by D. N. Hoxa
“Naomi got Collins’s phone records, and he’s made regular, almost daily calls to numbers registered to ogres. We also have an address to start.”
“Wait, we’re actually going to see the ogres?”
“Buckle up,” Dumont said.
“Are you insane? They’ll kill us if we step into their territory uninvited.”
Everybody knew this. Ogres mostly lived isolated from the rest of the world because they liked it that way. They grew their own food and ate more fish than bears, so that’s why the ogres of Virginia lived close to lakes. In Richmond, they lived on Lake Danza, near Overton. They owned the lake and a lot of the land around it. Also, if you stepped into their territory intentionally without an explicit invitation from one of them, they killed you. No questions asked. People had died horrible deaths that way, and some young fools who’d once tried to do a prank on some ogres had lost their lives at the age of seventeen. That’s what stupid will do to you, and I wasn’t stupid.
“You don’t need an invitation this time. You’re with me,” said Dumont, showing me his purple ring.
Right. He was MM. How could I forget?
“They won’t be obligated to answer your questions,” Logan said. “Ogres have their own laws.”
And how would he know that? He sounded so sure. After finding out that his father had been human, I realized exactly how little I knew about him.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Dumont asked. So it was true.
“Christopher Ford,” Logan said without missing a beat. I agreed with him wholeheartedly on that. If Ford answered our questions, he’d make all of this a hell of a lot easier for us.
“Not possible. He won’t speak to us again, and we can’t make him,” Dumont said.
“But you can’t make ogres tell you anything, either,” Logan reminded him.
“And that’s assuming that they know something.” How would they, when they lived completely isolated from the rest of the world? You rarely saw ogres in the street because very few of them left their communities to live with the rest of the world.
“Like I said, if you have any better ideas than Christopher Ford, I’m all ears.” Dumont sounded exhausted.
I looked at Logan, but he shook his head. We were all out of better ideas.
Dumont didn’t need confirmation. He simply drove us to the ogres of Lake Danza.
20
I was afraid. Also a bit excited but mostly afraid. I could probably take an ogre in a one-on-one, maybe even two, but more? I wasn’t that confident in my abilities. They were big and they were strong, and their strength was in rocks. That’s gotta tell you something. It didn’t help that their skins were very resistant to magic. A normal spell that could knock out a normal magian would feel like nothing more but an itch to an ogre.
“Are you sure they’ll let you in?” I asked Dumont for the tenth time in the past hour alone. It had taken two hours to get here from the graveyard, and I still hadn’t been able to even imagine what it would be like in there.
Lake Danza was at our right, shaped like a huge heart, and the bottom of it was hidden by lots of dense trees surrounding the two large, wooden gates at the end of the private driveway.
“I’m sure. I’m very sure. This is my job, damn it,” Dumont said as he parked the car. I’d gotten on my own nerves, so I wasn’t surprised that he was pissed off.
His phone rang before we made it out of the car. My heart jumped as he grabbed his phone and looked at the screen. Maybe Naomi had more updates for us.
But Dumont flinched. “This is personal,” he said.
“Oh.” So not Naomi.
“Do you mind?” Dumont said, showing me his ringing phone.
“Oh!” He wanted some privacy. Of course he did. It was a private phone call. I swear my brain wasn’t working right.
Logan and I got out of the car and gave Dumont some space.
The air smelled weird, like fish and rotten eggs, but not as intense. The view of the lake was beautiful, but I was too focused on what was behind those gates to appreciate it. Someone would come out of them any second now. They probably already knew we were here.
“Are you okay?” Logan asked, looking at me like he was trying to catch me lying.
“Of course. I’m fine.” Other than my dirty clothes, I was okay. The black blood of the dogs had dried, but it still looked disgusting. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any spare clothes with me when I decided to turn myself in to the MM.
“I should have come with you,” Logan said, looking down at my white sneakers, which were covered with specks of the black blood.
“It’s fine. We had no way of knowing,” I said. “And I handled it fine.” With Dumont, of course.
“You could have been killed,” Logan continued. It was like he was talking more to himself than to me.
“Hey, I’m fine, okay? I’m standing right here. You can see me.”
Logan’s whiskey-brown eyes widened for a second and then turned…soft. Like jelly soft. I liked it.
“Next time you wanna turn yourself in, I’m kidnapping you,” he said.
“Why would you do that?” I said with a laugh.
“To keep you from hurting yourself. You can’t be trusted with you,” he said, and he almost sounded serious.
“I just met you a few days ago, and I survived all those years, didn’t I? I don’t need you to save me, Logan.” Mostly because I didn’t think I could be saved.
“What if I need to save you?”
Hold your horses. I looked at the ground. “We’ve already been over this.”
We both knew we liked each other. There were feelings involved—strong feelings if that kiss we shared was anything to go by, but that was it. We were already enemies. We knew that. We just didn’t want to admit it to ourselves.
“And we’ll go over it many more times,” he said. “When I kidnap you.”
“Well, what if I kidnap you first? That way I can keep you away from Nana. I’ll lock you in my basement to keep you from hurting yourself.” It was a damn good idea, too. I just had to win the lottery first so I could buy a house with a basement.
“You still think she’s worth fighting for, Eye Patch?” His tone suddenly changed completely.
I wanted to say yes, but something stopped me. I couldn’t decide what to say, and the way he stared at me, like he already knew what I thought even before I did, put a lot of pressure on me. Did he not know how hard I was trying to forget for now?
Luckily, I was saved from answering when the truck door opened and Dumont stepped out.
“Ready?” he said, completely unaware of the tension between Logan and me. He was still trying to convince me that Nana was the bad guy. I was still trying to convince him to stop trying to kill her.
We were still trying, it seemed.
“Yep,” I said and eagerly walked around the truck to the gates, for the moment forgetting who we were about to meet. “So what, we just knock on the gates?”
The gate to the left pulled open just as I finished speaking.
The ogre that greeted us made me want to back off real slow, but I didn’t want to give that kind of impression. So I sucked it up and stayed put. He was about seven feet tall, and his white skin looked kind of scaly, like a fish’s. He had big black eyes and a round nose, almost completely round ears, and those teeth. Two of his bottom canines were longer than the rest, and protruded outside his lips, almost reaching his nose. He wore a light blue shirt and dark pants, and he was barefoot. His feet were hideous, his big toe the size of all my toes together. It didn’t help that they were covered in dirt.
It also didn’t help that three other ogres were a few feet behind him, watching us.
“Good evening,” Dumont said, folding his hands in front of him, making sure his right hand was above the left, so he could show off the ring on his index finger. “We’re sorry to bother you, but we’re here on official business, and we’re looking to speak to the family of one Felicia Gorko.�
�
The ogre narrowed his greyish brows. He didn’t bother with small talk. “Felicia Gorko is dead. So is her family.” His voice was deep and scratchy.
“We have questions regarding Lee Collins, Felicia Gorko’s son, and we would like to speak to someone who can answer them.” Dumont took half a step forward, as if to show the ogre that he wasn’t afraid. “I can come back with a warrant, but neither of us wants to waste time.”
One corner of the ogre’s thin lips pulled up. His eyes moved to Dumont’s hand and the ring on his finger. Finally, he nodded. “Wait here.”
And he shut the gate in our faces.
So we waited. And waited.
Waited some more.
What felt like hours later, our friend came back for us. He pulled the gate open halfway this time and stepped aside to let us in, just like that. He didn’t even say a word.
Did I mention that I was excited? And scared. But I couldn’t wait to see the inside.
Huge oak trees created a green, leafy roof over us. The sun peaked through the branches here and there, enough so that we could see everything with clarity.
At first, there were only trees on either side of the unpaved pathway. We walked for a couple of minutes, and then we could finally see the Lake on one side, and the town on the other.
It was full of stone statues. I had no idea where they even got all those pieces of stone, especially the six-foot-tall statues of creatures that kind of looked like ogres but not exactly. They all seemed to live in houses made of wood and leaves—on purpose. Because they had the means to build more modern homes and roofs, like the six square patios with white curtains hanging on the sides, with really comfortable looking cushions inside. There were flowers everywhere, of all colors, kinds I hadn’t even seen before, especially around the bigger stone statues. The ogres were all dressed in usual clothes, much like mine, except for their size, and they were all barefoot. There were five weeping willows that I could see, close to the lake and the docks, the tips of their branches touching the surface of the water. Five little ogres were playing in the lake. I’d never seen small ogres before, but they were adorable. From a distance, at least.
Their parents, however, were not. The ogre and his friends stopped walking and kind of stepped to the side, as if they wanted to separate themselves from what was about to happen. A group of five ogres were coming from somewhere behind the square patios, and they were looking right at us. The ogre in the middle wore a white shirt and white pants, kept his hands in his pockets and had a cynical smile on his face.
Logan nudged me and nodded at my hands. I slipped two chakris into them. The ogres coming for us did not look friendly.
“Greetings, magians” the man with the white shirt said. His four friends, two women and two men, stayed a step behind, arms crossed as they watched us, unamused.
“Good evening. I’m Detective Dumont, and we’re here regarding the disappearance of Lee Collins,” Dumont said. Maybe it was just me, but he didn’t sound as confident as before. Couldn’t blame him. This ogre standing in front of us now was even bigger than the ones who’d let us in.
“To be honest, I’m not interested so much as to why you’re here. I’d like to know why you thought you could come here,” said the ogre, squinting his eyes at Dumont. The tips of his bottom canines looked really sharp, too.
“Because I’m a detective with the Magian Ministry, and I have proof of contact between Lee Collins, whose disappearance I’m investigating, and two ogres in this community,” said Dumont. Slowly, I took a step back and analyzed the other ogres. It was very silent out there, all of a sudden. I couldn’t even hear the kids playing in the lake any longer, and there was a crowd gathering around us. All of them ogres.
If they attacked, how much of a chance did we have?
None whatsoever.
The best we could do was to try to escape. Back where we came from? Or maybe through the patios and the lake? There were small boats tied to the four docks, but I was willing to bet my good eye that we wouldn’t make it all the way to them before getting caught. And killed.
Shit.
And the ogre wasn’t even saying anything. It was making Dumont sweat a little.
“Look, mister…?”
“Gavin Oso,” the ogre said. He didn’t look like a Gavin at all.
“Mr. Oso, Lee Collins is one of yours. We’re just trying to find him, and we need all the help we can get,” he said, moving from side to side like he was on stage in front of an audience, nervous as hell.
“Why should we listen to you when we’ve never been heard by your kind before?” Oso said.
Dumont’s hands clenched in fists at his side. He no longer showed off his ring because these ogres apparently didn’t give a shit.
“It is within our right to kill you,” Oso continued.
The excitement I felt at first faded, leaving only the fear. Fucking hell, I should have never let Dumont drag us into this. I looked at Logan. He gave me a curt nod to tell me he was ready. If they attacked, we would have no choice but to defend ourselves.
“I’m with the MM,” Dumont said, but he didn’t raise his voice. God, I wanted to smack him in the back of his head.
Oso shrugged and raised his hands to the sides. “Would we know that if it wasn’t for that ring on your finger?”
The stupid ring. He meant they could easily dispose of the ring and say they didn’t know who we were, after they killed us. No way was I going to let that happen.
“Mr. Oso, my name is Ruby Monroe, and I’m not with the MM. I get why you wouldn’t want to help the MM, I really do, but Dumont is one of the good guys, and the lives of a lot of people are at stake here, including Lee Collins. If we don’t figure out who took them, they’re going to die. If you can help us, please do,” I said in a rush.
Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to get involved in talking, but he pretty much admitted that he was going to kill us and get away with it. What did we have to lose by me opening my mouth?
“Interesting that you would say that. Were you not suspected to be the one responsible for all this?”
He knew who I was. Of course he knew.
“It doesn’t matter—I am not responsible for any of this. I’m just trying to find them, that’s all.”
“So why do you have your weapons ready?” The ogre looked down at my chakris and raised his brows.
“Because I’m not going to wait around and let you kill me, if that’s what you’re planning to do.” And I had no intention of putting my chakris away.
“You have to understand, Mr. Oso, that if you do kill us now, a lot of trouble will come to your door. Do you think it’s worth it?” Dumont said. “We haven’t insulted you, haven’t attacked you, we’ve just asked for your help.”
“A lot of people have asked for our help before,” Oso said and smiled. It looked terrifying on him.
Any second now…
“Gavin!” a woman called. My heart almost leaped out of my chest. We all turned to the left, where a woman and a man were practically running toward us, and the ogres standing behind us made way for them to pass.
She looked older than the others, with more wrinkles on her face, though wrinkles weren’t a clear indicator of age for her kind. Some of them never aged before death, and some got wrinkles very early on. It was all genetics, and most of them lived comfortably past their hundredth birthday. The man was bigger than the woman, but he looked younger than her, his white skin almost completely smooth, one of his bottom canines broken in half and perfectly square. They stopped at our side but never even looked at us.
“We want to speak to them,” the woman said, but she still didn’t acknowledge us.
“This is not the time, Margaret,” said Oso, who looked angry now.
“This is the perfect time,” said the man. “They’re here about Lee. We will speak to them.”
Oso almost killed him with his look. “That is not up to you, Herman. They don’t deserve our help. You kn
ow that better than anyone, do you not?”
“Please, Gavin. It’s Lee. He needs our help. You can’t deny us that,” Margaret said. Her eyes were a bit glossy, now that I noticed. Like she’d been crying.
I looked at Oso and prayed with all my heart that he let it go. Don’t kill us, man. We’re not the bad guys, I said to him in my mind.
“Lee has made his choices,” Oso said, but he didn’t look as angry as before. Maybe he had noticed Margaret’s eyes, too.
“And we’ve made ours,” Herman said, raising his chin. “If we can help find him, we will.”
For God’s sake, why the hell was this guy trying to piss Oso off?
“Please, Gavin. It’s Lee,” Margaret repeated in a whisper.
I didn’t even breathe while Oso thought about it for a fucking eternity.
Then, he stepped back. “Very well.” Even the birds seemed to have held their breaths, and now they continued to chirp away. Fuck, that had been close. “But they are your responsibility. If they cause even the smallest trouble in our home, you will pay the price.”
“Thank you,” Herman said without hesitation. He sure trusted us a lot for someone who’d never met us. “We’ll take it from here.”
“Follow us,” said Margaret, in a hurry to return to where she came from. I had no problem with that whatsoever, but Dumont still stood in front of Oso, looking at him like he was about to go furry any second now.
Terrified, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled as hard as I could. Was he out of his fucking mind? They just said they weren’t going to kill us! That’s the best news we’d had all day, and I wasn’t going to let him ruin it, even if I had to carry him on my back.
Luckily, I didn’t have to. The crowd that had gathered around us slowly moved away. Oso stood his ground, hands in his pockets, looking at Dumont like he was begging him to just make a move. Not on my watch. I never let go of Dumont’s arm until we were a good distance away from Oso and the others.
“Keep your head down, fool,” I said when nobody else could hear us. Margaret and Herman were a few feet away, leading the way. Dumont didn’t comment. For once, he listened, and I was thankful.
