Draw One In The Dark(58)

Clearly, they were rattled enough to forget their English. Clearly, they thought that Kyrie's panther form was too dangerous to anger. Although why they thought she would shift into a panther right then and take them to pieces in front of the diner patrons was beyond her.



Pulling and shoving at each other, they got to the door, then in a tinkling of the bells suspended from it, out of it, tumbling onto the sidewalk where the lights were starting to show, faintly, against the persistent glow of the sunset.



"What was that all about?" Frank asked. "Did those guys know you?"



"I have no clue," Kyrie said, choosing to answer the first question. And this was the absolute truth. She couldn't figure out why they would be scared of her. After all, even if she had been so stupid as to shift here, in the middle of the diner, they could have shifted too, and then they would have had the upper hand. There were three of them, after all.



Unless . . . She smiled faintly at the thought. Unless the total idiots thought this was a shifter diner and that everyone here would be shifters. If Tom was right the shifting was ancient, well established in their culture, and perhaps passed on in families. They had a lore and a culture. For people like that it must be utterly bewildering when strangers shifted. Perhaps they think we too band together.



Frank was glowering at her, and she realized she was still smiling. He reached for the plates and cups the guys had left on the counter and pulled them down, near the cleaning area, by the dishwasher, glowering all the while and banging the utensils around so much that, if they weren't break-resistant, they would probably have shattered.



"What's wrong?" Kyrie asked.



But he just glowered at her some more, grabbed a dish towel from the counter, and wiped at the serving surface with it. "Oh, nothing. Everything is fine and dandy. You and Tom and . . ." He lifted his hands, upward, as though signifying his inability to understand any of them.



Kyrie skidded back to the sunporch, to give Rafiel the distressing news about the rice pudding.



"There's no rice pudding," she said. "And the three dragons who were at Tom's apartment were just here."



"The dragons?" he said and started to rise. "Here?"



"In human form," she said. "They left." She frowned. "They seemed afraid of me."



He looked at her a long moment, then shook his head. "I don't know what to do. I wonder why they were here."



"Looking for Tom," she said.



"Oh." He looked out the window. "We could follow them, but there's only two of us—"



"And neither of us can fly," Kyrie said. "Besides, there's only one of us. I'm working. But since there's no rice pudding, you're free to follow them."



He just grinned up at her. "Oh, bring me pie à la mode, then. I don't care. I'm in it for the vanilla ice cream." And he winked at her.



"What kind of pie?"



"I told you I don't care," he said. "Just bring me a wedge."



"Green bean pie it is, then," she said, and walked away. To bump into Anthony, the last of the day shift to leave. He was in his street clothes, which, in his case were usually elaborate and today consisted of a ruffled button-down white shirt, red vest and immaculate black pants. "Hey," he said. "What's up with Frank? He's acting like a bear with two heads."



Kyrie shrugged and Anthony sighed. "What that man needs," he said, as if this summed up the wisdom of the ages, is to get laid. He seriously needs to get laid. His girlfriend hasn't been in for too long." And with that, he twirled on his heels and made for the door. Kyrie had often wondered if in his free time he was a member of some dance troupe. At least that would explain the bizarre clothes.



Kyrie went back to scout out the pie, though the only choices were apple and lemon. She chose lemon, figuring he would like it less, and put two scoops of ice cream on the plate with it. It wasn't so much that she wanted to thwart Rafiel—but a man who ordered with that kind of complacency did deserve green bean pie. Or at least Brussels sprouts. Too bad they didn't have any on the menu.



She took the plate of pie in one hand, the carafe in the other, set the pie in front of Rafiel and went off, from table to table, warming up people's coffees.



Despite her best efforts to banish it, the image of Frank getting laid was stuck in her mind. She looked across the diner at Frank, behind the counter, his Neanderthal-like features still knit in a glower. She shuddered. There were things the human mind was not supposed to contemplate.

* * *



Edward Ormson's first thought was that they couldn't be in Colorado. Not so fast. Even by airplane it took over three hours. And they couldn't be flying at airplane speeds. Well, they could, but it would have left him frozen as a popsicle sitting astride that dragon.