by Drew Hayes
By the time I arrived at Charlotte Manor, Lillian was already waiting on the porch. She wore yet another pantsuit, probably delivered by someone in her clan, and had a large purse with a yellow legal pad sticking out the top. Before I could so much as pop open my door to greet her, she rushed forward, opening the passenger side of my hybrid and climbing gracefully in.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Just excited to get started on my first day of work.” Her smile was wide and infectious, but something in the way her eyes were twitching betrayed Lillian’s anxiety.
“You sure that’s all? Did something happen? Did Krystal say anything?”
“Krystal? Hell no. That girl barely even speaks; she’s quiet as a barn mouse.” Lillian glanced back at Charlotte Manor through the window. “It’s just . . . I don’t want to sound ungrateful—I really appreciate you putting me up somewhere parahuman friendly and with such good food. But you mentioned that place has a presence, and the longer I’ve been staying there, the more I can feel it. It’s hard to describe, like everywhere I go, I know someone is aware of my movements and what I’m doing. It’s kind of unnerving.”
“Sorry you had to go through that.” I shifted the car into drive and began heading back toward Winslow’s proper city area. It was probably of note that she could tell Charlotte was paying special attention to her; it meant her senses were either exceptional or she’d been dining on something with high awareness. Either way, I’d have to ask the house to be more discreet in keeping watch. “When we get back, I’ll have a sit down with the presence; see if I can get it to offer you a little breathing room. We’ve had dealings before, so I should be able to talk it into backing off.”
“I would greatly appreciate that.” Lillian leaned back in the seat, seeming to finally relax now that the manor was fading into the rear view mirror. “So, what’s on the docket for my first day on the job?”
“Listening,” I told her. “And taking notes. Right now, you don’t have any of the training or certifications to actually do accounting work, so I’m going to teach you the customer service portion of the job. In a normal firm, there are reps to deal with most of that, but this is a small operation, so every employee has to be able to handle multiple jobs.”
“Can do,” Lillian replied. “I like to think I’ve got a way with people. I used to get compliments on my bedside manner, way back when I had a heartbeat.”
“You were a doctor?” I asked.
Lillian chuckled, hard laughter tainted with something darker than mirth. “A nurse. They didn’t let women be doctors back then. No matter how much we might have wanted it.”
I looked at Lillian once more, realizing for the first time just how great the difference in our ages was. I didn’t know much about the history of physicians—the best I could recall was that the first female doctor had been sometime in the mid-eighteen hundreds, which put Lillian’s human life somewhere before that. She was at least a hundred and fifty years old, yet she looked not a day past twenty-five. As someone who was undead, you might have expected me to be more prepared for these things, but there is a huge gap between knowing you’ll live without aging and actually confronting it while driving toward a highway.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said finally, realizing I’d let the silence drag on a little too long. “Did you try going back into the field? Times have certainly changed since . . . whenever you were turned.” I tried to steer around the subject of when exactly she was made into a vampire. Part of it was out of politeness, and the rest was because I couldn’t shake the old adage of never asking a woman for her age from my head. I didn’t know if it applied to the undead, but this was not the occasion to find out.
“Times have changed out here, but some clans are a little more stuck in their ways.” Her eyes went wide at that, and she began speaking again so quickly she nearly stumbled over her words. “I mean, I’ve been busy helping my people. Not even the House of Turva runs itself. We all do our part to protect and watch over each other. It’s truly rewarding, knowing that my work helps my family.”
“And what kind of work might that be?” I asked. “I didn’t get a resume from you, so it might help to know your strengths and weaknesses when deciding how to train you.”
“Let’s just say I’m a quick learner, and I’ve been around long enough to do almost every sort of job you can picture. Although, accounting will be a new one for me,” Lillian admitted.
“Maybe that’s why they lent you out. They want someone on hand who can balance the books.” I carefully pulled through a green light and onto the ramp for the highway. Much as I loved Charlotte Manor, it was out in the boonies of Winslow and required more of a commute than I generally preferred.
“I’m not ‘lent out,’ Fredrick. I work for you now. No one is going to call me back and leave you high and dry. My clan takes its gestures of friendship seriously.” She patted her legal pad gently. “You don’t have to worry; I’m in for the long haul.”
“How lovely to hear.” I did my best to keep some cheer in my tone as I accelerated toward the city, hoping against hope that Lillian was lying her ass off.
5.
The first few appointments went as well as I’d hoped, if not better. I introduced Lillian as my trainee to the clients, then got right to business. The curtness wasn’t malicious; I simply didn’t want her to have any chance to let them know about her affiliation with the House of Turva. Presumed alliances could be problematic down the line, and I liked to keep my business meetings on track. After all, the client was paying for my time, so the discussion should be centered around their needs. With two drop-offs and one potential client meeting under my belt, I began to feel more confident as I drove us out of downtown Winslow to the pleasant housing area where my next appointment was waiting.
This one was to be the softest of softballs, as I was supposed to meet with Amy to do a quarterly update on her supply receipts. We went through her logs, marking which materials were for jobs and which were for personal use or testing so that everything could be written off properly come tax time. It didn’t really need to be done quarterly, but that was about as long as we could manage without Amy forgetting and tossing the receipts out or setting them on fire. While the actual meeting hadn’t been due for another few weeks, I moved it up especially for my new employee’s first night. The whole task was glorified inventory work; dull, methodical, and perfect to bore Lillian out of her skull.
We pulled into the driveway of Amy’s modest, quaint-looking home. She lived with ample space and fences between her house and the neighbors, and none of them were aware that she had a top-end alchemical laboratory tucked away in the rear of the property. From the front, it appeared to be a totally normal, somewhat unremarkable dwelling.
Except, that was, for the frantic woman darting toward my car. Amy’s face was smeared with soot, and her hair was flying in all directions. She began waving at me, then noticed the passenger staring in aghast confusion and quickly tried to tone down her panic. That, in itself, was worrying enough; Amy was usually on so many self-crafted potions that she tended to be the mellowest person I knew. If she was panicking, something must have really gone awry.
“Hey there, Fred,” Amy said as I opened the door and climbed from the car. “So great to see you, really looking forward to the meeting, just one small thing that maybe we can chat about first? In private?”
As she finished speaking, the sound of something crashing behind the house rang through the yard.
“Now,” Amy added, motioning for me to follow.
“Um . . . Lillian, the client has some confidential information to discuss. Please wait in the car, and do your best not to listen,” I said. To her credit, Lillian shut the door and turned on the radio without a word of disagreement, which was a small comfort as Amy began dragging me around to the back of her house.
We’d just turned the corner when she dug through her pockets, pulled out a small blue vial, and threw it to the ground. Th
e air seemed to warp around us, as if we were standing on the inside of a bubble.
“That should block her from eavesdropping,” Amy said. “Soooo, we may have a bit of a problem.”
“You don’t say,” I replied, offering her a handkerchief to wipe the soot from her face.
“I know it’s not the best timing, but since you weren’t coming by until late, I figured I had a little window of time to get some work done tonight,” Amy explained, twisting the handkerchief around in knots on her fingers, the soot remaining uncleaned. “And Bubba has been up my ass about the enlarging potion, so when I finally had a breakthrough, I wanted to—”
“Hang on,” I interrupted. “What’s this about Bubba and a potion? He doesn’t touch anything stronger than beer.”
“This wasn’t the recreational stuff. He was looking for real alchemy, the kind with the power to create change. You know how sensitive he is about his size,” Amy said.
We all knew; it wasn’t something Bubba hid particularly well. Despite his pride in being a therian and a weresteed, Bubba had insecurity issues about the fact that he was considered something of a runt. While Richard easily dwarfed most other therians in his lion form, Bubba was at the opposite end of the spectrum—he got smaller when he shifted. In fact, he was so small that he wasn’t even technically a horse. He was a pony.
“He asked you to try and make a potion to fix that?”
“He’s been asking me for months. Ever since Gideon got captured,” Amy corrected, twisting the handkerchief even more. “And it’s been slow going. I can craft a potion to make him bigger, no problem, but it’s when you get into the permanent aspect that things become a lot more complicated. Anyway, I had an idea about distilling the essence from a Night Mare down and concentrating—”
“I’m sorry, a nightmare?” Much as I loathed to keep cutting Amy off, I wanted at least some clear idea of exactly what it was I was about to walk into.
Amy shook her head. “Two words. Legendary monster horse. Anyway, I got my supplies today, and decided to whip up a trial batch. I had Bubba take a drop, just a drop, to measure the effects. Good news: it sort of worked. Better than I’d hoped, actually.”
Another round of crashing, this time accompanied by what sounded like hoof beats, tore through the night. Apparently, Amy’s bubble only kept sound in, not out. Or maybe it turned us into ghosts, for all I knew; it wasn’t as though her experiments were predictable.
“Okay.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to think of how I was going to explain this to Lillian. Just a casualty of dealing with mages? Maybe that would sell; magic users did have a reputation for being unpredictable. “Okay, what do you need from me?”
“I put together a second potion to neutralize the first one before I ever gave it to him, just in case, but Bubba’s not in his right mind. He’s tearing about, making it impossible for me to get to the antidote. Plus, even if I grab it, I might need some help getting it in.”
“So, keep him distracted, then?” I asked.
“Pretty much. And maybe hold him down if I can’t get a syringe through his skin.” With that, Amy began dragging me again, out of the bubble (which popped at her touch) and around the back of the house to where her lab stood. She yanked me along, through the door, and into a scene of complete chaos.
Tables, beakers, and general supplies were on the floor, mostly smashed. In the middle of the room, crushing a table beneath his sizable hooves, was what I could only assume was Bubba Emerson, though not like I’d ever seen him before. No longer was he a runt; instead, the top of his body stood above my shoulders, and while I’m far from the tallest in the world, I’m not short, either. His normal sandy coat had been replaced by one of ash-black, like a burned-out log, and orange flames flickered along his mane and hooves.
Well, that explained the soot on Amy’s face. Sort of.
“What did you try to splice him with?”
“Really not the important issue right now,” Amy replied.
“How about the fact that your lab looks completely smashed, and I’m guessing that includes the antidote, too,” I countered.
“Please, you think I kept that in the upstairs lab?” Amy nodded to a small wooden door that I was positive hadn’t been there the last time I visited her, or on any of the previous occasions. “I need to get past him and down to where the dangerous stuff is stored.”
“Lovely. And what if he breaks through the walls?” I asked.
Amy shook her head. “Not possible. I’ve had enough experiments go wrong to know the value of sound construction. This house is warded up, down, and sideways. He’s not busting out anytime soon.”
I began stepping away from Amy—there was no sense in even trying this ridiculous idea unless I kept his attention solely on me. When I was across the room, I pressed my fingers to my lips and released the loudest whistle I could manage. Truthfully, it was pretty unimpressive, but evidently it was enough to get the massive horse that was Bubba to look at me.
He stopped smashing up the table beneath his feet and turned to me, letting me see for the first time that his eyes were a dull red instead of a horse’s usual glassy black. A snort came from his lips—mercifully not accompanied by a bout of flame—and his ears twitched as he stared at me.
“Hey, Bubba,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as was manageable in the face of a giant, burning horse. Amy began to slink silently toward the wooden door. “Do you know who I am? It’s Fred. Your friend. The guy who stocks your favorite beer in his fridge.”
Another snort, but nothing aggressive. At least, not so far. Through my peripheral vision—I didn’t dare risk a real glance—I saw Amy making progress, step by step, getting closer to the door. She was also getting closer to Bubba with every movement, so I kept talking, doing all I could to keep his attention rapt on me.
“It’s okay. I’m here to help. We just need you to calm down a little. When this is over, we’ll crack open a few beers and watch . . . whatever sport is on right now.” I’d like to blame panic for making me blank on which sport was in season at that moment in time, but truth be told, I couldn’t have named it even without my friend being turned into a monster horse.
“We’ll find something on. Maybe a nice action movie, or a western. Amy has the fancy cable; there’s bound to be options.” At this point, I was mostly just saying whatever inane nonsense popped into my head. All that mattered was that I kept the sound going. As long as his attention was on me, Amy would be okay, and that was the important part. It almost worked, too. Unfortunately, Bubba wasn’t the only one failing to pay attention to his environment.
The sound of crunching glass may as well have been a gunshot with how quiet the room was. Bubba let out a screeching whinny and reared onto his hind legs, twisting his head to see Amy, frozen in mid-sneak, her shoes lifting from the remains of a test tube. Faced with the split-second decision of how to handle the situation, she defaulted to the pair of options hardwired into every creature on the planet: fight or flight. Since her opponent was both an angry horse and a dear friend, Amy wisely chose the latter option, bolting the rest of the way to the wooden door before Bubba could get his bearings.
She barely made it, jerking the door open and slamming it shut an instant before Bubba careened into it. I expected the wood to buckle and splinter under the power of his charge, but it was Bubba who buckled instead, bouncing off the doorway like it was a block of steel. He shook his head, therian regeneration no doubt already patching up what little wounds he’d inflicted on himself, and then reared back again, trying to pound the entire wall with his hooves. It worked about as well as the charge, which was to say, not at all. Amy hadn’t been kidding about the warding on her lab, and it was all paying off at that moment.
Finally giving up on the wall, Bubba turned back around to face me. The red in his eyes didn’t seem quite as dull this time around, and before I could muster so much as a comforting word, he charged. There are few things in life quite like watching a sizable
steed partially covered in flames come barreling down at you while inside a closed room, and for those wondering, I would highly recommend against experiencing it. Especially if you don’t have vampire reaction speeds.
I leapt to the side, scarcely getting out of Bubba’s way in time, even with my superior dexterity. He was so damn fast now, his natural speed having been upgraded along with his size, that it was all I could do to avoid his stampeding bulk. Whatever remaining tables and supplies had been behind me weren’t so lucky; I heard him crunching them into debris as he turned back around. Amy’s lab was big, but not so large that it left me many places to go when facing off against a burning horse. Another change from Bubba, and again, I was able to jump to the side. He bounced off the wooden door again, coming away from the encounter with even more anger in his eyes.
This couldn’t go on much longer; I was barely surviving each attack as it was. My eyes flicked to the doorway, but I immediately realized I couldn’t escape. If Bubba followed me through an open door, I’d be setting him free on the world, which would make catching and curing him far more difficult. If he didn’t, then I’d be leaving Amy as a sitting duck the minute she returned from her lab. I had to stick it out if we wanted to help Bubba, but I couldn’t keep running around like I was.
As I dodged Bubba for the third time, nearly catching the leg of my slacks on fire, an idea finally struck me. He might be faster and stronger than me, but he wasn’t as lithe. Stretching my fingers out, wishing dearly that I didn’t keep my nails so trim, I leapt upward, all the way to Amy’s ceiling. The moment I made contact, I jammed my hands through the soft drywall, groping about for a beam to hang on to. For a second, I thought all was lost as my hands closed around nothing, but then I felt the wonderful sensation of something solid and grabbed on for all I was worth. Using my abs to lift my legs, I pinned myself to the ceiling like a fly.
