Roundtable Redcap Page 2

  “You have any idea how risky that is with his glamour dropped like that?” That was Blaine again with his typical dragonish paranoia.

  “Yeah, and I don’t care. A passed out Redcap is way less dangerous than a rampaging one.”

  I wondered which Redcap they meant. I was drunk with a full stomach. No way I’d rampage. At least not unless the worst thing in the world had happened. Everything from after I had found the chicken wings was hazy. But I remembered Tony doing something distinctly un-Tony-like. I tried to touch my head, but moving my arm felt like moving a mountain.

  “My cap?” I opened my eyes to find Lynn shining a flashlight into my mouth while Blaine peered over her shoulder, his eyes red with vertical slits like a reptile. That meant he was checking my magic energy. Made sense.

  “It speaks.” Blaine gazed at the top of my head. “This is beyond weird. But enough about me. What do you see, Doctor Frampton?”

  “Everything’s normal. And it shouldn’t be under these circumstances. Totally weird, unless it just happened.” She turned the light off and moved aside. “And I’m not a doctor. Yet.”

  “It’s all weird, how?” I tried to thank Bobby for asking the question my mouth couldn’t form.

  “All his vitals match the ones I took during the zillion hours of practice Fred helped me with back during mid-terms.” Lynn’s cold fingers prodded my wrist this time. “This is medically inconclusive. He should have elevated everything right now. Is there any chance his cap’s not really gone?”

  “Yeah, I can’t really answer that, so it’s also magically inconclusive.” Blaine grabbed me by the shoulders and pointed at the top of my head. “I only see the world’s worst case of hat hair with normal eyes, but a truck-ton of faerie magic with dragon eyes. The weird part is no cap with regular sight since Fred always glamours on a Paw Sox hat. There’s magic around his head. Without his cap, there shouldn’t be any magic there, at least according to every textbook I’ve read on the subject. The absence of hat should make a vortex, sucking magic from everyone and everything else around. But it’s like someone put a stopper in it that I can't see with either sight. The only way that's possible is if someone glamoured his head. But why anyone would do that is beyond me.”

  “Could it be some kind of practical joke, maybe?” Bobby peered down at me, scratching his head. “Hey, maybe he got drunk and made it invisible, put one over on us. Is that what you did, Fred?”

  I tried to tell Bobby I’d never make my cap invisible, but only an incoherent gurgle came out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure whether my garbled speech came from being drunk or having a mouthful of Redcap teeth hanging out. Probably a bit of both. I hoped Bobby was right about someone playing a prank. Because I couldn’t remember about Tony and what had actually happened at that point.

  “I’m not sure he’s in a state to answer you.” I smiled when I saw Henry Baxter. The bookish Psychic vampire had more common sense than most of my friends. He’d know what to do. “We ought to get him home so—” He leaned on the table, reaching out with the other hand as though about to help me. “Oh.” Henry froze, his eyes going even more out of focus than I imagined my own had.

  “Great. A trip down memory lane.” Lynn sat down across from me. What felt like ten minutes and ten seconds all at the same time passed as they waited for Henry to snap out of his Psychic trance.

  “Yeah, we should get Fred home.” Henry took his hand off the table and wiped it against his leg, as though trying to get rid of something icky. “His family will know what to do for him.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell us what you saw?” Blaine tapped his foot. “It looked important.”

  “Nope.” Henry shrugged. “Important or not, it involves a secret I agreed to keep. As a matter of fact, I ought to go wipe out that memory. It’s dangerous, but I can’t tell anyone why. Probably should stop thinking about it, too. You never know who's a Telepath.”

  “Well, that’s amazeballs dipped in awesome sauce.” Lynn rolled her eyes so much it made me dizzy. “Super memory power, and we can’t even use the info he gets from it.”

  Bobby and Blaine bookended me, getting their shoulders under my arms to stand me up. My stomach decided to act like a Maytag on the spin cycle. Something splattered on the tile and stank to high heaven.

  “Woah!” Henry’s vampire reflexes helped him jump back just in time, taking Lynn with him. I managed to make it without upchucking again.

  I wasn’t sure exactly how they got me to the driveway or how long it took before Josh pulled up in his dad’s Campus Security cruiser, but I remembered nothing else after they bundled me into the back. The way I felt the next morning, that was a good thing.

  Chapter Two

  Irina

  I’d been up since before five in the morning, clearing knick-knacks and trinkets out of Grandpa’s bathroom and living room, plus the hallways leading to it and the bedroom. I’d decided no one could possibly have more trinkets and souvenirs than Saul Kazynski. Crashing that crazy PPC party the night before hadn’t taken the edge off visiting the city I hated. But I loved my Grandpa. This was the third time I'd returned because he needed me.

  Every time I visited my once and hopefully not future home, something craptastic happened. It’s why I never came back on holiday breaks from the Boston Conservatory. Instead, I volunteered to water people’s plants, walk their dogs, clean up after their cats, and still pay loads of sublet rent money in Boston all winter and summer. Now, I had my own apartment with the most normal regular human roommate in the known universe since Junior year. And I’d graduated the night before that concert at the senior center benefit, so I thought it’d be safe enough. But I’d been wrong.

  And that concert was craptastic crap on a crap cracker, too. I didn’t care that all the extrahumans had called the thing in Water Place Park a golem. It looked like something straight outta Lovecraft. I hate Lovecraft. He hated everything so much all his stories are about destroying the world. He should have changed his name to Hatecraft.

  Even that horror writer up in Maine might have freaked out faced with that golem. And, of course, Irina Kazynski was expected by her faerie monarch honored Grandpa just to keep on playing through all the insanity. Our music helped defend people, at least, which is how it’s supposed to go for Psychic musicians like me. But I was rusty in the non-human powers department. I hadn’t been fast enough, and Grandpa’s hip got busted.

  So, there I was, waiting for the magical construction guy from Redford Renovations to arrive and get to work modifying the place for wheelchair and walker access. Grandpa had a broken hip. The folks down at the Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Center said he’d be fine to go to a home, but not on his own, or without accommodations. Apparently, this apartment needed as much rehabilitation as his broken hip.

  I wiped my forehead with a cloth, realized it was the one I’d been dusting with, then screamed in frustration. I didn’t worry about people hearing me. The second floor was vacant, and the guy on the third floor was in jail for some kind of crime against extrahumanity. Still, the neighborhood hadn’t gone downhill, just Grandpa’s building. Bad for him since most of his income came from rent. He’d stopped taking new violin students six months ago.

  In the kitchen, I splashed cold water on my face and dumped the dirty dust rag in a bucket. With a fresh one tucked in my back pocket, I went back to the living room to tie my hair back again in the mirror. I worried about having to stay here even longer to clear out Brodsky’s apartment and help screen new tenants for two units. After all, I’d gone to school for music, not landlady-ing. I screamed again, this time with extra blood-curdle. It made me feel a little better. At least, at first it did.

  “Um, I wasn’t interrupting anything, I hope?” The rich baritone voice startled me. I whirled, almost knocking over a spindly aluminum music stand. A hammy hand righted it before I could move. It belonged to a big guy with a bird’s nest of unkempt hair, making me think he usually wore a hat. I recognized him immedia
tely.

  “You’re the lunk from last night.” I put my hands on my hips.

  “Hey, you’re the vodka lady.” He flashed me a smile I didn’t return, despite his perfect-looking teeth. I knew he was an Extrahuman. The teeth could be fake or glamoured. At least his expression wasn’t coy or flirty. I wouldn’t have tolerated a hungover contractor trying to put the moves on me, regular human or not.

  “It’s Irina. Miss Kazynski, to you.” I narrowed my eyes, peering up into his pallid face. Something seemed off about him besides the aftereffects of too much drinking. “Are you sure you can handle working today?”

  “Sure thing, Miss Kazynski.” He reached up as though about to tip his cap to me, but his head was bare.

  “Look, maybe you should have called in sick or something.” I walked over to the big bay window at the front of the parlor, reaching for my phone. “You’re looking more than a little green around the gills.”

  “Sorry, but you’re stuck with me.” He shook his head, then touched his temple and winced. “Already tried that. Anyway, this is my last job. After this, I’ll get some rest. Dad said, no excuses.”

  He pulled a tape measure off his belt and went around the room. It had to be a magipsychic device because the measure inched its way up doorframes and down walls. The lunk jotted numbers down on a card. I peered at them, trying to make sense of how the writing could look so tidy when his hands dwarfed the pencil stub.

  “Excuses?” I raised an eyebrow, then got angry because that kind of thing causes premature wrinkles. Electric violin-playing YouTube stars had to stay cute, not end up with a face like DeForest Kelley. “Oh, wait a minute. I bet you told him you didn’t drink that much.”

  “Well, that’s because I didn’t.” He sighed. It sounded wistful as though maybe he’d drank like a sailor on shore leave to impress a girl or something. What had he meant by this being his last job? How could a garden-variety hangover make anyone so fatalistic? He didn’t sound nearly as dude-bro lunkish as he had the night before.

  “Your dad’s one thing, but does your boss know you came to work half in the bag?” I noticed the sound of something tapping before realizing it was my foot. My left hand had curled as though it held my fiddle. If I started playing with a Psychic boost, I could send him packing in under a minute. I crossed the room, on my way to grab it, but the quality of the contractor’s silence stopped me in my tracks.

  “Now you just wait one minute, Miss Irina Kazynski, star of the Internet screen.” The lunk’s jaw clenched, getting squarer than 4/4 time. “Hungover isn’t drunk. Someone I thought I could trust spiked my drink. Oh, and by the way, my dad is my boss. He’s in the Under on important business for the Goblin King, too. If I don't do this job, it's not getting done. You wanna try calling him? Be my guest.” His scowl relaxed into a wistful half-grin. Somehow, I knew missing his dad had him more upset than my snobbish behavior.

  Instead of gasping, I inhaled slowly. Instead of stale beer, he smelled of cedar and sawdust. I blinked. I waited for the other shoe to drop, for him to get upset that I hadn’t apologized and lose his temper. This guy was either a Magus or Fae, and every one of either group I’d met had short fuses. Things in Providence always went sideways for me, sliding into craptastic no matter what I did to make things better. But if I pissed this guy off enough, it’d be my own damn fault for once. And I couldn’t abide that. I also wasn’t sure I could apologize even if I should. I hadn’t felt so immature since my Sophomore year in High School.

  “Well, I guess it’s my fault for forgetting my manners.” He pocketed the pencil stub and card. “I should have introduced myself like Mama taught me.” He grinned and held out his right hand. “I’m Fred Redford.”

  “Oh.” I stared at his huge hand, then looked at my much smaller one. It’d get crushed if he had anything like a firm handshake. I closed my eyes and wondered what Grandpa would do. Shake it, of course. I’d expected the calluses, but his were thicker than mine. “Well, hello, then.”

  “So, is it cool if I keep on working here?” He crooked a finger at the still inching tape measure, and it headed toward him.

  “Yeah, it’s cool. Go on and do your job.” I grabbed my violin and its case and headed toward the kitchen. I stopped, glancing over my shoulder to find him opening a red metal toolbox. “You want some soda or something? Grandpa always has ginger ale.”

  “Wow, thanks.” His smile was definitely way too perfect. He just had to be using some kind of glamour. “In a bit. I have to give the tools their instructions and get some special plaster from the truck.” He headed out the door.

  In the kitchen, I rummaged in the fridge for something to drink. I couldn’t do ginger ale unless I wanted to burp while practicing. I didn’t. A pitcher of iced tea squatted in the back, so I reached for that and poured a glass, relieved to have a cold beverage. Summer was coming on early and with a vengeance.

  I hoped Fred Redford wasn’t the type to let the ambient temperature get to him. If he was Fae and Unseelie that might be the case. Maybe my guess about him being a Magus had been wishful thinking. I minded them the least of all the extrahumans. I tried to tell myself the son couldn’t have taken after the father. Most his age were already in the Under, tithing to one of the monarchs. Everyone knew Neil Redford was a Redcap. His glamour-free face freaked people out all along I-95 from Pawtucket to Cranston on billboards. But I hadn’t heard much about Fred or the Mama he’d mentioned.

  I dried my hands, then moved my violin next to Grandpa’s. I lifted the lid, sighing as I admired the amber-stained wood, the scroll, the chin-rest. That violin, like Grandpa himself, had seen things I wouldn’t wish into the nightmares of my enemies. I shivered, a sudden chill coming over me as my eye snagged on the two seals embossed in the velvet interior of the case.

  The queen and the king had both given their favor to Saul Kazynski over half a century ago, and it’d pass to me along with the violin eventually whether I liked it or not. I didn’t. The Stradivarius would end up locked in an attic somewhere while I sawed out Internet hits on my Stingray if it meant I could avoid anything Extrahuman for the rest of my life.

  “Hey.” Fred stood in the doorway, hands framing the biggest lunchbox I’d ever seen. “Just letting you know that the tools are widening the doorways now that they have plaster and glue.” He glanced around at the boxes and bags of stuff I’d moved to the kitchen. “I’ll go have my lunch on the stoop.” He turned his back on the kitchen. I imagined someone stabbing him in it, probably because he’d mentioned his friend spiking his drink. I got a bad hunch about him going outside, something I usually ignored in Boston. But I couldn’t afford that luxury in Providence.

  “No, wait.” I dropped the lid to cover the Stradivarius and shuffled things around. “Use the table. I already ate.” I pulled a chair out, scraping it on the linoleum floor to be sure he’d hear, then invoked the name any faerie from Providence wouldn’t ignore. “Grandpa Kazynski would insist.”

  “Hmm.” Fred looked me over. It wasn’t anything like someone checking me out, more like he wanted to make sure I was okay with being around him. His gaze held admiration and respect, nothing sexual at all, which was fine by me. I've got no time for that. Fred was just about the strangest man I’d ever met. Almost as odd as me. “Okay. If you say so.”

  “You go to that Paranormal College, right?”

  “Yeah. Extrahuman Engineering.” He raised an eyebrow as though waiting for me to say he didn’t look like the type for such a brainy subject. “And you don’t.”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s interesting.” He sounded like he actually thought it was. “I saw you at Water Place Park, Jeannie's charity thing. You played while everyone else fought. Did you get your Psychic training somewhere else?” I couldn’t help but stare as he brought fifteen sandwiches out of his lunchbox, arraying them on the table like an all-you-can-eat sandwich buffet.

  “Well, I picked regular plain old human music to major in.” I waved a hand at the
violin cases. “Which is why I want to ask you something. But only if you promise not to tell anyone I’m an ignorant weirdo.”

  “Your weirdness is safe with me.” I wasn’t sure how he could talk around what for me would be seven mouthfuls of that meatball sub, but he managed.

  The fact of the matter was, most Extrahumans had left Boston after the Internment. Once I went home, I might not find anyone to ask. And Fred seemed awfully good-natured for a guy with a hangover, changeling or not. I took a deep breath and a chance.

  “Did you ever hear of someone being jinxed?” I couldn’t look at him, but not because he was chewing monster bites of sandwich. More like I didn’t think I could look at anyone after asking something like that. “And I’m not talking about that weird Luck stuff the raccoon-dog people deal with, either. I mean like a hex. Well, I know those don’t really exist, but there has to be something like a curse or a—well, there’s just no better word I can think of. A jinx. You know, just a ‘bad things will happen to this person if they go to this place’ kind of thing.”

  “Huh.” Fred cleared his throat and actually put his sandwich down. I counted the remains of his lunch to avoid looking at him, realizing it had been the tenth. “Well, yeah, maybe. I guess coincidence could work like the old definition of a jinx.” He tossed the rest of that tenth sandwich into his mouth, then picked up the eleventh. Half of it disappeared in seconds. I watched him finish it, carefully gaging whether he’d try to flirt if I gave him the idea I was some kind of lame damsel in distress. But I wasn’t one, and he had another think coming if he decided I was.

  “Well, I think I am.” I hid my face behind the huge glass of iced tea I’d left sweating on the counter. “Jinxed, that is.”