To Die Fur (A Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Mystery) (21 page)

We walked past the pool, through the sliding doors, and into the house. Whiskey led me straight to the kitchen, where I found Ben getting breakfast ready. That reminded me of how early it still was, and that I hadn’t eaten yet. I grabbed a muffin off a tray and said a muffled
good morning
around it.

“Morning,” Ben answered cheerfully. “Hey, guys. Trot, don’t you usually eat before you get here?”

I chewed and swallowed before answering. “Didn’t have time today. Things happening. Big, important. Gonna need you.”

“Need me? For what?”

“Thunderbird stuff. C’mon, we gotta go.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the back door.

“What? I’m in the middle of making breakfast! I can’t just—”

“Consuela can put out muffins, juice, and cereal. Let’s go.”

“But—”

I stopped tugging and turned to face him. “And take off that apron. That’s no way for an ambassador to dress.”

His eyes got wider. He had gorgeous eyes. I wished I had a little longer to appreciate them, but Eli was waiting. I helped him get the apron off, as he protested and tried to tell me how important his scrambled eggs were.

“Listen,” I said. “I know how good your eggs are, and how disappointed our guests are going to be that they won’t get to eat them, and how this is totally not up to your standards as a chef. But the time for cold feet is over.”

He stopped resisting and let me pull the apron off. “This is crazy. I don’t even like cats!”

“Oh, please. You adopted Tango in a heartbeat.”

Tango gave him Cat Look 23, the I’ll Make You Pay For That Later.

“All right, all right.” Ben threw up his hands in surrender. “Lead the way. I promise I won’t make a break for it when your back is turned.”

[And if you did, you wouldn’t get far.]

He glanced at both animals uncertainly over his shoulder as we left.

“I wouldn’t mess with them,” I said. “We’ve had a rough morning.”

We marched him out to graveyard while I dug out my phone and texted Consuela about breakfast. Multitasking is the key to my sanity; too bad they keep changing the locks.

We stopped in front of the gate, because I could see Ben needed a little calming down. “Okay, look. I know this is weird and scary and you feel like you’re out of your depth. But you’ll be fine. You’re just a conduit for negotiations, right? A messenger.”

“A minute ago I was an ambassador. Which one is it?”

I was tempted to say
The one that gets you through that gate,
but resisted the impulse. “The job description doesn’t matter. I’ve been called everything from a gofer to an executive assistant, and the title usually says more about my boss than me. The thing is, every time I’ve been hired it was because the person who hired me thought I could do the job. And they were always right, because that was
their
job. So have a little faith in the one who picked
you,
okay?”

“A crow? That’s your backbone of your pep talk? Trust in the
crow
?”

“Eli is in charge of the Great Crossroads, Ben. I get the feeling that he’s a crow in the same way Mickey Mouse is a rodent. It’s only technically true.”

“You are really terrible at this.”

“And yet I got you this far.”

“I’m outnumbered.”

“You could fry any one of us with a lightning bolt. Or blast us with hurricane-force winds.”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know. But you
could
.”

I opened the gate and motioned him through. “Just keep telling yourself that. If that doesn’t help, remember how much cats hate getting wet. You could always whip up a rainstorm.”

He walked through the gate. He did it slowly, but he did it.

[Be. Quiet.]

We found Eli right where we left him. He flew right over and landed on Ben’s shoulder, who, to his credit, didn’t flinch—well, not much.

And then Eli put his beak up to Ben’s ear and whispered.

Ben’s eyes sort of glazed over. He stood absolutely still, not even blinking, for the ten seconds or so Eli talked to him. When the crow was done, he launched himself off Ben’s shoulder and flew away.

[That was abrupt. Things must be more serious than I thought—]

“Foxtrot,” Ben said. “It’s time to go.” He didn’t sound freaked out anymore, just solemn.

“Okay then. Good luck—”

“We’ll need it. You’re coming with me.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

I goggled at him. I don’t goggle very often, and as a result I’m not that good at it. “Whatwhat
what
?”

“Eli explained the whole thing to me,” Ben said. “I can do this—I think—but I’m going to need help. You’re it.”

This
is interesting.>

[I suppose we shall have to hold down the fort. Any instructions before you leave?]

“Wait! Leave? I can’t just—I mean, I’m not even packed—I can’t just—”

The glare I turned on her could have melted glass. Tango, of course, ignored it completely. “You two keep an eye on Augustus. Don’t do anything so stupid it can’t be fixed.”

[Yes, boss.]

“You two better stand clear,” Ben said. “I’ve never done this before and it might get a little messy.”

“Done what, exactly?” I asked him nervously as Whiskey and Tango trotted away.

“This.”

Ben raised his hands and closed his eyes. A wind began to blow, but not in any normal direction; it was a circular wind that blew around both of us. A whirlwind. It expanded, until it was about a dozen feet wide, with us in the middle. I could see dust and dirt and bits of grass and leaves as they spun past, counterclockwise. The air in our immediate vicinity was utterly still, the unblinking eye of a miniature hurricane.

“Oh, boy,” I breathed. “You aren’t going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?”

The whirlwind sped up and got louder, a hollow roar all around us. Lightning arced from Ben’s outstretched hands into the spinning walls of the vortex, turning the whole thing into a crackling, sparking tube. It was like being trapped in the center of a supercharged merry-go-round, electric horses blurring past in a furious gallop of flashing hooves and thunderbolts, everything on the other side somehow getting farther and farther away …

“If we land on a witch,” I yelled, “she damn well better take a size eight shoe!”

Ben didn’t reply, but the lightning arcing from his hands stopped. The vortex slowed. The roar softened to a growl, and then a whisper.

The whirlwind died. And we were someplace else.

It was obvious at first glance this was Apedemek’s domain: A yellow-brown African savanna stretched in all directions, and flat-topped acacia trees were visible in the distance.

I turned an accusing eye on Ben. “I can’t believe you just
Dorothied
me like that.”

“Sorry. But Eli told me the situation was urgent, and he’s pretty damn convincing.”

“Really? All I saw was him whisper a few words in your ear.”

“What? No, we talked for…” He frowned. “Hours? Days? But…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I learned a lot. Some of it was stuff I already knew, too—I just forgot that I knew it. Does that make any sense?”

“No. What the hell am I doing here?”

“What you’re good at. Facilitating.”

“I can’t facilitate without any facts!”

“Eli said you already know everything you need to. Just trust your instincts.”

I’ve been asked to do the impossible before. I have been tasked with finding fresh organic strawberries in January and a size nineteen tuxedo in Tokyo. I’ve fielded demands for wasabi-flavored jelly beans, the original lightsabers used in the first
Star Wars
movie, and the president’s phone number. I may not always have succeeded, but I’ve always done my best and I’ve never given up.

But negotiating an armistice between two feuding Divine Felines with absolutely zero preparation? That set the bar to another level entirely. I mentally cleared my schedule for the next available Wednesday, which I planned on spending wailing, beating my head against my bedroom wall, and shaking uncontrollably. But until then …

I grinned. “Bring it on, mother—”

Which is when I was interrupted by a lion leaping at me.

In the real world—whatever that means—being knocked down by a four-hundred-pound carnivore is usually a prelude to being eaten. Here, it was apparently how they said hello.

“Hello,” said the lion. I was flat on my back and he had a massive paw on each of my shoulders. Oddly, he felt like he weighed almost nothing.

“Hi,” I replied. He wasn’t full-grown yet; his mane was still coming in. His large, golden-brown eyes regarded me with more curiosity than malice.

“Are you food?” he asked.

“Definitely not,” I said.

“Oh. Well, you’re not a lion.”

“I know. Can I get up now?”

“Sure.” He took his paws off my shoulders and sat back on his haunches. “If you’re not food and you’re not a lion, what are you?”

“I’m a human being. Like him.” I jerked a thumb at Ben, who was watching the exchange with interest but no alarm. “Mostly.”

The lion spared Ben a glance, and then a sniff. “You smell kind of like a bird. And kind of like a storm.”

“I’m a Thunderbird. And no, I’m not food, either.”

“Oh.” The young lion sounded a little disappointed. “Well, it was nice to meet you.” He bounded away in the direction of the acacia trees, just as abruptly as he’d appeared.

I got to my feet. “Well, that was … weird. He didn’t even know what species we were.”

“Don’t be so humanocentric. Lots of animals go their entire life without encountering a human being. And some lives are shorter than others.”

I had the feeling there was more to it than that, but I had too many other things on my mind to pursue that particular line of questioning. I shaded my eyes with one hand against the hot sun and peered in the direction the lion had run in. I could see the glimmer of water beside the trees. “I think I see a watering hole over there. Let’s walk that way before we get run over by a herd of wildebeest or something.”

So we did. Neither of us was really dressed for Africa in what I assumed was eternal summertime, but—much like the weight of the young lion—it didn’t seem quite real. I looked down, and my feet were leaving deeper footprints in the dust than they normally would. I was from another, less ethereal world, and didn’t belong here. I hoped there was enough oxygen in the air.

As we walked, Ben told me some of what Eli had relayed to him in their exchange. As a Thunderbird, he could move from one astral plane to another without using the graves as portals, unless the ruler of the realm decided to prevent him from entering.

“You’re a natural negotiator,” Ben told me. “You don’t need to know the history and politics and personal details of these entities in order to deal with them. In fact, Eli said that would work against us; we need to use our guts, not our heads.”

“As long as I don’t wind up wearing them on the outside,” I muttered. Eli may have had faith in me, but I wasn’t convinced the two big cats would feel the same. At least we only had to deal with one at a time.

But that didn’t mean there was only one present. Oh, no.

As we neared the watering hole, I saw lions sprawled at the base of the acacia tree, relaxing in the shade. Many, many lions. If a group of lions is normally called a pride, then this was, at the very least, an overconfidence. Possibly an arrogance.

The thing was, everything was on a much bigger scale than I first thought. The watering hole was more like a lake. The tree? It made a redwood seem like a sapling. And the lions it shaded—all female, I noted—numbered in the hundreds.

At the base of the tree lay Apedemek.

He was much larger than the other lions, of course. Also the only male. And, of course, his mane was on fire.

But the really weird thing? The whole arrangement felt familiar.

I tried to figure it out as we walked up, and suddenly it hit me. I’d had a short-lived gig when I first started out with a somewhat notorious country singer. He liked three things: booze, groupies, and guns. His preferred method of relaxing after a concert was to surround himself with all three and then hold court on the king-sized bed in his hotel suite. My job—other than procuring the booze—was to make absolutely, positively certain all the guns were unloaded and that no ammunition could be found within a thousand yards of the hotel room. It wasn’t a job I did for very long, but nobody ever got shot while I was doing it.

This felt exactly like that, just without the booze. I wasn’t sure if that would make things harder or easier—but I was about to find out.

Ben and I stopped about twenty feet away. Apedemek was obviously expecting us, but he just stared at us with heavy-lidded eyes, as if he couldn’t really be bothered to wake all the way up.

“Greetings, Apedemek,” I said. I wasn’t sure what the protocol for addressing a god was, but I wasn’t going to start by bowing and scraping; people in positions of authority are used to identifying the status of others quickly, and they tend to file you in their head largely based on first impressions.

He stared at me without speaking. Then he turned his head ever so slightly, to indicate he was looking at Ben. When he spoke, his voice was the rumble of a freight train.
WHICH OF YOU IS THE THUNDERBIRD?

“I am,” Ben said. To his credit, his voice stayed firm.

Apedemek turned back to me.
WHO ARE YOU?

“My name is Foxtrot.”

WHY ARE YOU HERE? ARE YOU HIS HAREM?

Hoo, boy. “No. I’m here to help you and Waghai Devi arrive at an agreement.”