“Don’t be mad. You were talking to Detective Nichols and I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
I assured Bobbie that I was fine with the way things had panned out, even if the new arrangement left me feeling out of sorts. I’d been planning to go back to the store and call the hospital before I got to work on the stockroom reorganization project. Now, with Tak by my side, I wasn’t sure what I’d get done.
*
THE trailer was gone from the front of Disguise DeLimit and a note from Ebony, explaining that she’d taken care of it, was tucked in the front door of the shop. I folded the note and Tak followed me inside.
“I’m going to be busy in the stockroom for the next couple of hours,” I said.
“Do you need any help?”
I shook my head no before thinking, and then changed my mind. “Yes,” I said.
“That wasn’t the clearest of signals.”
The thing was, the signals I was getting from Tak weren’t exactly clear either. It had been a long time since I’d been attracted to someone, so I found myself second-guessing the way I felt about him and the way he treated me. Las Vegas wasn’t known for its pool of eligible bachelors—the bachelors who partied in Vegas weren’t exactly eligible—so maybe I was rusty. Maybe my intuition was on the fritz. Maybe my judgment was out of whack because of everything crazy that had happened since I’d arrived back in Proper.
“I want to change. Will you wait here until I get back?”
“Sure.”
I ran up the stairs and changed into my clothes from earlier. My hair went back up into a ponytail. Soot sat in the middle of my comforter, cleaning his face with his paw. I sat down on the corner of the bed and placed my index finger directly between his ears. He stopped cleaning himself and looked at me, his paw suspended in front of his grumpy gray face.
“Soot, do you think it’s a good idea for me to trust Tak? He’s downstairs now. He seems understanding, but maybe it’s a mistake.”
Soot tipped his head back and my finger slid down to the tip of his nose. He swiped at it with his paw. “I don’t trust a lot of people. I trust my dad and I trust Ebony and I trust Bobbie. That’s pretty much it. I don’t even really trust Crystal to do the magic act the right way and keep my job safe. And now here I am, about to confide in a total stranger. What’s wrong with me?”
I scooped Soot off the comforter and planted a kiss on his head. He responded with an annoyed meow and a yawn. I made up for interrupting him up by scratching his ears while I carried him downstairs.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said to Tak. I set Soot on the concrete floor.
Tak’s eyes went from my face to my head and back to my face. “No problem,” he said. “You wouldn’t have left me alone down here if you didn’t trust me.”
“Were you listening to me?”
“No. Why? Were you talking about me?”
“No. Never mind.” I turned my back on him and reached for one of the big boxes. It was large but light. I shifted it from on top of a stack to the floor. Tak grabbed the other side, overestimating the weight of the box. Because he’d expected it to be heavy, his effort to help support it resulted in the box flying from my hands into the air. He looked stunned. I stepped forward and caught it.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“An alien,” I said. He raised his eyebrows. “Okay, I think it’s an alien but I don’t know. All of this came from the scouting trip my dad and Don went on. I have to figure out how to get it to fit in this room.”
“Don’t you want to empty the room out first?”
“No, I’m not getting rid of anything. I need to make it fit with everything else that’s already here.”
He scanned the room. White metal shelves lined the perimeter, with boxes stacked on top and garment bags hanging below. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the organization, just a general sense of put-it-in-the-back-ness that kept the off-season merchandise out of view and allowed the costumes in the shop to stand out. Aside from my dad, Kirby, and now me, nobody really knew what we had in our inventory at any given time. Judging from the condition of the stockroom, I was willing to bet that maybe none of us had a clear picture of the scope of it.
“I have an idea,” Tak said. “Do you have a tape measure and a notebook?”
“Sure.” I found both by the register and brought them back. Tak asked me to hold one end of the tape measure. He measured the length of the walls, the height of the ceiling, and the depth of the shelves, and wrote all of the numbers into the notebook. I watched, assisted, and waited while he worked. He appeared to have a plan in mind, and far be it from me to interfere with a plan.