Page 1 of Tell Me Why
Tell Me Why
SOS.
Wear white.
Don’t ask questions.
Do Not Bring Tina.
-Hunter
There had been an address and a time after Hunter’s signature, but no sign of him at the penthouse.
“What do you think?” Tina asked, scratching her elbow. She’d gotten bitten and it wasn’t done healing, yet. Tell wasn’t going to let her hear the end of it, and she knew it, but he seemed to be picking his moment, just now.
Holes in her new jacket and everything.
“Do you evenownanything white?” Tina asked as he pursed his lips at the note.
“Not from this century,” Tell answered wryly, still looking at the note. “I don’t ever trust him when he says not to ask any questions.”
“Why would he say not to bring me?” Tina asked. “I’m delightful.”
“You are,” Tell said. “And useful at times, even.”
“Thanks,” Tina said, and Tell grinned without looking at her.
“Itsmellslike him,” he observed.
“You mean suspiciously or expensively?” Tina asked, and he laughed quietly. “Are you going to do it?”
“The night is still young,” he answered. “I’ve run off for summons more questionable than this.”
“Sometimes I’m not sure I’ve correctly estimated your wisdom,” Tina answered.
He grinned.
“When you get old, sometimes you go get in trouble for something to do.”
“I’m not convinced getting old has anything to do with it.”
He set it back down on the entry table and shook his head, putting his finger to his cheekbone and resting his lips against the next digit.
“White, though.”
It had beenTina’s intention to write out the invoice for the night and get it set for the outgoing mail the next day, then go through the existing case files and get them organized, filed, and send out any remaining invoice reminders for the bills that hadn’t yet settled.
It was satisfying work, really, and something about the mundaneness of it struck her as exotic, in the face of a night when she’d been bitten on the elbow by a needle-toothed child bennax. Bennaxes were bornold, and were typically rather friendly and jolly, from the few she’d met, but they aged backwards, becoming less stooped, less wrinkled, less weary, and then ultimately lithe creatures made up of almost nothing but light for a season of their lives. They actually could blend in among humans, at the beginnings of their lives, but as adults, they became the crack of light through a doorway or a bolt of lightning seen from another room, and Tell said that, to a man or woman, they became vain with their beauty and capacity such that when they began to lose it, instead of being slow and wise, they grew petulant and childish, without youthful innocence or naivety.
They were vicious little curs and they’d taken over a school at the south end of town, one that had fallen out of use after it had been replaced, and that had been scheduled for demolition.
Tools had started to go missing, and then the demo foreman himself, and Tell had gotten called in to find the man and - if there had been foul play - the person who had kidnapped or killed him.
Tina had spent the whole case worried that they would be making a death-call to a young widow, but petulant and childish in this case meant he’d been stuffed into the boiler two days earlier and was just quite hungry and thirsty by the time Tell found him.
Not that finding him had been easy.
Tina looked at her elbow again.
