"She thought maybe there would be a clue," Marcus said at the exact same time that Adina said, "Sometimes dangerous stalkers leaves hints in fan mail," so Ashley got an earful of garbled gibberish that made sense to nobody. Nevertheless, he took it like a champ and introduced himself into the scene as the hero they both needed: someone to split them up. Someone to cut them apart so things could cool off and go back to normal.
"Say, Adina, is it? Adina, why don't you come with me? There's loads more mail. If you think it'll help, I'll take you there. Marcus, you gotta get back to shooting. They sent me over here to corral ya in."
"That'd be wonderful," Adina said, wanting to shake his hand and thank him but knowing that she couldn't. If he actually had more fan mail, great. But the way things were going, he could have suggested that he take her off to punch a toddler and she would have readily agreed to go. Any excuse to split ways. Based on Marcus's subtle relaxation, he felt the same way. Marcus went his separate way with Adina texting Alex to make sure the fox shifter would protect Marcus during the shooting of the show while she was off doing something else. She then proceeded to hate herself for how poorly the whole interaction had gone and put on a cheery face for Ashley, who led her off into another part of the facility. She tried to get a good read off him. Nothing unusual. Seemed like a decent fellow.
"That bad, huh?" he asked as they walked past some cars.
"What?"
"Something weird musta happened between you two," he stated matter-of-factly. "Figured y’all could use a good excuse to get out of Dodge."
"Oh," she said, taken by surprise for the eight thousandth time that day. "I don't know what you mean."
Ashley snorted, obviously rather entertained about it. "Sure, sure." He paused at a door to open it with a keycode, but as he pushed the buttons from muscle memory, he met her eyes. "So have you told him yet?"
At this point, Adina had stopped trying to guess what would happen that day, so instead of trying to piece together what Ashley might mean, she took the easy route and just asked. "Told him what?"
Ashley put his fingers up to his mouth like big fangs. "His transformation," he whispered.
Adina paused. Did she read this right? This random agent actually knew that Marcus had to be transforming? Maybe there was more than met the eye with him. She studied him a bit closer. "How'd you know about that?"
"It's my business," he huffed pleasantly as the door clicked open. "You don't work in Hollywood for as long as I have without learning a few things." He winked, giving her the impression once again that she liked him. No wonder he made it in the industry. "Who do you think sent him to you?"
She grinned back. He was surprisingly appealing, with his diminutive frame and friendly demeanor. "You care a lot about him, don't you?"
Though the smile stayed, his eyes betrayed a sudden tinge of protective anger. "I'll say it this way. When ya find whoever roughed him up, don't hold your feisty self back, okay?" He looked like he might go for the clap on the back, but seemed to think better of it and instead led her into the building. "Come on. I'll show you the rest of the mail. You're going to have your hands full, I'll tell you that much."
* * *
Adina did, indeed, have her hands full.
More specifically, she had two car trips’ worth, with her trunk full of letters, back and forth to her apartment. She normally would have taken it all to the office, but she wanted to get a jump start on it and didn't anticipate being done any time soon. Anything to avoid letting her mind wander. She left Alex there to keep an eye on things, which he was more than happy to do. The only problem she could foresee about that was that he might get a little sidetracked flirting with starlets. The man had a way with the ladies. His flirting game was as on point as his shoe game was, and women tended to eat it up. But even with his potential to get distracted, she felt comfortable enough leaving him there. He had never let her down before, and for his youngish age, he was quite clever. On more than one occasion, she'd let him scout out a scene and he'd gathered great intel from charming people. Talking with him was like taking a lovely spa trip—pleasing, relaxing, warm, comfortable. People tended to speak to him when they might not to Adina or some of the other agency workers. He had a face you could trust, a wit so sharp it was like watching Bugs Bunny confuse Elmer Fudd, and enough charm that he'd lay on to make even the tightest-lipped person speak.
The one thing he was lacking was power. Even in his fox form, he wasn't all that powerful, not like Adina or even Gregory. Luckily, he had enough smarts to know he wasn't all that strong, so in the odd event that he'd need help, he was more than happy to ask for it. He wouldn't get all noble and get murdered trying to take something on he couldn’t handle, which was nice. She didn't have to worry as much with him on the job, freeing her up to deal with her confusing emotions and five boxes of fan mail.
She got zero sleep that night, as per usual. Forty hours of awake time, and counting. She didn't even know why she owned a bed. She barely used it, and even when she did for a couple of hours here and there when she got too tired to function, she slept terribly, waking up endlessly and wandering around her cold apartment, thinking. That night was no different. She ordered herself to think about other things instead of Marcus and the whole episode outside the Airstream. She sifted through some of the letters, reread the sparse police notes, and redid her list of who was on set from the security camera footage, but didn't put too much effort into it until she finally stopped trying to ignore that anything had happened and face it. Sooner or later, she'd need to come to grips with what happened, make some sort of choice on what her position was, and act on it. She wasn't someone who enjoyed just sitting around, pondering the deep mysteries of life. She preferred concrete decisiveness, but the entire case had been nothing but a series of hitches and glitches. The werewolf hadn't shown up again, despite Marcus occasionally smelling the intruder nearby at random places. Whoever they were, they were keeping a quiet profile. They must have just lost it the night he or she had gone after Adina. She still knew nothing about who the person might be, other than that they must hang around Marcus more often than not. She found herself reliably frustrated, unsure, and otherwise unlike herself. She was never unsure. She made snap choices. Decide, boom, that's it. Nothing more. The Wi-Fi at the agency wasn't working properly, and after one failed reinstallation, she changed providers. She was the decision maker, the one who came in to fix problems. Having one of her own was nothing short of bizarre. She spun her mental tires for a couple of days until one morning, as she was going through the fan mail in the hopes of finding something she hadn't seen before, the events that had transpired came crashing back. She might not be able to clear up a lot of the other stuff on the case, but one thing she could do was control herself—at least, that was the theory.
Thinking about Marcus's fantasies that she'd seen was a bit like watching her identical twin, if she'd had one, perform on stage. It was her, but not her. She in real life didn't feel comfortable doing naughty things with people. She wasn't a virgin, but the few experiences that she'd had resulted in disaster. She in Marcus's fantasy, however, was a sex expert. She did things that Adina herself didn't know how to do, moving with an ease and confidence that Adina wished she had, but reality was a cruel mistress.
11
Dinner
Marcus was losing it.
It wasn't all that complicated. He was simply going insane. Ever since he'd been attacked, all these crazy things had started happening to him. He felt more alert. More awake, like he'd chugged a 5-Hour Energy shot mixed with a Red Bull. He could barely sleep, and it kept getting worse by the night. That was strange, but he could probably figure out a way to write it off as a fluke, work stress keeping him up or something. But the smells, the damn smells! They were everywhere. He'd always had a normal sense of smell, but ever since the attack, he'd picked up odd, unexpected scents that flooded his nose. Normally, walking past a burger joint he might catch a whiff. Now, it was like h
e was pushing his face against the meat, picking up way more than he ever had and way more than he could ever want. He kept noticing people before he saw them because of their cologne or perfume like a sixth sense. His eyes felt sharper, and just the other day he'd noticed himself being able to see individual blades of grass from across the street in a way he'd never been able to in the past.
He did some research, and after a confusing few moments, he found it: the answer, the only logical conclusion, something so painfully obvious that he was amazed he'd never thought it through before.
He was a werewolf.
It would explain everything! The smells, the new energy, the physical changes, his eyesight, everything, and a quick search told him exactly what he'd feared: the full moon was coming up. If he had been bitten and the transformation had begun, it would culminate on the full moon. He had five days until then, a measly five days to pick up his life and figure out what the hell was happening to him. He'd never once considered the possibility that he was transforming. He was just feeling lucky to be alive, but what if the attacker hadn't been trying to kill him, but transform him instead? Convert him to be like them? It cast a whole new, horrifying light on the investigation, a light that he had no idea what to do with. He felt like he should tell someone, but who? The only person he could come up with that might know what to do was Adina, but after she'd shot him down outside the Airstream, he'd felt weird around her. She'd known what he was thinking and he could have sworn he actually smelled her desire in return, but the fact remained that she'd declined him. Things were awkward as hell between them, but faced with the worry about becoming something more than human, "awkward as hell" looked like a childish afterthought. There were far more important things at stake here than a simple uncomfortable interaction, and there was no way he was going to let something like that keep him from going to the only person who might be able to help.
The thought tumbled around his head for what seemed like forever, nagging him, tearing at his mind until he felt like he was insane. He had to know. Maybe it was early in the morning, very early, 2 am early, but he just had to get answers. He checked his phone and unlocked it before realizing this wasn't the sort of thing to be talked about over a phone. He needed to see Adina in person, and based on what she'd joked about with the other cast members, she got to sleep late. Maybe she was still up. At the very least, he could drive around the city at night and clear his head. She probably wouldn't be happy about him just showing up at her apartment, but he didn't have many other options. She was the only person he knew with expertise in that field. Maybe she'd seen something like it before and could help him, but there, in his empty apartment, all he was doing was worrying himself, so he grabbed his keys, threw on some clothes, and went out for a drive.
Halfway to her apartment, he came a little more to his senses. What was this going to look like? Him just showing up in the middle of the night, completely unannounced and not invited? This was breaking every social rule of all time. Not only that, but he was showing up at a woman's house, in the middle of the night, completely unannounced, after she'd spurned his advances. This put all kinds of red flags up, red flags that even he recognized then. He couldn't do that to Adina. He had a feeling that she'd let him in and not be too weirded out, but he had to do more than just appear. He had to bring something to apologize for pulling this on her, so he went through the fastest take-out place he knew, sat in the drive-through, got take-out for the both of them, and headed her way. If she was up and hungry, they had something to do other than just stare at each other. If she wasn't and she wanted him to leave, he could give her the food as an apology for waking her up. Win-win, even though he wasn't sure what he'd do if she turned him away. Who else did he know that could give even the slightest bit of guidance?
He rolled his windows down and let the cool night breeze touch his face. The moon, concerningly bright and only five days from the big day, the full moon, loomed overhead like a constant reminder of what might be happening to him. The worst part of it all was the lack of knowledge. Most people didn't survive the transformation, as far as he knew. There was a very valid reason that people weren't just transforming themselves for fun and acquiring all the benefits of becoming a werewolf: being stronger, faster, better at everything. It was a risky thing, and he'd almost never heard of a successful transformation. What distinguished the successful ones from the agonizing ones that ended in death? Was he going to survive this thing if he was right? Or would he be up in the sky? He didn't even know what to prepare himself for. He sped on through the city. Any policeman who would have stopped him would have gotten an interesting explanation.
Finally, he found Adina's place. He pulled up in front and hesitated. This was a terrible idea. He should not do this. He wanted to talk to her, to apologize for everything that had happened and to find out about the legitimacy of his worries, but now? At three in the morning? She had to be asleep, and he'd just waltz in with take-out and pretend it was okay? This was a huge invasion of her privacy. She'd given him her address in case the werewolf came back and he couldn't go to the police, not to just use at his will. He cooled himself down. This, though unconventional, was something he needed. He needed to clear his mind, and she was his best bet. Hopefully, she didn't just shoot him the moment he knocked. Something told him that she didn't get too many visitors.
He hiked up the stairs, holding the food, trying to prepare a statement. There was no real way to introduce her to what he was thinking about, not without some serious explanation, and if she got the wrong idea, she might get upset. He didn't want her to be upset. He didn't even want to be doing this. In the time it took him to get to her door, he couldn't craft a suitable explanation. To his surprise, the glass door betrayed a light on inside her house. Was she awake? What the hell was she doing at 3 am awake? She was supposed to be down at the set doing more investigation the next morning at 6:45 am. This was witchcraft. If he got less than six hours, he turned into a groggy nightmare. He cleared his throat, shuffled his feet, almost dropped the food, and knocked.
When nobody answered, he waited a few moments and knocked again. The possibility of her throwing open the door heavily armed became a very real possibility. She'd also been attacked in her home. Of course, it was different. The werewolf had apparently gone through her window and here he was, knocking pleasantly, but she could still be on edge. He was. Every time a delivery driver dropped a package off for him, he was inside the house getting ready for World War 3. No response came from the other side, so he knocked a third time, which was when he heard her voice.
"Jesus fuck, what? Whoever you are, you better have a damn good explanation for coming here at this hour and banging on my door—"
Adina threw open the door and stopped mid-sentence, staring at him blankly like Jesus himself had just appeared on her porch. A confusing series of emotions flashed across her face before she landed on hesitance. "Marcus. What are you doing here?" she glanced behind him. "You okay?" Her eyes settled on the boxes in his hand. "Do you have food?" An important follow-up question came next. "Why do you have food?"
He had been expecting that the hardest part of this would be explaining what he was doing there, but when he saw her beautiful face, he just blanked out. His mind emptied. All he could do was stare into her eyes, so so deeply, not able to say a word. She was wearing just some house clothes, some ugly old pajama pants and a T-shirt that he had no doubt was from Goodwill. Her hair was tossed here and there like she'd gotten out of the shower and hadn't done anything with it, and her makeup was off, but she still looked stunning enough to take his breath away.
Regardless of the reasons, it abruptly dawned on him that to Adina he was just some dude that was standing on a porch like a dumbass, a dazed look in his eyes, oil from a poorly constructed take-out box getting all over his hand. He shook himself out of it and cleared his throat. "Adina, I... I need some help."
* * *
Adina's night had gone from decent, to weird, t
o extremely weird. She'd started the evening by doing some work, then she got carried away with some romantic feelings that she didn't want to get tangled in, then the reason behind the romantic feelings showed up without warning. Even beyond the reasons for him showing up, a little time to get ready and not look like shit would have been nice. Between the lack of makeup and the baggy old clothes that she'd bought from a thrift store where fashion went to die, she could not look any worse. Hey, maybe she wasn't interested in him... she still looked awful. And if she actually was interested in him and she got a little excited from him being there, she wasn't doing herself any favors.
But there were bigger things to worry about, things like the fact that she suspected something must be wrong... but if something was wrong, why the food? Was there an emergency, but the sort of emergency that allowed him to grab a snack first? She looked him up and down. She recognized lack of sleep anywhere. "Come in?" she said slowly, swinging the door open and letting him into her messy apartment. God, even a little warning? Not even a casual text that would have let her put her socks on? "Are you okay? What's wrong?"
Marcus, to his credit, barely spared a glance at the living quarters, but instead followed her in and set the oily boxes down on her relatively clean table. "I don't know. I think it's crazy, but I think I may be turning into a werewolf."
Adina practically choked on her own breath as she dealt with the oily mess by putting a tray under it. "Oh." This was not the sort of conversation she wanted to have at all, much less here and now. "Um. Why?"
He listed all the reasons, but she already knew them from talking to him. This wasn't a chat she was looking forward to, but she reluctantly nodded. "Well, I'm not a doctor," she told him as a last-ditch effort to duck this topic.
Marcus - Precinct 12 Page 9
