Kingfisher(77)

“What if the knights come back here?” Pierce asked uneasily.

“They won’t cross that bridge in the dark. And I’ll be gone at dawn.”

They left her beside the fire under a watchful moon. Pierce glanced back at her before he turned onto the trail. She had risen also, and was standing at the edge of the cliff, looking out at the dark that defined itself best, to the human eye, by what it was not.

Light flared from a different night in the corner of Pierce’s eye. He turned his head and froze at the reflection of fire in a pair of unexpected eyes. Something big, he sensed, just beyond the light. Something wild, powerful, undefined.

He opened his mouth to warn, then saw those eyes again, their human shape and expression, in his head, in memory. He breathed again, relieved by the thought of a closer, more dangerous guardian for the solitary knight than the wandering moon.

“Pierce,” his father called from the dark ahead.

He nodded a greeting to the wolf and turned again to the path.





23


Carrie, veering around knights at any hour and on every corner of Chimera Bay, was hardly surprised, on one of her Stillwater lunch days, to see a darkly clad figure walk into the restaurant door ahead of her. It was too early for lunch, but Todd Stillwater rarely bothered with CLOSED signs. People would know, he told Carrie, and mostly that worked, though he didn’t explain how. Carrie, causing the knight to turn as she followed him in, saw the expression on his face of someone amazed that he had actually found his way through a door.

Then she recognized the face.

That red hair, those vivid, blue-green eyes—there was a name attached to the face in some cluttered drawer or file holder in her head. He was frowning at her, recognizing her as well, but in the wrong context. She should, she remembered, have been carrying sheets instead of fresh basil and oregano from the Farmer’s Market.

“Carrie?” she offered helpfully, and he nodded quickly.

“Yes. The Kingfisher Inn. I’m Pierce Oliver.”

He looked older, she thought, than just a week or three. He had seen things, learned things, done something, at least, to be wearing that uniform.

“Did you get yourself knighted?” she asked with astonishment.

“No.” The thought made him smile ruefully. “The only weapon I’m good with is the knife I stole. I plan to give it back,” he added quickly.

“That’s what my dad said. That it would bring you back.”

“Really? Merle said that?”

“He did.”

“How did—”

“He just knows things. If you want lunch, it’ll be an hour or so before we start serving.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t come for lunch. I came to see if—” He paused; a little color streaked his face. “Is Sage here?”

“No,” she said, amazed again, wondering how they had ever met. “She shops on Tuesdays.”

“Of course. On Tuesdays.” He sighed. “If I walked in here on a Wednesday or a Saturday, that would be the day she’s out shopping.”

She stared at him, recognizing that dazed look in his eyes. When on earth had he had time to fall in love with Todd Stillwater’s wife? Then he was seeing Carrie again; he glanced puzzledly at the world around her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Are you working for Stillwater now?”

She swallowed, stepped closer to him. “Listen,” she said softly. “Please. Don’t tell anyone I’m working here. Please. Nobody at the Kingfisher Inn knows. Nobody. I don’t want them to know. Except my father. I mean, he already knows. But he’s not talking about it. Maybe he’ll talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Just—please. Promise me? If you promise, I’ll tell Sage you came here. But I won’t tell Todd Stillwater.”

He flushed again. But his eyes, on her face, were wide, curious. “I’ll try to remember,” he promised. “Might be easier if I knew why it’s such a secret.”

“It’s too complicated to explain, and I can’t, right now. You should go. I need to work. That way I’ll have something to think about, and Todd won’t pick you out of my head.”

He frowned at that, still studying her. “Are you all right? I’ve never even met him, and he has that effect. Of making people not all right.”

“I’m fine. I need to be fine. We’ll talk later. Over a beer at the Kingfisher bar. All right?”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

In the quiet vault, she took the odd pot out of the corner where she always found it, no matter where else she had left it. Stillwater moved it out of his way, maybe. It had other quirks that she was beginning to expect. No matter how thoroughly she washed it, no matter how it brightened and glowed under her scrubbing, it would be, when next she saw it, in the same dull, cobwebby, grimy state as she had first found it. Stillwater, again, she guessed, though it was hard to imagine him not cleaning a pot, when she never saw as much as a speck on his gleaming machines. Another weirdness was the way it changed size according to what she put into it. It seemed to know what she wanted to cook: It grew huge at the proximity of live crabs from the docks; it dwindled down to the size of a soup bowl when she melted butter.