Jenna Black: Girls' Night Out

“Oy!” he shouted. “Shut the fook up!” His accent was so heavy I was

lucky—or, actually, unlucky—to have understood him at all.

Instead of being chastened, Al flipped the guy the bird without even looking at him. Things might have gotten ugly—I didn’t think Mr. Yellow Undershirt was the kind of guy to take well to a girl flipping him off—except at that moment, Gary’s door opened. Al gave a happy little cry and flung herself forward.

Scowling, Mr. Yellow Undershirt slammed his window shut and retreated while I got my first look at Gary, the love of Al’s life. I was not impressed.

Apparently, he’d been slow to open the door because he’d been in bed, though a quick glance at my watch told me it was almost four in the afternoon. His baby-fine, mouse brown hair was sticking up at odd angles, and he was wearing a ratty brown and white striped bathrobe. Stubble peppered his face and neck, and his eyes were bloodshot and dopey-looking.

“Althea?” he asked in the low, hoarse voice of a dedicated smoker. “What . . .

? How . . . ?” He hugged her back, but he didn’t look particularly happy to see her.

“I was so afraid my mother had done something to you,” Al said, her face buried against his shoulder. She had to bend her neck at an awkward angle to manage that position, because Gary was shorter than she was.

Gary patted her back, then finally seemed to notice me. He looked even more puzzled. I wondered if he even knew Faeriewalkers existed. I’d never heard of one before I’d moved to Avalon, and I suspected that was true of just about everyone who lived in the mortal world. It was probably a real strain on his brain to figure out how a Fae girl had managed to come to his home in the mortal world.

“Er, I’m fine, luv,” he said, patting her back again.

Al pushed back from him finally, but she didn’t let go. “She threatened you, didn’t she?” Al asked. “That’s why you dropped out. And why you wouldn’t answer the phone.”

Gary looked sheepish. And guilty, though Al didn’t seem to notice that part.

“I value my hide, Al. Sorry, but she was real . . . persuasive. I wanted to at least leave word, but she said she’d kill me.” His accent was more upper-crust than you’d expect in this crappy neighborhood, and I could understand him much better than Yellow Undershirt Guy. I had the immediate suspicion that it was an affectation, maybe one he’d used to hide his background from Al.

My bullshit meter maxed out. He was just parroting back the explanation Al had already handed him, the one she wanted to hear. If he’d held up a sign saying

“I’m a sleazeball,” he couldn’t have been more obvious. Maybe he was afraid of what Al might do if she found out he’d dumped her and didn’t care enough to even answer the phone when she called.

“How . . . how can you be here?” he asked, shaking his head. “You’re Fae.”

“And the award for Best Statement of the Obvious goes to . . .” I muttered under my breath.

Al dabbed at her eyes and beckoned to me without turning. It was like she was afraid Gary would disappear if she let him out of her sight. Having no desire to get a closer look at Gary, whose bathrobe was starting to gape and reveal way more than I wanted to see, I stayed where I was.

“This is my friend Dana,” Al said, apparently unperturbed by my refusal to come closer. “She’s a Faeriewalker.”

Gary blinked. “What’s a Faeriewalker?”

Al gave him an abbreviated explanation, stressing the absolute necessity of keeping me close. I wondered if she was also trying to remind me why I couldn’t just turn around and walk away. I suspect the expression on my face was forbidding enough to make her worry I might forget—if she’d even bothered to look at me.

“So,” Al said, “are you going to invite us in, or are you going to keep us standing on the doorstep?”

Gary didn’t look thrilled about the prospect of letting us in, but he stepped aside and opened the door wider. I guess that was an invitation of sorts, though it surely wasn’t the level of enthusiasm Al had been hoping for. Personally, I didn’t want to set foot in the house. Gary had tripped my Creep-O-Meter the moment I’d laid eyes on him, and I didn’t think getting behind closed doors with him was all that safe.

If only I thought there was a chance in hell I could get Al to walk away. She accepted Gary’s invitation without even glancing at me to see if I was coming. I had to hurry to catch up. I thought we’d be okay with about fifteen yards between us, but I didn’t want to take any chances and planned to stay as close to her as possible. Which was going to make this touching reunion even more fun.

The inside of the townhouse was even more disreputable-looking than the outside. It looked like Gary furnished the place by Dumpster-diving. The carpet was a stained, puke-green shag, and the couch was some nubby, burnt-orange fabric with a big strip of duct-tape across one cushion—his idea of patching a rip, I guess—and three or four little round black patches that I took for cigarette burns.

Fast food wrappers and dirty dishes hid the coffee table from view, and the only decoration on the wall was a spiral-bound calendar featuring a topless babe and a red Corvette. Add to that the eye-watering stench of stale smoke and spilled beer, and I figured Gary’s house was now officially the grossest place I’d ever set foot in.

Even Al, looking around and frowning, wasn’t completely oblivious to the squalor. The frown turned to a narrow-eyed scowl when she caught sight of the girlie calendar. Gary blushed and hurried over to block her view and take it down.

“That’s not mine,” he said. “It’s Tom’s. My house-mate.”

“Oh,” Al said in a small voice, and for the first time, I thought she might be starting to rethink this whole adventure.

“Have a seat,” he said, waving at the couch. “I’ll get us something to drink.”

He didn’t wait for us to agree, hurrying out of the room like a cockroach scurrying away from the light. Al was regarding the disgusting couch doubtfully, and I sidled over to her.

“Let’s get out of here, please,” I said. “You got what you came for. You know he’s okay. We obviously—”

Al abruptly forgot her distaste for the couch, sitting down and crossing her arms over her chest. “This may be the last time I ever get to see him. I want a proper visit.”

I wanted to point out that you couldn’t have a “proper” visit in a stinking hovel, especially not when the guy you were visiting was a loser who’d probably been in bed when we came by because he was sleeping off a bender. I’d been around my mother in that state often enough to know it when I saw it. But Gary came back into the room, carrying two open cans of beer. He handed one to Al, who accepted with enthusiasm, then offered the other to me.

“No thanks,” I said, wrinkling my nose. My mom’s drinking had given me something of a complex about alcohol, but even aside from that, I thought beer was disgusting. How anyone could develop a taste for something that smelled and tasted so foul I’d never know.

“Aw, c’mon, luv,” Gary wheedled, his accent growing a little heavier. “’Ave a drink to celebrate our reunion.” He thrust the beer at me again.

“No. Thanks.”

To tell you the truth, this guy creeped me out enough that I wasn’t sure I’d even have accepted a soft drink from his hand. Not if it was already open, anyway.

Al had no such qualms, gulping her beer like she was parched. I think she was more unnerved by the squalor of Gary’s living conditions than she’d have liked to admit. Maybe she thought a little alcohol would make the place look better. I didn’t think anything short of a wrecking ball would do the trick.