The designers of Guinness’ Pub used an architectural style that Celeste would call aggressively Irish and proud of it. The front was made up entirely of French windows painted green with gold trim below a red and gold sign. The whole front was festooned with gold, green and white tricolor Irish flags. A set of French doors was open, spilling Celtic Punk music into the street.
“You sure you want me to go in there?” Celeste asked.
“Yeah, kid.” Lucky put a hand on her shoulder. “Of the two of us, I have better senses. I can take him down if he does a runner out the back.”
“What if he tries to go through me?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Are you telling me that you can intimidate a room full of werewolf cops, but one leprechaun makes you antsy?”
“I’ve dealt with werewolves before. Not so much with leprechauns.” Celeste said. “You know where you stand with a werewolf. You may be standing in front of a bunch of teeth, but at least you know it.”
“If you’re going to live in New Orange with the kind of abilities you have, sooner or later you are going to have to deal with people like Seamus,” Lucky said. He’s not as bad as Maxwell, and you handled that fine.”
Celeste rubbed one arm as she looked up the street at the pub. “I’m not sure that I came out on top in that meeting,”
“Time will tell.” Lucky turned her body toward the pub. “Right now, that leprechaun isn’t going to flush himself out.”
“I should be so lucky.” Celeste muttered.
She walked up to the open doors, paused to take a fortifying breath, closed her eyes and pulled the magic up from within just as when she had done the same to intimidate the werewolf cops. When she felt her skin prickle from the magic, she opened her eyes again. With a grim smile she walked into the pub.
The room was long and narrow, only a quarter the size of Lucky’s. Most of it was taken up by a long bar with a little space on the other side to squeeze behind the bar patrons. Tonight, it was full of people, all talking and laughing.
When she stepped into the room, all talk trailed away, leaving only the sounds of heavy guitars and a whisky-throated singer crooning about drunken lullabies.
The patrons turned to stare at her like she was a hero in a western, pushing her way through the swinging doors of a saloon and announcing that she was looking for the man who shot her pa. She held in a slightly-hysterical giggle at the thought. All the while checking the impulse to adopt a bow-legged stance, hands on her hips over imaginary six-shooters.
“My name is Celeste Ingram.” The music might have drowned out her words, but the magic would ensure that everyone heard her. “I work down at Lucky’s, and I’m looking for Seamus.”
The barkeep put his dishrag down. Both hands vanished behind the counter where he probably stored his peacekeeper of choice.
“DON’T” Celeste used the magic to let her words slither through the barkeeper’s ears and down into the lizard brain. He automatically put his hands on the counter.
He glanced once at the end of the bar where Seamus no doubt dropped down to hide while she was outside, in full view of the windows drawing up her magic. “What might you be wanting Seamus for?” He asked.
“Lucky threw Seamus out of his place last night. After that, the whole of the stockroom was tossed. It looked like an earthquake hit it, and we want to know what Seamus knows about that.
Without warning, a little man jumped up on the bar and sprinted directly for her, kicking aside any glasses left in the way.
“You were supposed to run out the back!” Celeste braced for the leprechaun to try and run over her. By now the patrons on her end of the bar were snatching up their drinks and ducking beneath the counter to avoid collateral damage from the impending fight.
Celeste held out her hands, envisioning an invisible wall made of magical power extending floor to ceiling that the leprechaun wouldn’t be able to parkour over. Before Seamus reached her, he held his own hands out and pushed. Celeste felt a second wall impact her own, flipping her end over end until she was on her back like a turtle. Then the leprechaun was out the door.
With a groan, she sat up. “He was supposed to run out the back,” she mumbled.
Just then Lucky put his head in the door. “We got him!”
“Got him?” Celeste blinked up at him in confusion. “How? You were going to wait out back.”
Lucky shrugged. “There was a fifty-fifty shot that he would head out the front. So I waited at the mouth of the alley. I got him with the mojo when he went out the front door and up the sidewalk in front of me.”
“Lucky?” The barkeep glared at the werewolf.
“Yeah?”
He replied by placing a loaded revolver on the counter. Then he crossed his arms. His expression said that he didn’t want to use the peacemaker, but he would if they didn’t comply with his next request.
“Take your help and get out of my place.”
“Fair enough,” Lucky said. He held out a hand to help Celeste up. “Are we looking at another round of bad luck for you?”
Celeste groaned as she got to her feet. “I feel like I just got hit by a truck. That probably was the bad luck.”
He looked skeptical. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll walk back home on the other side of the street.”
“You’re all heart, Lucky.”