Girls Can't Be Knights: (Spirit Knights Book 1) (2 page)

“The world trembles in anticipation.” The mare raised her head and pranced.

Justin noticed a cluster of people with cameras and cellphones pointed at him. Knowing he presented a perfect picture of a knight in shining armor, he waved with a jaunty smile. Tariel’s power stirred up around him, fluttering his long, emerald-green cloak in a breeze and shining a ray of bright light on the pair of them. The effect gave his audience a flash of his green-tinted chainmail and pauldrons while downplaying his work boots and jeans.

“I see a sign for the place,” Tariel said, “so we’ve mysteriously wound up where we meant to go. It’s a miracle.”

Under the scrutiny of onlookers, he refrained from thumping her between the ears for her cheek. “Where I come from, we call that sass, and I get plenty from my wife. You can stuff it.”

“You married her, so I assumed you like it.”

“
You
can be an ass if you want. I’ll pass.”

“Oh, your wit is rapier-sharp today.”

“Funny.” He pulled on the reins to get her to stop in front of the Oregon Historical Society. It sat on a one-way street, across from a strip of green space. Statues and park benches lined a concrete path between trees and strips of grass. “Wait here and don’t cause any trouble.”

“No, of course not. That’s your thing.”

Justin rolled his eyes and hopped down from the saddle. “There isn’t one person in my life who respects me,” he groused as he jogged across the street. “Not even one. Wife, two daughters, horse, boss, in-laws, every single one a smartass or a tyrant.”

Three brickwork steps brought him up to the museum entrance, and he took a deep breath. The glass double doors opened into a wide atrium with regal blue carpet bordered by brick flooring. To the side, a tall, skinny man stood behind the lobby counter that held a cash register, pamphlets, and a poster Justin barely glanced at. He ignored the man and strode deeper into the museum, past a small shop with a wall of bookshelves and displays of knickknacks and jewelry.

“Excuse me,” the man called after him, polite yet stern. “There’s an admission charge for this museum.”

Justin sighed and glanced over his shoulder. Thankfully, the guy hadn’t emerged from his post to follow him. “I’ll just be a minute. My wife thinks she dropped something upstairs.” For good measure, he added a genial wave.

No alarms or sirens went off, and the cashier didn’t chase after him. Justin hurried the rear of the building and noted another exit by the stairs. Kurt had asked him to find a specific hat on the second floor, which meant going up past memorabilia from the 1940s and 50s hanging on the walls. He reached the upper floor and plunged past a display about Native American influence on the Pacific Northwest. Next, he passed through the Lewis and Clark Expedition exhibit, some Roaring Twenties memorabilia, and a World War II section.

The exhibits had been arranged in a loop, putting him at the stairs again. Only then did he stumble across a glass display case of hats, gloves, shoes, purses, and scarves, all from the early half of the twentieth century. With more than two dozen hats to choose from, he frowned. At least the display helpfully included descriptions. Kurt had said it would be a “ladies’ hat with the indelible stamp of post-war Portland.” When pressed for more information, he’d shrugged and shooed Justin out to go get it done.

Movement in his peripheral vision made him turn to look. A mother with two young boys edged her sons around him without bothering to check the display. He got that reaction a lot. Some people wanted to touch his armor, some asked for his picture, and some treated him like a plague carrier. Ignoring them, he ran his gloved fingers over the board, reading the dates and descriptions.

Two hats fit his instructions—the rest claimed to be men’s hats or from the 30s or earlier. He had to choose between a rounded white hat with a white silk scarf tied around it in a bow, and a pink, wide-brimmed floral hat. The white one had a heart design in the weave of the scarf, and a description of “woman’s dinner hat.” Cheerful silk roses and beads festooned the other hat, offering so much more flair than its description of “woman’s picture hat” suggested.

Eyes flicking from one to the other, he shrugged. “Portland
is
the city of roses,” he muttered. Having made a choice, he knocked a fist on the glass to test its strength. They’d chosen a sturdy, reliable pane, probably safety glass to avoid damaging the pieces within. He gripped the hilt of the sword hanging from his belt and scanned the entire case to pick the best place to cut it open.

In the upper corner of the side panel, he noticed a square black plastic piece and pushed on it. The magnet inside it released, letting him swing the panel open. He smiled, pleased he wouldn’t have to destroy anything. With luck, no one would even realize he’d taken the hat before he returned it.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Justin had managed to get partway into the case and stretch his arm out to touch the hat before the voice interrupted him. It belonged to a gentleman in a suit with a patch identifying him as private security.

“Nothing.” Justin snatched the hat and ducked away just in time to avoid the guard’s attempt to grab him. As expected, when the guard snatched at his cloak, the man’s fingers slid over it without finding any purchase. Running down the stairs, Justin heard the guard reporting a theft on his radio. Just what he needed.

Tucking the hat under his cloak, he hurried out the side door and sprinted through the plaza beside the building, then vaulted over the low iron fence separating it from the wheelchair ramp. He hoped it would take the cops at least a few minutes to respond to a report of a weirdo taking an antique hat.

Chapter 3

Claire

A strange noise made Claire look up through tears she hadn’t been able to prevent. She saw a white horse standing in the sunshine, light forming a halo around the mare and hooves glinting silver. The horse held a cat in its teeth and flung it away, then huffed and nodded her head at Claire, giving the bizarre impression she had done that to help. Swiping her arm across her eyes to dry them, Claire swore as she remembered she’d been wearing makeup. The long sleeve of her tie-dyed shirt, already streaked with blood from her scrapes, now had smears of black eyeliner and purple eye shadow across the white and blue pattern. Her face would be even worse.

The horse danced in place and whickered at her, then lifted a leg and struck a majestic pose, her blue eyes rolling upward and back down at her. Drawn by the movement, she noticed the statue on the block of stone the horse stood in front of. Some guy on a horse had been set up there, and this real horse had taken the exact pose of the statue. She stared in disbelief for a second, then had to laugh at the absurdity.

“Showboat,” chided a male voice behind her. “Come on, let’s go.”

Claire turned to see the owner of the voice and had no idea what to make of him. The man, well built and muscular, jogged toward them in green-tinted chainmail with green steel pauldrons over jeans and work boots, an emerald-green cloak streaming out behind him, and a sword strapped to his waist. Her father had dressed like that sometimes—exactly like that. This guy might have known him, or might know his friends.

In direct contrast with his tall, dark, and handsome knightly figure, he carried a pink, old-fashioned ladies’ hat with fake flowers and a wide brim. From the way he handled it, she guessed it must be important or expensive. Claire had no idea what to make of that, as the hat also didn’t look new. When she glanced behind him, the sign for the building he’d just come from read
Oregon Historical Society
.

The man shook his head with a roll of his eyes for the horse, and beckoned the mare toward him. “Don’t be a pain, we need to get out of here. They didn’t exactly
want
me to have it.”

Stamping a hoof, the horse snorted and nodded at Claire.

Turning, the man peered at her, making her blush. He gave the horse a sidelong glance, and the mare nodded again, as if to say she wouldn’t cooperate unless he did something. With a shrug, the man smiled at Claire. “Hey. You look like you’re having a rough day, and are probably tired. Can we give you a lift someplace?”

She opened her mouth to tell him to go away, but only managed to croak out an unintelligible noise. After coughing to clear her throat, she heard the wail of a police siren in the distance and gulped. “Um, sure.”

He offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet. “I’m Justin.”

“Claire.”

“You ever ride a horse before, Claire?”

Her attention shifted to the magnificent beast as he patted the mare on the neck. She gulped again. “Yes, but it’s been a while.”

“I’ll climb up first. You put your foot on mine, give me your hand, and jump up. I’ll pull. You’ll sit in front of me. Okay?” His voice came out gentle and pleasant, and she wondered if he had any idea how much she missed having someone, anyone, talk to her like that. Everyone else who was “nice” to her did it out of pity, but she could tell Justin’s offer came from something else. Sympathy, maybe, or just a sense of decency. It made her eyes sting again.

Nodding, she wiped her face and followed his instructions. His strength proved more than enough to get her into the saddle in front of him. Sitting on this strange man’s lap felt creepy, and even more so when he handed her the hat and put his arms around her to manage the horse’s reins. Somehow, though, he gave her the same sense of security and warmth that her father always had.

“Hold onto her mane if you need to,” his voice rumbled in her ear. He turned as the sirens screamed closer, muttered, “Crap,” and snapped the reins.

She clutched the hat to her chest and grabbed a handful of white horse hair as the beast lunged into action. The mare’s hooves clanged on the concrete and they dashed past a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Leaning back to look behind them earned her a nudge.

“Move with us, not against us,” Justin warned, his mouth close to her ear. “Yes, there’s cops chasing us. It’s not a big deal.”

Claire wanted to ask if he’d stolen the hat, but she already knew the answer. He seemed so nice, then he had to go and be a criminal. A thief and a truant rode a horse up Park Avenue—it sounded like the start to a bad joke. They turned and left the green strip behind, galloping up a city street. The horse dodged cars and pedestrians alike as it danced between asphalt and sidewalk. People stared and pointed. A few fumbled for their phones to take pictures or video.

Several blocks later, the sirens had faded into the distance, unable to follow them through traffic. “Where do you live?” His voice startled her after he’d been silent for so long, obviously concentrating on their escape.

“Oh, uh.” If she told him, he’d deposit her there. The cops would come and pick her up. She’d get an earful from Brad, her social worker, and then he’d spend the rest of the evening trying to persuade the foster parents at her current group home to give her a second chance. Either she’d spend the night in a holding cell because they had nowhere else to put her, or she’d go back there. Both choices sucked. “Nowhere.”

“Nowhere? Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

“Huh. Okay. Hm.” He hauled on the reins to get the horse to turn down a pedestrian walkway and they sped up. “I don’t believe in coincidences, so you can come home with me tonight.”

She flushed, wondering if he’d tricked her with the fatherly demeanor. “Um, I…can’t, uh, pay you or anything.”

Justin chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. If we ever let a lack of money stop us, we’d be dead already. Tariel, take us home.”

The strange word confused her until she realized it must be the horse’s name. Her father’s horse had had a strange name too: Kupiri. This mare, though, looked nothing like his stallion. That huge brute had been chestnut-brown with shiny black hooves and eyes. Still, so many similarities made her ask, “Did you know Mark Terdan?”

The horse’s ears flicked back.

“Name sounds familiar, sure.”

He’d said he didn’t believe in coincidences, and she had a feeling she shouldn’t, either. At the moment when she’d needed someone to come and rescue her, a knight appeared and did it. If her father were alive, he would have done the same thing. In fact, she could picture him bringing a stray teenager home for dinner and offering her a place to sleep.

The horse taking a freeway on-ramp surprised her. They galloped up Interstate 205, staying in the breakdown lane on the right side. Tariel sped up enough that Claire screwed her eyes shut and cringed away from the wind. Justin curled an arm around her and held her close. Something cut the wind down, and she cracked an eye open to see he’d pulled his cloak around to cover her. It filled the small space with the scent of vanilla and something woody, like cedar. Looking down, she could see the road speed past, and she wondered how fast they were going. Justin hadn’t ducked under the cloak with her, and she wondered how he managed to avoid getting bugs in his eyes and mouth.

The cloak flapped up, showing her they’d reached the I-205 bridge. Sunshine flashed on the water as they kept going. This ride felt ridiculous, magical, insane. Not two hours ago, she’d sat in the school cafeteria by herself, ignoring the stares from Brian, his buddies, and the pack of girls who fawned all over them. If they could see her now…they’d probably still find a way to be jerks.

At least she didn’t have to go to school tomorrow. Maybe, if Justin and whoever he lived with were nice, she could talk them into letting her stay until Friday morning. A wild hope bloomed in her chest as she thought of being able to find a permanent home. No more group homes, no more three month stays with a couple or family who had no idea what to do with her, no more social workers. The shrink visits would probably continue, but they never bothered her much. Spending an hour talking and thinking about herself was fine.

She watched the water give way to land, then water again, then back to land. Tariel took them off the freeway three exits into Vancouver, Washington, and Justin pulled the cloak off Claire. The last time she’d been here, her father had to stop for gas on the way home from a family visit to Mount St. Helens. It looked about the same as Portland, as far as she could see. They trotted down city streets, heading east. The horse seemed to know where to go, and Justin didn’t steer so much as hold on.