“They only serve beef and rice here,” a shaggy guy in dreads behind me said. “It’s a thing.”
“Thanks for the tip.” I shooed him back to give me an appropriate three feet of personal space.
Nin leaned into view, waving a slender arm and smiling. Her short black hair had been bleached as long as I’d known her, and this week, it was dyed purple. “It is not the usual hours for the special menu, but for a good client, of course, come inside, please.”
I left my puzzled advisor behind and waited at the side door until it opened. I stepped into a workspace that was more like a closet than a smithy, but all manner of completed rifles, pistols, and specialty pieces hung on pegboards. Boxes under the counters held stocks, barrels, and bolts, along with boxes of wildcat cartridges for the weapons. The place reverberated with magic, at least to my senses.
Nin gave her assistant a few instructions and stepped inside with me, closing the door so the people waiting for food wouldn’t see this area. That made the tight space even tighter. I had to duck my head to keep from bumping it on the ceiling.
“Thanks for slipping me in, Nin.” I pulled out Fezzik and showed her the bent front sight. “I probably could have used some pliers to fix it, but I didn’t know if that would void the warranty.”
Her brow furrowed, but only for a second before she got the joke, then laughed. Even though Nin had only been in the country for five years, she’d about mastered American sarcasm and idioms, as far as I could tell. She spoke English slowly, but her words were precise and easy to understand.
“You are funny. What did you fight?” Nin took the gun from me and pulled out her tools. “Did my baby perform well?”
“It did. I got the last of the wyverns that killed those kids outside of Portland. And then I let a dragon throw me around.”
The tool kit slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. I managed to catch Fezzik before it suffered a similar fate.
“A dragon?” Nin gaped at me. “You are joking again?”
“Unfortunately not.” I took out my phone and showed her pictures of my wrecked Jeep in the trees. It hadn’t occurred to me to stop and take a picture of the dragon himself—odd, I know—but I trusted the placement of the smashed vehicle would suffice as proof for most people. Not the insurance agents, alas.
Nin stared at the phone, stared back at my face, and then at the phone again. “You cannot fight dragons.”
“It wasn’t my intention.”
“I did not think there were dragons on Earth. I did not—do you think I need to put a warning on my weapons?” Nin glanced at the pegboards. “People will not believe they are strong enough to slay dragons, will they? They will get themselves killed. Then they will sue me. America is very litigious.”
“I’ve heard that, but since the official stance from the government is that magic and magical beings don’t exist, I think you’ll be all right.”
Nin grabbed a pad of sticky notes. “I am going to start putting a warning on all weapons I sell.”
“That’s a good idea, but could you fix mine first? And give me a few more boxes of your special ammo? I had to use more than expected on the wyvern.”
“Yes, certainly.” Nin, her tongue stuck in the corner of her mouth, proceeded to draw a stick dragon with a circle around it and a line through it before retrieving her tools and working on my gun. “Take what cartridges you need from that box, please.” She pointed without looking.
“How’s business?” I wondered how many clients she had who knew what she did when she wasn’t mixing sauces and grilling beef—and how many were likely to go on a dragon safari with her weapons.
“Business is good. I am saving my money and thinking of opening a restaurant next year.”
That wasn’t the business I’d meant, but I asked, “Will it have more than one entree on the menu?”
“In my country, it is very common to perfect one dish and sell only that.”
“I guess that’s a no.”
“I am thinking of adding a gluten-free sauce option.”
The assistant opened the door far enough to hand me the food I’d ordered. I dug out ten dollars for the meal and a hundred for the repair service. Nin, I knew, wouldn’t charge me for anything but the ammo, so I stuck the cash on a shelf when she wasn’t paying attention.
My phone buzzed. The number wasn’t familiar, but it was a local area code.
I answered, hoping the therapist was calling to cancel my appointment. “Yeah?”
“Ms. Thorvald?” a young male voice asked uncertainly.
“Good guess. Who’s this?”
“Lieutenant Sudo. I’ll be meeting you at the usual place tomorrow, but I need to move our appointment up an hour. I have something important to do in the afternoon.” His voice was snotty, and I immediately disliked him—and the insinuation that I wasn’t important.
But more concerning than that…
“Where’s Colonel Willard?” I asked.
“She can’t make it.”
“She’s always my contact.”
“Not this time.”
I opened my mouth to ask for more details, but he hung up.
“Why do I have a feeling this crappy week is not about to get any better?”
4
As soon as I walked into the fourth-floor waiting room and saw the marble floors, the leather couches, the counter full of free snacks and drinks, and the view of Lake Union out the window, I knew I should have asked for the therapist’s rates before making an appointment. As an independent contractor, I had health insurance on the minimalist side.
I rolled my eyes through filling out the new-patient paperwork, feeling antsy because my new contact had moved up our appointment, and I was already suspicious that this was going to be a waste of time.
“Are you all right, Ms. Thorvald?” The perky twenty-something receptionist looked at me with concern.
“Yeah, why?” I glanced around.
There were two other people in the waiting room, presumably to see other therapists. If this turned out to be some surprise group share-fest, I was going to bring Sindari out to eat everyone here. Or at least cow them into fleeing.
“I can hear your pen scrawling from here. You seem to be applying more pressure than necessary.”
“I like to be firm.” Noting the thick dark pen strokes on the paper, I forced my fingers to loosen. Would I be judged for that? Were there cameras in the waiting room, taking note of how pissed or frustrated people appeared while filling out the paperwork?
“Of course.” Perky Receptionist smiled, her artistically feathered eyebrows twitching.
Even though I attempted to finish the paperwork with less firmness, it was difficult. The guy a few seats away started muttering, “Life’s a long drive, but my car’s in the shop. Life’s a long drive, but my car’s in the shop.” Over and over, too loudly to ignore.
I turned in the paperwork. The other person waiting kept straightening the magazines on the coffee table over and over.
I gritted my teeth. Dr. Google assured me that normal people went to therapy—I’d checked—but they weren’t represented in this waiting room.
“Mary will see you now,” the receptionist said.
Mary? How… informal. Did this mean Mary hadn’t earned a degree that came with a fancy honorific?
“Thanks,” I mumbled and walked through the door she opened for me.
Mary turned out to be a graying Japanese woman with the last name Watanabe, but she only introduced herself by her first name and waved me to a chair that faced her seat and would put my back to the door. I gritted my teeth again. The odds of danger finding me here were low, but putting my back to a door went against my instincts. It wasn’t as if Ms. Perky was going to beat down invaders before they could reach us.
“Aren’t you supposed to have a couch?”
“Do you need a nap?”
“No, I need a seat that doesn’t put my back to the door.”
That was a weird thing to admit, wasn’t it? Her eyebrows climbed. Yes, it was.
Growling, I adjusted the chair so that I faced the certificate proclaiming her a Licensed Professional Counselor and could see the door. I had to turn my head to look at her, but it wasn’t my fault she’d so inconsiderately set up her office.
She had my paperwork on a tray beside her chair and a notepad in her lap. The sole desk in the room was pushed up against a wall and was apparently there to hold plants and stacks of folders rather than for work.
“What brings you here today?” Mary asked.
“A referral.”
She raised her eyebrows encouragingly. Oh hell, was I going to have to do all the talking? Small talk isn’t my thing. Nor is pouring out my soul to strangers.
“I’ve developed a few… health quirks, and my doctor thinks stress may be a factor. But look, I don’t want to talk about my childhood or my mom or analyze ink blots or take a personality test or any of that bullshit. I just need some breathing exercises or meditation techniques or something.”
It was a struggle not to lump those latter two into “any of that bullshit” too, but I was willing to admit that I did get tense at times. Maybe there was a method that could relax me when I was on the road. Punching the bag at the gym always helped, but beating things up wasn’t always practical.
“I see. Is work on the table?” Mary didn’t appear fazed by my list. “What do you do for a living?”
“Professional killer.”
She dropped her pen.
“Not of people.” I lifted my hands. “Of magical beings that come to our world and commit crimes against people. Like the wyverns in the news a couple of weeks ago.” I hoped she wasn’t going to be one of those nuts who denied that such creatures existed. The mainstream news didn’t cover them, but there were millions of social media posts and videos online. If she thought those were all hoaxes, I might end up with a fistful of drug prescriptions and an appointment in a sanitarium. Could medical professionals without fancy higher degrees prescribe drugs?