Faded Steel Heat

3

I descended the stairway wearing my clotheshorse best only to discover skinny old Dean newly returned. He wrinkled his bony nose, shook his bony head, proceeded into the kitchen. Alyx's blue eyes twinkled. "You don't waste much time picking out your clothes, do you?"

Tinnie was in the kitchen. Dean brightened right up. "Miss Tate! This is a pleasant surprise. May I observe that you are looking particularly lovely today?"

"Mr. Creech! You rogue. Of course you may. Somebody ought to notice. Let me help you with that."

I leaned into the kitchen. Damn! The old boy was being victimized by a hugging redhead.

Life ain't fair. Not even a little. Me she pokes and pinches.

A crackling sense of amused anticipation grew around me. Somehow the ladies had both wakened my partner and put him in a good mood. That filled me with foreboding. Eclipses and planetary conjunctions are less common than the Dead Man awakening in a good mood when the house is infested with females.

I took a deep breath.

Here we went again.

I led the ladies into the Dead Man's room, which takes up most of the left-side ground floor of my house, excepting the pantries off the kitchen.

The cuties made themselves right at home. Without asking they dragged chairs out of my office, which is an ambitious closet across the hall from the Dead Man's room. Tinnie perched on the guest's chair. Nicks claimed the comfortable one that belongs behind my desk. I would cherish the warmth forever. Meantime, Alyx decorated the chair I usually use when I'm in with the Dead Man. The Goddamn Parrot still perched on Nicks' hand, nibbling bits of something she offered him. He cooed like a goddamned turtledove.

You might reserve that admiration for Miss Tate. If you were a gentleman. That was my partner, shoving unwanted advice directly into my head.

"But I'm not. She's told me so lots of times." I glared. Alyx and Nicks smiled as though enjoying a private joke. Maybe Old Bones had shared his remarks with the three heartstoppers, not just me.

Perhaps I blushed, slightly. Tinnie sure grinned.

The Dead Man resides in a huge wooden chair at the heart of the biggest room in the house. Usually the room isn't lighted. In his present state he doesn't need light. But the ladies did and had brought lamps in from other rooms.

They shouldn't have bothered.

The Dead Man isn't pretty. That's partly because he isn't really a man. He hails from a rare species called Loghyr who resemble humans only vaguely. He goes four hundred plus pounds, though the vermin keep nibbling off bits so he's probably dropped a few. He's uglier than your sister's last husband and has a snoot like an elephant. It hangs about fourteen inches long. I've never seen a live Loghyr so don't know how they use that.

He was called the Dead Man when I met him, ages ago. One of those clever street names, picked up on account of he has been dead for four hundred years. Somebody stuck a knife in him way back when, probably while he was taking one of his six-month siestas. He's never bothered to explain.

But he is Loghyr and Loghyr do nothing hastily. They especially don't get into a rush about giving up the ghost. I hear four hundred years is far from a record stall.

Nobody knows much about the Loghyr. The Dead Man will babble on for weeks without dropping a hint himself.

I leaned against a set of shelves loaded with souvenirs from old cases and knickknacks the Dead Man likes to grab with a thought and send swooping around if he feels that will rattle a visitor already distressed by his less than appetizing appearance.

Could you not have selected clothing less threadbare? In business it is important to present a businesslike appearance.

Him too? Steel yourself, Garrett. It's teak on Tommy Tucker time with you in the coveted role of Tommy in the brown-bottomed slit trench. "That's how we'll justify my fee."

Fee?

"Money? Gold and silver and copper. That stuff we use to buy beans for me and Dean and keep the leaky roof from leaking on your head? You recall your days in that ruin on Wizard's Reach? With the roof half-gone and the snow blowing in?"

The women looked at me weirdly. Which meant that they were getting only my half of the conversation. But their imaginations were perking.

Of course. You must maintain a businesslike approach —if not a businesslike appearance. But, perhaps, you have overlooked the fact that we have a retainer arrangement with Mr. Weider and are, therefore, expected to provide our services against fees already paid.

"You got a point." The Weider retainer had seen me through numerous dry spells. "Hey, Alyx. Before we worry about anything else, are you here for your dad or you?"

"I'm not sure. He didn't send me but he asked Manvil if they should think about calling you in. This thing will affect the brewery. He might've sent me if it ever occurred to him that a daughter could do something productive. I think he hasn't sent for you just because he's embarrassed to admit that he can't handle everything himself. He's still hoping he can get by without you but I think it's been too late for that for days."

I didn't have a clue what it was all about yet. I glanced at Nicks.

Alyx told me, "Nicks is in it because my brother is in it and they're engaged and she's worried."

What a cruel world it is where a beauty like Nicks wastes herself on a creature like Ty Weider. Though Nicks did not appear excited by her impending nuptials.

She is not. But she does not have the heart to disappoint two sets of parents who have had this alliance planned for twenty years. She has found ways to delay it several times. Now her time has run out.

"And Tinnie?"

"She's my friend, Garrett. She's just here to lend emotional support."

A wise man would not now insist on subjecting all things to a rigorous scrutiny, Garrett.

I have lived with His Nibs so long that even his obscurantisms and obfuscations have begun to make sense. This time he was hanging a codicil on the rule about not looking too closely at politics, sausage manufacture, or the teeth of gift horses. Tinnie was here. I should enjoy that, not go picking the scabs off sores.

"All right. I still don't have a clue. Start at the beginning and tell me everything, Alyx. Even if it doesn't seem important."

"Okay. It's The Call."

I sighed.

It would be.

Already I knew I wasn't going to like any of this.