“Monster Slayer: He keeps you safe! He lets you watch! Wednesday nights on the Adventure Channel!”
—Monster Slayer television promo
THE LUCKY, SANDY-BLOND-HAIRED FELLOW now sought after by two separate groups of immortals resided in the college town of Bellingham, Washington, about twenty miles south of the Canadian border.
Despite Apollo’s visions, Leif Karlson had never been to Paris. He did, however, spend an inordinate amount of his free time in cafés. It had little to do with coffee. Leif liked coffee just fine, but he wasn’t a snob about it. What he liked more was the excuse to get out of his apartment ever since he lost his job. Though he made an effort to try a new café every once in a while, the Sacred Grounds Café topped a small list of favorites based on two factors. The first factor—free Wi-Fi— Sacred Grounds satisfied in epic proportions. The other was atmosphere.
It had occurred to Leif that anything worth thinking about was worth categorizing, and so he’d decided that atmosphere was a combination of the lighting, the attractiveness of the baristas, and the number of patrons in the place at any given time. As such, Sacred Grounds was also at the top of his list. The lighting was perfect (not too bright, not too dark, the perfect level of warmth); the baristas were top-notch (primarily female, primarily cute, and, also primarily, appearing to be just over twenty years old—so the twenty-six-year-old Leif could flirt with them without feeling creepy); and the number of patrons was usually just enough to give the place life without making it too loud.
Usually. Today was not one of those days.
He stood at the end of the bar, waiting for his drink order to make its way through a mass of people and wondering just what the heck was going on. Initially he counted himself lucky to get a table at all, though after placing his order, it was apparent that there were other empty tables as well. The sea of people hanging about, most of them women, centered mainly around a table in the corner and seemed more interested in getting a glimpse of whoever sat there than finding a spot of their own. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the stragglers from crowding the bar with drink orders to pass the time.
A celebrity of some sort? Maybe even one of the so-called “gods”? It was impossible to ignore the chatter of the women nearby.
“Can you believe he’s here?”
“I know! I hear he just got back from filming a show in the mountains. He’s even cuter in person.”
“Ohmigod, did you see the episode where the monster just ripped his shirt right off? I nearly lost it then and there. So hot!”
“So very hot! I hear he’s a son of one of the gods too. You know, like Herculor or whatever!”
“Really?”
“That’s the rumor.”
“Mm, Herculor. I’ve got to find something for him to sign!”
“Oh, I’ve got something he can sign, honey.”
Both women exploded with laughter. Leif tried his best to get away from them before he threw up.
So apparently it was a celebrity, and likely that guy from TV who made a show out of slaying the monsters that had shown up soon after the “gods”. Jason . . . Jason something. He couldn’t recall. But so what if he was a celebrity? It’s not like the guy would have anything to say to Leif. Maybe Jason Whatshisfinger would leave soon and give everyone else some peace. Leif was just thankful he’d managed to get a table.
The call from the barista came, finally. “Tall mocha on the bar for Leif!”
He reached for it only to be intercepted by the woman waiting beside him who snatched the cup first and glared as if he’d just stuffed a dead rabbit down her shirt. “Excuse me!”
“Excuse you? That’s mine, sorry.”
She gaped. “Is your name Lisa?”
“Leif.”
“Exactly!”
The barista—a young blonde woman named Jen who reminded Leif of the cheerleader who repeatedly shot him down in high school—was focused on making the next order in an ever-growing queue and wasn’t paying either of them a lick of attention.
“She said ‘Leif,’ actually,” Leif tried again, reaching for his drink.
“Rude! Wait for your own latté!”
Annoyance clashed with amazement at the scope of the woman’s mistake. All Leif could get out at first was, “That’s not a—”
“Ugh!” She spat out the first sip and slammed Leif’s mocha down, sloshing the contents across the counter before hurling her outburst at the barista.
“There’s chocolate in this!”
“What the hell, lady? That’s not your—”
The woman ignored him completely. “Hey! You put chocolate in my latté, you stupid—”
The barista spared her a hurried glance. “That’s not your latté; that’s his mocha. Please be patient.” Though harried, she flashed Leif one of her customary smiles that he always assumed resulted from large tips. “I’ll remake yours in a sec.”
Before he could respond with more than a smile of his own, the latté princess came back with a, “No! You don’t understand. That latté is for Jason Powers! Don’t you know who that is? Now make it right! Now!”
Jen put some milk under the steamer. “Who’s that? And if it’s for him, why’d you take a drink?”
“You know damn well who he is! Now make my latté before he leaves!”
Jen grinned at him. “I thought she said it was Jason Powers’s latté?”
“She did say—”
The woman smacked her hand on the bar. “Listen, you little slut—”
“Hey!” Jen and Leif both shouted at once. Jen whirled on her and kept going before Leif could find the words. “I called his name; you drank his damn mocha! For crying out loud, lady, you were in line behind him! Shut up, be patient, and try not to be such a virulent bitch!”
“. . . Yeah!” Leif added to what he hoped was great effect.
The entire bar line was staring now, all focused on the crazed woman. It took a few moments under Jen’s glare for her to regain her wits. “Fine! See if I ever come back here again!” For a second it appeared she might manage more until she turned and stormed off.
The remains of Leif’s mocha went with her.
“Hey!”
Jen turned back to the espresso machine. “That felt good.”
Leif pointed after her. “She—the nutbar took my mocha!”
“Go ahead and sit down.” She drew a breath. “I’ll have someone bring yours out to you.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks,” he answered. Why was he feeling stupid now? He wasn’t the one who took the wrong damn drink. “I was just about to tell her off, myself, you know.” He turned to go as she nodded, then stopped. “Jason Powers is here?”
“And about five hundred more fans like her, I’d guess. Fun, huh?”
“Frigging insane.” At least he could get away from the crowded bar. He returned to the table he’d staked out, sat down, and powered up his laptop. “Leif, Lisa,” he grumbled to himself. “How the heck do those names sound at all the same?” It infuriated him more the longer he thought about it.
The laptop was taking its sweet time to boot up. He turned to the dark-haired woman occupying the table beside him whom he might have found attractive were he in any mood to care. “Geez, it’s nuts in here today, huh?”
She looked up from the smartphone she’d been tapping on and smiled behind her glasses. “Jason Powers is here.”
“Heh. You knew, then.” Great, another one. He’d just wanted a nodding grunt from her that would kill a bit of time until his laptop was ready. He hadn’t really intended to start a conversation. “I didn’t take you for a fan, all the way over here.”
“I’m not. A fan, rather.”
“Oh, whew! Yeah, you look too smart for that.” Thank goodness! “Bunch of fan-girls running around here, crowding up the place and acting vacant over nothing. Show’s all fake anyway.”
The woman’s smile at his first comment melted away at his second. “What’s fake about it? He makes the journey out to where the monsters live and fights them without any help. It’s not staged, if that’s what you think. That’s why people like it.”
“Oh, come on. He just goes out there and kills stuff. What’s the big deal? It’s a glorified fishing show, for crying out loud. Just because he’s attractive and muscular—” He flung an arm toward the scene of his bar altercation. “I mean, did you see the kind of idiot it attracts? Lowest common denominator!”
The woman frowned and set down her muffin. “Jason Powers risks his life and protects his crew every time he goes out there! It’s real, it’s exciting, and that ‘lowest common denominator’ is what makes a show successful!”
“Yeah, right.” Leif didn’t bother hiding an eye roll. “Probably scouts the whole place by helicopter and dopes down the monsters before fighting them, just like that one wilderness-guy who they caught sleeping in hotels that were ‘rainforest-adjacent.’ Even if it is real, it just makes him an idiot risking his life.”
She snorted. “If that makes you feel better about yourself.”
“What? It’s just a mindless reality show! What next, Busy Highway Jaywalker? How about something original, with plot and writing and—”
“Wait, bona fide monsters show up in the world, ravaging the countryside, and you don’t think that’s interesting? How jaded are you?”
“Fiction has imagination; reality’s just boring. If you’re not a fan, why’re you defending it?”
The woman smirked then handed him a business card from her wallet. “Tracy Wallace, field producer for Monster Slayer.”
“Ah, so you’re glad dangerous monsters are running around.”
She had the nerve to roll her eyes. “No, that’s why we hunt them. ‘Terrifying’ and ‘interesting’ aren’t mutually exclusive. We provide a valuable service and entertain people at the same time.”
Leif shook his head, put her card facedown on the table, and turned back to his laptop. It had finished booting. Conversation over.
“Right. Whatever. Thanks for filling my café with brainless meatbags.”
“My pleasure. You have yourself a fantastic day, sir. Be sure to catch Monster Slayer Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on the Adventure Channel.”
Leif grunted and assumed it counted as the last word. It was a good, decisive grunt, with just the right amount of contempt. The woman gave no response, focused instead on texting someone. Good.
Why did he talk to her, anyway?
Leif happily went on with the business of ignoring her—or tried to. He logged on to the online poker Web site, where he had recently discovered he could make a fairly decent living, and promptly lost three straight hands. So apparently he didn’t play well when cranky. Or distracted. Cards floated before him, but all he could think of were things he could’ve said to the fan at the bar or the producer beside him. That none of the comebacks were very good—or at least not good enough to bother with—only rankled him further.
Distracted, distracted, distracted. It was like the day that weird old man at the table beside him whistled the same tuneless pattern over and over until Leif finally had to flee the café to get it out of his head. He considered changing tables away from the woman, though he wasn’t sure it would help even if there were a table to change to.
He lost a fourth hand and then a fifth, which led him to flick Tracy Wallace’s card off the table with a single finger thrust. That she utterly failed to react didn’t help his mood.
It was then that the sound of squawking from across the café caught his attention. Jason Powers was leaving. The commotion caught Tracy’s attention too. Or maybe it was that the tall, chiseled, muscular hero-type waved to her and called her name. Probably it was that. Still texting, she stood and acknowledged Powers with a wave of her hand that had the entire group of fan-girls staring daggers at her. She rushed off, heading for the exit with Powers and his harem in tow.
Leif breathed a sigh of relief and was immediately dealt three of a kind. Clearly Tracy Wallace was cursed.
She wasn’t gone more than a minute before he noticed that she’d left her wallet behind. Leif glanced toward the door, expecting her to return for it, yet there was no sign of her. He grabbed the wallet, half standing to try to catch her before he stopped and sat back down. Why should he bother? If she was so damn smart and successful, let her come back for it herself. He tucked it inside his laptop case for safe-keeping.
After all, he wasn’t a thief. His father had instilled “Thou shalt not steal!” pretty deeply into his head a long time ago, so he supposed he was just taking it to keep anyone else from stealing it. Or something. He was going to turn it in to the barista when he left, but five winning hands later, he completely forgot about it.
The two Muses sitting three tables away, however, did not.