Kindling The Darkness. Jane Kindred
but in almost-military shape, living in tiny, artsy Jerome in the middle of nowhere keeping tabs on its “extra-human” population? Maybe he was a fugitive. Lucy opened her eyes. Maybe he was her fugitive.
The phone rang from the living room. She’d left it in her pocket when she stripped out of her wet clothes. Lucy sighed and climbed out of the tub.
She got to the phone after the call had rolled to voice mail, and she listened to the message on speaker while toweling off. An older woman spoke a bit hesitantly, as though her request was awkward. She spoke on behalf of “the council,” which wanted to contract Lucy’s services to investigate a werewolf sighting. In Jerome. So much for taking care of its own.
Whoever this “council” was, they were clearly desperate. Lucy called the woman back to verify the job’s legitimacy before agreeing to take it. Despite the unorthodox call to her personal phone, they’d been referred to Smok Consulting through the proper channels. They were anxious to meet with her this morning, in an hour, wanting to take care of the problem before too many residents—or more likely, tourists—became aware of it. This “werewolf” was probably the fugitive she was tracking. She could kill two hell beasts with one stone.
Lucy pushed down the exhaustion. She’d stayed up this long. Might as well go for two days. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten—she’d left a gorgeous plate of hash browns cooked into a giant pancake, plus a sweet side of bacon, at the coffeehouse—but there wasn’t time for a proper breakfast. Maybe she could grab coffee and a muffin somewhere in Jerome before meeting her contact. Lucy sighed. As much as she’d resented Lucien’s attitude about Smok Consulting’s work, it had sure seemed easier handling these kinds of jobs with two people. Maybe he hadn’t been entirely useless.
* * *
The road to Jerome, once she’d left Sedona and driven through the flat stretch of valley beyond Cottonwood and Clarkdale, was straight up the escarpment separating the Black Hills from the valley. One thing Lucy hated was driving slow, and driving up between the stacked limestone retaining walls that hugged the mountainside meant driving slow.
Arriving in Jerome with fifteen minutes to spare, Lucy parked in front of an artsy-looking shop in the bottom of a restored Victorian on lower Main Street near the Ghost City Inn, an old miners’ boardinghouse turned B and B. A wrought-iron sign hanging over the door declared the shop was Delectably Bookish. She wasn’t sure if it was a café or a bookstore, but she thought she smelled coffee brewing inside. She opened the door, pursuing the scent. It looked like a reading room, with comfy mismatched chairs and couches strewn among tables beside stacks of hardback books—and, hallelujah, a shellacked wooden counter at the back bearing an espresso machine and a case of pastries and treats.
Lucy made a beeline for it. Coffee was definitely brewing. But there was no one in sight.
“Hello?” She leaned over the counter, peering into the back through a beaded-glass curtain. “Anyone back there?”
Nothing.
She was running out of time, and she really needed that coffee. She’d been awake for almost thirty hours at this point. “Hey, hello? You’ve got a customer out here.”
In frustration, she tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter and grabbed a lemon poppy seed muffin, stuffing a bite into her mouth while she went around the counter and helped herself to a cup of coffee. There were no paper cups. She’d have to bring back the cappuccino cup after her meeting.
Lucy sipped her coffee as she headed back around the counter and nearly dumped it on herself as she looked up. At the bottom of the staircase that led from the book stacks to the second floor of what she assumed were more book stacks, a ruggedly handsome middle-aged man stood watching her, arms folded—and they were seriously impressive arms packed tight into a white T-shirt—a scowl on his tanned face. It was her G.I. Joe vigilante.
“Find the cash register all right? I hope that pesky drawer didn’t give you any trouble. It sticks sometimes.”
“Cash register? No, I—just needed a coffee. There was nobody here. I left money on the counter.”
“Jerome isn’t your personal hunting ground. You might want to learn some manners before someone mistakes you for a thief and treats you accordingly.”
Heat rushed to Lucy’s face. “Yeah? Well, you might want to be a little more responsive when a customer is waiting. In the real world, baristas don’t get tips when they ignore people. Maybe you shouldn’t be taking bathroom breaks when you’re supposed to be working.”
“Maybe you should learn to read.” His head tilted toward the words printed in large gold lettering on the outside of the glass panel on the door. “We open at noon.”
Lucy tried to maintain some dignity, the stupid muffin crumbling in her hand as she set down the coffee cup. “Why the hell is the door unlocked if you’re not open?”
Barista G.I. Joe studied her for a moment, his expression giving away nothing. “We generally trust our neighbors around here. This is the first time I’ve ever been robbed.”
“Robbed?” Lucy picked up the five-dollar bill and waved it at him. “I paid you. But you know what? Forget it. Keep the coffee and the muffin. And the damn change. Maybe you can buy yourself a functioning lock.”
She tossed the muffin and the money on the counter and stalked to the door, willing down the prickly heat in her skin threatening to top off her humiliation with a furious blush. She made it all the way to the door—and then pushed instead of pulled.
His soft laughter as she adjusted her grip on the handle followed her out.
Lucy wasn’t easily flustered. Years of practice being the “good” daughter under Edgar’s strict rules and dealing with supernatural rogues, paranormal entities and therianthropes—or shape-shifters, in layman’s terms—of every description had made her preternaturally calm under pressure. Everything was to be kept inside. A Smok wasn’t supposed to react with emotion but with a cool head to defuse the most unpredictable situations. And she certainly didn’t get embarrassed. What was it to her if some petty wannabe-vigilante barista chose to call her a thief just because he couldn’t be bothered to man the counter at his day job?
Normally, she’d have already forgotten the encounter. Maybe it was the lack of sleep—and caffeine—affecting her, but her blood was boiling, and she couldn’t shake it off. She wanted to go back and punch the guy in the mouth.
Lucy gritted her teeth and entered the landscape-dominating Civic Center building on Clark Street that housed the town hall, an odd mix of classical architecture and Mission Revival that defied the small-town-Victorian aesthetic.
With a few minutes to spare, she stepped into the bathroom to make sure she was presentable. Charcoal-gray pin-striped suit immaculate, white shirt crisp, nothing out of place. After tucking a few stray hairs into the loose braid that hung down her back, she touched up her Blood Moon lip stain—the dark, dramatic hue was the one concession she made to traditional femininity; the over-the-top color went beyond sexual appeal, making an aggressive statement that made her feel in control—and headed upstairs to her meeting.
The door to the meeting room opened outward—like a respectable door. Lucy pulled it open and stopped on the threshold in disbelief. Among the three council members sitting at the table was Barista G.I. Joe.
His dark brows drew together into a disbelieving scowl that matched the one she was no doubt displaying as he met her eyes. “You have got to be kidding.”
The elderly woman who’d risen from the seat next to him at Lucy’s entrance glanced from him to Lucy and back. “Do you two know each other?”
“No, we don’t,” said Lucy before he could answer. “We just had a misunderstanding about coffee.”
“I