The Hinky Bearskin Rug (39 page)

Rap pulled past the pack as it scrambled to its feet. Stun
flipped from backwards to forwards in one smooth jump, angled across the short
end of the track, and bodychecked Rap clean off the track.

A yell of triumph burst out of Jewel.

Lena nudged her. “Look. Pink stuff.”

There, hovering over the heads of the zooming pack, a pink
haze hung high in the air, near the twenty-foot ceiling. Jewel squinted. A
thread of pink actually hung over the whole oval. But over the skaters themselves,
the pink seemed to boil up out of nothing and coalesce in a shimmery, faintly
glittery cloud.

“Yeah, we saw some earlier,” Jewel said.

It was actually kind of pretty.

Then she realized what it could mean here.

Wherever pink stuff appeared, people disappeared.

Her stomach clenched.

Lena murmured, “It’ll stay like that until somebody gets
hurt or practice ends. I think I actually saw it in the bar after last
practice.” Lena added, her lips almost touching Jewel’s ear, “Although that may
have been the margaritas.”

“Road rage?” Jewel whispered back. The current unofficial
theory was that pink stuff on the highways was created by road rage.

Hairs lifted on the back of her neck as possibilities rose
in her imagination, none of them good. And in a bar!
Drunks and magic — bad combination,
she thought, remembering the
boozer genie she’d captured a few months ago.

Lena said, her eyes on the track, “We’ll talk about that
later. I have to gear down. I can meet you in the parking lot in twenty.”

Intensely aware of Randy’s disapproving presence on her
other side, Jewel said, “Twenty works for me. I got a fire to put out.” She
flushed.

Six months ago she would have scorned to postpone good
girltalk merely to argue with a man over something she fully intended to do anyway.

Lena’s glance went to Randy, then Jewel. Her smile seemed a
little wistful. “’Kay.”

o0o

I have the
following people to thank for their help in writing this book. If the book
contains errors, it is my fault. If I got it right anywhere, it’s to their
credit.

David Henry
Sterry, for his moving memoir,
Chicken;
Candida Royalle for advice and for some terrific women’s erotic films
(especially
Stud Hunters);
Betsy
Mitchell for not fainting over the first draft; Sue Grimshaw, for wanting more;
Rich Bynum, for infrastructure geekery; Ysa Wilce for patience and
brainstorming; “Mr. Balantine” for inside dope; Nalo Hopkinson for such sexual
diversity retraining as I’m capable of receiving; Eden Robins for patience and
multiple reads; Leah Cutter for cover design, Julie Griffin for the smoking
pigeon, Pooks Burroughs for copyedits, and Julianne Lee for ebook formatting;
Martha Whitehead for clout; Kim Hughes for website design; Julie Griffin for the
smoking pigeon; and my many, faithful, and ever-wise readers: Yvonne Yirka,
Kate Early, Hiromi Goto, Pam & Bar Man Mordecai, Larissa Lai, David
Findlay, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Sylvia Halkin, the Cherries, and the
multi-talented critiquers at Chicago-North RWA.

This book is a work of fiction. All
characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used
in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people,
situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

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The Hinky Bearskin Rug

Hinky Chicago Book Three

Jennifer Stevenson

Book View Café Edition September 17, 2013
ISBN: 978 1 61138 288 4
Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Stevenson

First published: 2008

Cover design by Leah Cutter
www.KnottedRoadPress.com

Smoking pigeon design by Julie Griffin

Copyeditor, Patricia Burroughs
Formatter, Julianne Lee

www.bookviewcafe.com

Jennifer Stevenson loves dark chocolate, Chicago, and crows, and she would never buy cigarettes for pigeons. She thinks up new uses for old sex demons for money and lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two cats.

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