“It was nice meeting you,” said Agnes, giving Lady a smile and a wave on her way to the door. “Maybe I’ll see you later?”

  Lady nodded. “Yeah. I spend a lot of time here, so most likely!” Maybe there was a chance they would be friends anyway. Probably not fast enough for Dom’s liking, certainly not fast enough to be useful to finding things out—If there was even anything to find out in the first place.

  “Well, see you later then!” Agnes continued on and out the front door. Lady watched her go with a sigh and turned back to shelving books. How were there even this many books to shelve anyway?

  “Hey,” said Otsuya.

  Lady yelped and nearly dropped her books. It was like Otsuya had appeared out of nowhere. Knowing her, she might well have. “What?”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you. There’s no need to snap at me.”

  Lady took a deep breath and steadied her hold on the books in her arms. “What?” she asked in an altogether calmer tone.

  “Did Agnes just go outside?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Otsuya turned to face the door. “Just play along, okay?”

  “What?”

  “Just play along!”

  Lady was still trying to figure out what Otsuya was talking about when the front door opened. Agnes came back inside, a frown on her round face. She was looking around, her cell phone in hand.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Otsuya. It didn’t sound like she was the least bit concerned. If Lady had to guess, she would say that Otsuya already knew precisely why Agnes had come back inside.

  Agnes noticed Otsuya and turned to face her. She motioned back toward the door. “My car won’t start. Do either of you know anything about cars?”

  “No,” said Lady. “Sorry. What’s it doing?”

  “I know about cars,” Otsuya said at the same time.

  If Otsuya knew anything about cars, that was news to Lady. She doubted it was true, though. She was willing to bet that Otsuya knew less about cars than she did. She was willing to bet that Otsuya had never even driven a car. Not that Agnes knew that or had any reason to doubt her.

  “Would you mind taking a look at mine?” Agnes asked, sounding hopeful.

  “Not a problem,” Otsuya headed out the door followed closely by Agnes. Lady was tempted to go find Dom or Crispin. Maybe one of them knew something about cars. She remembered Otsuya’s instructions to play along, though. She wished she knew what she was playing along with.

  Agnes had a small, mint green sedan. It was parked on the gravel outside the library. “It won’t start,” said Agnes, holding out the keys to Otsuya in case she needed them. “I just replaced the battery, so I don’t think that’s it. I just filled up the tank too. Do you want me to pop the hood?”

  “Sure. Yes. Go ahead and do that.” Otsuya moved around to the front of the car. When the hood opened, she still had some trouble getting it up. Lady quickly helped her.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Lady asked, hissing the words under her breath while Agnes was still half in the driver’s seat.

  “Hmm.” Otsuya leaned in and hummed like she knew precisely what it was she was looking at. “I think I see what the problem is.”

  Looking in, Lady was fairly certain she saw what the problem was too. Things were missing. She wasn’t sure what exactly, but there was definitely less beneath the hood than there should have been. There were things dangling that she imagined should have been attached to other things. Something was leaking. Something smelled burned. Lady couldn’t have said what precisely was wrong aside from “a lot.”

  “What is it?” Agnes came around to take a look for herself. Lady was tempted to try and block her. She had a suspicion that verged on certainty that Otsuya had done this. It seemed like something the police might get called in for. There was no way to keep Agnes from looking at her own car, though. Even closing the hood would be awfully suspicious. “Um.” Agnes looked down at the mess Lady had already seen.

  “Dom knows about cars too,” said Otsuya, perfectly calm. “Let me go get a second opinion before I do anything. This is definitely fixable.” Otsuya headed for the front door. “Wait there. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared inside.

  “Does Dom know about cars?” Agnes asked, looking at Lady hopefully.

  Lady thought there was a better chance that Dom had driven a car than Otsuya. She knew he didn’t own one presently, though. She had never gotten any indication that he knew more about cars than she would. “Oh, yeah. I’m pretty sure he does. Yeah.” God, she hoped Otsuya knew what she was doing.

  Agnes shifted her weight from foot to foot anxiously. She looked down at her phone. “Maybe I should call someone. I need to get home soon.”

  “Well…” Lady glanced back at the door. “Give Otsuya just a second. Worst case scenario, I’m sure one of us could give you a ride.” Upon mentioning it, Lady wondered if that had been Otsuya’s motivation to start with. It probably had been.

  The door opened and Otsuya came out followed by Dom. His expression was impassive as he went around to the front of the car. Lady heard a sharp intake of breath from him as he saw what Otsuya had done. Thankfully, his surprise didn’t show on his face. “It’ll take a little while, but I can fix this.”

  “How long is a little while?” asked Agnes.

  Dom looked at Otsuya and then back down at the car. “Might take a day… or two.”

  “A day or two?” Agnes sounded alarmed. “I can’t—I need my car. I should call someone and—”

  “We can give you a ride,” said Otsuya, smiling warmly.

  Agnes shook her head. “You can’t just chauffer me—”

  “Sure we can,” Otsuya insisted. “You work at the library now. We’re friends and this is what friends do.”

  Agnes still looked uncertain. “I should call my dad. Maybe he’ll know a shop or—”

  “This is easy enough to fix.” Dom closed the hood. “I’ll do it as fast as a mechanic, and I’ll do it for free. Won’t cost me anything but a little time. A mechanic is going to charge you an arm and a leg.”

  Agnes bit her bottom lip. At the end of the day she was still a broke young woman living in her father’s home. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” Dom tripped over the one word answer. He didn’t sound at all sure. The car wasn’t even his after all. Between all of them, Crispin was the only one with a reliable means of transportation. “Let me just go get the keys.” He headed back inside before anyone could object.

  “It’ll be fine,” Otsuya assured Agnes. “If he says it’s easy to fix, he means it.”

  Agnes nodded. She swallowed. For a moment Lady was afraid she was going to accuse them of the obvious. “I really appreciate this, you guys,” she said instead. It sounded like she meant it too. “I mean, I only just started working here, and… People aren’t usually this nice to me. I should pay something. I can’t just let him do all that work for free. I should give you gas money too. I don’t have any cash on me, but—”

  “It’s fine,” Lady said quickly, interrupting her. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if she took money from Agnes after what they had done to her. “Here, I’ll drive you myself. I need to swing by the store anyway. I can do it on the way back! Let me just go check on Lion.” She headed inside after Dom. She was sure Lion was fine wandering the library on his own for a while. She was more interested in intercepting Dom.

  She ran into Dom halfway to the front desk. He already had the keys in his hand. He tossed them in the air and caught them when he saw Lady. “Crispin said you can borrow the car. Just keep your phone handy in case the police call and we need it.”

  “Were you in on this?” Lady demanded, keeping her voice down just in case Agnes followed her in.

  Dom grimaced. “She told me what she’d done when she came and got me. I didn’t really have any choice but to roll with it.”

  “Can you really fix that car?”

  “No,” Dom said immediately. “I’m calling a professional as soon as you guys leave. I’m not paying for this out of pocket either. Otsuya better reimburse me. You tell her that.”

  “I will, but I can’t promise anything.” Lady held out her hand for the keys.

  Dom handed them over. “You better get some useful information out of this.”

  Lady couldn’t promise anything on that front either. “Keep an eye on Lion for me, will you?”

  “I’m not babysitting your cat.”

  “You don’t have to babysit him. Just bring him with you when we meet at Destiny’s place.”

  Dom rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. He motioned Lady on. “Just hurry up and get this over with.”

  Lady turned and headed back outside. She dangled the keys, jingling them to get the girls’ attention. “You guys ready to head out?”

  Chapter Nine

  Agnes lived in a split-level house that had seen better days. The yard was overgrown and the roof of the carport was sagging a bit. “This is me,” she said, pointing them into the driveway.

  Lady pulled in and cut the engine. She was fishing for an invite inside. This was probably the least subtle way to go about that short of asking.

  “Do you mind if I run in and use the bathroom?” Otsuya asked.

  Lady had been wrong, apparently. There were less subtle ways. Otsuya had found one.

  “Um.” Agnes already had her door partially open. She looked from the door to her house. There was only one other car in the driveway. It was a beige clunker of a car. The police cruiser from Lady’s vision was nowhere to be seen. “I guess that’s fine. Sure.” She went to the door, fishing her keys from her pocket as she went.

  Lady got out of the car as well, following behind Otsuya and Agnes. “Thanks,” said Otsuya.

  “Sorry about the mess.” Agnes unlocked the door and opened it wide for them.

  The inside of the house wasn’t a mess exactly. There was a lot of clutter. Some clothes were strewn on the floor. There were some empty Chinese food containers on the coffee table. It was hardly the messiest house Lady had ever seen. It wouldn’t have been up to Ms. Poole’s standards, but Lady had definitely lived in worse. “It’s fine,” Lady assured her.

  Agnes pointed down a dimly lit hallway up the stairs. “The bathroom is the second door on the right. The door doesn’t lock, but if you turn the fan on no one will come in.”

  “Thanks,” Otsuya hurried in that direction, though Lady wasn’t even sure she needed to or could use the restroom. Otsuya’s biology was a mystery to her.

  “Is someone else home?” Lady asked, hooking her thumbs into the pockets of her shorts.

  “Hmm?”

  “You said no one would go into the bathroom if the fan was on. Is someone else here?”

  “Oh, um—” Agnes didn’t get a chance to answer. Someone walked from the kitchen. So, yes, someone was home. “Ben!”

  The young man leaving the kitchen had a carton of milk in one hand and a box of cereal in the other. He was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts, a fact that made Lady instinctively lower her eyes to the ground.

  “Who’s this?” asked the young man. Ben, presumably. He sounded tired. His speech was a little slurred.

  “I started at the library today,” snapped Agnes. She wasn’t yelling, but there was anger in her voice all the same. “Remember? I started there today?”

  “Oh,” said Ben. “But what are they doing here?”

  Lady chanced a look up. Ben was making no move to cover himself. He didn’t seem embarrassed to be caught in his boxer shorts. He was a very skinny boy, she noted. His ribs were visible beneath his pale skin. There were some poorly done tattoos along his chest and arms. They looked like generic tribal symbols. Aside from that, there was a definite resemblance to Agnes.

  “My car broke down and—” Agnes looked from Ben to Lady and then back again. Her face was very red. “I’ll tell you later. Can you just—Go put on some pants or something?”

  “Your car broke down?” Ben was making no move to go look for pants. He seemed a little glassy-eyed and out of it. Lady wondered if he was high.

  Agnes huffed and reached out, taking Lady by the wrist. “Let’s—Let’s wait for Otsuya in my room.” She tugged her toward the stairs.

  Lady followed. She felt embarrassed for Agnes. This had to be hard for her. Lady could imagine she was panicking on the inside. This was just about the worst first impression you could make on a new employer. Not that Lady was her boss or even worked at the library, but Agnes clearly viewed her as someone above her in the workplace hierarchy.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Agnes muttered as she opened a door at the end of the hall and ushered Lady inside.

  “It’s fine,” Lady said quickly, and she meant it. She didn’t think any less of Agnes for how her brother was acting. If anything, she liked Agnes more now. This kind of humanized her, made her more sympathetic. Lady knew what it was like to have trouble with family.

  Agnes turned on the light. “There’s really no excuse. I don’t—I didn’t know anyone was coming over. I—I’m sorry about my room.” She turned on a light.

  Lady looked around. It wasn’t as if the room was dirty. It was much cleaner than the rest of the house, albeit a little cramped. It was a small room to begin with, but it was fully furnished. Maybe too furnished. There was a bed and a nightstand and a desk and a stand for a television and game system. The walls were lined with furniture and nearly every surface was covered in figurines and models. The walls were covered in posters. Lady didn’t recognize most of what she was seeing. Some of it was animated, some live action. There were space ships and men and women with elf ears and giant swords.

  “I haven’t redecorated since before college,” Agnes said hastily, stumbling over her words. “I was kind of a dork in high school,” she added with a nervous laugh.

  Lady put her hands in her pockets, afraid she might knock something over without meaning to. She shrugged. “You like sci-fi and fantasy and stuff.” She didn’t see anything wrong with that. “That’s cool.” She went up to a bookshelf to get a better look at some of the figurines. “This is from, like, an anime movie or something, right? I think my foster brother watched it and had, like, a poster in his room or something.”

  “Yeah,” Agnes said sheepishly. “It’s… I like it… I used to like it or… you know… Whatever.”

  “Where’d you guys go?” came Otsuya’s voice from the hallway.

  Agnes gave a start. “We’re in here,” she called, hurrying over to the door and opening it.

  Otsuya wandered in like she was perfectly at home. She had no reservations about being in someone else’s house. Not that this surprised Lady in the least.

  Agnes looked like she wanted to say something. She was probably trying to find a way to say her goodbyes so that she could escort them from the house entirely. The sound of footsteps in the hall prompted her to close the door. Having them overstay their welcome by holing up in her room was apparently preferable to facing her brother again.

  “Oh, wow.” Otsuya stopped in the center of the room and turned a circle on the spot, taking it all in. “Look at all this stuff.”

  “Yeah, I haven’t redecorated since I left for college,” said Agnes, running through the practiced excuses she had already given Lady. “I was a huge dork. I really need to pack this stuff up.”

  “Are you getting rid of it?” Otsuya went to one of the shelves and bent down to take a closer look. “I want some of this if you’re just getting rid of it.”

  “Otsuya,” Lady muttered, trying to shut her up. It was obvious that Agnes was still very much into all this stuff. She didn’t want to get rid of anything.

  “I’m, um—”

  Otsuya caught Lady’s expression. She wasn’t as oblivious as she could sometimes come off. She caught on. “You said you didn’t have any hobbies,” she said, turning back to Agnes.

  Agnes’ face was still very red. “I don’t, really. Like I said, this is mostly from high school.”

  “This is cool. This is a really cool collection. I really like the figurines and stuff. Where did you get them?”

  “Um…” Agnes fidgeted with her hands behind her back. “Online. I ordered them online.”

  “I figured. You can’t get stuff like this in Dark Lake.”

  “I put most of them together and… um, painted some of them.” The way Agnes volunteered that bit of information made Lady think she took pride in the fact.

  Otsuya’s face lit up. “Seriously?” She turned back to the shelves. “You painted these?”

  “Some of them. Not all of them.”

  “Show me the ones you painted!”

  Agnes moved to the shelves and pointed out several figurines. They varied in size and shape. There were some complicated-looking robots and a woman wearing colorful armor and some kind of wolf-like monster snarling. Lady didn’t know anything about painting figurines, but they all looked really good to her. They looked like something you would buy in a store.

  “That’s amazing!” Otsuya said, reaching for the wolf even though Lady wasn’t sure they should be touching anything.

  “Careful,” Agnes said so quietly Lady wasn’t sure Otsuya heard her.

  “They’re really good,” said Lady.

  Despite the concerned way she was looking at the wolf figurine in Otsuya’s hands, Agnes was smiling. “Thanks. It’s… Well, I know it’s stupid, but I like painting them.”

  “That’s not stupid!” Otsuya looked at Agnes as if she had just said something completely nonsensical. “Why would that be stupid?”

  Agnes shrugged helplessly. She clearly hadn’t been prepared for praise. She had readied excuses for her nerdy hobbies, but Otsuya’s compliments had completely disarmed her.

  “It’s cool,” Lady agreed. “How’d you get into it?”

  Again, Agnes shrugged. “Collecting merchandise from the shows and comics I liked, I guess. It kind of spiraled from there.”

 

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