“This goddess hasn’t a clue,” I muttered, kicking at a clod of earth. “Now what do I do?”
The sudden hum of the generators as they were turned on, triggering the big lights that lined the Faire, was the answer to that question. I sighed, felt sorry for myself for sixteen seconds, then turned and marched back to the Faire, slipping the Vikingahärta’s chain over my neck.
“What are you guys going to do this evening?” I asked Eirik later, as the three stood around my mother’s booth, where I was selling off the last of her stock.
“Bed Imogen when she is done,” Finnvid said immediately, casting a warm glance down the line of tents toward the one Imogen manned. “Until then, I will think about bedding Imogen.”
“We shall wench,” Eirik announced, nodding at Isleif. “There are many women in town who desire our rods. Then, after we have wenched our fill, we will pillage a McDonald’s. We have not done so in five years, and we have missed the joy of plundering Chicken McBlobs and dipping sauces.”
“And Big Macs.”
“Aye, and the Big Macs.”
“You would pillage without me?” Finnvid asked, looking hurt.
“You will be bedding Imogen,” Eirik pointed out.
Finnvid thought for a moment. “Imogen would like to pillage, too. We will do so after I have bedded her several times.”
“It is important that a man regain his strength after repeated beddings,” Eirik told me in the tone of one confiding a fact of great importance.
“Er . . . yeah.” I gnawed on my lower lip for a bit, wondering if I should ask Eirik and Isleif to stay with me when I tracked down the orgy Ben was supposed to go to, but decided that there really wasn’t any danger in what I planned to do—a little spying—and sent them all off with a happy wave, and a warning to Eirik and Isleif to use protection while wenching, and to be sure to pay for their pillaged goods.
I didn’t have much time to worry about them for the next four hours, since the crowds around my mother’s booth just about cleaned her out of all of her potions, charms, and spells. I waited until there was a lull, when the band started playing in the main tent, and tucked away the evening’s proceeds, shut down the booth, and dropped off the money with Absinthe.
“Peter says he is not sure if you will join us again or not,” she told me as she wrote up a receipt for Mom’s takings. “He says you may wish to return to your job.”
Absinthe and I never got along, at least we hadn’t when I was young and didn’t know how to protect myself against her mind-reading ability. Now I was an old hand at locking out people. I slid my mental barriers into place and gave her a placid smile. “That’s true. My plans are uncertain at this point.” Such as whether or not my future would involve a sexy vampire.
“Just so you do not forget your debt to me.” She tucked the money away in the big safe that sat in the middle of her trailer.
“I’m not likely to. You haven’t . . . uh . . . had any other visions of my mother, have you?”
One shoulder rose in a careless gesture. “I have not tried. It seemed clear to me that she was happy. I am not worried about her, although if she wishes to leave the Faire, I wish she would close her booth so that we may replace her. Peter says we must give her time, however.”
I murmured something polite and made my escape before she could pin me down with pointed questions, wondering once again how she and easygoing Peter could be twins and yet be so different from each other.
The speculation of what form paying off the debt to Absinthe may take kept me occupied as I sat in a taxi at the edge of the Faire parking area, waiting for the small blue car that I knew was Naomi’s to leave, praying to any and all gods and goddesses I could think of that they were actually taking Naomi’s car, and not going on Ben’s bike. I didn’t want to know if he’d taken her on long rides, where she could smell his hair and feel the warmth of his body pressed against hers, and even if she tingled all over just thinking about the way his muscles stretched and contracted as he moved with the bike . . . I shook away the image that was building in my head, just in time to point at the car that was exiting the pasture parking lot, and say, “That’s it. Could you follow that car, please, but don’t let them see you?”
The driver, dressed like a monk (complete with tonsure) in rough brown robes, and a rope belt upon which was attached his cell phone, gave me a long look in the rearview mirror. “If you get me into trouble—”
“I won’t. I promised you it was simply a little misunderstanding between me and my boyfriend, and that’s all it really is. So if you could just follow them, please?”