Page 3 of Shift of Destiny
Aurelio handed Moira a piece of paper. “That’s Tinsel’s address, and the address of the business on Wizard Street I told you about that might have a job. Shepherd will move your car to his shop overnight, so don’t worry about that.”
Moira was already beautiful, but when she smiled, she was stunning. “You’ve been truly kind, and I appreciate it.” She turned to Chance. “I’m not inconveniencing you, am I?” Her voice was as warm and expressive as her eyes.
He shook his head. “No, it’s only a few blocks from here.” He opened the diner’s door for her, then followed her outside. The sun had only set half an hour ago, so the sidewalks still radiated warmth. “I’ll just put my toolbox in my truck, and we can go.” He hesitated. “Unless you’d rather ride?”
“No, I like walking,” she said. “I want to read more of the names of the businesses. It’s kind of like the aliens theme in Roswell, New Mexico, except it’s fantasy elves and fairies. Oh, and psychics. ‘I Knew You Were Coming Prognostication Services.’” She gave him another smile and a thumb’s up sign. “Best tourist gimmick ever!” She pointed to the top of one of the aspens that lined the downtown streets. “Besides, I love looking at the color waves of twinkling fairy lights in all the trees.” She shook her head. “It must have taken days and weeks to put these all up, but at least the weather is nice. I once had a job hanging outdoor Christmas lights in Chicago. Nearly froze my butt off.”
Chance shrugged one shoulder. “I think they pay a company to do it.” Actually, the town had traded a small plot of land to a troop of forest pixies in exchange for lighting up the trees for the summer tourists every year. The lights were conventionally solar-powered, but the color waves were pure pixie magic. Which she wouldn’t have been able to see, if she were an ordinary human.
He led her to his truck, where he put his toolbox in the locker box in back. “Do you need any luggage from your car? Where is it, by the way?”
She pointed to a mostly cream-colored, dusty four-door wagon across and down the street, under a street lamp. “I call it the Frankencar.”
He could see why. It looked like it had been assembled with spare parts from a salvage yard. The main chassis was from a Subaru, but the two doors he could see didn’t match the Subaru’s color or each other, and the front bumper looked like it came from an old Jeep. The hood had a jagged hole that looked like something had exploded from underneath.
She glanced down. “I have everything I need for tonight in my backpack. Besides, I gave my keys to the nice man from Knight’s Garage.” She deftly slipped its padded straps onto her shoulders and pulled her frayed braid out from under it. “How do you pronounce the name of the town, by the way? I don’t want to insult anyone.”
“It’s a mangled Native American place name, but it’s easier than it looks. The accent’s on the third syllable. Koto-yee-si-nay.”
He pointed toward the intersection as she repeated the town’s name. He purposefully shortened his steps to match her pace, because underneath her alert interest in the storefronts they passed, she was clearly running out of steam. Silence with her felt comfortable, but he found himself wanting to hear her voice again. “You’re looking for a job?”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that hole in the hood means old Frankie threw a rod, or maybe a carburetor, if that’s possible, which means a new engine. Which costs more money than I have. Hence, the job.” She sighed. “I have the worst luck sometimes.”
“I know what you mean.” He shook his head ruefully. “I think my name is a curse.”
She gave him a teasing smile. “As in, after all the good fairies blessed you with chivalry and a smoking-hot body that would make a fitness model jealous, the bad fairy twisted the meaning of your name so bad things happen to you?”
She thought he was hot? He chuckled, glad for the darkness that hid his blush. “Well, unusual things, at any rate.”
“Really? Like what?”
He ducked his head, not wanting to talk about himself any more. He was dismayed to find himself telling her things he hadn’t told anyone in Kotoyeesinay in the nine months he’d been there.
“No fair,” she complained with exaggerated outrage. “You can’t just say ‘unusual things’ and not explain.”
He held up his hands in surrender. He couldn’t tell her about any of the incidents in town because they mostly involved the supernatural residents. “Uh, last year when I was in St. Louis, I was stuck in a hospital elevator and had to help a woman give birth, because her husband passed out when he saw the first drop of blood.”
“Lucky you were there to help. Did she name the kid after you?”
He laughed. “No, I think they stayed with Amelia Jane.” He pointed to indicate they were turning left. “They sent me a bottle of wine, though.”
“Okay, what else?”
Her attentiveness made him want to tell her tales of glory, but he wasn’t a hero, just a man. Most of the time. “While I was working on a remodeling job for a high-tech company in San Francisco, one of the managers tried to pay me to help her and her pals build a secret storeroom for stuff they wanted to steal from the company.” He shrugged. “Out of eleven other contractors, they chose me.” He didn’t mention the part about how the woman had aggressively tried to bed him, but that to him and his beast, she smelled like death and tasted like ashes. He later found out she’d been dabbling in death magic.
“What did you do?”
“Played along until I got enough recorded on my phone, then sent the file anonymously to the company president and board of directors.”
She gave him a quizzical glance. “Not the police?”
“No way.” He snorted. “Knowing my luck, they’d have arrested me as the ringleader.”
No one with magic or a non-human nature wanted much to do with human law enforcement, especially the more ruthless agencies that would study them, kill them, or worse, turn them into weapons. Besides, like most predator shifters, he hated cages with a passion, and police buildings had too many of them.
“Yeah, the police seem to like the easy answer.” A troubled look crossed her face for a moment. His beast nudged him to find out what was bothering her and fix it, which was odd. Usually, his beast ignored humans, even pretty ones, unless it considered them a toy or a threat.
His sensitive ears heard a flurry of wings and a low-pitched, taunting squeal. He disciplined himself to keep his eyes down and not watch as a young wyvern flew by, hotly pursued by a young griffin apparently intent on catching the other’s tail. Moira wouldn’t see or hear them, so she’d think he was crazy.
