I swallowed the drink. I wanted to tell him to go away. But he basically had me pinned down in front of all these eyes.
I had one job to do, and that was to sit here and drink my way through the next hour or so with a smile on my face. I could do that even with the bloodsucking Woodstock dropout over there.
“Four,” I said, tapping the plastic cup. “Too bitter. Too much pulp.”
He straightened and wrote on the card, then flipped it over with his long, almost delicate fingers.
The cup was withdrawn and a new cup was set in its place. I sniffed the frighteningly pink milky liquid, hoping it might be a cocktail, but got a nose full of bitter rhubarb. I stifled a groan.
“Since you have brought up the subject of Ryder Bailey,” he said, “I’d like to know why you hired him.”
The casual tone layered on top of something that sounded like anger stopped me. I looked over at him. “Why I hired him?”
The air around us thickened in that wavy way I knew meant he was exerting his powers. The sounds of the room around us quieted, as if someone had just closed a window between us and the rest of the people in the building.
We would not be overheard. We might not even be remembered, if Rossi was going full out and making people avert their eyes, but since I was a judge and most of the town knew it, I assumed he was just keeping our public conversation private.
“Were you bribed, coerced, threatened?”
“Threatened? By Ryder?”
“Be calm. Take a drink.” His smile was in place but held no warmth. “It’s strawberry rhubarb milk.”
“Why would he threaten me?” I said through teeth clenched in a smile.
“Not what I asked. Not what you need to know. I’d like to knowifyou were threatened.”
I sipped the pink milk. “Seven.” I picked up the glass of water and took a drink, swishing away the thick coating on my tongue. “It’s like a popover in milk form. Kids would like it.”
“Huh.” Rossi dutifully jotted that down, his handwriting small and slanted with curly bits at the top and bottom. “It looks disgusting. What you people enjoy.” He shook his head.
“I wasn’t threatened. Now you’re going to tell me why you think I might have been.”
The next drink was dark and carbonated. I could hear it popping in the cup before I even got my hands on it. Soda of some kind. I swigged down a gulp without sniffing it first or really knowing what it was.
“I do not trust Ryder Bailey.”
It went down wrong, and I choked, sputtered, and coughed against my palm. Every eye in the audience turned to me. Including Dan Perkin, who had gone lava red.
Old Rossi had dropped the dampening barrier around us and patted my back gently.
“Rhubarb root beer,” he informed me.
I could tell. I wasn’t going to get that smell out of my sinuses for days.
I got my coughing fit under control and wiped the tears away from my eyes. “Sorry,” I said to the audience, probably breaking protocol. “User malfunction. The entry is fine, I just forgot how to swallow for a second.”
I raised the glass in a toast and took another sip of bitter, bubbling rhubarb swimming in the caramel-sweet wetness. I suppressed a shudder and nodded and smiled for the crowd.
“One,” I said quietly. “No, let’s do two. It’s terrible. But don’t write that. Um…say something like: robust flavor. And what is your problem with Ryder?”
“I wouldn’t say it’s a problem. I don’t trust him.”
“Why?”
“He’s been out of town on weekends.”
Last time I looked, that wasn’t against the law. “Why are you paying attention to his schedule?”
