The interior of Crin and Company was quite simple, as none of the three members of the business were particularly inclined to discover their hidden interior decorator gene. The two couches in the lounge area were chosen for comfort rather than aesthetic value, the cushions sagging perfectly for an occasional stolen nap. The coffee table was battered and covered with old coffee stains, a find at a rummage sale two blocks north of Birch Lane. Blue carpeting, flecked with grey, covered the entire floor surface of every room of both the downstairs and upstairs of the building, complementing the off-white wallpaper. In the most secluded corner of the lounge area, Deke and Crin had installed two filing cabinets, a bookshelf, and two desks. Kaye wasn’t a full-fledged member of the team, but she lived in the building with Crin, and so fought over desk space with Deke. Crin had her own desk, a flat, messy area in which she could crowd as many things as she liked. She didn’t actually use it for working.
Two hours after their break, Crin was seated at one of the couches, a legal pad open in front of her. A frown dominated her facial features as she studied her scrawling handwriting. Her best friend at Podmore School for Girls had had the prettiest penmanship, but Crin’s was a step above chicken scratch and a level below legible. She forced herself to focus on the question Deke had just asked her. "No, I’m pretty sure Calvin Berry hasn’t fled New York. I’d have sensed it if he had."
"Then why can’t you get a better lock on him?" Deke wanted to know from his side of the desk. Kaye, on the other side, ignored the pair. Her back was to Crin on the couch, and Deke had to look over her shoulder to see his boss. "I mean, you can sense that he’s in the city—can’t you just hone the sense a bit?"
Crin’s frown deepened. This was a problem that plagued her occasionally, but she tried not to dwell on it. "If I could, I’d bag every bounty within a couple of days."
"Touché."
Tapping her pen against the pad, she rolled first one shoulder, then the other, like a baseball pitcher winding up for a pitch might. She might have looked delicate and dainty, but anybody who knew her knew better than to assume any weakness. "Don’t worry, though. I’m close to bagging this guy. I can feel it. Sort of."
"Well, that’s reassuring," Kaye felt the need to input. She looked up from a sociology assignment, one eyebrow raised above the other. "Hey, I need to settle a bet. How good are you at karate?"
Crin didn’t look up from where she was scribbling a note on her legal pad. "I know how to duck, block, kick, and punch. Katas, I’m not so good at. And I’ve never worn a Gi. Might make me look fat."
"Corinthia Rita Dalmeiier, even fat wouldn’t make you look fat," Kaye admonished immediately. "Honestly, you’re a freaking skeleton!" She turned and her expression changed in a blink, becoming sly and sophisticated. She pinned it on Deke and Crin smiled sympathetically at her miserable friend. "Pay up. She could SO take Buffy in a fight. Buffy doesn’t have precog abilities."
"I’ll pay up when I see Buffy lying unconscious on the floor of this very room," Deke muttered, looking at neither woman.
Crin’s look turned to mock-outrage. "Derek Harrison! You voted against me?"
He shuffled paperwork to avoid her gaze, his grin sheepish. "If it’s any consolation, you could take the actress who plays Buffy in a fight. But Buffy herself has super-strength. Plus, she’s wittier than you."
"Nobody appreciates me," Crin said, crossing to the phone. It started ringing just as she reached for it and she deliberately looked over her shoulder to stick her tongue out at Deke. Her expression quickly turned impassive as she listened to the person on the other end. "Uh-huh…all right…four thirty, right? No, I can’t make that. I’ll send my representative." With an announced click, she ended the call, and turned to Deke. "Deke, Pat’s Bar and Grille, twenty minutes."
"Casual attire?" Deke wanted to know as he stood up.
Crin contemplated his lanky countenance, her eyes not quite seeing him. "Swing for a pair of sunglasses, and wear a camera. Tourist."
His grin was quick. "My favorite. Coming, Kaye?"
She glanced at Crin for unvoiced permission, which Crin gave to her with a light shrug. The contact wasn’t anybody dangerous, just another of Crin’s seedy informants that she seemed to pick up from the oddest places. Most of the seasoned professionals in the business knew that Crin was a name that could be trusted. Crin might have been young, but she and her rather unlikely team had yet to lose a bounty. "Sure, count me in." With that, she raced up the stairs to change for the meeting.
"Call and check in from a pay phone with any relevant information," Crin ordered at Deke as she pulled on a FCUK cap (purloined, no doubt, from a trip to England to capture a criminal that had evaded her for a solid three months without a single lead). "I’ll be on my cell phone."
"And where are you going?"
"Please, my girlfriend from school is coming into town to go out for drinks. You’ve seen my wardrobe several times. Therefore, you know that I have absolutely no clothing that shows off what a sassy and talented bounty hunter I am." A girlish shrug, one of the first Deke had ever seen from her, and she began reaching for her purse. "Actually, I ripped my best jeans going after Calvin Berry’s brother last week, and I hear they’re having a sale over at my favorite store. It’s time I dipped into the Dalmeiier trust fund."
"Dipping into a trust fund for a pair of jeans? You rebel you." Deke rifled through drawers and rummaged through random piles of debris behind the desk before finally emerging with a neon-yellow, eighties style baseball cap and a chunky old Minolta camera. "So when do I get to meet this mysterious Adele in person? All I’ve seen are photographs—very nice photographs, I’ll admit—"
"Exactly."
"Huh?" Halfway buried in a desk drawer, Deke looked up to see his boss frowning at him disapprovingly.
An annoyed line appeared between Crin’s eyebrows. "She’s engaged to a psychologist. High-class and all that. And you ogle her photograph whenever you’re daydreaming."
"Crin, you’ve really got to get over that inferiority complex. Just because we’re bounty hunters, we’re not on a lower level than them. You’re falling back on the economic caste system this country has set up—"
"It’s not an inferiority complex." Crin’s grey eyes were beady on her employee, a look that had gutted everything from murderous schoolmates to dangerous wanted criminals. "I grew up on the other side of the rungs, remember? I’m not cowed by Adele’s family and their money, or her fiancé. It’s just that Adele is my friend, and I’d rather you didn’t drool every time you saw her picture, okay? I spent five years beating away the idiots that sniffed after her because she was too friendly, and I’d rather not send you to the emergency room."
"Again," Kaye supplied from where she was coming down the stairs. Her wardrobe, although gleaned entirely from New York City, screamed "Tourist, mock me please!" Her white T-shirt read "I LOVE NEW YORK" in several black block lettering, and her cut-off jeans shorts were tattered, bearing a heart-patch on the back left pocket. She had tucked her black hair into a Philadelphia Eagles baseball cap, so that a few strands came out to frame her face. Crin cleared her throat before Deke could start staring. "Ready to go, Deke?"
He just held up the Minolta and took a picture. Crin wondered whether there was actually film in the camera. Either way, Kaye wrinkled her nose and tugged on his arm, pulling the two from the building with a hurried, "Bye, Crin!"
Crin was about to follow them out and lock up when her sixth sense made her walk to the phone and pick it up mid-ring. "Crin and Company."
"That has to be the most impersonal phone-answering voice I have ever heard from you, Crin-darling." The bubbly southern accent that tumbled through the phone receiver was more familiar to Crin than her own voice. Her grin grew to phenomenal proportions.
"Adele! I didn’t think you were going to call until at least six! And what are you doing, calling on the work phone?"
"Your cell phone is turned off, hun."
Guiltily, Crin picked up the small silver object, blinking as she realized that it had powered down sometime during the day. She would have to remember to recharge it later, but she doubted she would. She was terrible at remembering details like that—Kaye would probably end up doing it for her. "Right. Whoops. So…you in town yet?"
"On my way to your lovely little place as we speak. I don’t know about you, but I woke up this morning and immediately started hating the majority of my wardrobe." Tanned, brunette, and petite, Adele Warren could make even sackcloth and ashes look good—and she had, as Mordecai in their senior high adaptation of Esther. Plus, she had a southern charm that had any man in her way immediately fawning over her in a wish to submit to her ever whim. "So, I’m thinking a shopping trip is in order."
"You’re reading my mind again," Crin accused, plopping into the worn recliner.
"Five years in New York and you still haven’t lost that cute little Maine accent."
Crin picked up one of Kaye’s old magazines and looked disinterestedly at the male model trying to look intelligent on the cover. Her voice was droll as she parried Adele’s question. "Which is amazing, because I’ve only spent a fourth of my life up there."
Now Adele’s laughter—bubbling, brook-like, just like her speaking voice—burst from the phone receiver. "Ah, but I’ve missed you! Oh, here’s the street—see you in a sec." Without warning, she hung up, leaving Crin holding a dead phone and a magazine. Smiling lightly, the redhead dropped the magazine back onto the desk. Deke and Kaye would get the information she needed on Calvin Berry, and she would bag the creep this weekend and have a good time visiting with her friend.
It looked like things were looking up for New York’s resident freak of nature.
Things were not looking so good for a young man seated in Pat’s Bar and Grille, trying as hard as he could to look like he was enjoying the meal for which his current client had offered to pay. Usually, it was supposed to be the lawyers that paid for the meal, but this client was a bit of an oddball—which was probably why the other lawyers at the firm sniggered behind his back whenever Jackson Templeton even glanced at a file containing the name William Spodsere. Willy was every lawyer’s worst nightmare: loud, rude, wouldn’t shut up in court for anything short of a threat with duck tape.
And now he wanted to pay for lunch.
Jacks, as he was known by his close circle of friends and family, shifted in his seat now, keeping an eye over his shoulder. He didn’t trust the types that hung out in Pat’s Bar and Grille, tourists that thought dark and seedy meant authentic, like the bars they saw on all of those realistic cop shows from New York. He could always identify tourists by their wide-eyed wonder at the gray on gray that was New York City. They mingled with the regulars rather well, though. Jacks noticed a pair a couple of booths away that, despite the fact that they had on clothing that redefined the word "Tourist," were nearly unnoticeable. He didn’t allow his gaze to linger on them.
"Jack, man, you haven’t eaten a thing." Willy had returned from the bathroom, it appeared. The man sat in the booth across from him, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him. "This is quality New York dining, you know."
Jacks refrained from commenting that quality had surely taken a turn for the worse since the time that he had walked the streets. Willy Spores, as his nickname on the streets happened to be, liked food way too much, in his opinion. Quality was sacrificed for quantity in this matter—Pat’s Bar and Grille was known for its large platters. Jacks had ordered the smallest thing on the menu, but even the four or five bites he had taken hadn’t caused a dent. "Sorry, Willy, not very hungry."
"You lawyer types never eat very much," Willy observed, wiping his hands. "Trying to be like the lawyers on TV?"
Jacks took a bite of the salad and reached for his beer, toasting his lunch companion with it. "They’re actors. They work out and drink whenever they’re not on set. I just drink." To prove his point, he took a long swallow. "So fancy telling me why you’re lawyering up again, Willy? We had a deal—you stay out of trouble, and I’ll keep working your back in court."
Willy snorted, rubbed at the bristles of a beard that was slowly overtaking his chin. He worked as a bouncer at a nightclub not too far from Pat’s Bar and Grille, so the unshaven look suited him, gave him a rougher look. "What makes you think there’s been trouble?" he asked, pretending offense.
"It’s Tuesday."
"Tuesday? What does that have to do with anything?"
Jacks looked up from spearing a piece of lettuce and dousing it in ranch dressing. He had never had a problem with showing exasperation around Willy. "With you, Willy, everything. Now, what did you do, so that I can figure out a suitable defense? Do we need to hide a body? I’m afraid I left my grave digging shovel in my other suit."
"I ain’t done nothing." Willy leaned back and took out a cigarette, intent to light it when he saw that Jacks was giving him a look. They were seated in the non-smoking section, after all. "Seriously, Jack. Nothing."
"Then why the surprise lunch—that is not to say that I’m not enjoying it—and cryptic offer for drinks tonight?" Jacks took another sip of his beer, and made a mental note to never order salad and beer for the same meal ever again. "I doubt you’re really interested in befriending me, Willy. You can’t even get my nickname right."
For the first time in their rather interesting association, Willy looked nervous as he glanced around the bar, double-checking to make sure that their conversation was not being overheard. Jacks kept his movements nonchalant for his client’s sake. "A guy in my position—well, a guy’s bound to hear things on the street. Undercurrents and stuff, you know?" He paused, pushed his hands through whatever hair he had left. "There’s a new bounty hunter in the area. A pair of them, though the chick is the main power. Slip of a thing. Most learned the hard way not to let that fool them—she’s grabbed more wanted criminals than the cops this year."
"She have a name?" Jacks asked, pretending interest.
"Sure, but she ain’t sharing. Keeps it closer than the vest, really. Most just know her as Sticks." Willy kept moving his cigarette, treading it through his stubby fingers. "Works with a tall guy and some kind of relative. Maybe her sister. The guy trades on the name Deke. Sister apparently has no name."
Jacks wiped at his mouth with a napkin, done with all that he could eat of his salad. "Why are you telling me this, Willy?"
"You got connections, is all. Somebody’s gonna try and off her, and you gotta figure out who she is so you can protect her." Willy waggled his bushy eyebrows. "Word is that she’s pretty."
A pretty face, Jacks had learned early on, could easily mask a very empty head. Still, he said nothing, and let Willy continue to blather on. Finally, he sighed and pushed his palms into his forehead, wishing he’d had the foresight to bring aspirin to this meeting. "So what you’re saying is that you want me to protect some random bounty hunter chick who’s got a hit out on her?"
"Word is that she has connections with the NYPD—and I can’t exactly go to them. You’re my next best thing, pal." Willy’s brown eyes met Jacks’ own gray ones. "Call it a hunch, but Sticks has done a lot to help out the cops this year by getting some of the dirtier criminals out of the way. Probably even helped you a couple of times, too."
A card slid across the table between the two men, and Willy leaned back, casually flicking his wrist. To any outsiders, it didn’t look as though any information had been passed at all. "Way I see it, Jack, you’re not connected at all, so they won’t suspect you looking out for Sticks."
Jacks pocketed the business card without so much as even glancing at it. "What’s on the card?" he asked instead.
"She’s a woman of habit. Got a friend coming in to the city, goes to visit a specific club out over Hudson River. A very chic place, given the neighborhood. She’ll be there tonight." Willy stood, dropped a large bill on the table. "Normally I’d hire a professional, but I’m not inclined to care that much in this situation. If Sticks is gone, it makes my life a little harder, but it’s not too much skin off of my nose either way."
"Why bother at all?" Jacks wanted to know as he stood up, reaching for the suit jacket he had discarded in the stagnant heat of the bar. "What’s so important about this chick to you, Willy?"
"She’s tracking an enemy of mine, and very close to catching him, I believe." Willy slipped from the side door without another word, leaving Jacks alone in the bar. He turned and headed for the front door, not really interested in acting conspicuous. As he passed by the booth of the pair of tourists he had noticed earlier, his footsteps slowed the slightest fraction. A young man and woman, both early twenties, tourist clothing, nothing spectacular. However, his gaze rested a bit longer on the woman, and he frowned lightly to himself. She looked vaguely familiar, but he was positive that he had never met her. He didn’t meet many people that weren’t from New York nowadays.
She felt his gaze on her and looked up at him with an expression that was openly challenging. Her eyes were brown, which made Jacks’ frown deepen. He was expecting her to have grey eyes like his own, but why was that? "Sorry, thought you were somebody else," he muttered by way of apology as he passed by.
The New York sun nearly cooked him crisp when he stepped outside the restaurant, but he ignored it and instead flagged down a taxi, immediately listing off directions to his office. Once he was out of sight of the restaurant, he pulled the card from his pocket and looked at the scrawled words.
"Sticks—small. Redhead. Parties at the Parisian Fox with brunette."
Well, that narrowed it down. Jacks frowned down at the card before stuffing it back into his pocket. Although he was a lawyer by day, his nights were spent in far more interesting adventures for his younger brother. Bobby Templeton was the new Proprietor of Limbo, a separate dimension that housed the minds of comatose humans. Jacks, having run the place for six years of his life, was well acquainted with the regular duties involved, and so lent a hand occasionally.
What very few people knew about the Templetons of Southampton, Florida, was that they were far from the normal family—their very legacy was rooted in the supernatural, for as long as Limbo had existed, a Templeton had been in the throne there. Nobody was sure why it was the Templetons that had been chosen for this awe-inspiring fate, really. Maintaining the field dimension wasn’t a hard task, but it could be strenuous at times. Jacks’ older sister Sheila had been the first Templeton to ever turn down the position, and Jacks had been the first to ever be fired.
At least Bobby seemed to be doing all right with his new place, so that Mom and Dad could have at least one offspring they could be proud of, Jacks thought as he exited the taxi and paid the driver. Jacks and Bobby had never really gotten along until they realized that they harbored a mutual dislike for their mother, Flora Templeton. Now their tentative friendship was making the family look less dysfunctional. Of course, in Jacks’ opinion, any family that produced a stripper, a lawyer, and the leader to a supernatural realm had to be dysfunctional.
"Mr. Templeton, you’ve just received a call," Renée, his secretary, told him as he entered the business lounge. "From a Timothy Jaymer."
"You can call me Jacks, you know," Jacks reminded her as he breezed through the lounge, up to his office. He rather liked the space behind the mahogany door. The sketches on the wall were whimsical and relaxing, the deep rich green of the carpeting giving the room an official feel. He broke this air as he propped his feet on his desk and reached for the phone, clicking a button on his speed dial. After letting it ring a couple of times, he said, "Hey, Tim. What do you say we have some drinks after work? I’ve got this new place I want to try."
