“It’s what I planned on doing.”
“You can do that?”
Hudson ran his hand through his hair. A grotesque fish with a bloated body and mutant fins swam back and forth through his stomach. He paced into the kitchen and I followed him, more than ready to leave. When he spun around, I had to brace a hand on his chest to stop myself from slamming into him.
“Why’d you call someone to pick you up? I can drop you off.”
“This will be faster. Besides, you said your bike was starting to have some problems. I’m beginning to think it’s you who has horrible luck with vehicles.” My gut twisted with guilt at the accusation.
“I didn’t have bad luck until I met you.”
He said it like he meant it to come out as a joke, but it didn’t.
“Hey, I didn’t ask you to pretend to be my boyfriend. You got yourself into this mess.” I clamped my mouth shut and crossed my arms. That wasn’t true. Hudson had wanted to go immediately to the police. If we’d done things his way, we’d already be free of Kyoko and Jenny. I’d been the one to insist we play along with Jenny’s demands, and he didn’t even know the fear that motivated me. Nevertheless, despite several opportunities to walk away, he’d done nothing but help. I, on the other hand, had broken his phones, sabotaged his motorcycle, and made a stupid mistake, ensnaring myself more deftly in Jenny’s crimes. If I was going to be angry, I should be angry with myself, not Hudson. I pushed my hair over my shoulder and reached for his arm. “Look, I’m sorry I made that call. It was stupid and I wasn’t thinking. I’m grateful I’m not in this alone.”
Hudson took a deep breath and released it. “I don’t regret it, pretending to be your boyfriend. I mean, it would have been nice to have had drinks first like I’d planned, but this has been . . . interesting, too.”
The pressure in my chest eased and I found a smile. “We can still get those drinks. Tonight. Come by my house. We can recap what we both find over a nice bottle of wine.”
“It’s a date.” Hudson’s soft smile curved his lips, and my heartbeat accelerated.
We locked the back door behind us and let ourselves out through the side gate. Hudson wanted to wait with me until Ari arrived, but I didn’t want to linger near Hudson’s bike. I finally convinced him to walk two blocks with me to a convenience store, where I grabbed a bag of Skittles and Hudson bought a small bag of Cheetos.
“Here.” I pulled my business card from my bag and scribbled my home address on the back when we reached Hudson’s bike. “It’d be best if you left before Ari arrives; otherwise, we’ll be here another hour explaining everything to her. And by everything, I mean you.” I eased away from his motorcycle.
Even as Hudson started to argue with me, I spotted Ari’s BMW pulling around the corner three blocks away.
“See that silver car?” I pointed. “That’s Ari. I’ll see you tonight. Say five-thirty?”
I trotted down the sidewalk, then zigzagged into the street to intercept Ari, not waiting for Hudson’s reply. Ari slowed as she pulled up beside me. A gray kitten clung to her shoulder—not real—and her face glowed with curiosity. I popped open the passenger door and looked back toward Hudson. He waved and pushed his helmet on, then eased his bike into the street and zipped away. I watched until he turned at the corner, body leaning into the curve. With a heavy sigh, I got into the boxy car and set my bag at my feet.
“Did that hot motorcyclist just wave at you?” Ari demanded.
“Yep. His name is Hudson.”
“Does Hudson by chance know where you were this morning?”
“And last night.” I grinned at Ari’s dropped jaw, purposely taking my time with the seat belt to make her squirm.
Ari was Italian, with olive skin and dark brown hair and eyes. She was several inches shy of my five-nine and twice as curvy. We were the same age, but Ari would always look younger: One flash of her deep dimples and she lost ten years. When faced with those dimples, teachers overlooked detention-worthy transgression, her parents turned to putty, and men of every profession and age fell over themselves to smooth the way for Ari, tearing up speeding tickets, opening doors to exclusive events, and once even holding the post office open an extra half hour.
“Details! I demand details, or this car isn’t moving.”
“If you don’t get this car moving, we’re not going to make it home.”
“Oh, sure. Play the curse card.” She gunned the BMW and we shot down the road after Hudson.
There was, unfortunately, a lot more to catch my best friend up on than Hudson. It didn’t occur to me to keep Kyoko a secret from Ari. She was my confidant and business partner. I trusted Ari with my life, and considering I had linked her to Jenny through my hasty phone call, I owed her an explanation. Plus, Ari’s help finding Jenny would be invaluable.
I found it impossible to keep my emotions in check while I recapped the last twenty-four hours, and the BMW was sputtering and coughing eight blocks before we reached my apartment. Ari executed an expert parallel park in front of a squat art deco apartment building, and we walked the last blocks. Having been my friend for over ten years, she was almost as used to electronic malfunctions as I was. Better still, she didn’t complain or even appear put out by the inconvenience. All her apparitions represented concern and curiosity, not frustration.
“Jenny Winters? Did I have a class with her?” Ari asked.
“Were you in my Honors English junior year?”
“Nope. So what’d you see on Hudson?”
I was surprised Ari had waited this long to bring the conversation back to Hudson.
“Hats,” I said. “Sombrero, sailor, a silver top hat from Monopoly. The silver terrier, too. A weird plastic and metal model of a city that isn’t a city. A full moon. Some hipster glasses. A marble cherub. Some creepy sea creatures. A rotten banana that drips slices. And, of course, a glowing broadsword.”
“Do you know what any of it means?”
“He’s in hero mode when he’s wearing the sword, and the Monopoly pieces always show up when he’s acting suspicious or frustrated, but the rest? Not a clue.”
“What did Aunt Sofie say?”
“To be open to love.”
Ari’s eyebrows arched high.
“Which means nothing. You know Sofie. She’s always trying to play matchmaker with me.”
“Hardly. Did she see something around you that indicated Hudson is special?”
“She claimed it doesn’t work that way—”
“But she saw your grandma and Theo together.”
“I made that point.”
“I think I need to call Sofie,” Ari said.
“I think Jenny and the elephant she dumped on me, not to mention the blackmail, takes precedence.”
“Over a man?”
I glanced at Ari, relieved to see she was kidding.
“I didn’t get a good look,” she said. “I mean, he’s got a hot body, I think. It’s always hard to tell under leather. He’s hot, right?”
“Like lava.” I replayed Hudson removing his shirt and that teasing glimpse of his backside. We trudged up the stairs to my loft, and I was granted a reprieve from Ari’s interrogation as she conserved her energy for breathing.
I lived in a loft at the top of a seven-story tower. No one lived beside me at the moment. The real estate company had given up on selling the next-door loft as well as the one beneath me, and a string of renters had broken their leases over the repeated electronic fritzes. I did what I could to dampen my curse when in public, but I deserved a place to relax as much as the next person. I countered my guilt by telling myself the sporadic tenants should expect some problems when they rented a unit for half the usual asking price.
If not for Sofie, I could never have afforded the beautiful loft, with its warm butterscotch-colored hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, and second-story loft-within-a-loft bedroom. My aunt owned the loft outright, and I chipped away at payments, but in my heart, it was all mine. One look at the
bones of the loft, and more specifically at the series of glass doors opening along two entire walls to a long patio, and I’d fallen in love. Sofie had let me choose every interior detail, from the smooth glass railing of the bedroom stairs to the soapstone counters in the kitchen to the oval tub in the master bath. The comfortable mix of leather library furniture and period pieces filling my living room were all me, too.
I’d lived in the loft for several years, and I still felt a thrill of possession every time I walked through the front door. Not even the hike up six flights of stairs could diminish my love for my home. The rest of the residents thought I was a glutton for fitness. They had no idea I had their safety in mind. The elevator operated at the opposite end of the tower from my loft and the stairs, protecting my neighbors from any influence I might have on the mechanics of that death box.
Ari was out of breath when we reached the top landing, and she put a hand on my arm to stop me. “I want to meet him,” she said between breaths. “Bring him over tonight for dinner.”
It wasn’t an offer.
“Ari—”
“Don’t ‘Ari’ me. I want to meet the man who”—pant—“has masqueraded as your boyfriend”—pant—“who has stolen an elephant with you”—pant—“and who has you breaking into houses.” Pant. “He’s either a terrible influence on you or a great one. And I think it should be a new rule in our relationship that I meet anyone who sees you in handcuffs.”
My middle-aged neighbor, Jed, chose that moment walk by, his trash in hand. He raised his eyebrows at me. “You need to have your safeties in place if you’re going to play rough, Eva,” he said. “Listen to Ari.”
Ari grinned. “Thank you, Jed. So you think I should meet Eva’s new boyfriend, too?”
“You have a boyfriend? And I’m finding out now? Like this?” Jed gestured to the trash bag and his laundry-day house shorts and faded Hawaiian top. He peered behind us down the stairs.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I protested. “And you don’t have to worry, Jed. He’s not here.”
“They met yesterday,” Ari told Jed. “He’s in security, drives a motorcycle. Sets women’s panties on fire with his smoldering-hot looks.”
Jed waggled his eyebrows at me. “Wait until I tell Troy. What did you say his name is?”
“Hudson Keyes,” Ari said before I could stop her.
I whirled to Jed and pointed my finger at him. “Don’t even think about cyber-stalking him,” I said.
“Who? Me?” Jed blinked innocently, and I pretended not to see Ari make the “call me” gesture to Jed behind my back. I didn’t know how they did it, but somehow Ari, Jed, and Jed’s partner, Troy, always found out information I never told them about the men I dated. I suspected Ari used her FBI agent sister-in-law Miriam to do the dirty work, but they insisted most people’s basic information existed on the Internet for anyone to find. Anyone on speaking terms with electricity.
I left Ari plotting with Jed and keyed open my loft. Serenity engulfed me. I dropped my bag on the hutch inside the door and walked straight to the balcony. Large wood-framed glass doors pivoted open along the entire back and side wall, and I opened a few to let the warm April air circulate through the loft. Muted traffic noises and the rustle of palm fronds filtered in with the sweet aroma of freesias blooming on the balcony. I could feel energy returning, bringing hope and optimism with it. Somewhere in my high school memory banks, I’d find vital information about Jenny. By the end of today, Kyoko would be back in her hands and Sofie, Ari, Hudson, and I would be free of Jenny’s entanglement. Then I could explore my attraction to Hudson.
“You grab the yearbooks, I’ll fix us some lemonade,” Ari said, shutting the front door behind her.
I stacked four yearbooks on the coffee table and accepted a glass from Ari. We plopped down side by side on the couch, propped our feet up, and made satisfied sighing sounds at the same time, which caused us to laugh. I grabbed our senior yearbook; Ari took our junior.
“She’s not in here,” I said after scanning the index and then the senior photos. I started thumbing through the activity pages.
“She’s in here. Check this out.” At the bottom of the page, listed under “Winters, Jennifer” was a black-and-white shot of Jenny, ten years younger, glaring at us from the glossy page. Her hair was slicked back, her brows furrowed, and her face half hidden behind heavy glasses that had never been in style. She must have been wearing contacts yesterday or had corrective surgery since high school, because judging by the thickness of the lenses, she would have been blind now without them.
“I wonder if she moved or transferred. Do you remember her now?” I asked.
Ari shook her head. “I don’t think we shared a class. And if we did, we never talked.”
“Is she anywhere else in there?”
Ari consulted the index. “Once, on page fifty-eight.” She flipped to it. An action shot of a cheerleader with a vague resemblance to Jenny slanted across the bottom corner. I doubted Jenny could pull off her giddy grin.
“That was completely useless.” I grabbed our sophomore book and flipped to the index. Jenny was listed only once, in her school photo. She had bangs in this shot and a fledgling glare behind the same glasses. The freshman book was a bust.
“How many different ways can people say ‘stay cool’ and ‘never change’?” Ari asked, reading the comments in the margins of my junior book. “Oh, listen to this winner. ‘Look me up in five years, baby. I’ll be the millionaire on the cover of Forbes.’ Who’s Stewart?”
“Sounds like an ass.” I couldn’t put a face with the name.
“Ha! ‘We’ll always have Maria’s Bakery, love Dave.’ Do I remember Dave?”
“Skinny guy, hair redder than mine. Liked to whistle.”
“Oh, Dave. That’s right. What was with Maria’s Bakery?”
“I think we kissed there.” I tossed my freshman yearbook back to the coffee table. “Maybe my honor’s teacher would remember Jenny.”
“Who was that?”
“I don’t remember.” I grabbed the senior yearbook again and flipped to the faculty. The teachers were listed by name but not by class. I studied their faces. I recognized one in a dozen.
“Look. Is this Jenny?” Ari asked. She pointed to a tiny photo with large font beneath identifying the group as the science club. I squinted at the half-visible face in the back row. “There’s one more face than there are names in the caption,” she said.
“It looks like her. Maybe.” I scanned another page of teachers before a familiar smirk sparked a memory. “Mr. Hornbunkel! How could I have forgotten that name?”
Ari leaned closer to get a better look at him. “He looks like he’d quote Shakespeare to grocery store clerks when they ask him ‘paper or plastic.’”
“Do you think he’d remember something useful about Jenny, because I’m at a loss. Nothing in these books has jogged a memory, and if you don’t remember her, I’ve reached a dead end.”
“Only because you don’t have the Internet. And we did learn a few things. She likely was in the science club. I can hunt down the other people in the photo with her and see what they remember.”
“How?”
“Facebook. LinkedIn. The alumni website. I may not be friends with any of these people, but I bet you I know someone who is. I can also look into Mr. Hornbunkel, send him an e-mail if he’s still at school or find out where he is now.”
“Are you sure you’re not just saying what you think I want to hear?” I asked. “You can actually find all these people on the Internet?”
“Yep. Probably by the end of the day. I’ll also see what the sites turn up on Jenny.” A starry cloud appeared behind Ari’s head, like the Milky Way condensed. Greens and reds swirled through dense solar systems, and many tiny clusters glowed too bright to look at directly. The three-dimensional galaxy could have been pulled straight out of the Hubble telescope photographs. When I’d first described the apparition to Ari, she’d explained it was how sh
e thought of the Internet: a final frontier of unlimited possibilities. It seemed like an adequate description to me.
Of all the twentieth-century inventions I missed out on because of my curse, airplane travel and the Internet were the two I most wished I could experience.
Ari glanced at her mechanical watch, then at me.
“You’re going to your consultation like that?”
“My consul— Crap!” I shot off the couch and rushed to my office. I scanned the large three-by-three-foot calendar tacked to the wall, then checked the wall clock. “I completely forgot about Max Overton! Ari, can you drive me? I’ve got only thirty minutes, and there’s no way I’m making it to Glendon Avenue by bus in less than an hour.”
“You actually forgot?” Ari asked.
“It’s been a long twenty-four hours.”
“Or it’s the hormones addling your brain.”
I stuck my tongue out at her.
* * *
Ari borrowed her brother Antonio’s car, and she dropped me off in front of a three-bedroom split-level house at three-thirty on the dot. Since I wouldn’t have time to change after the consultation before Hudson arrived, I’d selected an outfit that worked for business and pleasure: a summery yellow top, a black pencil skirt, and black heels. I had my satchel and I’d organized my paperwork for Mr. Overton’s house on the drive, using the familiar actions to keep me calm so Antonio’s car wouldn’t strand Ari on the way home.
Mr. Overton opened the door after one knock. He was big—big muscles, big hands when we shook, big smile when he asked me to call him Max. His height flirted with giant status, though I was pretty sure all those stacked muscles generated an optical illusion. The only divination I got off him was a Trix cereal box dumping colorful chunks onto his feet.
He ushered me into a front room with two matching recliners, a huge television, and several framed movie posters. I counted eleven guns and three swords between four posters.
“I’m not a touchy-feely guy,” Max said. “I don’t want anything Chinese looking. I don’t want candles or smelly dead flowers or tiny, pointless pillows. And I don’t believe in chi-voodoo crap.”
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 10
