Nolan stopped laughing and looked at me. Edward laughed harder. The other men with me managed to look solemn. Nicky said, “It was him or us.”
Edward laughed so hard, he was starting to cry as Nolan said, “Where’s Flannery?”
It would have been even funnier if Flannery hadn’t cleared the corner behind us just then. Nolan scowled at all of us. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Yeah, it was,” I said.
Edward just nodded, laughing so hard, he had to lean against the car. The other men held out until Flannery came up and said, “What’s so funny?” Then we all lost it.
51
WHEN EDWARD HAD finished laughing his ass off, he came over and hugged me, which he almost never did. He even apologized for laughing at me, which he did even less often. During all the unheard-of hugging and apologizing he managed to whisper, “Local informant wants to talk.”
I pulled back as if everything was normal and said, “So, where is this amazing Irish food?”
He grinned, very Ted, and said, “Pub.”
I gave him a look, suspecting this was the Irish version of his cowboy act. Pubs and drinking, very Irish, right? God, I hoped not, because as a teetotaler, I’d learned years ago that people are far less interesting drunk than they think they are, and they don’t have nearly as good a time as they remember. I drank occasionally for Jean-Claude, because he could taste solid food, wine, and liquor through me. It was one of the common benefits of having a human servant: You could taste food that you hadn’t tasted in centuries. I’d never be the wine snob that he was, but I was learning to appreciate a few vintages.
The pub was full of dark wood just like the last one, but this one had more tables placed closer together so it was more like those back home. It seemed the owner of the place planned on making money from all the crowded tables. It was so crowded in fact that if Jake and Kaazim hadn’t already been there holding tables in the corner, we’d have never gotten seats together and maybe not at all.
Normally I wouldn’t have liked the level of noise and crowd, but today it was a nice change from the strangely empty pub where Flannery had taken us. This one felt like a real business; the other one had felt like a front where you did things that didn’t really have to do with drinking or food.
There is always that moment when you have police officers or combat vets when no one wants to sit with his back to the door, but there’s usually no way to avoid it for a large party. Jake and Kaazim had gotten there first, so they had seats with a good view of the room and a solid wall at their backs. I expected them to offer me a seat beside them—I was queen and all, or was going to be—but Jake stood up and did the air-kiss thing as a greeting, which he’d never, ever done, but he used it to whisper, “You need to sit where you can get up easily.”
I was already tired of the whole clandestine thing, but I nodded, smiled and went along with it. I ended up sitting at the end of the table with my back to part of the room, but at least I could see the main door from the corner of my eye, and the bar with the door to the kitchen area was straight in front of me. Nathaniel sat by me, but at the corner of the table so his back was to the main door. He was used to sitting that way most of the time when we went out with enough of the guards. Damian was tucked under the table at our feet again. Dev didn’t fight that his back was to the door here any more than he had at the last pub, because he could hold Nathaniel’s hand. But he looked at the mirror above our table and I realized he could see the whole room in it, including the door. I tried to remember if there had been a mirror in the last place, but if there’d been one, it had been too small for me to notice. Ethan drew the short straw and had to sit beside Dev, but he was using the mirror, too. Really, there were no terrible seats here. Jake and Kaazim had done well. Edward sat beside Kaazim so he’d be closer to our conversation, with Nicky and Domino beside him. Nolan and Flannery were actually on the other end, opposite me. I thought at first their seats were bad because they had their backs to the bar and kitchen entrance, but there was another large mirror on the wall in front of them. Either through reflections or direct line of sight, we all had pretty good seats.
The waitress got our drink orders. I asked for a Coke and a glass of water, because apparently hydration helped with jet lag, so part of my problem was I hadn’t had enough water, or so Edward told me. At Nolan’s suggestion, most of us ordered the Guinness beef stew. Most of the men ordered either Guinness to go with the stew or another local beer or ale. Nathaniel was the only one who got just water; even Edward indulged in a local stout that Flannery recommended.
The waitress set a couple small, useless napkins down in front of me before she set my water on one, but she hesitated before putting the Coke on the other napkin, and I realized there was writing on the napkin. In neat block letters, the message read, “Ladies’ room, five minutes.”
I fought not to look up at the waitress in any way that wasn’t perfectly normal. She had medium brown hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, dark brown eyes, and a pale face, so either she needed just a little makeup or she was pale for other reasons. Was she going to be meeting me in the bathroom? Was she the informant? Was she scared? Was that why she was pale?
Nathaniel and Dev both noticed the napkin. Jake probably did, too, but he didn’t show it. I tried to act as normal as Jake and Kaazim, but I knew I failed. I wasn’t sure I was even as smooth as Nathaniel. Dev was strangely good at it, too.