A Red-Rose Chain

A small, regretful smile touched his lips. “Perhaps,” he said, and opened the door.

I’ve never been much for comic books. I don’t object to them as a medium, and having two teenage boys effectively living with me has meant getting used to finding them piled on the coffee table, but it’s hard to get too excited about a world where a cheap domino mask is all it takes to hide your secret identity from everyone around you. If it had been that easy for me, my life would have been very different.

The shop was small, made narrow by the huge racks of comics and graphic novels that took up every inch of wall space below seven feet. Above that, the shelves gave way to posters and to tall, expensive statues, for the person who just has to have a bust of Batman watching their every move. A few racks of action figures and other, odder merchandise stood here and there among the periodicals. I blinked at a display of purses made from superhero-themed fabric. I hadn’t realized there were so many different ways to wear a cape, or so many different styles of bustier that people would consider appropriate to wear into combat.

Tybalt kept hold of my hand, guiding me past the glass-topped counter where a bored-looking girl was flipping through something about robots. The deeper we got, the stronger the smell of paper became, until we reached the back of the store. A half-open door afforded a glimpse into a small office packed with filing cabinets and cardboard boxes. A trim, silver-haired man sat at the room’s sole desk, typing rapidly.

Tybalt motioned for me to be quiet before raising his hand and rapping lightly on the doorframe. “I believe we had a lunch appointment, if you would care to put your papers and quills aside, you old rapscallion.”

“Rand!” The man was smiling as he turned, the expression carving deep furrows into the skin around his lips and eyes. If not for the faint glitter of a human disguise hanging in the air around him, I would have assumed that he was somewhere in his mid to late sixties, young enough to still be healthy and spry, but old enough to be slowing down. With that glitter, he could have been any age, from sixteen to six hundred. Immortality makes everything difficult. “So you weren’t kidding when you said you’d bring your new girlfriend to meet me.”

“Indeed, and here she is,” said Tybalt, lifting our joined hands ever so slightly, like he was showing me off and asserting ownership at the same time. I swallowed the urge to pull away. No one owns me, and I don’t like it when people pretend they do. At the same time, what little I understood about the Court of Cats told me he was trying to protect us both. He knew my feelings on the subject, and that I’d be yelling at him later. He’d done it anyway.

Belatedly, I was starting to realize that marrying a King of Cats was going to mean learning a lot more about how the Cait Sidhe worked. I was never going to be part of their world, but I was definitely moving into the subdivision next door. “Hi,” I said, smiling at the man as sincerely as I could manage. “I’m October.”

“And you can call me ‘Joe.’ Give me just a second.” The man—Joe—stood, leaning out of his office, and called, “Susie! You’ve got the store for the next hour or two. My lunch date’s here.”

“Yeah, whatever,” called a female voice from the front of the shop. Presumably, the bored clerk we’d seen before was just as bored now that she was in charge.

Joe stepped back into his office, beaming. “There, that’s sorted. Come with me.”

The office was small, and had no visible exits. “Won’t she notice that we didn’t go out through the front . . . ?” I asked hesitantly.

“The new issue of Atomic Robo just came in. Susie’s a great employee, and I love her dearly, but I’d be lucky if she noticed an armed robbery right now. We’re fine. Now come on.” His smile faded a few degrees, and a warning glint came into his eye.