Kingfisher(15)

“Sure,” Gabe said, his attention on her now that she was going to leave him. He rose as she did, watched her silently as she took the glass to the bar. She waved to him, and he nodded, still not moving; she felt his gaze until she closed the screen door behind her and stepped into the parking lot.

A shadow shifted beside the pickup as she crossed to the driver’s side. She stopped, more startled than frightened; nothing much ever happened in Chimera Bay. The shadow stepped forward, let the light from the streetlamp fall on its face.

She didn’t recognize him, but he knew her.

“Carrie. I’m Todd Stillwater.”

He was, she thought incredulously, the most beautiful man she had ever seen. If a Greek statue of an athlete had landed in the Kingfisher parking lot, alive, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, he would have looked just like this, complete with the wonderful straight nose, the mobile, curling lips, the wide-set, guileless eyes. Even his voice was perfect, deeper and more tempered than she would have expected from his youthful, open expression.

She was staring, she realized, frozen and mute. She opened her mouth; a bat squeaked out, by the sound of it.

He smiled a little, reassuringly, though the charming little frown, like the most careful chip of the sculptor’s chisel between his brows, remained.

“I startled you. I’m sorry. I usually don’t skulk around scaring people in parking lots. I just drove over on the off chance you’d still be here. I closed earlier this evening.”

He paused, waiting. She cleared her throat. “Yes,” she managed. “I’m Carrie Teague.”

“My wife Sage dropped into this place a couple of times recently. She likes the way you cook. Your ideas. We wondered if you’d like to come and work for me.” She opened her mouth again; nothing came out this time. He added, “I run my own kitchen; Sage helps me. She also bartends, sets tables, serves, cleans up after—”

“Oh,” Carrie breathed, enlightened. “You want me to set tables.”

“No. Sage doesn’t mind doing all that. But it’s too much for her to have kitchen duties as well. So I’ve been looking for someone else to cook with me. I’m asking you. If you can bear to leave this place. I can pay you very, very well.” He smiled again. “I think you’d be worth it.”

She felt something break loose in her chest or her brain, float slowly aloft like a hot-air balloon ascending from earth into warm, endless blue. “I don’t—” She pulled in a breath dizzily. “I don’t know what to say. Except thank you. I could never afford to eat in your restaurant. But I’ve heard your cooking is—well, unlike anything else around here. Magical. I think that’s the word I heard when I started paying attention. My experiments—my little bites—they’re just for fun. Mostly I fry fish. Make clam chowder. French fries for lunch and garlic mashed for dinner.”

“Yes,” he agreed, waiting patiently, she realized, while she dithered, tried to talk him out of what he wanted. Why, she wondered, didn’t she just say okay, then shut up and dream how fat that creel would get and how fast?

Then she saw Ella’s face, tight with anger at the thought of Stillwater, her spatula pressing down on a spitting round of burger until it seared.

As though he read her mind, he said swiftly, “Think about it. I can be patient. You know where to find me.”

He gave her another sweet smile, opened a big, graceful hand in farewell.

A door opened, slapped shut behind her; she jumped.

“Carrie!” her father called sharply. She turned, her own hand still raised. Merle stepped out from behind the scaffolding, scanned the parking lot, looking as though he were scenting it, tense and watchful, like some four-legged beast with its hackles raised.

“What?” she wondered bewilderedly. Now what? Nobody ever explained anything, so how exactly was she to know? She glanced behind her; Stillwater had already gone. “Where have you been?” she asked Merle, but he didn’t explain that either.

“Who was that?” he demanded.

“You sound exactly like someone’s father,” she said irritably.

“Well, I am.”

“Well, now is not the time. And never mind who that was. It’s my business.”

“I know,” he said grimly.

“You know what? Who that was, or that it’s my business?” She threw up both hands, scattering questions everywhere into the night. “You want me to make decisions without giving me anything! I might as well go work for him—it’s got to be less mysterious than this falling-down place. Rituals with letters, rituals with cauldrons, a bloody gaff, a missing knife, everyone in a time warp, looking back at the past, wishing for the good old days, hinting of portents, speaking in riddles, knowing things but never saying, never explaining—and you’re mad at me for just thinking of going to work for Stillwater. How did you even know he was out here?”

He was silent, looking at her, and still, so still that for a moment he seemed to fade into the night, become one of those half-invisible things, both seen and unseen, so familiar that no one ever bothers to look, to recognize, until it’s too late.

Then he did vanish. A wolf sat in the place where he had stood, its muzzle lifted and open in a long wild cry. Carrie, stunned motionless, heard in its fierce energy, its plaintiveness, the only answer that Merle could find to give her before the wolf ran off into the dark.