Anyway, I have to go, before everyone I know turns in for the day.” I topped off my coffee and headed out, before she could ask why there were tongue marks in the mayonnaise.
CHAPTER 9
I found my duffel bag in the car and my cell inside the duffel, so things were looking up. The Camaro itself had some obvious new dents and smelled a little mildewy, but it started, so I counted it as a victory. Ten minutes later, I parked it next to a mini-mart that looked like any other in Brooklyn from the outside.
It did on the inside, too, at least in front. Customers could prowl the deserted aisles, buy rubberlike hot dogs, get a scratch-off card and stock up on overpriced toiletries, all while being ostentatiously ignored by the staff. The locals had eventually gotten tired of the lousy service and gone elsewhere, which of course had
been the point. There were rumors that the store was a front for mob activity, drug running and/or gambling.
The truth was a whole lot weirder.
The back room was accessible through a brief hallway and a speakeasy-type door. I bent down and knocked, because the eyehole was roughly in line with my navel. A tiny green eye peered back at me suspiciously. “What?”
“Open up. It’s me, Dory.”
“How do I know that?”
“Because you’re looking at me?”
“Turn on the light.”
I sighed. “It is on.” There were half a dozen hundred-fifty-watt bulbs in the overhead fixture, enough that I could feel their heat slowly frying my brain. Not that it mattered. Troll eyesight is universally terrible, and no spell I’ve ever heard of seems to help.
There was a low-voiced conversation on the other side of the door. “You don’t have to whisper. I don’t speak troll,” I said helpfully.
“You should learn,” a familiar voice said as the door swung back.
I was still bent over, giving me a view of about a mile of shiny black leather encasing two massive thighs. A flick of the eye downward showed me a pair of high-heeled slides adding another three inches to an already towering height. Three gnarled toes peeked out the end, the usual number for a Bergtroll, or mountain troll. Although most don’t have nails painted high-gloss red.
Or so I liked to believe, anyway.
A trip upward showed me a very healthy bosom encased in a bright red vest, which was mostly hidden behind a flowing brown beard. It matched the hair framing the wide face above, which had been teased to within an inch of its life and streaked with platinum highlights. Its owner regarded me quizzically.
“Why you bent over like that?” Olga demanded.
Out of shock, I didn’t say. “No reason.”
I stood up and she pulled back, giving me access. The tiny mountain troll who had answered the door clambered back onto his stool, pushed over to one side where he could smoke in peace. He’d also been used as a doorman by the proprietors of the establishment’s former incarnation—a crowded gambling den. I guess it had gotten too crowded, because it had been replaced by a beauty parlor.
“New look?” I asked, settling myself onto an empty stool.
Olga plopped back onto a chair by a manicure station. The chair groaned, but held, and the manicurist went back to work on her thick, curved nails. “You should try,” she said, eyeing my short nails and casual hairstyle without favor. “You look like boy.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Most guys don’t think so.”
“I not see you married.”
“Hell has yet to freeze over,” I agreed.
She snorted. “What happened to that vampire?”
“Which one?” Lately, I had more in my life than I liked. Of course, since I liked zero, that wasn’t hard.
Olga spread her giant hands, turned them upward and made grabby motions. I grinned, thinking of Louis-Cesare’s expression if he ever found out that his name sounded like the troll word for “tight ass.” Not that it didn’t fit. On several levels.
“I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“You see him more often if you—” Olga looked at the manicurist. “What that word?”