“I’m going out to visit her.” I paused on my way up to my room to dress. “Do you want to come? You two haven’t met, have you? She likes elves. She’d like to meet you.” At the least, Mom would be interested in asking Freysha questions about Eireth, whom I knew she’d never entirely gotten over.
“I can come with you. If elves did visit her in the night, I may be able to determine who and why.”
“I’m more concerned that it was my half-dwarf thief who visited her in the night, but thanks.” Maybe Freysha could help me make a trap to ensnare that thief. I would ask her in the car.
Freysha nodded. “Dwarves would be more likely than elves to knock over trash cans.”
“Not everybody can be agile and graceful.”
Unfortunately, I had a feeling the sneaky thief was more like an elf than a dwarf. She’d eluded everyone so far, and I had no idea how I would trap her.
15
“There are so many ways to make a trap.” Gondo gestured expansively from the back seat of the Jeep. He was wedged between a couple of enchanted metal gargoyles and manticores that Dimitri had parted with, defenses that were redundant at our place now that Zav had done his upgrades. “How long is this drive? I will make a list for you. And read you the list. It will be thorough, with footnotes and appendices. I learned about footnotes and appendices in my human university class.”
“A list is good. No need to read it aloud. I can scan it later.” I took the Woodinville exit off 405 and drove toward Duvall, wishing Mom had picked somewhere less remote when she’d opted to move up here to be closer to Amber. Duvall was three hundred miles closer than Bend, Oregon, but with traffic, it didn’t seem like it.
“Oh, I should read the list to you.” Gondo rummaged in the beat-up briefcase filled with tools that he’d shown up to the house with, arriving less than a minute before Freysha and I had been headed out. Since he’d had homework and notes for Freysha from the class they were taking together, it hadn’t seemed appropriate to take off and leave him standing on the sidewalk. Besides, he could help install the yard art. “That way,” he added, “I can extrapolate when necessary. Do you have any coffee?”
“No.” I looked at Freysha in the passenger seat, wondering if she enjoyed the company of overly chatty goblins or was simply too polite to shoo them away.
She only smiled. She had been studying to go to their world and learn from their engineers. Maybe her readings had prepared her for goblin chattiness.
“I went first to the Coffee Dragon,” Gondo said, reaffirming my suspicions that nobody ever used the word sable in the name, “where I’d hoped to acquire some of the special blend, but the fearsome trollish woman was there and said I couldn’t come in because the goblin occupancy capacity had already been crossed.”
“She’s turning away customers?” I might have to talk to Dimitri about that. Even though the goblins slept under bridges and in parks, they somehow always had money to pay for numerous cups of coffee.
“Yes. And there were only eighteen goblins inside. I counted. They didn’t even have all of the tables. A surly orc was swigging espresso shots at the little table by the window.”
Hm. Maybe I wouldn’t talk to Dimitri. Nineteen goblins did seem like it would exceed some maximum-occupancy law somewhere. There were probably dice ricocheting off all the walls by now.
“Why so many goblins so early in the day?” I asked. “I thought you were night people.”
“Last night was the Ratchet Festival, so we were up all night,” he said. “We will nap in the afternoon.”
I almost asked what the Ratchet Festival entailed but was afraid he would tell me.
Gondo pulled two smashed aluminum cans out of the plastic garbage bag I kept in the back of the Jeep and tucked them into his briefcase. I wondered what second life the lemon La Croix cans would have.
He asked Freysha something in the goblin language.
“No.” She made a hand gesture that looked like using a screwdriver.
“Hm.” Gondo tapped a ruler to his chin.
What had he been measuring in the back of my Jeep? I didn’t ask about that either.
“Can you two engineers help me figure out how to trap a half-dwarf thief?” I asked instead.
“Is your dragon mate not capable of such a simple task?” Gondo asked.
“He’s busy. And he doesn’t know I want to trap her.”
“Her? A female dwarf thief?” Gondo’s green ears perked. “Dwarf women are buxom and sturdy and know about tools. They’re most pleasing.”
“Uh huh. This one is from Asia and is half-human. She might not know about tools.”
Instead, she knew about undead minions, which was much less appealing.
“Disappointing,” Gondo said. “I will sketch some trap ideas. Freysha will help.”
“There’s some rope in the back.” I pointed a thumb over my shoulder. “If you haven’t already used it for something.”
“Rope? Our traps will be sublime and sophisticated. We have no need for simple rope.”
“But aluminum cans are okay?”
“Aluminum cans are a fabulous invention unique to this world.” His voice had grown dreamy. “Fabulous.”
I drove through Duvall, continuing past larger mostly wooded properties, and finally turned onto the gravel dead-end street where my mother had rented a cabin. Tall pines and firs filled the yards and provided privacy. The homes were all on acreage, so I understood why my mother had chosen the area, even if I wished it were more conveniently located to the city.
“Do you think she’ll like me?” Freysha whispered as we passed a wooden bear-holding-a-trout mailbox, followed by a mailbox with foxes painted on the side. Maybe Dimitri’s yard art would fit in here.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“I’m the offspring of… the other woman.”
“I think my mom is the other woman.”
“Not from her point of view.”
“You’re making my head hurt.”
I turned onto Mom’s gravel driveway and parked the Jeep, noticing that she’d added a new outbuilding since the last time I’d visited. Between the pottery shed and the wood shed, a wooden cylinder with a door in the end now rested on its side. It looked like a giant whiskey barrel had fallen over.
“What is that thing and why is it a circle?” I wondered.
“The bottom is flat,” Gondo said. “That means it’s an arc, not a circle. The arc is the strongest structural shape.”
Freysha nodded. “In an arc, stress is distributed equally instead of being concentrated at any one point.”
“Thanks for the engineering tips. Maybe Mom got a new storage shed. An unstressed storage shed.” I stepped out of the Jeep.
The door on the strange wooden building opened, and my mother walked out. Naked.
I almost fell over.
She lifted a hand to wave, then realized I hadn’t come alone. She stepped back into the building, wrapped a towel around herself, and came out again.
Rocket barked from inside the cabin, and I spotted golden fur and a nose pressed against a window by the front door.