The blonde didn’t seem scared as she took a long look around the garden center.
The sturdy barn-red store was flanked with plastic-covered greenhouses, with the one- and five-gallon shrubs grouped out front like leafy islands sprouting from an ocean of parking lot. The balled and burlapped trees were set around the perimeter, and tables of flowers and veg flats were strategically placed so shoppers couldn’t miss them on the way in. ‘‘This place is cute,’’ she said finally. ‘‘Yours?’’
In other words, was he an owner, a contract landscaper working out of the nursery, or a schlub who, at thirty-three, watered plants for a living at seven bucks an hour?
‘‘Mine and my partners’,’’ he said, wondering how she’d react if he told her it was a little bit of all of those things.
He was part owner, along with Jox and Red-Boar, because all three of their names were on the Nightkeeper Fund started by his umpteenth-great-grandfather after he’d sold off most of the old artifacts. Strike also did some landscaping now and then, when he got the itch. And yeah, he was thirty-three, and although he had an MBA from Harvard Biz and used it to manage the fund, at the moment his career pretty much consisted of watering plants and discussing the intricacies of dried versus composted cow manure.
That, and studying spells that hadn’t worked in twenty-four years.
‘‘Want to give me a behind-the-scenes tour?’’ The blonde shot him a look of pure invitation that normally would’ve had his glands sitting up and taking notice.
Now, though, his libido sort of shrugged and yawned, which gave him serious pause. Oh, come on. How could he not be interested in getting some of that?
He ought to be . . . hell, he was trying to be, but he was doing the autoflirt thing—and had been for the past few weeks—all because of some seriously funky, sexed-up dreams that had him waking up horny as hell. He could clearly picture the woman in those dreams: her high-cheekboned face and pale blue eyes, a set of full lips that seemed made to wrap around a guy and hang on for the ride, and white-blond hair that sifted through his fingers like spun platinum.
He looked at Pink Top again to make sure. Nope, wrong blonde. Assuming, of course, there was a ‘‘right’’ blonde . . . which was a serious stretch, because even if the barrier were active, which it wasn’t, and he’d gone through the talent ceremony at puberty to get his full powers, which he hadn’t, Nightkeeper males weren’t supposed to be precogs. Which meant the dreams were just dreams, and he should be good to go.
Only he wasn’t.
‘‘There’s really not much to see out back.’’ He smiled in an effort to soften the brush-off. ‘‘Besides, I’ve got to keep working. My boss is a real ballbuster.’’ There was even a bit of truth to that—Jox might be the royal winikin and thus technically Strike’s servant, but the garden center was his baby, and woe to he who skimped on watering duty.
Surprise flicked across the blonde’s face, along with a hint of temper he figured she was entitled to. ‘‘Really? Wow. Guess I called that wrong.’’
‘‘My bad, not yours.’’ He cranked the water wand and hit a hanging pot of salmon-colored begonias. ‘‘Enjoy the impatiens.’’
As she huffed off and the begonia pot overflowed, a voice from behind Strike said, ‘‘What are you, fucking stupid?’’
Exhaling and counting to ten backward, Strike dealt with the water first, shutting it off and dropping the hose. Then he turned and held out a hand. ‘‘That’ll be five bucks, Rabbit.’’
Wearing low-slung jeans, heavy work boots, and a black hooded track jacket even though it was in the high eighties and rising, with the hood pulled up over his shaved head and his iPod buds stuck firmly in his ears, Red-Boar’s seventeen-year-old son was dressed to depress, and wore the ’tude to match.
Smirking, the kid dug in his pocket, pulled out a ten, and slapped it in Strike’s palm to pay the ‘‘no saying ‘fuck’ on the job’’ fine they’d been forced to institute when Rabbit graduated high school a full year ahead of schedule, blew off his SATs to joyride down the coast in Jox’s truck, and then e-mailed all his completed college applications to the U.S. Embassy in Honduras while swearing to Jox and Strike that he’d submitted the apps on time.
He’d probably figured—hoped—that his father would cut ties after those stunts, leaving him free to do whatever the hell he wanted. Instead, Red-Boar—aka the only adult Nightkeeper who’d survived the Solstice Massacre—had surprised all of them by rousing his PTSD-zonked self long enough to ground Rabbit’s ass, cancel his AmEx, julienne his license, and order the kid to work at the garden center all summer, where he’d promptly started cussing out the customers.
Thus, the ‘‘fuck’’ fine.
Strike pocketed the ten. ‘‘You want change?’’
‘‘Put it on account.’’ The kid’s eyes, so light blue they were almost gray, followed the blonde into the store. ‘‘But seriously. How can you not want a piece of that?’’
‘‘I take it you’re done pruning out back?’’
Jox and Strike did their best to keep Rabbit away from the front of the store as much as possible, because they never knew what he’d get into next. Sometimes his ideas were brilliant, sometimes terrifying, quite often both. But Rabbit was Red-Boar’s son, which meant he was one of them. It also meant that he was at a serious disadvantage, because his father was a head case, and nobody knew a damn thing about his mother except Red-Boar, who wasn’t talking. So Strike tried to cut the kid some slack. In the end, the four of them were a family, albeit a seriously dysfunctional one.
Rabbit lifted a shoulder, still focused on the front of the store even though the blonde was long gone. ‘‘Why don’t you check on the pruning for yourself, Strike-out? ’’
‘‘In other words, no.’’ Strike rubbed absently at his wrist, which had started aching early that morning, along with most of the rest of his body. He was tired, and vaguely pissed off for no good reason. There was nothing wrong, but there was nothing particularly right, either.
He was used to living with Jox, Red-Boar, and Rabbit in a strange bacheloresque symbiosis that was part necessity, part history, but it wasn’t the life he would’ve picked. Four and a half more years until the world doesn’t end, he reminded himself. You’ve just got to hang on until then.
‘‘Delivery’s here,’’ Rabbit said, shifting his attention as an eighteen-wheeler turned up the driveway. ‘‘I’ll sign for it.’’
‘‘No way.’’ Strike grabbed Rabbit by the back of his hood, knowing the kid was just as likely to blow straight past the truck and down the street to the liquor store, bucking for another shoplifting conviction. He headed the teen toward the greenhouse with a shove. ‘‘Prune. Now.’’
‘‘Fuck you.’’
Strike patted his pocket, where he’d stuck the ten. ‘‘We’re even.’’
He signed for the delivery—more cow shit—and headed into the store, which was functional and homey without being unrelentingly cute.
The walls were lined with shelves and bins holding everything from fifty-cent peat cakes to three-hundred-dollar customized bird feeders, complete with advanced squirrel deterrent systems that made no sense to Strike. Rows of freestanding shelves held the seeds and chemicals, and twenty-pounders of fertilizer, crabgrass killer, and slug repellent were stacked neatly in a row headed for the checkout area, where books and magazines competed for space with other point-of-purchase doodads. The counter was paneled in rustic wood like the rest of the shop, and the high-tech cash register was disguised to look like something out of the forties.
Behind the counter, Jox was perched on a bar stool chatting with the blonde, whom he’d apparently talked into a pink ceramic pot for her impatiens, along with a bonsai money tree.