Light flickered at the end of the hall, and the one bulb went out, casting a small pocket of shadow. Silvery reflections whispered through those shadows, and for just a moment, it looked like a hand was beckoning me. I blinked, and the light was on as if it were never off and there were no silvery reflections.
“Okay.” I blinked again but the light remained on. “Feish, did you see the light go out?”
She turned and tapped me on the head. “Your eyes getting old? The light never went out.”
I pursed my lips. “Robert? Did you see that?”
“Ghost,” he muttered at my side. Well, good, at least I wasn’t losing it.
I found my feet wanting to go toward the spot that had called to me.
No. I had to find that goblin and get us another job.
But how?
I knew from Gran’s book that his kind had exceptional hearing. Beyond that, I didn’t have much of a plan.
“Goblin!” I yelled into the hallway, making Feish and even Robert jump. “We hear you need help?”
A door at the far end of the hallway creaked open, right under where the light had gone out in no small coincidence, and a creature with a tiny face and oversized bat ears peered out of a room. “Who you be?”
“Breena O’Rylee,” I said. “Celia’s granddaughter. Do you need our help?”
He made a flapping motion with his hands, hurrying us forward. Rather than run—no thanks after those stairs—I picked up a quick pace that had me at the end of the hall in no time. Feish kept up easily, and Robert, as usual, trailed behind.
Up close, the goblin’s skin was a deep brown speckled with lighter brown spots, like a natural camouflage. Out in the bush, he’d be hard to spot. Which begged the question, why the hell was he hiding in the city? He stood out like a sore thumb. I narrowed my eyes and tried to see him as a human would. A petite man, barely five feet tall with flawless dark brown skin and big dark eyes stared back at me, the softness to his features making him downright pretty. That was the fae for you—vanity was the name of the game.
Even his disguise would stand out in a crowd.
“You really her?” he whispered.
“Jinx said you were looking for help. That’s what we do. We help people,” I said.
“For money.”
I spread my hands wide. “I’m not a charity. And to be clear, you asked for my help, didn’t you?”
He blinked. “Don’t you want to help people just for the sake of it? Like your gran would?”
I smiled and leaned in close. “No.”
Now that wasn’t entirely true, but I wasn’t about to offer up our services for free. That was how you got taken advantage of. And I had no doubt this little goblin had money for payment. They were known hoarders of coin.
“Should I leave?” I asked.
“I could wait for the Hollows to help me. They would help for . . .” The goblin kept his voice low, so as not to attract attention, but he still hadn’t invited us into his room. “Well, not free, but not a lot. They be cheap.”
I wasn’t sure about cheap, but I wondered if they’d be willing or even able to help him.
“You could.” Feish tapped her chin. “But we would tell them you turned down help from Breena, and then they would say you’re a waste of time. You have a little problem.” She pinched two webbed fingers together, and my juvenile mind thought for a minute she was referencing something other than his current problem. “Nothing important enough for the Hollows to deal with, in my opinion.”
The goblin grumbled a series of curse words under his breath and opened the door to invite us in. As soon as I stepped over the threshold, I was assaulted by a smell that was nothing short of the worst locker room smell I’d ever encountered. As if the stink had been roasting in the heat for a few weeks.
“Bums and feet,” I muttered, not sure if I should plug my nose and risk tasting the smell on the back of my tongue. The thought made me gag, and it took all my fortitude to shake off the urge.
“This is awful,” Feish mumbled, her hand over her fish lips. I didn’t blame her, not one bit.
The goblin didn’t even notice us gagging on his stench. “Look, I have a family heirloom and someone is trying to steal it.” He dug around in a pile of dirty clothes to pull out a packet of pages. Written on something far thicker than modern paper, more like what I would think papyrus would feel like. I ran my fingers over it, the pages almost greasy under my touch. “It’s a family tree of sorts that establishes my lineage and the timeline of when my family settled in these parts. All in Goblinese so don’t bother trying to read it. I don’t want to lose my land, and these give me rights.”
He held up the pages, bound with a couple of thick elastics, to his chest for a moment, then tucked them into a yellow manila envelope, then finally laid them on top of what might have been a table. It was hard to tell for sure, what with all the wrappers and containers from fast food joints that covered it. I saw some green moldy bits in more than one container, which partially explained the stench. Was he trying to stink out any possible intruders? I couldn’t keep my nose from wrinkling.
“So you want us to find the person who wants to steal these pages of yours?” I asked, working to speak around the heavy smells in the room. Gawd in heaven, this was bad. I was suddenly wishing I hadn’t eaten those greasy hush puppies. My stomach rolled, threatening to revolt at the mere thought of grease.
I had to work to keep it all in and focus on him at the same time.
He shook his head, bat ears flapping. “No. I want you to hide them for me. Then guard them. I don’t know why they want them—I just know they can’t have them. Okay?” He clasped his hands together over and over, flexing overly long fingers that reminded me of Jinx’s hairy legs, minus the hair. I could easily imagine his joints bending backward. I shook off the thought as it was so not helping me in the stomach-clenching department.
“Okay, so we hide the family lineage. Keep an eye on them, and then what?”
“That’s it. Keep them safe,” he whispered. “Three more days of keeping them safe, then that’s it.”
“Three days? That’s it? What happens in three days?” I asked, but as I finished speaking, I got a very sudden weird vibe. I did a slow turn and lowered my voice. “Someone is at the door.”
I could almost feel an energy outside there, one that was way too dark even for a ghost, and I had the sudden thought that the entity from the Sorrel-Weed house had somehow followed us here. Of course, that wasn’t the case, but it was my knee-jerk reaction.
The goblin shoved the yellow envelope into my hands and pushed me toward the back of the room. “Go out the window. Down the fire escape,” he whispered. “Hurry! Three days, keep them safe for three days.”
A thump against the door rattled the entire frame. “Grimm!” The booming voice shocked the shit out of me. I stuffed the envelope under my shirt and wrenched the window open. I shoved Feish and Robert out first, then turned and faced Grimm.
“Sign something that I’ll get paid. Now. Or I’ll leave the whole package here for you and your friends.” I reached for the table and grabbed a napkin that was only slightly smeared with food. I dug in my bag for a pen as someone hammered on the door.