Kelly Meding - As Lie the Dead

I tried out that sentence several times but couldn’t make good sense of it. A casual “Good luck,” or even “Get the hell out of my office,” would have sufficed. Riddles wore me out.

“Yeah, okay,” I said.

“Thank you for seeing us,” Phin said.

“You really had to thank him?” I asked, after we’d left the public defender’s office behind and were once again on the sunny streets of downtown.

“Blanket rudeness isn’t in my repertoire, Evy,” he replied.

I rolled my eyes and leaned against the side of the car. “So we’re right back where we were, which is nowhere. The Assembly is a bust, and my only other lead isn’t doing anything useful until tomorrow night.”

“You’ve been working the investigative angle pretty well, but how about a more direct approach?”

“Meaning?”

“Who’s on your list of suspects?”

“The list of who’s not is a lot shorter.”

“So let’s whittle it down.”

“What do you suggest? Door-to-door interrogations?”

“If you want an apple, you don’t shake a pear tree.”

I blanched. Phin smiled.

Fifty years ago, the relocated train car had housed a popular diner. Once brilliant silver walls had faded to dusky gunmetal gray. Long lines of windows and a single arched door were boarded over, hiding any hint of the previously colorful glass and lights. Another landmark gone to pot, nestled between a struggling deli and a flower shop.

I hadn’t a clue why Phin had brought me here.

He walked up the cracked cement steps and grabbed the handle of a door held shut by a rusty padlock.

“Um, Phin?” I said.

The handle turned without the grind of old metal I’d expected. Hell, I hadn’t expected it to turn at all. The padlock disappeared as though it had never existed. Light, music, and the mouthwatering scent of fries and burgers drifted out of the open door. My jaw dropped.

Phin took my hand and led me inside. A faint buzz tickled the back of my neck as we passed over the threshold. I stared, slack-jawed, as we entered a bustling, sparkling diner that was right out of the past. The countertop shone. Bright neon lights ran along the ceiling, reflecting back on the shiny leather booths. Two cooks hovered over a crackling flattop, shouting at each other and waving spatulas in the air.

With room for about fifty and nearly full at three in the afternoon, the diner was anything but the decaying front visible from the street. Odder still, the crack-free windows showed perfect, sunlit views of the city street outside.

The door closed with the ding of a bell. A waitress in a blue apron sauntered over, heels clicking on the black-and-white checked linoleum. Her blond hair was speckled with various shades of brown and tan, but it was her bright copper irises that gave her away as a were-cat. Most wore contacts to pass among humans—not this one.

She gave me a brief once-over, then smiled brightly for Phin. “Hey, handsome,” she said, quite literally purring over him. “Why’d you bring the Sape?”

I bristled. I’d heard the insult in passing—a simple play on Homo sapiens— but never to my face. Phin squeezed my hand; I hadn’t realized he was still holding it. I let him, mostly for the look Kitty Cat gave me. Priceless.

“Why not?” Phin asked. “Did Annalee enact a ‘No humans’ policy since the last time I was here?”

“No such luck,” Kitty replied, without a hint of sarcasm. “There’s an empty booth in the back. I’ll bring you menus.”

Phin navigated our path through the crowded diner, weaving among patrons and dozens of conversations. I observed without staring and came to the simple conclusion I was the only person in the place who wasn’t a Dreg. Except for two vampires sitting quietly at the far end of the lunch counter, absorbed in their own chatter, the staff and clientele were exclusively were.

I slid into the back of the booth, facing the diner so I could keep an eye on comings and goings. Phin was grinning as he sat down. Before I could ask, the waitress returned with two menus. I looked at the laminated cover and snickered: “The Green Apple.”

“Drinks to start?” she asked.

“Coffee,” I replied without bothering to check the list. I’d smelled it faintly under the scents of fried foods.

“Wheat grass juice,” Phin said. “Thanks, Belle.”

“Coming up,” Belle said, and walked off.

“What the hell is wheat grass juice?” I asked.

“It’s good for you,” he said.

“So’s apple juice.” I’d be damned if the table didn’t have a mini-jukebox right next to the wall, nestled perfectly between a chrome napkin dispenser and the salt ’n’ pepper shakers. “What’re we doing here? Shaking apples? Meeting someone for information?”

“Lunch, Evy.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we’re eating lunch,” he said, like a patient schoolteacher. “Neither one of us has eaten since breakfast, and you’ll be much more effective if you’re not working off toaster-pastry fumes.”

“Okay, fair enough.” I was hungrier than I’d realized. “But why here, other than the obvious apple tree joke?”

“I like the food.”

“Bullshit.”

He tilted his head. “Are you judging the food before you’ve tried it? I assure you, it’s excellent.”

“No, I’m sure the food is great, but I call bullshit on that being your reason for bringing me to a diner that, one, obviously has a glamour on it for protection, and two, has a clientele that’s pretty exclusively Dr—nonhuman.”

“I admit, the glamour is to keep humans out,” Phin said. “We like having a few places to be among our own kind, without the threat of Triad interrogations or human interference.”

“Two things of which I’m both, Phin.”

“Call it another exercise in trust.”

I flopped against the back of the booth and surveyed the landscape. Two males and a female at the table next to ours. Male and female at the booth across from me. A woman and four children, all about the same age, diagonally from our booth—a litter joke raced through my head, but I kept it to myself. No one seemed to pay us much mind. If they knew I wasn’t one of them, they didn’t show it.

“Are you angry?” Phin asked.

I should have been angry. He knew I’d been a Hunter. I liked to control my environment, and I hated surprises. He’d taken me to an exclusively Dreg diner that humans couldn’t even see without first walking through the glamour, and then declared we were taking precious minutes out of our day to sit down and eat, when fast food was a smarter option.

Still … “No, I’m not.”

Belle returned with a round tray laden with a clay mug, a plate of creamers, a carafe of steaming coffee, and a juice glass of something thick and green. The green goo went to Phin. Belle put down the plate, the mug, then filled it to the brim.

“Ready to order yet?” she asked.

Phin shook his head. “Can we have a few minutes?”

Belle nodded and wandered off. I blew across the top of the coffee and sipped. Scorching goodness tore down my throat, strong and invigorating. I opened the menu. Glanced at the offerings. Cheeseburgers, steak sandwiches, bacon and eggs, club sandwiches, French fries—not a shocking thing listed.

“What is it?”

My head snapped up. “Huh?”

“For a moment, I thought your eyebrows were going to join your hairline. What surprised you?”

I closed the menu and pushed it away. “The food.”

“What about the food?”

“Looks like something I could get at Denny’s.”

There it was, that damned look. Furrowed brow, straight mouth, lips pressed so hard they disappeared. “You don’t really know much about us, do you?”