Melee

by Kristy Tate

  And because all those things could also be said of Declan, his parents fell silent as they waited for him to finish making omelets.

  Declan’s phone buzzed with a text and he pulled it out of his pocket.

  COURTNEY: FOUND HIM

  DECLAN: BE THERE AS SOON AS I CAN

  COURTNEY: IT’S NOT SAFE. WAIT TIL DARK

  SACRIFICE YOUR BODY. It had been a mantra Declan had grown up with. He couldn’t remember a time when chasing balls or torturing them with sticks hadn’t been a part of his daily routine. His dad, a football coach, had been an equal opportunity athlete. He hadn’t pushed Declan into one sport, but had introduced him to most, if not all. Skiing in the winter, swimming in the summer, lacrosse, even polo and curling. In time, Declan had learned that most skills translated across the board. Speed, agility, coordination, teamwork...and the ability to sacrifice your body. Athletics, then—like any other pursuit—was a mind game first and a physical game second.

  But on the University of Washington’s basketball court where Declan was a walk-on, something strange was messing with his head. Voices. Where were they coming from and why did they ring in his ears?

  To the left...

  Under the basket...

  Foul him...

  Just like the morning when Declan had effortlessly flattened Baxter and winded McNally, he found it easy to outjump, out-rebound, and outrun the other players. Except for two: a tall dark man with arms like tree trunks and a feisty squat and square-shaped Asian. From outward appearances, nothing about them suggested an alliance, but they moved in sync as if their plays had been carefully choreographed beforehand.

  It occurred to Declan that if he could hear their thoughts, they could possibly pick up on his as well. So he tried to keep his mind blank, which was surprisingly impossible to do.

  An elbow in his gut. A shoulder bumping his arm. Flesh smacking flesh. The pound of feet. Palms slapping the ball. The stink of sweat and exertion tinged with desperation. The guy with tree-trunk arms passed Declan the ball. He caught it, dribbled down the court, blew past the other players, and sank a lay-up. It was a crap move. His dad would have told him that instead of showing off, he should have passed it off. Be a part of the team.

  Only this was a team he didn’t think he could play on. Not if there were pack members on it. He played halfheartedly, but finished out the scrimmage. It didn’t surprise him when the Asian and the other guy cornered him in the locker room.

  He smelled them before he saw them.

  “Who are you?” The tall guy wore a friendly expression, but there was wariness behind his smile. He wore a towel around his neck and his skin glistened with sweat. He put one foot on the bench on one side of Declan while the Asian stood on the other. If the locker room hadn’t been full of people, he would have felt intimidated, and it occurred to him that was exactly how they wanted him to feel.

  Declan bared his own teeth, introduced himself, and followed it up with, “And you?”

  “Gregson Nelson,” the tall guy said.

  “Lee Park,” the Asian said.

  The two exchanged glances. Declan tried to pick up on their thoughts, but drew a blank. Was it possible they could tune him out?

  “We haven’t seen you around,” Lee said.

  “Where’d you go to school?” Gregson asked.

  “East End High. How about you?”

  “Olympic Peninsula,” Gregson answered for both of them.

  “Things are wilder there,” Lee said, lifting his chin.

  “That’s where all those girly Twilight books are set, right?” Declan tried to make it sound like a joke.

  “Nothing girly about vampires,” Gregson said.

  “My mom and my sisters were so into that stuff,” a guy next to them scoffed as he pulled on his jeans. “My mom dragged us all out to Forks when I was a kid. I can’t believe you’re actually from there.” His gaze sized up Gregson and Lee before he tugged his T-shirt over his head.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Gregson asked in a dangerous tone.

  “No offense...it’s just not the most populated place.”

  Lee blinked. “We like it that way.”

  “Excuse me.” Declan gathered up his backpack and headed out of the locker room.

  “See you tomorrow?” Lee called after him. There was nothing menacing about the three words and yet they sounded like a threat.

  DECLAN FOLLOWED COURTNEY’S instructions to an abandoned warehouse in La Conner, a small out-of-the-way coastal town. The warehouse, a giant structure made up of corrugated tin, was held together by soaring wooden beams blackened with tar. Inside, away from the cool ocean breeze and weak moon, the air stank of kelp and brine.

  Declan picked his way across the pocked cement floor. “Hello?” His voice echoed throughout the hollow space. A silvery bird darted in through a glassless window. For no good reason he could think of, he followed it to a dark corner where someone had parked a 1960s VW van.

  The van’s tires had long melted onto the floor. The side door gaped open, exposing a rusted metal floor. There was a driver’s seat with curly springs poking through cracked vinyl behind the steering wheel and a lone bench in the back.

  Malcolm and Courtney sat on the back bench. Malcolm had his hands between his knees while Courtney leaned away from him, her expression stony.

  “I need you to convince him to go to Alaska,” Courtney told Declan.

  “I’m not running away,” Malcolm said.

  Courtney held up one finger. “One: the pack is hot to recruit you—and I don’t have to tell you that they’re not nice people...or creatures, or whatever they are.” She lifted another finger. “Two: the police are after you—and they may or may not be nice people, but I’m pretty sure they won’t be nice to you.” She held up a third finger. “Three—”

  Malcolm pushed her hand down. “I don’t want to hear it, okay? I’m not ready to give up my life.”

  Courtney blew a loose strand of hair out of her face. “It’s already gone. You’re reduced to hiding in warehouses and gutted-out vans. What kind of life is this?”

  “Where and how do you live?” Declan asked Courtney.

  “I have everything I need—everything I could wish for...except for, you know, parental approval, a home, love...” Courtney said, her tone bitter.

  “Thanks for proving my point.” Malcom lifted his head and glared at her. “I’ve got to salvage my life somehow. I have to save it.”

  “I don’t know what to do about the pack,” Declan said, “but maybe if we could convince the police that you had nothing to do with Jason’s death you could at least go home.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Courtney said.

  “If I could just hide from the pack, I could at least hang around in Seattle...watch my family from afar.”

  “Would that be worth it?” Declan asked.

  Malcolm nodded.

  “Hiding from the pack is impossible!” Courtney said. “Hiding from humans is easy...transfiguration spells are a cinch...but hiding a smell from a werewolf is not going to happen.”

  Malcolm studied Declan. “I can’t believe they haven’t reached out to you.”

  Declan shrugged. “Should I feel excluded?”

  “You’re lucky!” Courtney said.

  “You know what?” Malcolm said. “I don’t need to hide from the pack—I need to get rid of them!”

  “But how?”

  “Wolfsbane!” Malcolm exclaimed.

  “You’re going to kill them? All of them?” Courtney asked.

  “No...but I bet the threat of it could drive them away,” Malcolm said.

  Declan sat on the rusted floor. “Lizbet ordered some for the nursery.”

  “Yeah?” Courtney perked up.

  “Mr. Neal wouldn’t let her keep it. He said it was too toxic.”

  “So where is it now?” Malcolm asked.

  Declan shrugged. “It’s probably still there.”

  “You don’t thin
k he would have killed it?”

  Declan shook his head. “Not a chance. Mr. Neal loves all his plants...even the deadly ones.”

  “Let’s go and get it!” Courtney said.

  “Huh...how are we going to do that?” Declan asked.

  “Easy!” And with that, Courtney waved her hand and disappeared.

  “Neat trick,” Malcolm muttered. “So you’re going to do it on your own?”

  “No.” Courtney’s voice floated in the air. “I don’t know my way around the nursery. Declan has to come with me.”

  “If you’re taking him, you’re taking me,” Malcolm said.

  “No need to get huffy,” Courtney said seconds before Malcolm also disappeared.

  So long as the evil spirit is caught in the upper world, the princess cannot get down to earth either, and the hero remains lost in paradise.

  Carl Jung

  From Lizbet’s Studies

  CHAPTER 11

  Declan, Courtney, and Malcolm stood inside Neal’s Nursery parking lot waiting for Mr. Neal to leave.

  Malcolm looked at his watch. “I keep forgetting I’m invisible,” he said.

  Declan looked at the sky, measuring the moon’s distance to the horizon and trying to guess the hour.

  “You wanted to be invisible,” Courtney said. “I couldn’t very well make your watch discernable...well, I could, but then you’d have a floating watching and that would be weird.”

  “He’ll think it’s weird if he hears us out here,” Declan said under his breath.

  “I think it’s weird he hasn’t left yet,” Malcolm said. “He closed and locked the doors hours ago.”

  “Could he have gone out the back?” Courtney asked.

  “Maybe...” Declan said.

  “Let’s just go in,” Malcolm said. “He’ll never notice us.”

  Declan showed them the back entrance. After typing in the code on the alarm, he pulled the gate open. It swung noiselessly on its hinge. But another noise came from inside the office. Strains of Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor floated through the air like the soundtrack of a horror movie.

  Declan bumped into Malcolm.

  “Watch it!” Malcolm hissed.

  “How can I watch you?” Declan whispered. “You’re invisible. Why’d you stop?”

  “Mozart died listening to this,” Malcolm said.

  “How is that even possible?” Courtney whispered. “Did he have an orchestra and a choir at his deathbed?”

  “Probably not, but it’s still creepy,” Malcolm said. “They claim that Mozart received the commission from a mysterious messenger who wouldn’t reveal the commissioner's identity. Mozart believed he was writing the requiem for his own funeral.”

  Courtney sighed. “Are you trying to spook us?”

  Declan pulled his phone from his pocket and used his flashlight function. “Guys, this way.” He led them to the corner farthest from the office. Ducking behind the shelter of potted fruit trees, Declan searched for images of wolfsbane on his phone. “This is what we’re looking for.” His phone looked as if it floated mid-air.

  “Oh, it’s pretty,” Courtney said.

  “Doesn’t look so deadly,” Malcolm said.

  “That’s part of its power,” Courtney told him.

  “Let’s split up,” Malcolm said.

  “It’s not out here,” Declan said. “Mr. Neal told Lizbet they couldn’t sell it.”

  “So—where is it?” Malcolm asked.

  “Probably in the office.” Declan turned off his phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

  “But that’s where Neal is!” Malcolm said.

  “We can wait for him to leave,” Courtney said.

  “Smart...but boring,” Malcolm said.

  “Do you have a better idea?” Courtney asked.

  When no one said anything, Declan touched their arms so they’d follow him. They crept down the sawdust-strewn path between the ferns and hydrangea. When they got to the office, they peeked in the window. Mr. Neal sat slumped in his chair, his head back, and his mouth and eyes open.

  “Oh no, Mr. Neal!” Declan cried.

  “Is he dead?” Courtney asked.

  “I would say so,” Malcolm said.

  Declan blinked back tears. He’d always liked his former boss. Pushing past his friends, he entered the office and stood in the center of the room. If this was soon to be a murder scene, he didn’t want to leave his fingerprints on anything. But what if Mr. Neal wasn’t dead? He looked dead...

  “Do you think it was suicide?” Courtney asked.

  “No.” Declan shook his head. “Absolutely not.” He stiffened his spine and knelt beside Mr. Neal and reached for his wrist. He was already cold. When Declan didn’t feel a pulse, he placed his two fingers on Mr. Neal’s throat. Definitely no pulse.

  “Maybe a heart attack,” Malcolm suggested.

  “Okay, guys, this is terrible—but here’s a thought,” Courtney began. “What if we write a suicide note claiming that—”

  “No!” Declan stood, unable to take his gaze off Mr. Neal.

  “Why not? It will get Malcolm off the hook!” Courtney said.

  “But his family, they deserve to know the truth,” Malcolm said.

  “Mr. Neal didn’t have any family.” Declan sucked in a deep breath. “But he was a great guy. Everyone loved him.”

  Malcolm looked at the ceiling. “As much as I would love to go home to my family, I can’t... I won’t shift the blame to an innocent man. Even if he’s dead.”

  Courtney’s shoulders sagged. “You’re right. What we need to do is make the real murderers pay.”

  “There’s no way for that to happen,” Malcolm said.

  Declan eyed a flat of ragweed. “Maybe we can’t pin Jason’s murder on the pack, but we can make at least a few of them miserable.”

  “HOW EXACTLY DOES THIS work?” Lizbet asked Courtney the next day as they stood in the deserted UW quad outside the locker room. The first day of fall semester was only a few weeks away and since the summer term had ended, the campus held an eerie stillness. The sound of thumping basketballs came from the nearby gym’s open windows.

  Courtney flushed. “I can’t tell you how it works, I can only promise you that it does.”

  “But the plants?”

  “Yes, they’ll look like they’re floating through the air, unless we can tuck them under our shirts or something.”

  Lizbet shook her head. “That’s a really, really bad idea.”

  Courtney looked out over the quad. Other than a lone girl sitting on a stone bench, hunched over her phone, and a gardener raking the leaves from a flowerbed, they were alone. “Well, I’m not too sure about this plan, either.” She turned her frown on Malcolm. “Why did we think this was a good idea?”

  “It’s payback,” Malcolm muttered.

  “But we don’t even know if these wolves on the basketball team had anything to do with Jason’s death,” Courtney said.

  “Just the fact that they’re still in school says a lot about them,” Lizbet said.

  “You’re right,” Malcolm said. “Most of the wolves drop out of school. But still...the wolves operate as a pack. They’re incredibly symbiotic.”

  “But we’re not punishing the pack,” Lizbet pointed out. “We’re singling out only a couple of them.”

  Malcolm pointed a finger at Lizbet’s chest. “If you had any idea how miserable they have made my life, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I totally get it if you don’t want to be involved.”

  Lizbet bit her fingernail. She wanted to help them because they were friends of Declan’s, but she disagreed with their tactics—even though Declan had insisted the plan had been his. She handed the carton holding the ragweed to Malcolm before stripping off her leather gloves.

  “I’ll wait out here and keep watch,” Lizbet said. “Don’t even think about handling the plants without using the gloves,” she told Courtney. Turning to Malcolm, she added, “And that means you can do no
thing but carry the box.”

  “We need some sort of signal if someone comes in,” Malcolm said.

  Lizbet took note of the nearby animals. A robin sat in a birch tree. A wren worked on his nest in the gym’s eaves. A squirrel scurried through a flowerbed. “If a bird or an animal comes in, that means someone is coming.”

  Courtney narrowed her eyes at Lizbet. “How are you going to get an animal to go in the locker room?”

  “You have your tricks, and I have mine,” Lizbet said.

  She followed them to the locker room door, pulled it open, and stuck her head inside. It reeked, but was empty.

  Courtney nodded at Malcolm. Moments later they disappeared and the carton of ragweed floated midair.

  “Good luck,” Lizbet whispered before closing the door on them.

  Wandering back outside, she pulled a piece of bread out of her pocket and went to make friends with the robin—just in case she needed back-up.

  “I REALLY WANT TO STAY and watch,” Declan said after he emerged from the locker room.

  Lizbet shook her head. “It’s not safe. Do you think they were successful?”

  “I have no idea,” Declan told her. He ran his fingers through his wet hair. His shirt clung to his still-damp skin, and he smelled of soap and shampoo. He slung his gym bag over his shoulder. “Have you seen them?”

  “No, but they are invisible.”

  His lips quirked in a smile. “It’s pretty cool being friends with a witch.”

  “And I bet you’re a star on the basketball court.”

  “Don’t forget there’s a couple of other creatures there, too.” His grin widened. “But, yeah, I’ll make the team.” His smile faded slightly. “That wouldn’t have been a guarantee a few weeks ago.” He paused. “It seems like cheating now. Besides, I’m not so sure I even want to be on it anymore.”

  “Don’t forget there’s a downside as well as the upside. I mean it’s not as if you made the choice.”

  Declan pressed his lips together. “I would still go back if I could... Being a monster, it’s not something I would wish on anyone.”