Discount Armageddon
Page 24

“Citizens of Manhattan,” I said, waving my arms for emphasis. More patrons turned in our direction. Dominic had gone even paler, which was an accomplishment. “May I have your attention?”
“You’ve got it, sweet-cheeks,” called the whistler. “Now can I have your number?” His buddies laughed, elbowing each other in the easy amusement natural to semidrunk frat boys trying to get enough coffee in themselves to remember where they left the car.
“Maybe later,” I said. Turning my attention to the coffee shop as a whole, I said, “My friend and I belong to two rival sects of monster hunters, pursuing the supernatural and mysterious through the underworld for centuries. He believes in extermination. I believe in preservation. Now we put it to you: which of us is right?”
“The one who takes off her top!” called another of the frat boys. Another round of laughter followed.
The rest of the patrons shook their heads and turned back to their tables, dismissing my outburst as being either drunken ravings, promotion for a television show they hadn’t heard about yet, or both. I hopped down from the chair, straddling it as I smiled benevolently at Dominic.
“Well?” I asked. “See any sign these nice folks feel like they’ve heard blasphemous talk?”
“I—you—they—”
“Pronouns are only useful when you combine them with other words. I have a few I can give you, if you’re at a loss.”
“I don’t believe you did that!” He was turning red now as the blood rushed back into his cheeks, horrified embarrassment chasing his pallor away.
“Why?” I shrugged, dropping my chin to rest on my crossed wrists. “Look, these are people who’ve grown up with slasher flicks and horror novels and everything else you can imagine. About the only way I’d get them to listen to me if I wanted to claim that cryptids were real would be to hop up on this table and strip.”
That seemed to get through his rising anger. The color died in his cheeks, slipping back toward white. “I will give you five hundred dollars not to do that,” he said.
“Deal. Also, you should maybe have your blood pressure checked. All that hyper-color action can’t be good for you.”
Dominic shook his head. “I never believed the stories about your family. I thought they were exaggerated. Now I’m starting to think that they may have been understating things.”
“Oh?” I asked, interested despite myself. “What did they say?”
“That you were all insane.”
“Ah.” I sat up again, grinning at him. “That’s pretty much true. We’re all crazy. But crazy has its benefits.”
“What benefits are those?” he asked warily.
“Crazy gets all the knives.”
Twenty minutes later, Dominic was finally done sputtering in righteous indignation, the frat boys had staggered home, and the barista had wandered into the office to call her boyfriend. Her laughter drifted through the coffee shop’s ventilation system, providing a handy, if accidental, mechanism for tracking her location. I was on my second cup of heavily-doctored coffee, and giving serious thought to a third. I’m not normally a big fan of overcaffeination, but registration for the tango competition was scheduled to open at seven in the morning and I needed all the help I could get.
“So you’re here alone to demonstrate that you can be trusted to be here alone. Isn’t that a little circular?”
“My orders were clear. I am to scout, take notes of what I encounter, and report back. That way, we can determine the size of the needed purge. At the same time, I demonstrate that I am morally prepared for fieldwork.”
“Uh-huh. And if you’re not prepared?”
“I will be reprimanded.”
“Harsh.”
Dominic shook his head. “You cannot imagine.”
I’ve read Grandpa Thomas’ journals. I had some idea. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a good idea to tell him that. “Here’s the thing I don’t get,” I said, propping my chin up on the knuckles of one hand. “You’re here to kill the people I’m here to look after. Why are you worried about them going missing, if you know it’s not because I’m getting them out of town? Either they’re in somebody else’s territory, which is a problem for your superiors, or they’re dead, which is a problem for me, but either way, they’re not a problem for you anymore.”
“A plague may stop a war, but does it not bring down even more destruction on the land?” asked Dominic, in a lofty, philosophical tone.
I eyed him. “If you don’t stop quoting dogma at me, I’m leaving.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You trying to tell me you just came up with that? Just now? Off the top of your head?”
He hesitated. “Well, no.”
“So that was more of the party line.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want your party line. I want answers. Why are you worried about my missing cryptids? They’re not your problem. If you didn’t kill them, you’re not my problem. So what’s your angle here?”
“I—” He hesitated again, clearly unsure how he was supposed to continue the conversation. Finally, he fixed me with an aggravated stare and said, “You are without a doubt the most annoying woman I have ever met.”
“We breed for it. Were you planning to answer my question?”
Dominic sighed. “If I thought the monsters were fleeing, it wouldn’t be my problem. I’d notify my superiors and keep hunting the ones that remain. There haven’t been any signs of them appearing in neighboring territories, and at least some of them would have to be traveling on foot. Since you’re here, there was a chance your family was running some sort of ill-considered underground railroad.”
“Well, we’re definitely not. I’d know.”
“I’m assuming you have local contacts who would have told you if they were running something like that, and that you wouldn’t have been lurking around on rooftops hoping to find me if they were.” I nodded, and he continued, “That’s my ‘angle,’ as you so charmingly put things. You can solve a mouse problem by developing a snake problem. But is it any better?”
I groaned. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that. You think we have a snake?”