~~~~~~
“Hello?” Marco was silent for a moment. Then he hit the door on his side, hard. Casey jumped. Now he dangerous, like he’d been in the parking lot at the store.“Goddamn it, Lyrene, it’s one night. Can’t you—alright. Alright, yes. I’m coming. I’m on my way.” He hung up.
“Trouble?” Casey asked.
“We immortals are great fun to have around,” Marco said, darkly. “We don’t age, file for social security or clutter up the hospitals. And if you’ve gotten your fat in the fryer six days in a row we just live to get you back out of it. If this girl doesn’t figure out how to live straight I’m going to enter a bleeding monastery I swear to God my Father.” He put the car into gear, then looked over at Casey. “I’m sorry. Her boss called the cops and I can’t afford to have her get arrested.”
“I’ll ride along.” She smiled. “Hell, it’ll be better than watching the morning news for the six thousandth time.”
“Good.” He pulled out of the parking lot and turned the car back to the highway. SPID was the biggest road in Corpus, the main artery for the city. Eight lanes of gray spread before them and department stores pulsed like hearts to either side. “I should warn you, though, she’s a fan.”
“Well, so are you and Arthur.”
“I’m homesick. Arthur’s a nerd. Lyrene went to Relms Con last year dressed up as Leythorne the Gray Lord. Bleached hair, pancake makeup, pointy ears.”
Oh. Shit. “I think I remember her,” Casey said, cautiously. Her public persona respected fans of all shapes and colors, and seeing somebody dressed up as one of her characters usually made her day. But she remembered last year’s convention a little too strongly. Something about that one encounter just never sat right.
“She’s going through a bad time right now. The other two in the city are sane. They work at the Aquarium. Neither one knows the other is there, they’re still best friends, and I’d tell them about each other but they’ll get it on their own one day. But Lyrene…If she were human she’d probably be on lithium.
“She’s a smart girl. She’s got a bleeding Ph.D, In marine biology. She was in line to direct the Aquarium, and she up and quits to go work as a pole dancer at Bottom’s Up.”
“She met a guy.” Casey said, dryly.
“How would you know that?”
She shrugged. “Girl loses her mind? There’s a guy involved.” Marco turned on a blinker. “You think the sniper’s Faerie, don’t you?”
His hands clenched on the wheel, knuckles bleach white.
“Who do you suspect?”
“It’s more who I can’t suspect. We have a Wym.” These were the small, Tinkerbell like creatures that inhabited Ambercross’s woodlands. “She hangs out in the mall, making punk-rock clothes out of fast food rappers and discarded price tags. Recoil would turn her into a goth girl’s eyeshadow. She’s not it. Raziel’s out of town. Good thing too, ‘cause short of a Sidhe Lord in Corpus I don’t know what could take her down. The Merrow wouldn’t hurt a fly. There’s a dryad in Lamar, but it’s a hellacious commute and she’s checked into her job at the nursery every single day. Tim Anderson, my partner…not only are we together all the time, I’ve got his time cards. And he doesn’t have the first clue how to fire a gun. It’s not me. As for our real problem children…
“We’ve got two Phookas here in town. Raziel put the fear of God into them, and then fear of her just in case that wasn’t enough. Ero does well enough, but Prix…if you can’t pass for human, you have to pick another shape. And Prix wants to be a tiger.”
Casey whistled. Ever since a couple dozen big cats, including three tigers, burned to death in the Big Fisherman fire, exotics had been illegal in Nueces County. One of Casey’s church friends had just gotten a pet sugar glider, and she swore everyone to secrecy lest she lose Lisa forever.
“Prix wants to be special. She can’t go anywhere else, because nobody wants a Phooka in their city. You know what they are.”
“Yes, I do.” Casey said. If Marco was telling the truth, not a lot of Ambercross nasties made it into Earth lore. Phookas had, twice. First as themselves, and then as Kelpies. Their most famous trick was to appear as the most glorious horse anyone ever saw, and then drown their first rider.
“If she were more stable, I’d feel better about having her around, but she’s never where she says she’ll be,” Marco said. “She’s hiding things from the rest of us, and the last time we talked was almost a year ago. She hates Texas, she hates the ocean, and she’s got a sadistic sense of humor. If anyone would shoot humans for fun, it’d be Prix.”
They turned onto Airline.
“What about the other Phooka?”
“When he’s not pretending to be someone’s kid, he’s the guard dog at my shop. The little snot makes eight-fifty an hour.”
“Oh.” Casey said.
"So, if she’s targeting people who work with us,” Marco continued, “Tim’s boyfriend is at risk. Detective Banks, because he’s Raziel’s contact with CCPD. You. Arthur, maybe. He’s in the dark, but he works with us. Nikki’s teacher. The Merrows’ bosses. If we add in customers and casual contacts, though…” he shrugged.
“The whole city, basically.” Casey said.
“Yeah.”
Casey swallowed. “I’m still a target, aren’t I?”
Marco took a deep breath. “When a Faerie of any sort decides to hunt, chase a goal, we can’t give up. It’s not in our nature. I decided to protect you, and I’m going to continue doing that. Prix has decided to kill you. She’s not going to stop. The good news is, you’re also the best chance I’ll have of finding her. If I stay with you, I put a stop to it.”
Casey nodded. “Do I get a say in this?” she said.
“Do you want to die horribly in the teeth of humanity’s nightmare?” He actually waited for her to shake her head. “Then probably not.”
He got out of the car.