“I was just asking where you two were off to tonight. You’ve already experienced our one and only diner and our lone bar, so will you head over to Eastport or just repeat yourselves?”
I hadn’t even thought about tonight beyond remembering to bring to work the stuff I needed in order to get ready. I knew Ryu wanted to look for Peter’s car, but obviously I couldn’t tell that to Tracy. So I mumbled something about “playing it by ear,” which seemed to satisfy her.
“Well, you two go ahead and have a good time. I’ll close up here.” Tracy looked so obviously pleased I had a date that it bordered on humiliating. I knew I was fairly pathetic, but was I really so pathetic?
Probably, replied my inner voice, snarkily.
Bite me, I thought. Followed quickly by, I really gotta stop talking to myself.
Ryu waited to greet me properly until we got out to his car. With one hand on my door’s handle he used the other to brush my bangs from my eyes. “Hey there,” he said, gently. “You feeling okay today?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, blushing. “I’m sorry I freaked out last night. Stuart and I go way back and he knows exactly how to get under my skin.”
Ryu smiled. “No need to apologize, I figured as much. But I hate to think that idiot wrecked our evening.”
“He didn’t,” I assured Ryu, blushing even harder. “I had so much fun last night.” I wanted to tell him it had been one of the best nights I’d had in the last eight years but I knew how pitiful that sounded.
“Good.” He grinned, opening my door for me. He looked decidedly pleased with himself. After he’d settled himself in his seat and we were pulling away from the bookstore, I realized I had no idea where we were going.
“Everything got rather exciting this morning and so today’s plans have changed slightly,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “Anyan already found the car; somebody set it on fire late last night. But now there’s a protective spell over the whole thing so we can go investigate at our leisure.”
I gave a murmur of assent. I wasn’t at all opposed to spending another evening in Ryu’s company, but I wasn’t sure why he was bringing me with him on his search.
“So,” he continued blithely, “I figured we would check out the car, see if there are any clues there as to what happened to Jakes. Then we can just take it from there. We’ll have to eat at some point, obviously, so dinner can be your payment for being my sidekick, if you like.”
“Oh, I’m your sidekick, am I?” That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard, I thought, smugly.
“Of course,” he said, grinning cheekily. “It’s hard work, but somebody has to do it.”
“What’s my job description?” I asked, enjoying our easy repartee.
“Well, you have to write down everything I say,” he said with a nod to the glove compartment. “There’s pen and paper in there. And you have to underline anything you think is particularly clever, so that you can congratulate me on my quick thinking when the appropriate moment arises. That’s usually when my theories are proved correct, which of course they will be. You also have to question anything I say that might need an explanation, so that I get the chance to provide one in order to highlight my own genius. Oh, and if you could leave the pithy one-liners to me, I’d appreciate it. Pithy one-liners are not for sidekicks, I’m afraid.”
“Do vampires watch too many television mysteries?” I asked.
“Hey,” he said, acting affronted. “It’s research!”
I laughed, and our homicide-drama banter continued until we pulled off the main road onto a tiny winding dirt track that must lead somewhere toward the ocean. I could feel it pulsing in front of me, beckoning.
As we drove farther, I finally recognized where we were: right near the Rockabill Bluffs, an area of small cliffs adjoining our public beach. In the summer months, they were where the local boys took their seasonal girlfriends for a little heavy petting.
They were also a very good place from which to launch a body.
Right before we got to the bluffs, we turned off onto a small track that couldn’t even be called a road. I didn’t think a Boxster was really the best vehicle for such terrain, but at least it was small and couldn’t get stuck on anything. Also, the temperature had dropped precipitously after the storm the other night, so although the ground was muddy the mud was frozen solid.
Good. I wouldn’t want to ruin my shoes, I ironized, looking down at my already filthy kelly green high-top Converse.
We stopped after just a little ways: Ryu must have been equally concerned about getting his car back out. “It’s right up ahead,” he said, as we got out. “Go on, if you’d like, while I secure the car. The others are already there.”
For about ten minutes I walked along the path, which was becoming less and less pathlike, until I was utterly convinced I had somehow missed them. There was no smell of burning, which I figured there had to be if a car had been set alight. But right then I emerged into a little clearing where sat the wreckage of Peter’s tiny Toyota.
Nell was sitting on the ground, looking for all the world like an oversized garden gnome. Trill, in pony form, was stretched out beside her with her head in Nell’s lap. Nell was braiding Trill’s mane into thick seaweed plaits. Near them sat Anyan, who must have been able to smell my approach, as he was watching for me with ears pricked and tongue lolling happily. I waved at them, and Nell and Trill smiled at me in welcome. I’d never seen a pony smile before. Now I knew why. It was horrible.
Anyan, wagging his tail, got up when he saw me. He came toward me and I knelt down to scratch his ears, cooing, “Who’s a good puppy?” in baby talk. I absolutely loved dogs, and Anyan was quite a dog. Now that I wasn’t under the influence of panic and adrenaline, I saw that he was just as huge as I remembered, but less fierce looking. I’m sure he could look fierce, but he didn’t look much like a hellhound at the moment. The cool white light shed by the little luminescent balls scattered throughout the glen revealed that Anyan’s coat was less black and more the dark reddish brown of wolves. He also had strange dark eyes that I thought were actually dusky gray. They’re oddly human, I thought, as Anyan leaned forward to lap my cheek.
But our little moment was interrupted by Ryu’s entrance. Anyan saw who it was and backed away from me. He sat down, watching Ryu intently.
“Good evening, Nell,” Ryu said, with a little bow toward the gnome. “Nice to see you again, Trill,” he added, with the same courtly little bow. They both acknowledged him with a nod.
Then he turned toward Anyan and me. “Anyan,” he said, his voice flat.
I giggled. That was the most serious meet-and-greet with a dog I’d ever seen.
But my laugh was cut short when Anyan, with a voice as rough as pebbles poured over gravel, growled back, “Ryu.”
If he’d donned the top hat and tails of the Warner Brothers frog and sung “Hello, My Baby” while tap dancing with a cane, I wouldn’t have been any more shocked than I was at that moment.
“It’s been awhile,” Ryu commented, noncommittally.
“Yes, it has,” replied Anyan, sounding equally unmoved. He looked toward me. “Why did you bring Jane?” he asked. “These events do not involve her.”
“Why not?” Ryu’s response had an undertone of heat to it. I was sensing these two had a history. “She’s one of us and therefore this does involve her.”
Anyan gave Ryu a hard look. “You never did know how to separate business from pleasure,” he observed, his rough voice imbuing his accusation with a harsh note of finality.
Throughout their exchange I just stared, open-mouthed. Part of me registered that I should be offended Anyan didn’t think I belonged there, but I was too surprised at the whole talking-dog thing to focus on anything else. Finally, to put an end to the conversation, Ryu changed track and said, “Anyan, just release the car and I’ll get to it. This shouldn’t take long and we’ll be out of your fur.”
Anyan’s hackles bristled almost imperceptibly, just for a second, and I heard a faint pop. Something around the car that looked like a force field from Star Trek sparkled then died. The smell of burning rubber suddenly filled the little glade. That must have been what Ryu had been talking about when he said there was a “protective spell” around it. But it appeared that Anyan had been the one who set it, rather than Nell. I’d already realized that he had somehow healed my forehead that night at the cove, and now he was magicking cars. He must have been top of his class at obedience school, I thought at the same time that I remembered to be mad at him. I glared at the dog. For his part, he did look decidedly sheepish as he came toward me again.
Ryu started with the front of the car, examining under the hood and then poking into the driver’s seat.
“Why didn’t you tell me you could talk?” I used the opportunity to hiss at Anyan.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his tail going down between his legs. “We didn’t want to give you too many shocks in one night.”