Time to Your Elf, page 9
Reg picked up a bottle of olive oil.
It wasn’t like she cooked. She just had the idea that if she had some things, like oil, that she needed for cooking, she might actually cook something. Maybe. Not that she knew what she would make with olive oil. French fries?
“Hail, Reg Rawlins!”
Reg jumped and looked up. Orri stood a few feet away from her. She hadn’t seen lights or heard bells; he was just there. Maybe he had already been to the grocery store ahead of her or had materialized in another aisle before finding her.
There was a smash of breaking glass. Looking down, Reg saw a pool of oil spreading at her feet. Her hand was empty, the bottle shattered on the floor. Reg stepped carefully around it, looking around to see whether anyone had seen the accident.
She looked at Orri as she walked by him, trying to distance herself from the broken bottle of oil.
“Maybe you have a warning about dropping glass bottles this time?”
He raised his brows and looked at her.
“No, I suppose not,” Reg sighed. She pushed her cart to the end and rounded the corner to enter the next aisle. Orri walked along beside her. “Well, what is it this time, then?”
“I have a warning for you.”
“Yeah, I figured. What is it?”
He looked disappointed that she was not taking his appearance more seriously. Here he was, a time traveling elf, showing up to give her a special, personalized message, and she acted as though it were something that happened every day.
Which lately, it had.
Reg just waited, scanning the shelves for anything she might need. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t going to cook anything. At best, she would warm something in the microwave. She even turned down food that required oven cooking. She didn’t like the big, shiny oven and the blast of hot air that puffed up in her face when she opened the door. A person could burn herself trying to take out a pan of fries. She could forget that she’d left something in the oven and burn the house down.
Reg thought about that for a moment. How much of what was in her head were words that she’d absorbed from her foster homes? How would she burn herself? She was a firecaster! She wasn’t going to be hurt by a little heat or fire. She should have a natural aptitude for cooking, given her powers.
Orri stopped Reg, holding his hand up to make her pay attention to his portentous announcement. A couple of other shoppers walking by gave him curious looks.
“Beware Janus and the cat with nine lives.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Reg looked at Orri. A new warning this time. One that she hadn’t heard before. Janice?
Who was Janice? She didn’t know anyone by that name.
And the cat with nine lives? Starlight, maybe? She knew that he had lived other lives before he had chosen Reg. He’d been powerful and important in the past. Maybe even one of the immortals. Harrison had told her that he was Bastet, an Egyptian god.
Reg found it hard to believe. He was her fuzzy, cuddly companion, who liked having his ears and chin scratched and got irritated if she didn’t clean his kitty litter often enough. If he had been an Egyptian god, then what was he doing now, living with her, rubbing against the fridge door to beg for tuna casserole?
“Who is Janice?”
Orri gave a little bow, then fireflies began to blink in and out around him, swarming together, until she blinked her eyes and he was gone.
Reg looked around to see whether there were any more Orris hanging around. She saw only a couple of other shoppers, ordinary people, walking past the aisle.
Reg started putting the groceries away when she got home. Starlight jumped down from his spot in Reg’s bedroom window and walked into the kitchen, arching his back to stretch, and then stretching each of his back feet out behind him in a way Reg always found charming. He’d obviously been sleeping the entire time she had been gone.
“I got you kitty food and litter,” Reg told him. “Yeah. And do you really have nine lives, by the way? And is this your ninth, or do you still have a few left?”
Starlight ignored her, poking his head into the bags to see what else she had bought. Reg started putting items slowly into the cupboard and fridge. She threw out a few of the things that she thought Sarah had put there, foods that Reg wasn’t ever going to eat, so she might as well reclaim her cupboard space for things that she would eat.
When there was a knock and the door opened, Reg startled guiltily and closed the garbage bin to hide the evidence. Sarah walked in, smiling and nodding at Reg pleasantly.
“Hello, Reg. Did you have a successful trip?”
Reg nodded. “Sure. Picked up a few things that I needed. I don’t want you to think that you have to keep my cupboards stocked all the time. I can afford to feed myself.”
“Oh, I know you can. I just end up with too much in my kitchen and figure maybe it is something that you would like.” Sarah shrugged.
Or something Reg would throw out for her.
Reg put a few more cans in the cupboard. “I saw him again.”
“You saw who, dear?” Sarah looked at her, then got it. “Oh, the elf? What did you say his name is?”
“Orri. Yeah. He showed up in the middle of the grocery store.”
“Out in public? I’ve never heard of an elf appearing in public. Did anyone else see him?”
Reg wondered fleetingly whether Sarah believed her or thought that Reg was losing her marbles and hallucinating in the store.
Reg couldn’t help wondering herself. Corvin had told her that the invisible friends she had when she was a child had probably been ghosts. He had told her how powerful she was. Others in Black Sands had agreed, and Reg had seemed to discover new powers and to have new adventures all the time. But what if it was all just in her mind? What if nothing was real and she was in an institution somewhere, experiencing everything in her head? Creating a new fantastical world in her own head.
What about that? What if none of it was real and she was just deluding herself?
“There were others around,” she said vaguely, unable to remember specifically who might have seen Orri. Any of the clerks? The butcher at his counter in the back of the store? Friends or clients who had been there to get groceries at the same time? Black Sands was a small place. There were bound to have been people that she knew there.
“That’s very surprising.” Sarah picked a couple of items out of Reg’s bags and put them in the fridge. “So what happened this time?”
“He scared the heck out of me. I didn’t even see him materialize this time; he was just standing there.”
“I imagine so. It would have scared me too. They really should be more careful. You can’t just go around appearing to people and think that they won’t have a heart attack or stroke.”
“Or even just faint.”
“Did you faint?”
“No. Thank goodness.” Reg couldn’t imagine what would have happened if she had fainted right in the middle of the grocery store. Would they slap her cheeks? Splash water on her? Call the police? Would she end up in an ambulance or the hospital wondering what had happened? “I didn’t faint. Nothing happened.”
If anyone had seen Reg drop the olive oil bottle, Sarah would probably hear about it sooner or later. The grapevine was alive and well in Black Sands.
“Did he have another warning? Or one of the same ones as before?”
“A different one this time. Janice and the cat with nine lives?”
“Janice?”
“Yeah. I don’t even know a Janice. And the cat with nine lives? Is that Starlight? Francesca’s Nicole? Some cat that is going to cross my path and I’m supposed to know about it ahead of time?”
“Maybe a black cat,” Sarah suggested. “One that you don’t want to cross in front of you, because of bad luck.”
“Is it really bad luck for a black cat to cross your path?” Reg asked curiously.
“It is if you hit it. Especially for the cat.”
Reg tried to stifle a laugh at the remark, snorting as she looked for a place for another box of cookies. Starlight yowled and looked at her reproachfully.
“I’m sorry,” Reg told him. “But it is true. That’s one of the reasons you are not allowed to go outside.”
He meowed something again crossly and stalked out of the room instead of waiting to see whether she would feed him. Sarah watched Starlight’s retreat.
“Well, if he’s going to be so sensitive…”
Reg nodded. “He’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“The cat with nine lives,” Sarah mused.
“Don’t all cats have nine lives? I mean, that’s what they say, isn’t it? It is really true?”
“Cats just have some close calls,” Sarah said. “They get into mischief, and if they are lucky, they escape by the skin of their teeth. They don’t really have nine lives.”
“But they have more than one, right? Because I know Starlight has had others.”
“Reincarnation, you mean? Yes, I suppose so. None of us knows how that might work, of course, or if it means that we all have an unlimited number of incarnations. There are many other traditions. Most religions believe in some kind of life to follow this one, whether it is as another person, or on another plane.”
“Heaven?”
“That’s one of them. There are many other names. And many other places our souls are said to go for their eternal reward.”
Reg didn’t want to think of those other places. She didn’t believe in eternal punishment. She couldn’t, not with the way she lived. She couldn’t be a con and believe that people would be punished for every time they had lied and cheated.
“So do you think I already know the cat with nine lives?”
“You said that all the other warnings he has given you have already been fulfilled, so it would follow that this one has too. And the cat with nine lives might not even be a cat. It could be a person. A man who has been through several incarnations. Or who has been lucky to escape death in the past.”
“Corvin? Do you think it’s him?”
“Corvin.” Sarah considered this. “No, I can’t see that one. That doesn’t mean he isn’t, but I can’t think of any reason that would point to him.”
Corvin didn’t even like cats. Reg thought about other people in her life. People that she had already known who had been threats to her. Because as Sarah had said, all the other warnings had been too late. Why would this on be any different?
“Oh!” It hit her with a flash of insight. “I know who it is!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sarah’s eyes widened. “You know?”
“Of course. It’s so simple. It’s Jacky Lane. Maybe Janice was her real name, back in the beginning. It even starts with a J. Or maybe it’s one of the aliases she took at some point.”
“You think she was the cat with nine lives?”
“She had eight ghosts attached to her, right? That’s eight lives. Plus her own. Nine. And she’s a woman, so Janice could be her name.”
“Well… yes. It’s possible.”
“And she was poisoning me. So of course Orri would warn me to stay away from her. It all makes perfect sense.”
“You could be right,” Sarah admitted. But she still sounded doubtful.
“I am. That’s it.”
“Then why would he say Janice and the cat with nine lives?”
“Because it is a riddle. That just makes it harder to solve. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Sarah pursed her lips. She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s my warning, so I guess I’m the one who knows whether that’s what it means or not.”
Reg made herself sound confident because she didn’t want Sarah to argue about it and to fill her mind with doubts. It was Orri giving her another warning about something that had already happened, just as he had done every time before. She hadn’t told him this time that what he’d warned her about had already happened so, hopefully, he had gone home satisfied and would not be back. Without him reappearing in her life every single day, she could stop worrying and just go on with her life. She could work with her clients, relax with her cat and her friends, and afford to eat out or go to the grocery store when she needed to. That was a good life.
Sarah helped her to put the last few things away. She looked into the fridge for a moment. “It seems like you have an awful lot in here. We should probably clear some of it out.”
Having cleared it out twice already, Reg didn’t think there could be that much left. Certainly not enough for Sarah to complain about. She opened the fridge door and looked in. With the food that she had left behind, in addition to the things she had left in the fridge the last time, it was pretty full. Plus whatever else Sarah had added to it when Reg had been out. She supposed it was just a ploy to make sure that she looked through all the bowls and ate whatever Sarah had just added.
“Okay, I’ll take a look later,” she agreed.
Sarah nodded. “We wouldn’t want anything to go bad.”
Reg was tempted to wink at her and agree, but she didn’t. She just nodded as if she didn’t know what Sarah was up to.
“I’m glad you’ve worked out the warning by the elf.” Sarah turned toward the door. Then she paused and looked back. “But if he warned you again about something that has already happened, then won’t he come back again?”
“Not if I don’t tell him.”
“And you aren’t worried that you still haven’t been given the message that he was tasked with giving you?”
“He’s given me all kinds of warnings. So, no. I’m not worried.”
“You don’t want to ignore a harbinger.”
“I’m not. I’ve listened to everything he has to say.”
“But you haven’t received the real warning.”
Reg rolled her eyes. “They were all real warnings. The timing was just off.”
“To be a true harbinger, he has to tell you of something in the future.”
Reg tried to ignore the knot in her stomach. “Then he’s not a real harbinger. He just thinks he is.”
Sarah tilted her head to the side and gave it a little shake. “You can think what you like, but I don’t know. An omen is a sign of something to come. You don’t eliminate the thing that is going to come or the omen by ignoring it.”
Reg just pressed her lips together, waiting for Sarah to leave. There wasn’t any point in arguing it anymore. Sarah knew her position. And Reg was sure that she was right.
Pretty sure.
Even though she had gone out for food, Reg wasn’t in the mood to stay in and eat. She wanted to celebrate. Celebrate the fact that she had her business back and money in the bank. Celebrate the fact that she’d had her last visit from Orri. Life was good. Everything was good.
So she went over to The Crystal Bowl.
The last time she had tried to eat there, she had been turned away. Reg’s siren parentage had only just been discovered, and the management had decided that they weren’t going to serve “her kind” there.
But that was in the past now. People were forgetting about the revelation. Nothing had happened. Reg hadn’t gone on a rampage. She hadn’t dragged anyone to the icy depths of the ocean. She hadn’t done anything exciting, but had stayed below the radar.
So she was confident that this time, they would allow her in. They had forgotten all about her history and would be happy for her patronage. She’d eaten there regularly ever since she had arrived in Black Sands, and she had missed it.
She went when she knew it would be busy. The more that was going on, the better the chances were that the staff would completely forget that they weren’t supposed to be serving sirens.
Reg had to wait in the doorway for a few minutes while the hostess found tables for people. But it never filled up all the way so, in a few minutes, people were distributed to their various tables and the hostess turned to Reg. Her smile faltered slightly.
Reg gave her a determined, reassuring smile, and waited to be helped. She could go and find a table herself. She’d done it before enough times. Sometimes the staff were busy and the regulars didn’t wait as the sign instructed. Reg looked around. She would just head to her regular table and the woman wouldn’t stop her.
The tables in the corner she usually sat in were already occupied. It was the supper hour. Reg looked at the adjoining tables to see what was free. That was when she saw Corvin. He looked up and met her eyes across the restaurant. Reg wanted to turn away and leave but, if she did that, she might never have the confidence to go back there again. She couldn’t run away.
Corvin stood. He nodded to the seat across the table from him. When the hostess turned around to see who Reg was looking at, Corvin gestured to the seat.
“Oh, there he is,” Reg said hurriedly. “He’s already been seated.”
The hostess looked at Corvin, not sure what to do. She wanted to tell Reg that she wasn’t welcome there, but Corvin tended to have an influence over the people around him. The same charms that made him so attractive to Reg also made it possible for him to get people to do things that they would not have done otherwise.
“I’ll just go join him,” Reg said casually, and slipped past the woman.
But the hostess followed, not willing to leave it at that. She stood beside the table as Corvin held Regina’s chair out for her and then seated himself again.
“I’m sure Miss Rawlins would like a drink,” Corvin told her, his voice oozing with charm.
The hostess drew out an order pad, though Reg knew that she didn’t usually wait tables. “Of course,” she agreed, in a faraway voice.
Reg placed her drink order. Just one glass. Alcohol and Corvin’s charms together were a dangerously potent mix. The hostess brought Reg her drink and with reluctance drew away from the table again, leaving Corvin alone with Reg. Alone, but in a busy restaurant. He wouldn’t be able to do too much with so many people around. As long as she could resist his taking her away from there, she should be fine.
