Authors: Phoebe Matthews
Instead, I saw a policeman.
My choices were limited. I could open the door and stand in the doorway and let in a flood.
Or I could say, “Tar, I’m ducking out fast to talk to the officer,” and not give him a chance to object.
I opened the door the minimum, slid through and pulled it closed.
When I looked up at the officer, rain hit me in face. “If I open the door far enough to let you in, we’ll get water in the bookshelves.”
“What are you doing in this store?”
I did a quick glance up the staircase. Nobody here but me and
the policeman. “We started to close up and then this downpour began and there’s water all over the floor so we’re mopping.”
“Why is the screen off its hinges?”
I glanced at the screen door. It leaned against the end wall of the well. “Lost some screws and the workman was just starting to repair it when this storm hit. So I have him inside doing clean up.”
“With the interior lights out?”
By now my hair was plastered to my head and clinging in long soppy tendrils across my face. “Listen,” I said, “you can come inside and discuss this and I will show you my driver’s license or whatever else you want, and then you can help mop up the water you let in, okay?”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but do you work here?”
“I’m a personal friend of Zack and he left early to go on a camping trip so he left me to close up.”
His expression changed, can’t say exactly from what to what, but right then I
realized the problem. Zack must have told the cop on the beat he was going camping. It didn’t say that on the sign. So when I knew where Zack had gone, the policeman accepted my explanation of why I was in the store.
He sloshed back up the stairs and I sloshed back into the store. Tarvik had found a rag mop in the storeroom and was busy soaking up water and wringing the mop out into a bucket. I found paper and pen by the cash register and wrote Zack a short note.
You left me in the back room. Your mother came and broke the wards. Claire.
I didn’t figure there was any need to explain the water.
Tar finished mopping and
then we agreed
there was no point hanging around. We couldn’t possibly get any more wet. So we set the spring lock and pulled the door closed behind us and dashed up the stairs to the street and stopped for one awful minute to stare.
Traffic was a jammed mess. The street was a river, water up to the hubcaps on stalled cars. At a far corner I saw a traffic cop waving his arms while the rain continued to fall in sheets.
Tarvik grabbed my hand and led me around a corner and down a block and by the time we reached the place where he had parked his car, the rain had stopped. No, that wasn’t right. The car was dry. The street was dry. The buildings were dust-covered.
Tarvik pulled his tank top away from his body and tried to wring some of
the water out of the hem.
“Maybe we should take a slow walk in the sun before we get in the car,” I suggested.
“Going to take a while to get our clothes dry.”
Going to take more than a while to get my brain dry. My thoughts were a soggy jumble. Except one.
“Tarvy baby, next time there’s a choice between a broken window and a wailing witch, go ahead and break the window.”
END
Based on characters in the Mudflat series by Phoebe Matthews,
http://phoebematthews.com
Phoebe Matthews writes the EPIC award-winning Mudflat urban fantasy series published by BookStrand.
Mudflat novels
Welcome to Mudflat, Baby
Mudflat Toy Boy
Mudflat Spice and Sorcery
Goldilocks in Mudflat
Wicked Good Short Story Collections
Nine Horoscope-in-Catsup Stories
Steampunk Man and More
Steampunk Widow and More
Sunspinners novels
Demonhold
Demonprice
Turning Vampire
Vampire Disaster