White Night (The Dresden Files #9) - Jim Butcher Page 0,165

of monster his family generally did, I owed it to him to try to talk some sense into him. Or pound it in. Whichever.

I pushed open the door to the Coiffure Cup and was immediately, pleasantly assaulted by the aroma of coffee. There was techno music playing, thumping bouncily and mindlessly positive. The front room contained the coffee bar, a few little tables, and a little podium next to a heavy curtain. Even as I came in, one of the young women behind the bar came out to me, gave me a bubbly, caf-feinated smile, and said, "Hi! Do you have an appointment?"

"No," I said, glancing back at the curtains.' "Um, I just need to talk to someone. One second."

"Sir," she said in protest, and tried to hurry into my path. My legs were longer. I gave her a smile and outdistanced her, pushing the curtain aside.

The techno music grew a little louder as I went through. The back room of the boutique smelled the way boutiques always do, of various tonsorial chemicals. A dozen styling stations, all in use, stood six on a side, marching up to a rather large and elaborate station on a little raised platform. At the base of the little platform was a pedicure station, and a young woman with a mud mask, and cucumber slices, and a body posture of blissful relaxation was lounging through a pedicure. On the other side, another young woman was under a dryer, reading a magazine, her expression heavy and relaxed with that postcoiffure glow. On the main chair on the platform, a deluxe number that leaned back to a custom shampoo sink, another young woman lay back with a blissful expression while having her hair washed.

By Thomas.

He was chatting with her amiably as he worked, and she was in the middle of a little laugh when I came in. He leaned down and said something in her ear, and though I couldn't hear the substance of it, it came across in an unmistakable just-us-girls kind of tone, and she laughed again, replying in a similar manner.

Thomas laughed and turned away, practically prancing over to a tray of… styling implements, I supposed. He came back with a towel and, I swear to God, a dozen bobby pins held in his lips. He rinsed her hair and started pinning.

"Sir!" protested the coffee girl, who had followed me into the room.

Everyone stopped and looked at me. Even the woman with the cucumbers over her eyes took one of them off and peered at me.

Thomas froze. His eyes widened to the size of hand mirrors. He swallowed, and the bobby pins fell out of his mouth.

All the women looked back and forth between us, and there was an immediate buzz of whispers and quiet talks.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said.

"O-oh," Thomas said. "Ah-ree."

One of the stylists glanced back and forth between us and said, "Thomas." (She pronounced it Toe-moss.) "Who is your friend?"

Friend. Oy vey. I rubbed at the bridge of my nose with one hand. I was never going to get away from this one. Not if I lived to be five hundred.

Thomas and I sat down at a table over cups of coffee.

"This?" I asked him without preamble. "This is your mysterious job? This is the moneymaking scam?"

"It was cosmetology school first," Thomas said. He spoke in a French accent so thick that it barely qualified as English. "And night work as a security guard in a warehouse where no one else ever showed up, to pay for it."

I rubbed at my nose again. "And then… this ? Here I'm thinking you've created your own batch of personal thralls while running around as a hired killer or something, and… you're washing hair ?"

It was difficult to keep my voice quiet, but I made the effort. There were too many ears in that little place.

Thomas sighed. "Well. Yes. Washing, cutting, styling, dying. I do it all, baby."

"I'll bet." Then it hit me. "That's how you're feeding," I said. "I thought that took…"

"Sex?" Thomas asked. He shook his head. "Intimacy. Trust. And believe me, next to sex, washing and styling a woman's hair is about as intimate as you can get with her."

"You're still feeding on them," I said.

"It isn't the same, Harry. It isn't as dangerous—more like… sipping, I suppose, than taking bites. I can't take very much, or very quickly. But I'm here all day and it…" He shivered. "It adds up." He opened his eyes and