Page 13 of Wicked Hour (Heirs of Chicagoland 2)

We walked into the small alcove between exterior and interior doors. There was tile on the floor, paneling on the walls, and an old-fashioned gumball machine in a corner, topped with a pile of real estate brochures.

I arched an eyebrow. “Not that I need to prove anything, given we fought the fairies together—and won—but I’ve walked forty miles of Hadrian’s Wall, hiked Lac Blanc in the dark, spent three nights in a tent in the snow in the Pyrenees. That acceptable?”

His mouth twitched. “Yeah. That should do it.”

“Yeah,” I said, pushing through the interior door. “I thought it might.”

***

We sat down at a booth along the diner’s front glass wall and ordered black coffee, which the pinafored waitress delivered in plain stoneware mugs.

I took a sip, grimaced at the harsh bite of what tasted like liquid creosote.

“Coffee’s shit,” Alexei said, staring down into it.

“It’s pretty bad.” I looked at Connor. “I don’t suppose there’s a Leo’s in Grand Bay?” Leo’s was my favorite coffee shop in Chicago.

“Leo’s is good coffee,” Alexei said. The most words he’d said directly to me so far, and since we agreed, I considered it a good step forward.

“No Leo’s,” Connor said. “But there will almost certainly be coffee, and it will probably have ‘north’ or ‘moose’ or ‘lake’ in the name.”

Alexei grabbed a half dozen sugar packets from the condiment holder, ripped off the tops, and emptied them into his mug. He piled the leftover paper into a neat little mountain, then took a sip of the coffee-flavored sugar, swirled it around his mouth.

“Did that help?” I asked.

“No,” he said, putting down the mug and wrapping his hands around the ceramic to warm them. “Just makes it sweet.”

“Alexei has a bit of a sugar problem,” Connor said.

“Sugar isn’t a problem,” Alexei said. “It’s a solution.”

“You riding dirty?” Connor asked.

Alexei humphed.

“How much you carrying?”

Connor’s voice, dropped to a whisper, had gone so serious, I thought we’d shifted to talk about transporting contraband across state lines. Especially when Alexei reached into a small leather backpack, pulled out a wrinkled and folded paper bag.

He unfolded the top, poured the contents on the table. But where I’d been expecting to see drugs or contraband, I found a hoard of candy. There were gummi bears, sour sharks, licorice, and lemon drops. A rainbow of taffy, a sleeve of candy wafers I didn’t think they even sold anymore.

“You’re hilarious,” I said to Connor.

He smiled at Alexei. “Told you that would make her nervous.”

“I won’t apologize for being law-abiding.”

“Long as you aren’t a square,” Alexei said, tracing the shape in the air with his fingertips.

I rolled my eyes. You could take the shifters out of Chicago, but that apparently meant bringing along their inner fourteen-year-olds.

“Shifters,” I muttered, and took a square of banana taffy. “Sarcasm tax.”

Alexei almost—but not quite—smiled.

I unwrapped the taffy, read the joke on the inside of the wrapper. “‘Knock, knock.’”

“Who’s there?” Alexei asked. At least he was game enough for a bad joke.