He shook his head and scrubbed at the stubble on his chin. “No.”

Feish—damn, I knew I’d been close, my guess had been pretty much spot on—brought a pot of tea and one cup. Crash shot him a look. “Another cup.”

Feish snorted and strode away, muttering under his breath.

“She’s a bit weird when another woman comes in here,” he said. “Protective.”

She? Well, damn, I’d been wrong on that count. He poured me the first cup of tea, and I picked up the fine china. Feish brought another cup, paused when she saw that I had the first one, then disappeared again.

“Poison or some such in that second cup, I’m betting?” I asked as I took a sip of tea. After my run-in with Missy, I wasn’t taking chances. I let the flavors linger on my tongue. Hints of honey, ginger, cardamom. Sweet with a little bit of spice.

Crash nodded. “Probably just something that would make you shit your pants. She doesn’t harm those she doesn’t like, just embarrasses them.”

Lovely. I made myself go through my memory banks. “Is she a river maid?” River maids were different than mermaids, or nymphs like the one I’d dealt with on the riverbank of the graveyard. Not as pretty and no siren songs in their repertoire. They were more like the fish they were created from. Territorial, that was the only trait I could come up with from my rusty memories, and it looked as though she thought her boss was part of that territory. Good enough.

He nodded. “So, you do have some knowledge then.”

Feish brought a second cup—different than the first—and set it in front of Crash. I lifted a hand, knowing just how to defuse her hatred of me. “Good tea. I’ll have to get my boyfriend to pick some up for me. Where did you get it?”

Feish squinted at me. “You have a man?”

“Half-man,” I conceded. Sarge wouldn’t mind.

Feish’s eyes bugged open. “Half-man? You brave, they bad in the bedroom. All bark, no bite.”

I choked on the tea, laughing. Oh, it was going to be fun to hold that one over Sarge. “I’ll remember that.”

She gave a funny half bow from the waist. “I get Boss tea from Death Row. Cranky old lady vendor.”

I gave her a wink. “Thanks.”

She melted back into the shadows and I turned to find Crash watching me. “What’s your last name?”

“Does it matter?” I suddenly didn’t want him to know I was connected to Gran, even though I’d already told Feish.

“I can guess, because you look a bit like your family. But more like your gran. And your hair is the same as when you were here as a child. All fly-away edges as if you can’t manage to tame it.” He dropped two sugar cubes into his cup and stirred it around. Damn, so much for keeping my identity free and clear. Was it weird that I was having tea with a guy wrapped in a sheet, who knew my gran, remembered me as a kid, in what I was pretty sure was a secret hideout full of weapons? Yup, totally weird.

And I loved it.

I grinned. “Will you give me a better deal on weapons because you knew my gran? Because I still look like that sweet kid?”

He grunted and I think there might have been a chuckle in there. “Maybe.”

“O’Rylee,” I said. “Not that you didn’t know.”

He leaned back and nodded. “Thought so. I’d heard you married and left town.”

I grimaced. “Divorced and came back to lick my wounds.” Damn, that maybe sounded too bitter.

Crash lifted his tea and downed it in one big swig of a gulp as if there were a shot of something else in there too. He leaned forward and the burning urns threw light over a very nice set of shoulders, and some rather well-defined biceps. Of course, it made sense that he’d have sculpted arms given he was swinging a hammer around all the time. I lifted my teacup between us and watched him over the rim of it as I took another sip. Mostly because I wasn’t sure I could talk right in that moment.

Too busy drooling.

Corb and Sarge were lovely to look at, but they were . . . pups. Annie was right about that much. They were young, and still thought with parts other than the head on their shoulders.

Crash, on the other hand . . . I wouldn’t kick him out of bed. I mean, assuming I could get that far with him. That dark hair had a few silver strands at the edges that only added to the urge to run my fingers through his thick locks. I had to clench my fingers around the teacup to stop myself. Himself had pretty much no hair anymore, and what was left was short and stubbly. Not an ideal playground for a woman’s fingers.

I pursed my lips. “The wonder twins, they mostly had guns, and the blades they had were poorly made.”

“Because guns don’t take a lot of skill,” he said softly.

I pointed out the pair of pistols above us on the wall. “You have guns too.”

“Those are special.” He didn’t lean away from me. “You don’t like guns, do you?”

I shrugged. “I know how to use them, and in the right place and time they are worth having. But they wouldn’t be my first pick, no. Too much noise, too much attention.”

I must have said the right thing because he gave me a look that had me squirming. He liked what I’d said. Agreed even.

Crash tapped his fingers on the table. “Two blades, one for each thigh, not too long. No guns for you, not yet.”

A rush of excitement whipped through me. “Really? You’ll sell me two knives?”

He stood and reached for a pair of knives mounted on the wall, retrieving those as well as what looked like some sort of holster system for them.

One was the turquoise-handled knife I’d been drooling over; the other had a silver handle that was shaped perfectly for my hands.

“I’ll take four hundred for the pair,” he said. When Feish gasped, Crash smiled and added, “And then I’ll take ten percent of your first bounty.”

I blinked a couple times at that, not sure what he meant. “Bounty?”

Sarge had said something about payment being on a job-by-job basis, but that word hadn’t come into it.

He didn’t take his hand off the table, or off the knives. “The Hollows boys didn’t tell you much, did they? Figures. They like to keep people in the dark as long as they can. It’s a trademark of theirs, as though it gives them the upper hand with their trainees. The truth is it ends up getting their people killed a lot quicker because they do stupid things.”

Unspoken between us, I could almost hear him say, “like going into Factors Row by yourself.”

I wasn’t sure just how much I could trust this guy. I mean, I was reasonably sure that he was a shady fellow and there was some sort of weirdness going on with him and the fish chick, but if he could fill me in on things that Sarge and the others were not telling me . . . then wasn’t it like figuring things out in my own way? Them’s the rules according to the Hollows boys.

“It might be cheating if you tell me.” I smiled. “But if you don’t tattle on me, I won’t tattle on you.”

His lips curved upward. “Just like your gran.”

I raised my teacup, partially saluting him. “I take that as the highest form of compliment.”

He poured himself another cup of tea, throwing a few more cubes of sugar into it. “The Hollows Group takes on odd jobs that are sold to the highest bidder. They specialize in all things weird within the shadow world. That’s pretty much everything. As long as it pays.” He gave me a pointed look and I motioned for him to go on. I’d figured out the weird part all on my own. “You could end up doing a bounty hunt for some supernatural that didn’t pay debts. Or you might be paid to do a recovery—I had them recover one of my weapons that was stolen a couple years back . . . they didn’t like that I wouldn’t give them the full amount when my item was returned broken.”

I didn’t disagree with that thinking. If they broke it, then they shouldn’t get full payment.

He looked at me with a slight frown. “Basically, it could be anything that comes up that someone can afford to pay.”

I frowned. “So almost like a cop for critters?”

Critters was a word in the South used to refer to anything paranormal—ghosts, aliens, monsters, demons. All under one nice little word that didn’t sound so scary.

He barked a laugh. “Critters. Haven’t heard that in a long time. But yeah, kind of like a cop for critters, but without the rules. No rules for you, and no rules for the ones you’re being asked to hunt and keep in line. They won’t hesitate to hurt or even kill you.”

I wanted to ask him more questions, I really did. But we were interrupted by a loud banging on the door. I grimaced. “I think I’ve been found.”

Only it wasn’t Sarge. It wasn’t even Corb or Eammon.

It was my first taste of just how ugly the weird could be, and just how deep into it I already was.

11

Feish let out a squeak from her thin fish lips, and she scurried across the room that belonged to the Smith, out toward the front of the warehouse, her feet scuttling across the floor, clicking. Did she have crab feet? Damn, she was a strange one.

Crash stood and his sheet slipped lower over his hips, a slide that I watched with absolute fascination and possibly a bit of drool that I struggled to swallow down. “You need to go.”

“I didn’t sign anything for our deal. Here.” I flipped the money he’d requested onto the table. I didn’t really want to go—I wanted to just sit here and talk with this man. And have tea with him. And maybe touch that body and run my fingers through his hair. Maybe a few other things too.

He put a hand on my shoulder, the heat of his palm against my skin notable enough that I fleetingly wondered if he had a furnace burning inside of him, and steered me ahead of him. Not toward the entrance I’d used earlier, but in the opposite direction.

“I’ll know when your first bounty comes through,” he said. “And I’ll take my ten percent then. Verbal contract is fine. I know your gran. She wouldn’t let you get away with breaking it.” He spoke like he still talked to my gran.