In a Fix (3 page)

“God, Billy, what’s going on here? Trey disappeared between the bistro and the bungalow. I waited—”

“All alone,” he interrupted. “Worried. Distressed. So very horny.” This said in a proper, upper-class British accent.

I broke up again. “Stop. I’m trying to explain things to you.” I told him about Trey calling, and the guy with the weird accent.

“I gather you don’t want to tell the cops about the phone calls. Do you think that’s wise?”

“I don’t know! All I could think about was Trey getting killed if I said the wrong thing.
Maybe
the police could rescue him, but…” I dropped my head to my lap and hid behind a sheet of black hair.

He patted my back. “Yeah. But.” I felt him leave, and when he returned he had two beers. He popped both cans open and handed one to me. “The odd-accent guy didn’t give you any idea what he wanted?”

“Not a clue. I’m waiting for the next call. I assume there will be instructions.” I sipped gratefully. My throat was still sore from all the dust. “Gee, Your Majesty, shouldn’t we at least pour these into glasses?”

The Queen chugged her beer and followed it with an openmouthed belch. Most unregal. “Nah. Liz is a common girl at heart. Word in the palace corridors has it she sneaks down to the local and knocks back tequila shots on her birthday. Oh, wait—maybe that’s just when I’m there.”

I looked at him sideways, doubting the real Queen had ever grinned so impishly. “Does Mark know you snatched a reigning monarch’s energy? I don’t imagine he’d approve.”

“Pish. He doesn’t care, as long as I don’t cause an international incident. No one here recognizes Liz, anyway, not when she’s out of context.”

“No one?” I raised my eyebrows and took another, much longer, drink. Mina’s burp was barely a whisper compared to the Queen’s.

“I suppose it’s possible the management is under the impression they have a member of the royal family here incognito.”

“And might one assume you are getting the royal treatment while you are here?”

“Call it a perk,” he said with a twinkle.

“Well, as long as you
are
here, make yourself useful and help me figure out what to do. Should I call Mina and tell her what happened?”

“Is she the sort to take bombing and kidnapping in her stride?”

“She’s more the sort who wants everything taken care of and presented to her in a neat package. Like the engagement she contracted with me to deliver—” I vaulted to my feet. “Oh, shit! Shit, shit, shit!”

The Queen rose, too. “What? What’s the matter now?”

“The
ring
! Mina’s engagement ring—I left it in the bungalow, and now it’s … it’s…”

“Relax. Diamonds are hard. They’ll probably find it when they sift through the debris.”

I tried to calm down. “Yeah … yeah, I guess you’re right. Sorry. It’s just that this whole job centers around getting that ring. I’d hate to disappoint Mina.” Not to mention see my business go down the tubes. But there was no need for Billy to know how imminent failure was.

“Heaven forbid. So, you squeezed the proposal out of him?” He gave me a congratulatory clap on the shoulder. “Good for you, cuz. But when did you manage it?”

“Well, he hasn’t exactly popped the question yet. While I was waiting for him earlier, I just sort of … um, came across the ring.”

“Snooping, were you?” he said, happy as a frat boy at a kegger to catch me admitting to something naughty.

“I was just looking for some clue as to where he might have gone,” I said, chin up. “I don’t make a practice of it.”

“Right. I know that.” His eyes said otherwise.

“Look, it was part of the job. It’s not like I snoop in regular life.”

“Oh, no. You’re an absolute angel. Angels don’t snoop.”

“You are
not
helping.” Glaring, I grabbed his beer can and squashed it one-handed. Did the same to mine. His, at least, had been empty. I stomped into the kitchen to look for the recycling bin, my hand dripping.

“You know what your problem is?” he called after me. “You’re tense. If all this had happened after you’d boinked Trey, you’d be a lot more relaxed right now. And that, my love, is something I can help you with.”

Uh-oh.

Chapter 3

I dropped the cans on the counter and ran back to the living room, wiping my hand on the seat of my pants as I went. Too late. There was Trey, every spectacular inch of him. He ditched his old-lady shirt—and bra—and was about to drop his pants when I caught his arm.

“Billy, you can’t just assume Trey’s—”

“I can and did.” Trey’s voice, the very pitch and tone. He maneuvered me into his arms and kissed my neck.

Geez, he smelled good. All beachy and manly. How had he gotten rid of the Queen’s perfume so fast? My knees started to buckle—only a little, I swear—so I pulled away fast, to give him a piece of my mind. Only then I saw his lips, and he smiled the non-Chiclets smile, and I forgot what I was going to say. I think my mouth fell open.

He stopped and let me go. Two seconds later he was Billy, the real Billy, and he didn’t look pleased. Handsome as hell, yes, but not happy.

Truth is, Billy in his natural state is nothing to sneeze at. It was hard for me to be objective, having known him all through his snotty grade school and awkward teenage years, but adulthood had been good to him. He had dark brown hair, which he kept fairly short because of its tendency to curl, and inky blue eyes, fringed with lashes so black and thick they would make any woman—not just me—green with envy. When we were six, I told him he had girly lashes, and he promptly took his mother’s manicure scissors and cut them off. Which was a really dumb thing for him to do, and I still don’t know why I got the spanking for it.

Add tall to the equation. Six-foot-one, tennis-player trim. Oh, and dimples when he smiled. Shirtless was a good look for him, too—a smattering of dark chest hair, and muscles that showed but didn’t bulge like a gym rat. I halfway suspected he liked to spend time behind odd auras just to get a break from the hordes of willing women who tended to accumulate in his wake like sharks after chum. Frankly, his good looks annoyed me.

Once my post-exposure-to-Trey wits returned, something occurred to me. “Hey, when did you get close enough to Trey to pinch his aura? And why?”

He shrugged. “Clumsy old Liz almost slipped on the steps to the boardwalk right as Trey was on his way down to the beach this afternoon. He did the gentlemanly thing and steadied me. Some energy must’ve accidentally rubbed off.”

Yeah, right. Like anything was ever accidental with Billy. He still looked a little grumpy, though, so I let it slide with “Oh.”

“You shouldn’t get personally involved in your jobs. It only leads to trouble,” he said, a little too autocratically for my taste.

“Excuse me?
You
are telling me not to get involved? Mr. Nail-It-If-It-Wears-A-Skirt?”

“It’s different with men. We’re built for meaningless sex. You’re not equipped to deal with it.”

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at him. I only hoped it worked as well with Mina’s face as I knew it did with mine. “Of all the sexist, chauvinistic, paternalistic, patronizing—” I sputtered, increasing the volume with each word, “egotistical, idiotic, asinine…”

The amusement was building in his eyes with every new adjective I threw at him, and it wasn’t long before it dripped down into his dimples. By the time I was close enough to wag my finger in his face, he was back to his sunny self. He grabbed my shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks. “Easy to rile as ever, cuz.”

I shrugged him off. “I will never understand why you weren’t drowned at birth.”

“I’m hurt.” He tried—unsuccessfully—not to smile.

“Yeah, right.”

“Truly. I’m crushed. This hurts worse than when you kicked me in the nuts.”

“Oh, geez. How many times do I have to apologize for that? We were in fifth grade, for Pete’s sake. Get over it.” He’d told me he was wearing a cup for soccer practice. I was merely seeing if it worked. I can’t help it if I have an inquiring mind.

Before we could continue down memory lane—which tended to be a rocky path for us—my pocket sprang to life. Mina’s cell. It buzzed again as I fished it out of the polyester cavern.

Billy stopped me before I could answer it. “Wait. Who is it?”

I checked. “Looks like the same number as before. I better take it.”

“Let me.” When I hesitated, he held out his hand impatiently. “So I can hear the accent.”

“But if it’s not me, he might—”

“So it’ll be you.” He took my hand, borrowed some of Mina’s energy, and all at once we were twins. I’d say it was disorienting, but I was used to that sort of thing. It was only a little weirder than usual this time because he was still topless.

I handed him the phone. He kept holding on to me, because a secondhand aura takes a little longer to absorb. As long as he was poaching off me it didn’t matter. “Talk to me,” he said in a perfect imitation of Mina’s perky voice.

“Show-off,” I mouthed to him. He turned away from me, pinching my fingers more tightly than necessary.

“Yes, I understand … Where? I’m afraid I don’t … yes, of course. No, I haven’t said anything about you, I swear … Her? Just some old tourist who offered me use of her shower … no, of course I wouldn’t … Wait! What about Trey? Is he—” He closed the phone and let go of me.

“Well?”

He looked at me like I was a slow child. “Since when is a Swedish accent difficult to recognize?”

“Is that what it was? Huh.” I totally suck at recognizing accents, other than your standard BBC America British. I can imitate any dialect connected to an aura I’m borrowing, no problem. I just can’t identify them. My mother tells me I’m like someone who can play an instrument by ear, but can’t read music. Whatever. I wasn’t going to admit a weakness to Billy.

He shrugged. “Might be Norwegian, but my money is on the Swedes.”

“So what did he say? What am I supposed to do?”

“Mina will be following instructions to the letter, for the meantime.”

“Okay, I’m prepared for that. But you have to be a little more specific.”

“No, I don’t.” Still projecting Mina’s aura, he reached for his shirt and slipped it back on, not bothering with the bra. “Right now I’m going shopping. If you want to come along, I suggest you slip into something a little more regal.”

“Oh, no you don’t!” I grabbed his arm and spun him around. Not difficult, since in his current incarnation we were evenly matched, to say the least. “You are not hijacking Mina. I can take care of this myself.”

“Listen, Ciel, you’re great at your job, but this is different. This is dangerous. I can’t let you do it alone, and since Mina can’t show up with anyone, I’m afraid I’ll have to fill in for you.”

“That is so not going to happen,” I said in my best stand-up-to-Billy voice.

“Here’s the deal, Ciel. I am walking out the front door as Mina. If you want to follow me as Mina I can’t stop you, but you’ll blow your whole job here. Is that what you want?”

“Billy, be reasonable. You don’t know Mina. You might slip up. If I had her file here for you to read—”

“Don’t worry. I’ve read it.”

“What? How did you … you broke into my office!”

He shrugged. “Of course I did. How else could I track you?”

A nasty realization hit me. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you? Gone through my private files?”

“Well, how did you think I found you all those other times?” he said in a perfectly reasonable, albeit Mina-ish, voice.

“I thought my mother told your mother.”

“You tell your mother where your jobs are but not me?” He looked incredulous.

“She worries.”

“I worry, too.” He certainly had Mina’s pout down pat.

“Yeah, but I don’t care if I worry you,” I said, feeling mean.

He gave my hair a tiny yank. “Yes, you do.”

“Do not.”

“Never mind. I have some shopping to do before my big meeting. If you want to come along to the mall, you best get changed. If you get my drift.”

“Shopping? Are you crazy?”

“We have some time to kill. Coming or not?”

I sighed, heavily and melodramatically, the way I’d learned from my mother. (He ignored it, the way he’d learned from every male in my extended family.) “All right, already. Hand over a bit of the royalty,” I said, not seeing an alternative, since I wasn’t about to let him out of my sight until I found Trey.

He took my hand and shifted to the Queen long enough for me to tap into the energy, and just as easily donned Mina’s aura again. Call me shallow, but going from a firm, young body to one that’s … well, not … isn’t entirely pleasant. I shook out my arms—ack! the jiggle!—and flexed my muscles. Aside from the bingo wings, I was fine. When you project an aura, you’re limited by the age, size, and reflexes of your subject. Lucky for me, Liz was spry.

Billy held up the sturdy-looking brassiere he’d taken off earlier, not even bothering to tone down his grin. “Here. You might want this.”

I looked down at my new, gravitationally challenged bosom and sighed. “Give it over. I’ll be back in a second—and don’t you dare leave without me.”

*   *   *

“Mina would never wear leopard spots,” I hissed at Billy after the tarted-up salesgirl left us to hunt down more “perfect for you” clothes.

I was still having a hard time believing a shopping expedition was necessary, but Billy had assured me he was acting on orders to go about Mina’s normal day before going to the designated rendezvous point later. He figured the Swede didn’t want Mina traipsing off to meet him too soon, in case any stray police officers were still hanging around, and might be inclined to follow her. Since shopping was as normal as breathing for Mina—and nothing would’ve kept her from replacing her blown-up wardrobe—here we were, being normal.

“Says you. I happen to like it.” He twisted and turned in front of the three-way mirror, getting the full effect of Mina’s to-die-for body in the clingy halter mini dress.

I shuddered. “You would. But Mina happens to have taste. I thought you said you read her file. Did you even look at the pictures of her closet?”

“She’s on vacation. Believe me, nobody who owns a thong bikini like the one you were wearing earlier would hesitate to be seen in this.”