Honeyed Words (13 page)

“We haven’t had a chance to talk in a while,” she said with a funny look on her face. “And I just needed to tell someone.”

Oh, lord. Was I getting laid off again? I hadn’t worked in five months as it was.

“Well,” she said, fidgeting. “Carl and I have decided to take things up a notch.”

She grabbed the edge of the counter, turned away from me, and pulled her pants down over her left hip, exposing an awesome Celtic tattoo. The knot work twined around in thin black lines, forming an intricate heart.

I leaned forward to get a better look. “Holy crap, Jennifer.”

Something in Latin filled a narrow, rippling banner that crossed the lower portion of the heart. The colors were vivid—mainly green, but there were reds and yellows also.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, grinning like a cat. “Carl will die if he knows I showed you.”

For a moment, I flashed back to a nightmare where I’d branded Jennifer, Carl, and the whole movie crew with the mark of N
IDHOGG
. The coincidence was unnerving.

“What spurred this?” I asked, straightening up.

She turned, buckling her pants. “I saw the ones on your calf, and it’s been in my mind.”

Yikes. Not like I planned to inspire body art or anything. Especially since I didn’t get a vote on the markings. I had Odin and Gram to thank for those lovely things. “What’s the line in Latin?”

“Amor et Ecstasis—Love and Ecstasy. We got them the day after we … you know.” She turned beet red.

“Hot damn, Jennifer,” I said high-fiving her. She was quite pleased.

“Do not tell Carl I told you we’ve slept together, okay?”

I smiled. “Sure thing.” I glanced over to the mirror, considering the possibilities of eavesdropping elves, gave it my best go-to-hell look, then plunged on. “So, you know,” I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “How was it?”

“Sarah,” she squealed, slapping me on the shoulder. I swear it was like junior high. She lowered her eyelids and her voice seemed to drop an octave. “It was amazing,” she said. “Magical.”

“Awesome. Tell me it wasn’t here with his mom and dad in the house.”

She made a face. “Dear god, no. With all the noise?” She quickly covered her mouth, like she’d said too much. “Never mind. No. It was at my apartment.”

“About damn time,” I said. “How’s he feel about the whole thing?”

She shrugged, smiling from ear to ear. “It’s like we’re in high school,” she said. “Every spare moment in the last two months, we’ve been ripping each other’s clothes off. It’s been wild.”

I thought back to Saturday with Katie. “I can’t imagine Carl being wild.”

She winked at me. “You have no idea.”

Now I was feeling all mushy and romantic … and a little turned on. I’d definitely need to call Katie tomorrow.

We rejoined the rest and things got rolling. Never been to a board meeting. Can’t say as I ever want to go again. Sure, we learned that
Elvis Versus the Goblins
was making money, and our next movie had a budget in the low millions, but damn. If the pie hadn’t been so good, I can’t say it was worth being in the same room with JJ all that time.

After the meeting broke, I hustled out of there as fast as I could. Almost made a clean getaway, too.

“Beauhall,” Qindra called to me.

I stopped and turned back. She hurried toward me, clutching her briefcase in one hand and her heels in another. Speed over fashion. I was moving pretty fast.

“What’s up?” I asked, giving her the stink eye. I didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her. She worked for the enemy.

“You seem to be well.” She paused, watching me. “I’ve been thinking about you lately. What’s new?”

This was a tad bizarre.

“Not much new,” I said with a shrug. “Just living my life.”

She smiled. “Good to hear.”

We stood there a second, eyeing one another.

“I could use a drink,” she said. “Would you like to join me?”

I thought a moment, trying to skip over the derogatory remarks and the smart-ass responses that immediately sprang to my mind.

“I … uh…” I was confused. “Why?”

“Fair question,” she said. “I thought we could discuss current events, catch up on the ramifications of what has transpired over the last six to nine months.”

I squinted at her. “I’m not sure we would see eye to eye on most things.” I preferred being honest, if a little blunt.

“I also think we could discuss your tendency to lose control, act out.”

Couldn’t get much blunter than that.

“I can help you,” she said. “I think.”

I thought to myself just how she would know about how out of control I had been feeling lately and then decided that it was better to engage with the enemy on neutral ground in order to get information. “What the hell,” I said. “Not like I have anything else to do besides sleep.”

She described a pub just over a couple of blocks away in a strip mall and headed back to her car.

I was really going to have drinks with her. She’d healed me at the farm, and there was a good chance she did more later, but that time in the hospital was pretty fuzzy.

So far she or her mistress hadn’t taken any action against Jimmy and Black Briar, so maybe we were in the clear. Not like I was going to be best friends with her or anything, but sometimes it paid to have your enemies close.

Seventeen

The Dirty Olive was unremarkable as pubs go, buried in a strip mall next to the highway. I give it credit that there were no pickup trucks parked out front.

I pulled into a slot in the middle of the parking lot, across from a rent-to-own place. Qindra pulled in beside me in a subdued gray-and-black ragtop Miata. Very stylish, in a cute girl way.

She didn’t close the top. “Not worth it,” she said. “Besides, no one messes with my ride.”

“If you say so.”

She smiled at me, flashing a set of perfect teeth, and nodded to the bar. “Best damn martinis in the city. If you like that sort of thing.”

“I’m more of a beer gal,” I said, following her in.

The place wasn’t smoky, since that was illegal these days, but it stank of old cigarettes and sour beer. Not a bar in the world that didn’t have that amazing underlying stench. On top of that, however, was a wicked odor of cooked beef and something sweet and tart. I couldn’t place the smell, but my stomach told me I’d had enough to eat at Carl’s.

We stopped at the bar, ordered our drinks, and took them to the back. Place was nearly empty. An older couple, forties maybe, sat at the bar hitting on each other halfheartedly.

Near the door to the kitchen an old Asian woman sat nursing a cup of coffee. She had on a stained apron, likely the cook. She didn’t look at us as we walked past her.

We dropped our drinks on a table. Beer for me, and a dirty martini for Qindra—extra olives. She smiled at me, pulling the olives off the skewer with her teeth.

“You play darts?” she asked.

There were three boards along the back wall.

“I’m sure I can manage it,” I said.

“Good,” she said, walking back to the bar.

I took a sip of my microbrew and watched her as the bartender handed her two sets of darts. Real things, it turned out, metal tips.

I think I’d thrown darts at a cousin’s as a kid. Not a real memorable experience. Ended in someone crying, bleeding, things broken, whuppings all around.

“It’s easy,” Qindra said to me. “You hold the dart by the barrel like this.” She held one up so I could see. “The vanes here, or fletching, help stabilize it in flight.”

“Yeah, I get the general concept.”

“Cool.”

We threw three games. She kept some sort of score, apparently, and I ended up buying the second round of drinks.

I think she hustled me, but it held my attention.

Too many rules for my liking. Something about hitting certain sections of the board, not just the bull’s-eye. I thought it was all about the center. Go figure.

“You totally suck,” she said, walking back to our table. “Stick to blacksmithing.”

She was smiling and laughing as she said it, so I didn’t get mad. Mostly.

“Good plan,” I said, pulling my chair around backward and sitting in it with my chest against the tall back. “Besides the darts and the olives … just why are we here?”

“I think we have more in common than you may think,” she said.

I couldn’t pick out the genetic features in her face, but she was damn pretty. Knew it, too. She wasn’t exactly arrogant about it, but she used her looks as naturally as breathing.

Not really in my league. I glanced down at my boots and jeans, then over at her expensive suit and very nice heels.

“If you want to talk to me about your religion, or want me to sell some form of soap product as a member of your club, I’m really not interested.”

She shook her head. “Always the smart-ass, huh, Sarah?”

I shrugged. “Can’t fight nature.”

She just smiled at that and waited, like she was expecting something from me, but I didn’t call this little meeting. Really only one reason I could figure we were here, so why not jump into the deep end of the pool? “Why is Nidhogg interested in little ole me?”

“Interesting.” Qindra took a healthy drink of her second martini, keeping her eyes on me. When she set the glass on the table, she toyed with it, wetting her finger and running it around the lip of the glass.

“I know you have trouble controlling your anger,” she said finally. “I’m not sure if this is something new for you, or what?” She looked at me, expecting an answer.

“I’ve been a hothead most of my life,” I said truthfully. Da would agree.

“I thought perhaps it had something to do with that sword you made.”

I took a long sip of my beer. “I make lots of swords. You may want to be more specific.”

She sighed. “There is really only one blade we can be discussing.” She leveled her gaze at me. “Something Jean-Paul was willing to break compact over. A blade that Frederick Sawyer was willing to play his hand for…” She paused, watching me for a reaction. “It is not beyond their kind to covet something, to desire it above all other things.”

“Yeah. You work for some charming people.”

She held up one finger. “I am beholden to only Nidhogg.”

Great. Like that was different. “Fine, you and the oldest dragon of them all. I feel so much better.”

“You are too young to understand,” she said, dismissing my comment. “You were not raised to serve them, as I was.”

Raised to serve them? Was that any different from what Da did? Raising me to serve his dear and fluffy lord? But I had free will, after all. Didn’t Qindra?

“My mother served Nidhogg before me,” she said. “As did her mother’s sister. It does not always follow the parent, but it does follow the blood.”

“Follow the blood? Servitude?”

She shook her head. “No. Not exactly. We all serve someone, in some way. Surely you understand that much about the world.”

“There may be those to whom I allow my allegiance,” I said. “Friends, family, country, that sort of thing. But I don’t serve baby killers.”

“Always with the drama, eh Sarah?” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “You share a lot in common with them. There is a light inside you that reminds me of them in a way.”

“I’m no dragon,” I said.
Right? How could I be?

She laughed. “Of course not. They are rare and powerful, but they are not so easily hidden to those who watch for such.”

Those who watch? Did Nidhogg fear another dragon in her territory? Was that why she was so quick to stick it to Sawyer? Beyond the tit-for-tat politics of rival predators, maybe there was more here.

“No, you are not one of the scaled ones.” She was openly curious. “Nor do I believe you are one of the elder gods, returned to set my mistress afright.”

I was impressed, frankly. She was talking to me as if I was in the know—one of the in-crowd.

“Maybe,” I said, “I’m just a blacksmith who happens to have been in the wrong place at the right time.”

“Perhaps.”

Just
perhaps.
I didn’t like the level of scrutiny she was giving me. Hell, at this point I wasn’t sure why I had come here at all. As a matter of fact, this whole thing was starting to stink like bad cheese. I’m not the same as them.

“You serve them; you are complicit in their crimes.”

She nodded once. “Alas, you are correct. I have many crimes to atone for,” she said. “Things you would find unsettling in your immature view of the world.”

“Immature?”

“Oh, Sarah. You understand
immature:
childish, churlish, infantile.” Her grin was Cheshire in magnitude.

Now she was just pissing me off. I sat back, trying to keep the anger tamped down, making ready to stand. “Thanks for the dart lesson.” I said through gritted teeth. I stood and walked around the table, counting slowly in my head.