“Ha!” he laughed.
“What if I’m standing on one side of the door and I don’t want it unlocked?”
“You’ll attach this to your key chain. If your key chain isn’t in your hand, the door stays locked. If the key chain is in your hand, just hold this.” He pointed at a button on the white square. “It’s an override.” He pressed it and locks engaged with a weird electric hotel-door sound.
“To unlock the door, just press again.” He did so, and the locks swished and chittered. “You can tell that it’s locked by this little blue light. Open when it turns green.” He flicked between the two settings, making sure I was paying attention. “That’s it.”
“I’m going to have to unlock it every time someone comes over,” I grumped.
“The terrible inconvenience of living safely in the modern world. How you suffer,” Jean said around a mouthful. “Does the lock have any special settings for our extraordinary citizens?”
Brown nodded. “I put in a few indicators, yes. If it’s a god out there, you’ll see this light flash yellow. Human won’t make any lights go off, and since it’s impossible to find something that is common among all our other kinds, I set it to flash red if something on the other side of the door is anything but human or god.”
“Red supernatural, yellow gods, green open, blue locked, square white, pest brown. Got it.”
He flashed me a smile. “I also set up some cameras.”
“Please say you’re joking.”
“I am absolutely not joking. You can access the cameras on your phone, or it can pop on your TV like…so.” I hadn’t noticed he had stolen the remote from the side table and deposited it in his pocket until he pointed it at the small flat screen.
A split image of all four sides of my house appeared on the screen. Nothing out there right now but bushes and grass, shadow and sunlight.
“Think of the beach chickens,” I said.
Jean snorted.
“What?” Myra asked.
“This is a little overkill, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “It is exactly the right amount of overkill. You’re the police chief. You should have good security. And now you do.”
“This feed doesn’t go anywhere else does it?” I could just imagine Myra ordering Brown to send the camera feed to her phone, her house, and the station so she could Mom-eye me 24/7.
“We could do that,” he said. “What a great idea!”
“No!” I said, before Myra could open her big mouth. “This is enough. More than. What do I owe you?”
“Taken care of,” Myra said.
“It is. So.” Brown laced his fingers together in front of him I noticed a thin bracelet on his left wrist. Crocheted out of copper wire and red thread and soft orange beads. Both delicate and strong, it was eye-catching in its simplicity. I wondered where he’d gotten it. “Are you going to tell me why your sisters suddenly went all Fort Knox on your house?”
“It’s not all that sudden.” Myra moved around to sit in one of the chairs. “We’ve been on her about this since she was twelve. She’s never been a door-locker.”
“Is it because of Ben?” he asked. “The attack? I heard about it. Was it a vampire?”
“Yes,” I said. “And yes.” I gave up hoping he’d leave since his toolbox was still open and propped against the wall.
The unusually serious look in his eyes caught me by surprise.
“I felt him enter Ordinary. The vampire.” He nodded toward me, toward my neck and the twin black circles that were the only visible reminder of the bite, the attack. It was hidden under the collar of my shirt, but the elf knew it was there.
“How?” Jean asked.
He shrugged.
“Are you blushing?” she crowed. “I’ve never seen you blush before. Wow, the tops of your ears get really red.”
