“Where are you going with that?” I asked him.
“I’m gonna—puff, puff—attach it—puff, puff—to your car.”
“Okay, no.”
He paused. “Whaddya mean, no? And what’s with the food?”
“Thought they might be hungry.”
“So you’re giving them that? Where’s the fish?”
“What fish? It’s a convenience store. They have Slim Jims and ICEEs.”
“Well—puff, puff—we’re gonna need—puff, puff—some fish.”
“Why do we need fish? And stop walking!”
“I gotta get this hooked to the car.”
“You’re not going to hook it to the car.”
“And why not?”
“I don’t have a hitch.”
Thereafter followed a long string of out-of-breath cussing. Followed by: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON’T HAVE A HITCH?”
“Why would I have a hitch?”
“Everybody has a hitch! What do you do when you need to haul stuff?”
“I rent a truck.” And shit. I’d forgotten Stan’s truck again. He was going to skin me. And that was assuming I could find the thing, since it hadn’t been at the house.
Where the hell had I left it?
“What kind of truck?” Fin said, looking around.
“What?”
“You said we need a truck. What kind?”
“I didn’t say that. And you realize we’re having this convo in front of the store, right? Where everybody can see you?”
“There’s nobody around.”
“There’s that guy.” I pointed with the ICEE at the guy who’d stared at Fin earlier. He’d gotten his gas and what looked like a couple hot dogs and one of the nachos-of-death things these places always try to pawn off on you, like that cheese hasn’t been in the crock for two weeks.
But he wasn’t eating any of it, and not because it was nasty.
But because he was staring at Fin.
“Hey. That guy’s got a truck,” Fin said speculatively.
And then, before I could stop him, he dropped the mini-haul and went charging across the gas station, toward the guy. Whose eyes blew wide and whose food went everywhere when he threw the truck into gear and screeched out of the lot, like all the demons of hell were after him.
Or one big-nosed forest troll.
Who stood there, shouting something for a minute, before stomping back over. “Well, what the hell do we do now?”
“You can’t just steal a truck!”
“I wasn’t gonna steal it. I was gonna borrow it.”
“And you can’t go around talking to norms without a charm. You’re going to get picked up.”
Fin rolled his eyes so hard he almost fell over. “Yeah, sure. That’s what’s gonna get me picked up.”
“Look, just take that back where you got it from! If Blue and his lady friend want a ride, we’ll fit ’em in the car somehow.”
Thank God it was a convertible.
“And what about the others?”
I felt my stomach drop. “What others?”
Small hands found small hips. “Well, who do you think, Dory?”
Five minutes later, we were down by the water again, having towed the mini-haul over by the car simply to get it out of the way. And I was staring at—damn, I didn’t even know. Eight, nine, maybe ten selkies, all crowded up against the colorful rocks, in the shallows.
And not looking good.
I guess because they’d had to swim after the boat, although I didn’t see why they’d bothered. They were in the ocean! That was their thing, right? Why not swim away?
Only they weren’t looking like they felt like swimming right now. Some were gasping for breath; others were using their flippers to weakly stroke their companions, some of whom had their eyes closed and, honestly, looked like they might never open them again. Well, damn.
“We need to get them to a healer.”
“That’s what I said,” Fin told me, pawing through the bags of assorted stuff I’d bought. “But they’re afraid whoever it is will rat them out. They say they’ll be okay with some rest and food.” He looked up. “Are you sure there’s no salmon or anything?”
“It’s a convenience store!”
“Well, it seems like a poorly stocked one.” He opened some jerky and waved it around, but nobody seemed interested.
“They’d probably eat it in their human form,” he said. “But transformed, it’s like the animal mind gets a veto, you know?”
No, not really. But that didn’t matter right now. “I could go get something,” I offered, handing over the medical supplies. And some cigs, because the witch, or whatever she was, had looked like she was running low.
“Hey, thanks!” She hiked up her skirts and tucked the packet in the top of her stocking.
“No way,” Fin told me. “You’re gonna stay here till you don’t zigzag when you walk.”
“I don’t do that.”
“You just did that all the way down the hill!”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Yeah. Not imagining shit.” He held out a hand.
“What?”
“The keys.”
It took me a moment. “You’re not driving my car!”
“I’m not. I can’t reach the pedals. She is.” He pointed at Granny.
“I’m pretty sober,” she assured me. “It probably won’t end up like last time.”
I blinked. “Last time?”
“The truck. Man, that was something, wasn’t it?”
“What truck?”
“Dory! I need the damned keys.” That was Fin.
“What truck?” I persisted, getting a really bad feeling about this.
“That big one,” she told me cheerfully. “Hoo boy, that was fun to drive.”
“Wait. You drove the big truck?” She nodded. “Like, the six-wheeled truck?” More nodding. “And something happened to it?”
“Would you stop that?” Fin was looking pissed. “We got sick people here, and I gotta get something to hold that thing onto the back of your car, ’cause we’re never gonna fit ’em all inside otherwise, and you’re doing what? Oh, yeah. Bitching!”
“I don’t bitch!”
“Gimme the damned keys!”
“Here!” I was impressed I didn’t throw them at him, but placed them in his tiny little asshole palm.
“Finally.” He looked at Granny. “You done?”
“As much as I could. You oughta take a few days off,” she told Blue, who grunted at her. And then she and Fin left in a squeal of tires.
I stared after them.
She didn’t even slow down for the stop sign.
After a minute, I decided I might as well get comfortable, and pulled a six-pack of longnecks out of one of the bags. I handed Blue one, took one for myself, and discovered the heretofore unknown fact that seals like beer. Well, selkies, anyway.
I poured some down the throats of the interested parties, and then Blue and I sat and drank for a while.
The city lights on the water were nice. The place smelled like gasoline, brackish water, and a fish rotting somewhere nearby, but I’d smelled worse. And, slowly, the graffiti was calming down, so I didn’t get dizzy from staring at it anymore.
Blue drank his beer and ate everything in sight. Including two loaves of bread, a package of baloney, two boxes of PowerBars, a quart of orange juice, a bag of Cheetos, eight candy bars, four apples—the only fruit the store had—a dozen doughnuts, six hot dogs, another blue ICEE, and sixteen Slim Jims. Which was fine but made me feel like maybe I should have gotten more.
“You want anything else?”
“No.”
The voice was deep and rumbling, as if a mountain could talk. It fit him. And it kind of surprised me, although I didn’t know why. He’d been looking like he was following well enough; if he could understand English, of course he could probably speak it, too.
“You want something for the pain?”
He shook his head. And then looked skyward; I wasn’t sure why. It was too cloudy to see the moon right now.
I wanted to question him, but this didn’t seem the time. I wanted to help him, but wasn’t sure how, or even what would be acceptable. I knew Olga, Fin, and the twins, but I didn’t think they were necessarily representative of troll culture in general. Olga and Fin had been here for years, and the twins were young and impressionable. They’d become a weird amalgam of human teenage weirdness and Dark Fey habits and anyway, I was used to them.
I wasn’t used to him.
But I wanted to do something. “You want anything at all?” I asked, and waited.
This was a troll, after all.
But the answer came more quickly than I’d expected.