"Let's review," he said. "So far, you Tasered me, tied me to a chair, shot me, cut me, and punched me. Did I miss anything?"
She pushed against him, trying to throw him off, but he outweighed her by at least sixty pounds, and those pounds seemed to be made of steel because he wasn't budging.
"Have I hurt you in any way? Did I threaten you?"
She tried to kick him, but he clamped her leg with his thigh.
"Audrey, I just want to talk like two civilized people. If I let go, will you gouge my eyes out?"
"Probably."
His face was too close, and his eyes looked straight into hers. She searched his face for cruelty, anticipating a punch in the gut or a jab in the face, but found none. He was pissed off, but he didn't have that icy reptilian coldness she'd seen in Alex's drug dealer.
She was breathing hard, and he was, too. Time to end it before he got any ideas. Audrey jerked her head up and rammed her forehead into his nose.
"Damn it, woman, I said I just wanted to talk."
The accent broke through his words, and she caught it. "Louisiana." Oh crap.
"What?"
"You're from Louisiana. You're the Hand."
"I'm from the Mire, in the Edge." The silver earring in his ear flowed into a single mirror drop. "And I work for the other side."
She strained, trying to jerk her arms free. "You're all the same."
The sound of someone clearing his throat made them both turn. A boy stepped out from behind the tree across the lawn. The stray ray of sun breaking through the cloud cover played on his blond hair. The skateboard punk from the parking lot.
What in the world . . .
The blond boy called out. "I'm terribly sorry, but is there any way we could grab that cage off the porch? We won't disturb your dalliance."
Dalliance?
Another boy emerged carrying a fuzzy gray creature by the scruff of its neck. "You can keep making out," he called out. "We just want the cage. This raccoon is really hard to hold, and she doesn't like me."
They had Ling, and they thought that she and this idiot were getting hot and heavy on the porch. "Get off of me, you fool!" Audrey squirmed. "Get off, get off, get off!"
The man let go, and she rolled to her feet. "Let my raccoon go!"
The second boy looked at the man next to her. Audrey glanced at him, too. He was holding his knife. She hadn't seen him pick it up. The "dashing" smile was back, too.
"Tell him to release my raccoon."
An evil spark flared in his eyes. "Trade: raccoon for some answers."
"Fine," she ground out.
"Let the little beast go," he called. The boy dropped Ling, and she streaked across the lawn and hid behind Audrey's legs, hissing and spitting.
"My name is Kaldar, by the way," the man said.
"Not interested," Audrey told him. "This is strictly a business conversation. You step a hair out of line, and I will hurt you."
He tossed the bow to the ground. "With what? I took my knife back, and your bow is gone. You're out of weapons."
She headed for her door. "Oh, I have more inside. Don't you worry. I always have more."
AUDREY leaned against her kitchen counter, arms crossed. Kaldar sat on her love seat, as relaxed as he could get. Mr. Smooth Operator. The man was handsome, he knew it, but if he was waiting for an acknowledgment from her, he would be old and gray before he got it.
The boys had taken the chairs. The blond sat with an inborn elegance, back straight, one leg over another. A shockingly pretty kid. A few years, and he would be crushing hearts left and right. Of course, if he kept hanging out with that fool, he might not survive that long.
The brown-haired boy sat in the chair like it was a rock in the middle of a raging river, and he had to defend it from gators. As she watched, Ling snuck closer to him and showed him her teeth. The boy's eyes flashed amber. He hissed, and Ling beat a strategic retreat. A changeling. Well, at least Kaldar was telling the truth. The Louisianans murdered changelings on sight. Kaldar probably was Mirror, which didn't explain anything. The Mirror had no reason to get involved.
The four of them looked at one another. Inside Audrey, irritation fought with her sense of hospitality, but the South was too deeply ingrained into the core of her being, and it won.
"Would you like some iced tea?"
"Sweet?" Kaldar asked.
"Well, of course it's sweet. Who do you take me for?"
Kaldar arranged his face into an angelic expression. "I'd love a glass."
Wicked. That was the right way to describe him. Wicked to the core and full of himself. She had to get him out of her house. Audrey took out four glasses. The blond boy rose. "Please let me help."
"Sure. What's your name?"
"George."
"Nice to meet you, George." She distributed the ice into the four glasses and poured tea into each one. "Did I hurt you in the parking lot?"
"No, m'lady. I fell, so I could put a tracker on your car."
Great. At least that explained how they had found her. She took two glasses, George took the other two, and they brought them to the table.
"Should I check it for poison?" Kaldar asked.
"I would," she told him. Waste your time, go ahead.
The blond boy passed a glass to the dark-haired boy. The changeling sniffed, took a sip, held it in his mouth, and swallowed. "It's clean."
"First you let one child get hit by my car, now you make the other one act as your human poison detector. You really have no conscience, do you?"
Kaldar leaned back. "I didn't ask him to check for poison. His brother asked him."
Audrey shook her head and turned to the changeling boy. "What's your name?"
"Jack."
"Jack, there are poisons that are tasteless and odorless, the kind that even a changeling can't detect. Next time, let Kaldar drink first. If he dies, no big loss."
Jack snickered.
Kaldar sighed. "Tell me about the heist."
Audrey shrugged. "My father needed money to put my asshole brother into rehab. Yet again. I agreed to help them for the last time. My father and I took a plane to Orlando and met Alex there. We crossed into the Weird through the Edge in Florida, broke into the pyramid, and nabbed the box. It was a plain wooden box, about a foot and a half long, a foot wide, eight inches tall. We took it, popped back into the Broken, and drove up I-95. When we reached Jacksonville, I left them and flew back to Seattle."
"Did you know who commissioned the heist?" Kaldar asked.