“What is it, then?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Not unless you agree to join us.”
“Is this a cult or something?”
“Or something.”
“I’m going to need more information,” I told her, and I took a sip of my sidecar because it seemed like something to do but it made my fingers sticky. Sugar on cocktail rims is stupid. “Or is this an ‘I know too much already’ situation?”
“You do, but I’m not particularly concerned about that. If you were to tell anyone what you know, or what you think you know, no one would believe you.”
“Because it’s too weird?”
“Because you’re a woman,” she said. “That makes you easier to write off as crazy. Hysterical. If you were a man it might be an issue.”
I didn’t say anything. I was waiting for my more information. She stared at me for a long time. Definitely not a natural blue on the eye.
“I like you, Miss Hawkins,” she said. “You’re tenacious and I admire tenacity when it is not misplaced. Currently yours is misplaced but I think I might make good use of it. You’re clever and determined and passionate and those are all qualities I look for. And you’re a storyteller.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It means you have an affinity for our area of interest.”
“Literary charity, right? I didn’t think literary charities had this much of a secret-society vibe.”
“The charitable organization is a front and you knew that,” the lady said. “Do you believe in magic, Miss Hawkins?”
“In an Arthur C. Clarke sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic type magic or actual magic-magic?”
“Do you believe in the mystical, the fantastical, the improbable, or the impossible? Do you believe that things others dismiss as dreams and imagination actually exist? Do you believe in fairy tales?”
I think my stomach fell into my feet because I have literally always been the kid who believes in fairy tales but I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t a kid, I was a twenty-something in a cocktail bar who never feels old enough to drink so I said, “I don’t know.”
“You do,” the lady said, sipping her martini again. “You just don’t know how to admit it.”
I probably made a face at her but I don’t remember.
I asked what she wanted from me.
“I want you to leave this place with me and not return. You will leave your life and your name behind. You will aid me in protecting a place most people would not believe exists. You will have a purpose. And someday I will take you to that place.”
“I’m not really a someday baby, sorry.”
“Aren’t you? Hiding in your academic temples avoiding the real world.”
That, I thought, was a pretty low blow even if it was accurate but at that point she was pissing me off so I said, “Dude, if you have some fairy-tale place to be in why are you in the back of a bar talking to me?”
She gave me this weird look and I don’t know if it was because I called her dude or if it was something else and she stopped and thought about that more than most of the things I’d said, but then she just took a business card out of her pocket and slid it across the table at me.
It said Collector’s Club.
There was a phone number on it.
And a little sword at the bottom.
True confession: I was kind of tempted. I mean, how often does some old lady offer you a fairy-tale law-enforcement job like she’s the wonderland police? But something felt off and I like my name and the fact that she dodged the question about Z rubbed me the wrong way.
“Did Zachary accept your job offer or is he the one who burned down your clubhouse?” I asked, figuring it would be one or the other. From the look on her face it was the latter. The fake smile was back.