“Not so ordinary since the place contains hoppy things that hit up store owners for carrots,” Grimshaw said.

“I didn’t know about the Sproingers until after I bought the store.” Julian resumed his seat. “In a way, the bookstore is a kind of payoff for services rendered.”

“How so?”

“The store changed hands during the time I was inquiring about its availability. The owner’s heirs received their full asking price, and the deal went through fast, even for a cash transaction. I know that because I checked. But the business was still for sale, and I paid about a third of what it’s worth when you take the building and the stock into account.”

“Silence Lodge?”

Julian nodded. “Someone gave the orders to set the price within a range I could afford. Just like my rent for this cabin is almost too reasonable.”

“The Sanguinati—or some kind of terra indigene—want you here. Any idea why?”

“No. Except . . . Gershwin Jones is another Intuit who settled here within the past few months. Grace Notes should have closed within a month of opening. A music store in a place this small? But the building, which includes the apartment above the store, was offered at a rent that he wouldn’t have found anywhere else in the Northeast.” Julian sipped his beer for a minute. “The Dane family wasn’t liked around here. The families who live on High Street aren’t much liked either.”

“I drove around to get acquainted with the streets and noticed half the houses on that street are empty, and not all the unoccupied ones have For Sale signs on the lawn.”

“According to the gossip at the diner, some families fled but are intending to return. Other homeowners died last summer when the terra indigene tore through human places.”

Grimshaw nodded. “So those who are left are still trying to reestablish their superiority and are discovering they don’t have enough social weight to carry it off.” He waited a beat. “Do you think the Sanguinati are seeding the community to create a new dynamic?”

“They’re the form of terra indigene that often acts as the front man for more . . . disturbing . . . forms, so my sense is that restoring The Jumble to its original purpose has been something they’ve wanted but didn’t quite know how to manage because they didn’t want the Dane family to come back to Sproing. Then Vicki DeVine showed up with the deed and a need to make a go of the place. Right person, right time.”

“Openly running the bank is also a declaration: work with us or leave.”

Julian pushed out of the chair. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Grimshaw stood and stretched, his eyes scanning the land around the cabin.

“After what Swinn said about a bullet in the brain, are you looking for a shooter’s sweet spot?” Julian asked.

“Yeah. I am.” Grimshaw looked at his friend. “But you’ve already thought of that.”

“I have. I’ve also thought about why Swinn hates me when we’ve never met. I’ve wondered what he had hoped to gain by trying to bring me in for questioning over accusations made by women who had caused the trouble in the first place—especially when he didn’t have any authority to bring me in for questioning since Sproing has an official, if temporary, police force.”

“And I’m wondering about that night in the alley and what kind of tie clip the men who went after you wore.”

CHAPTER 33

Vicki

Sunsday, Juin 20

My hair was long, golden brown, and straight except for a slight curl at the ends. That should have been my first clue. The filmy nightgown that was slipping off my nicely defined shoulders and pushed up to my slender thighs should have been the second. But the man held my attention, making my heart pound as he approached the bed. He wore skintight black pants and an open-to-the-waist white shirt with big sleeves. His smile was assured, almost smug.

“There’s nowhere to run, so you’re going to do as you’re told,” he said. He sounded like Yorick—had Yorick’s voice, anyway, although Yorick never sounded that sexy except when he was having an affair and wanted me to know what he could be like with someone else.

Oh yeah? I thought, feeling defiant and scared. I got away before and I can do it again.

“First lesson.” He held up gold nipple clamps connected by a chain, but the clamps were the size of the thingies mechanics connected to batteries to jump-start cars.

His face morphed into someone who looked like Grimshaw’s nastier brother. That only lasted for a moment. As he leaned over me, smiling because I couldn’t seem to move enough to get out of reach, his hair darkened, and the face, now lean and sculpted, had a thin scar beneath the left cheekbone. Then the gray eyes changed to melted-chocolate brown as he settled the clamps over my big toes and said . . .

“Caw?”

I snapped awake. My left arm had gotten tangled in the top sheet, securing me to the bed, creating the sensation of not being able to move.

Jingle, jingle.

I lifted my head off the pillow and looked at the Crow perched on my big toes. The charm bracelet around its neck jingled as it wibble-wobbled on my toes, its nails digging in as it tried to maintain its balance.

“Aggie?”

“Caw.”

Freeing myself from the sheet, I rubbed my hands over my face— and then whimpered because the area around my left eye was still living in the Land of Ow.

“Could you get off my toes? I need to use the bathroom.”

Aggie hopped to the mattress. A jingle Crow is not a stealthy Crow. Then again, since she had access to purchased food and whatever was growing wild in the kitchen gardens that I hadn’t had a chance to restore, maybe her meals didn’t require any more stealth than mine did.

I wobbled my way to the bathroom. I had a low-grade headache and my stomach felt a little swoopy. Those might be symptoms of setting off the ow around my eye, but it was also my body’s typical response when the weather turned so humid it felt like I was breathing water.

That thought froze my brain for a moment. I turned on the bathroom lights and studied my neck carefully to make sure I hadn’t acquired gills overnight. Of course, I hadn’t eaten the strange food that was the only sustenance given to the plucky woman who had been abducted by the mysterious pirate who was taking her to his secret island.

I carefully splashed cold water on my face and checked my neck again. Still gill-free. I made a note to myself that, for the next few days anyway, I should read a milder form of romance before bedtime.

I returned to my bedroom to find Aggie exploring my jewelry box. I didn’t have much that wasn’t costume jewelry, and even the nicer pendants hadn’t been worn in a while because the chains had knotted sometime during my move to an apartment in Hubbney when Yorick and I first separated and then to The Jumble, and I couldn’t seem to untangle them.

Apparently a Crow’s beak could do what human fingers couldn’t. Aggie had worked out the knots on four of the necklaces and had laid them out on the dresser.

“Thanks.” Maybe Pops Davies would have a jewelry box that would allow me to hang up some of these pieces. Just because I hadn’t noticed something like that at the general store didn’t mean Pops didn’t carry it.

Barely awake and I was already tired and crabby and achy. The to-do list never seemed to get shorter, and if I didn’t get into a routine to handle the day-to-day I would never be able to handle having more than one lodger and provide them with amenities in the main house, to say nothing of providing some kind of cleaning service in the cabins.

But I didn’t have any other lodgers besides Aggie. I didn’t count Conan and Cougar because they weren’t paying me anything to use the primitive cabins. Of course, I wasn’t paying them for whatever they were doing around The Jumble as a trade for the lodgings.

Maybe I should ask what they were doing besides blocking the access road so that people couldn’t just drive up to the main house. Cougar had been around every morning to watch me breathe and decide if I was still alive or now qualified as a snack, but I hadn’t seen Conan except for the story-time evenings. The Bear showed up then in human form, but I had the impression that was the only time he wasn’t seriously furry.