“You gave them rooms?” he repeated in a growl.
“We need a cash flow,” Trixie said. “I was hoping to make a nest egg at Oktoberfest but the oni crashed that party. I only made forty bucks before all the yelling and screaming started. We got lucky. We would have been in the middle of that mess if the tengu hadn’t suddenly swooped in, yelled for everyone to get out, and grabbed the bunnies.”
“They grabbed what?” Tommy missed something. “Rabbits?”
Trixie laughed. “You look like shit. How much sleep have you gotten lately?”
“Not enough.” Tommy scrubbed at his face, annoyed that the lack of sleep was showing. He’d planned on sleeping the entire day after being up two nights in row. Oilcan’s emergency planning session, however, had awakened him at the crack of dawn.
“Here.” Trixie produced a Red Bull from under the counter and tossed it to him. “I’ve been hoarding that but you need it if you don’t know who Babs Bunny is.”
Tommy groaned as he realized who she was talking about. Babs was part of a commune of women who all had half-elf kids, collectively known as the Bunnies. All the women were illegal immigrants who hoped that their children created a legal loophole for them staying on the planet. No one was sure that they were right, not even the Bunnies. Just in case they were wrong, the women all used the names of famous rabbit cartoon characters instead of their real names. Because Babs couldn’t go to the EIA or the elves without endangering herself, she was the only midwife in town that the half-oni had been able to trust with difficult births.
“Alita knows someone that works as a housekeeper at the Wyndham,” Trixie said. “The story checked out.”
Tommy nodded after he realized that Trixie had circled back to the men who asked for hotel rooms. Alita was one of Trixie’s younger sisters. She was a smart, tough cookie, but then most of Aunt Amy’s kids were. Tommy cracked the Red Bull open — he needed the caffeine.
Trixie continued, passing on her little sister’s information. “Someone was bright enough to evacuate all the guests into the basement before the attack helicopter and dragon sideswiped the Wyndham. All the guests are alive but the rooms are toast. Alita also got some ‘how to run a normal hotel’ tips off of her friend. We found where the housekeeper carts were stored. The teens gave the lobby a quick scrub and went up to the eighth floor to deep-clean the rooms. Alita says that the linens on the beds need to be top notch, so we tracked down the laundry room and where the clean linens are stored. We even found an entire closet of itty-bitty soaps and shampoos. The men wanted to know if we offered room service. That was an interesting conversation. Turns out ‘room service’ is what you call take-out food in a hotel and has nothing to do with sex. I gave some of the cash that the men forked over to Alita and Zippo so they could buy groceries.”
Tommy nodded at the wisdom of the pair going shopping. Zippo was one of Bingo’s little brothers. He was only sixteen but nearly the size of Babe. Plus Zippo was chill enough to listen to the smaller but smarter girl. Alita and Zippo made a good brain-and-brawn team. It was wise to send them out with enough money to buy in bulk while the stores still had food to buy.
It was the whole cleaning thing that bothered Tommy. “Did Bingo not tell you about moving?”
“Look, I know how hard you’ve worked to keep us all safe, but I think you’re making a mistake. We’ve had shitty lives and, for once, we’ve got something nice. We can make this work.”
“We’re at war.”
“Yeah, every day of our freaking lives. What else is new?”
Tommy couldn’t deny the truth of that.
Trixie scanned the lobby. “Where’s Spot?”
“Spot?”
Trixie put her hand down to hip level to measure off how tall Spot was to her. “Bingo said you left with Spot.”
“Oh shit!” He’d forgotten he’d dropped Spot at Oilcan’s. He had planned to see Jewel Tear when he picked the boy back up. “He should be okay. Blue Sky was there and he promised to keep Spot safe. I need to grab my phone.”
Trixie put her cupped hands to her head and wiggled them. “Your ears are showing too.”
Swearing, he felt his head. “Oh, yeah. I didn’t want the elves to think I was pretending to be human. I took off my bandana when I got to Poppymeadows.”
“What did Tinker want?”
“She’s worried about people falling between the cracks like Oilcan’s kids did. I made the mistake of telling her about the girls on Liberty Avenue disappearing. I need to put together a list of missing whores to give to the police.”
“Exactly how the hell did this end up as your responsibility?” Trixie asked.
“Do you really think Oilcan would know where to even look for a whore?”
Trixie burst out laughing. “No. All the girls he’s ever brought to the track were cute but nerdy smart. He’s into smart, strong females.”
Tommy had never noticed who Oilcan dated. Trixie ran the concession booths at the racetrack; she saw who came and went with whom. She also had a thing for smart, strong women. Maybe she was crushing on Oilcan’s girlfriends.
“I need to talk to Mokoto,” Tommy said. “What room is he in?”
“My family is on the seventeenth floor. We put him away from the kids since he sleeps during the day. He’s not going to be happy being woke up after two hours of sleep.”
“At the moment, I don’t care. Are those running yet?” Tommy pointed toward the elevators.
“The closest one is working but only up to the eighth floor. Alita programmed it so our customers can only get to the floor that their rooms are on. Alita said she’ll work on the others later so we can use our room keys to access our floors.”
Tommy sighed. It was better than he expected but it still meant he needed to climb nine floors.
The elevator stopped on the eighth floor as promised. What Tommy hadn’t expected was a half dozen carts in the hallway, each parked beside an open doorway. As Tommy stepped off the elevator, a head cautiously poked out of the nearest room. It was Kiki, the bravest of the teen girls.
“It’s just Tommy!” Kiki called out.
“Hi Tommy!” came a chorus of voices all up and down the hallway.
Kiki skipped out into the hall to show off the fact that she was wearing a gray dress. Kiki was Trixie’s little sister; she was a year younger than Alita. Unlike her older sisters, Kiki couldn’t pass as human. Her father had been a lesser blood; she had his wild mane of flame-red hair, short horns, and vivid red-brown eyes. Despite that, she was cute in a scary kind of way. “Look! We found housekeeping uniforms! Aren’t they cute?”
“Yeah, I see,” Tommy said.
It wasn’t particularly cute, just a gray tailored button-down dress with a white apron. Kiki was also one of the tallest girls, so it was more like a long shirt on her. The girls, however, rarely got anything new. Everything was handed down and usually stained and heavily patched. Kiki probably cared more that it was a new piece of clothing than how it fashionable it was.
Down the hall someone started to sing, “Be our guest! Be our guest! Our command is your request!”
Kiki twirled the skirt of her housekeeping uniform, showing off that she was wearing shorts under it, and danced off singing. “It’s been years since we’ve had anybody here and we’re obsessed!”
Tommy shook his head. How could they all be so happy scrubbing toilets? But he knew that it was a safer, saner way than how they used to live, where his father’s troops might idly beat, maim, rape, murder and even eat any one of them.
Tommy walked up the remaining flights, stewing over his growing problem.