Amazon Ink by Lori Devoti

Author:Lori Devoti
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Once on the street I let out a breath. Just what I needed, Detective Reynolds poking around the shop while Zery and company were doing whatever the hell they would be doing today. Maybe if I were lucky, they’d have brought up a team of horses and be jousting or something.

That would be fun to explain.

Maybe I’d just go for the truth. Detective Reynolds, meet my old friend Zery, the Amazon Queen. I know she looks thirty, but really she’s pushed past ninety. And don’t mind Bubbe over there in the corner—she’s just calling up a serpent to guard her prized collections of animal parts and hunks of stone. And Mother? She wouldn’t hurt anyone with that broadsword—at least not today. After all, it isn’t that “time of the month” just yet.

Yeah, good times.

Mumbling to myself, I looked for an excuse to hang out—out of view—and see how long the detective stayed in the tavern and where he went next. A book/crystal shop across the street offered the best solution and, as a bonus, it doubled as a coffee shop.

I wandered in, bought a coffee, and plopped myself down at a table near the window. I had barely got my coffee to proper drinking temperature when Detective Reynolds and his companion stepped out onto the street. I pulled back, letting the purple gauze curtains disguise my presence, but my caution was unnecessary. Reynolds and his friend made a hard right, back toward Frances Street where they, like I, had most likely left their car.

I wandered out of the shop, keeping enough distance between myself and the pair that I could play at coincidence if caught. (Not that I thought the detective would buy that excuse, but he wouldn’t be able to disprove it either.) One block down, they climbed into an unmarked car, did a U-turn, and left.

I walked over to a park bench and sat down. I’d said I’d be back at my shop today. I hadn’t said when.

I took a sip of coffee and let the caffeine roll through me. It was lunch hour on a warm October Monday, and State Street was busy with state employees and university students resisting the work week by stretching their lunch break as much as possible. I tilted back my head and closed my eyes, let the sounds and smells of State Street encompass me.

The downtown area was one of the reasons I’d picked Madison. Like Dana and her friends, Zery and I used to come here back in our younger days—the late 1960s, so not that young for me, but still a lot younger than I felt now. Our hangout of choice had been about a half mile southwest, off Mifflin, home of counterculture and all things anti-establishment. A dream for an Amazon looking for a no-commitment fling.

Zery and I had been friends before that too. Our families seemed to wind up at the same camps a lot. We’d first met in Texas when I was ten and Zery was seven.

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