The Arrivals

“I’ll be fine,” she promised. “I just need a little fun.”

Several hours later, Kitty was trying to tell herself she was having fun, but reasoning with drunks with guns wasn’t the sort of evidence that was helpful in convincing herself to believe that lie. The tiny outpost town of Gallows was the best she could do this far into the desert, and all things considered, it wasn’t a bad little town. She’d had more than a few fun nights in Gallows. Mostly with Edgar, or … She stopped herself before she could think of the Arrivals she’d called friends over the years.

After pushing that thought away, she looked at the scrawny drunk beside her and started, “Be sensible, Lira. You don’t want to—”

A face full of wine interrupted her attempt at calming words.

Kitty swiped an arm across her face; the sickly-sweet scent of cheap wine was almost as irritating as the wet hair that now clung to her skin. She started counting in her head, willing herself not to lose her temper.

The bartender dropped behind the bar, and the drunk to her left started to raise her gun.

Kitty punched her.

“Thanks.” Lira grinned, as if she hadn’t just doused Kitty with wine.

For a moment, Kitty considered resuming her counting, but the moment was brief. She’d planned to spend one night pretending life was normal, and she was stinking of wine she hadn’t drunk, knuckles stinging, while the woman who’d started the argument smiled at her like they were friends. Admittedly, she’d known Lira for years—the quarrelsome woman was one of the shift managers—but a few conversations and arguments didn’t make them friends. More to the point, friends didn’t throw wine in a person’s face.

“Lord, save me from fools,” Kitty said, and then she punched Lira too.

Years ago, she’d have stepped out of their way and let the two drunk fools shoot each other to their hearts’ content, but Jack’s oft-quoted admonishment echoed even in his absence: It’s our calling.

“Calling, my ass,” Kitty muttered as she took in the sight of several skirmishes in the bar. Now that the manager was out and the bartender wasn’t trying to keep order, the patrons were behaving like naughty children. She could step in, but Jack wasn’t there to nag her, and she was feeling contrary. So she lifted her own drink in a toast and put her back to the bar to watch the show. Sometimes, being in a bar brawl made her almost feel like she was back home—if she could ignore the fact that this world was filled with magic and creatures that could step right into storybooks. People were people, even if they weren’t always human. Trouble was trouble, even if it was started by monsters. That was the truth of it.

She made a game of silently predicting the winners of various fights until the smell of smoke made her look around the room. The fire wasn’t coming from any of the empty barrels that stood as tables. The wall tapestries were all fine. The wafting smoke was drifting in from outside.

“Down!” she yelled.

Both of the front windows blasted inward, and red-tinted glass rained over all of them.

The chaos inside the pub stilled. Patrons who’d been ready enough to cosh each other over the head two minutes ago suddenly helped the folks they’d been fighting.

The bartender crouched behind the bar, so only his eyes and the top of his head were visible. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

One of the cooks crawled along the floor, shoving a bucket of unidentified bits of uncooked meat toward Kitty. “Here.”

She shot a frown over the crowd: they were watching her like she was all that stood between them and disaster. She wasn’t. Any one of them could step up, but they didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

For all Jack’s preaching at her, and despite all the straight-up weird shit she’d seen in the twenty-six years or so since she’d left the normal world and California far behind, she could count on humanity’s basic predictability in a situation. The moment real trouble started, most people hid. Now that they needed help, she was everyone’s best friend. If she were a softer soul, it would bother her. Okay, maybe it still did, but not so as she’d be mentioning it anytime soon.

Kitty sighed, but she twisted her damp hair into a knot and snatched up the bucket. “Stay inside.”

Without waiting to see if they listened, she clomped across the floor and pushed open the half doors that hung in front of her. She suspected that the lindwurm that had vanished from Cozy’s Ranch had found its way into Gallows.

Luckily, the beast that sprawled out in the street was a juvenile, more smoke than fire. It rested on its scaled belly with its legs splayed, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t move quickly if it was so inclined. Kitty hiked up the edge of her skirt and tied it off so it wouldn’t tangle around her legs when she had to run.

“Lookie here.” She eased to the side. The lindwurm’s head snaked to the left, keeping her in sight.

She tossed a slimy piece of meat onto the ground in front of it. In a whip-quick movement, it snatched the snack with a long thin tongue and then slithered toward her.

“That’s right. You just follow Miss Kitty,” she coaxed.

One big opal eye tracked her as she backed away from the building. It didn’t rush her or exhale fire in her direction—although a little plume of smoke drifted from its oversize nostrils.

She kept backing away, tossing handfuls of meat toward the lindwurm. After a few tense moments, it slithered forward a little more.

She wouldn’t want to try this with a full-grown lindwurm, but the young weren’t as agile or as surly. It was likely hungry, and once it’d had enough to eat, it’d nap. All she needed to do was lure it out away from buildings without getting herself cooked in the process. The sands that stretched around Gallows were the reason this was lindwurm-farming territory: farmlands like back home would’ve been reduced to nothing but prairie fires here.

A few more pieces lured the lindwurm farther from the buildings, but it wasn’t moving far or fast. She couldn’t tell it to wait while she fetched more meat, and a quick glance around made it obvious that no one was coming to bring her a backup bucket. Lindwurm herding was the sort of task that required help, and while she’d done it solo before, more often than not it had resulted in waking up after a few days dead.

“Any decent folks care to offer a little help?” Kitty called.

Not surprisingly, doors and shutters stayed closed.

The lindwurm was getting bored, and she was low on meat. It exhaled a small puff of flame, and she darted to the side.

“Seriously?” she grumbled. “Getting toasted was not my plan for the night!”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have gone out alone, Katherine.” Jack’s voice was uncommonly welcome just then. She didn’t need to look at him to know that his mouth was already pressed into a stern line that ruined what was an otherwise handsome face and that his pretty baby blues were ruined by a you-disappoint-me look.

Kitty hid her sigh of relief at seeing him by picking a fight with him. “I didn’t feel like dealing with you or Edgar, jackass. I wanted to relax.”

“Clearly,” Jack drawled, angling to the right of the increasingly restless lindwurm. “Upsetting lizards seems like a fine way to spend an evening.”

“Not my fault.”

“It never is,” Jack said. He paused only a moment before adding, “Reins and collar look intact. You could’ve—”

“I’m not a wrangler.”

“Yet another good reason not to go out alone.” He glanced her way, and once she met his gaze, he prompted, “Ready?”

“Go.” She tossed one of the remaining scraps of meat to the left.

As the lindwurm twisted its neck to snatch the treat, Jack hoisted himself atop the scaled beast. He wore the same grin he wore in a fight or anything remotely likely to get him injured. He was too dour most of the time, spewing rules the way she spit out cusses. In an adventure, though, he was all smiles.

“Hitch up your skirt and run,” he yelled.

The lindwurm’s tail lashed around at him, drawing blood, but it didn’t roast him. An older beast would’ve. All that this one did was buck and slash. So far, Jack was only getting the edge of its temper.

Kitty ran toward the butcher’s shop, shoved open the door, and tore down a fair-size bit of mutton. Slimy meat in hand, she raced back to the lindwurm.

It stilled again as it spotted her.

She held the mutton aloft—and away from her body—as she walked closer to the lindwurm. “I hate this part.”

“Be ready to bolt,” Jack reminded her.

As the lindwurm tasted the air, scenting at the meat she held in front of her, she said in as flat a voice as she could muster, “He decides to cook his dinner, and I’m going to be crispy.”