to see if Dan Stanton had replied to my message. He hadn’t, but a few minutes after I’d logged in, a chat bubble with his name on it popped up.
U there Daisy?
This might sound weird, but I’m not a fan of all things instant and chatty. It always feels like there’s too much pressure to reply immediately. But then, I was the one asking the favor, so I didn’t have a lot of choice.
Yes. Lee, is that you?
There was a short lag, then a reply. If you want to talk, meet me at the glug-a-slug in fifteen minutes.
On that cryptic note, Dan Stanton went offline. Well, not that cryptic. Back in high school “glug-a-slug” was what we called the Sit’n Sip, Pemkowet’s only twenty-four-hour diner, located about half a mile from the interstate highway exit. It was where teenagers went to eat hash browns, drink coffee, and sober up after clandestine keg parties. But Lee wasn’t the kind of kid who got invited to a lot of parties. He was the kind of smart, aloof, unpopular kid who wouldn’t deign to use the in-crowd’s pet slang terms, and I couldn’t imagine he would have changed that much, which meant that the fact that he was using one of them now was weird and cryptic.
Then again, I’d contacted him through an alias, so I don’t know why I would have expected anything else.
About ten minutes later, I walked into the Sit’n Sip. Lee Hastings was lounging in a booth in the far corner, long legs stretched out, the rest of him slouched intently over a computer tablet. Although I hadn’t seen him in a good six years, I recognized his tall, bony figure immediately, even wrapped in a full-length black leather duster despite the lingering summer warmth.
“Hey, hon!” a cheerful waitress called to me. “Sit anywhere you like.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m meeting someone.”
Lee lifted his head. He was wearing a khaki-colored Seattle Mariners baseball cap, which I thought was an odd choice with a black leather duster. Heck, maybe he had changed. Or maybe that was hip in Seattle. “Daisy.”
“Hi, Lee.” I slid into the seat opposite him. “It’s good to see you.”
He touched something on the tablet, making the screen go blank. “Is it?”
“Sure.”
Beneath the shadow of his baseball cap’s brim, his face was as gaunt as ever, dark eyes glimmering in bruised-looking hollows. Hence the nickname Skeletor. He’d grown one of those narrow beards that looked like a strip of Velcro glued to his chin and there were steel hoops in his earlobes. Okay, that was new and unexpected. “What do you want?”
“I need to create a database—” I began.
A look of disgust crossed his face. “Oh, for God’s sake! A database? Do you know what I get paid for consulting on a project? This isn’t high school, Daisy. I’m not going to teach you how to use Excel just because you promise to sit next to me in the cafeteria.”
Lowering my voice, I plowed on. “A database documenting the eldritch population in Pemkowet.”
“Are you—” Lee paused. “Say that again?”
I repeated myself.
“Why?”
The waitress came over with the coffeepot. I turned my mug upright for a fill and ordered a Danish. “Because it will help me do my job,” I said in an even tone once she was out of earshot. “Did you hear about the orgy out at Rainbow’s End?” Lee gave a brief nod. “Turns out it was set off by a satyr in rut.”
“Satyrs go into rut?” He sounded bemused.
“Yeah.” I blew on my coffee. “Every twelve years. And if I’d had a database to keep track of this one, I could have prevented the orgy.”
Lee studied me. “So it’s true?”
I took a tentative sip of my coffee, scalding my tongue, and grimaced. “What?”
“I heard a rumor that you were supposed to be some sort of diplomatic liaison to Little Niflheim,” he said. “But I didn’t believe it.”
I looked around for the waitress, hoping to catch her eye and ask for a glass of ice water. “Why not?”
“With your temper?” Lee grinned. “Unless you’ve changed a lot in the last six years, you’re the least diplomatic person I’ve ever known. Didn’t you get suspended for threatening to cut Stacey Brooks’s hair off in her sleep?”
“No,” I said. “That was Jen Cassopolis. I got suspended because the pipes in the girls’ locker room burst when I lost my temper because Stacey Brooks called my mother a Satan-worshipping whore. Anyway, yes and no. I’m an agent of Hel, and