“Yeah…” Mecca turned back to the duffel and fiddled with some socks, finally scooping them up and going to the dresser. “Things have gotten weird.”
Weird. That was the word of the day, wasn’t it?
Jenny nodded. “No kidding.” Thunder rumbled overhead.
When Mecca faced her again, Jenny stood, watching her, expectant.
“I just…” Mecca pulled in a deep breath and pushed on. “I didn’t like the way we left things.”
“The way you left things.”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She didn’t know what else to say or how to fix it.
So they both stood there.
As the awkward silence grew, Jenny said, “Why did you call me here, Mec? To make me watch you unpack?” She waved an arm around the room. “I don’t have time for this right now.” She stalked toward the door. Rain hammered on the roof above them.
Mecca flinched. Jenny had never dismissed her like that. “I was trying to apologize.”
Jenny whirled and her eyes flashed. “So fucking apologize! There is too much going on for me to spend an hour pulling your feelings out of you.” She paced toward Mecca, stopping two feet from her and spreading her arms. “So if you want to apologize, I’m right here. Apologize.”
Mecca blinked slowly. “What the hell is up with you?”
Jenny pinched her lips together and shook her head. Her voice came low and quiet. “My dad is dead. The people my mom comes from did it. My best friend, who can kill anyone I care about—me included—by just touching them, isn’t sure whether I’m a real person or ‘one of them.’ And ‘one of them’ who has become my friend is now missing and may be dead too. That’s what the hell is up with me.”
Mecca could barely follow everything she said. “You think I’d kill you?” How had this become their normal conversation?
“You haven’t told me you won’t.”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course I won’t.”
“What about my mom?”
“Huh?”
“She’s Visci. Are you going to kill her?”
“No!”
“And my frien—” Jenny stopped and then flinched as if Mecca had slapped her. She blew out a short breath and blurted, “Did you kill Helen?”
“Huh? Who’s Helen?”
Jenny narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you’re the reason Visci are disappearing and coming up dead.”
“Jenny. What…in…the…hell…are you talking about?”
Mecca couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.
A voice from downstairs yelled, “Jenny!” And then, not quite so loud, “Where is she? I know she’s here!”
The voice wasn’t one Mecca recognized. Sounded like a woman. Jenny glanced at the door, her brows squished together and a frown pulling down the edges of her lips.
Mecca followed her gaze. “Who is that?”
“I’m not sure,” Jenny said, already distracted and opening the door.
Chapter Twenty: Jenny
When Jenny got toward the bottom of the stairs, she found Zoey in the foyer, dripping wet, standing almost nose to nose with Will. He stood rail-straight, an intense expression of control on his face.
“…know she’s here.” She waved her phone to the side and pointed at the screen. “See?”
“Zoey,” Jenny said, rescuing Will from having to respond. He stepped back as she reached the foyer and Zoey turned to her.
The other woman’s short, usually spiky hair lay plastered to her head, the tips, currently blue, looking purple black. Her words came in a rush. “You need to call your mom right now and find out what the hell is going on with the hybrids.”
“And how did you find me?” Jenny hadn’t even known she was coming here.
Zoey waved a hand in the air, as if she had better things to do. “Tracker on your car.”
“What?” A tracker? They were spying on her?
“Never mind. You need to call your mom. Jorge is missing.”
“What do you mean, missing? Helen is missing. Not Jorge.”
Zoey huffed and rolled her eyes. “They are both missing.” The smell of cinnamon floated in the air. “He was supposed to meet me at the apartment, but he hasn’t come home, and I can’t find him anywhere.”
Jenny stared at her.
“We’re roommates.” Zoey spoke slowly, as if Jenny were four years old. “He was supposed to come home. He always comes home. And he isn’t answering texts. He always answers texts.” She pointed a finger at Jenny. “You need to talk to your mom. See if she can find out where they’ve taken him.”
A girl stood from the overstuffed chair in the living room and moved to the edge of the foyer, watching intently. Her black spiky hair shot through with emerald green seemed a strange juxtaposition of Zoey’s usual style.
“Who the hell is Jorge?” Mecca asked from behind her. “And why would you need to talk to your mom?”
Jenny wanted to scream. This was not how she envisioned telling Mecca about the other pieces of this mess. She didn’t turn around, but raised a hand to hold Mecca off for a moment.
Zoey looked back and forth between Jenny and Mecca, her brow creased between the eyes. She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter,” she mumbled. Zoey didn’t seem to be talking to her. Then those green eyes focused back on her own. “You need to talk to your mom.”
“I doubt she knows anything. I don’t think the Council is after you guys.”
Zoey took half a step toward her and wagged her finger between them. “You mean ‘us guys.’ And if you believe they’re not after us, you’re stupid.” Her voice lowered again. “Of course, you’re probably protected because of who you are.”
Mecca burst forward from behind her. “Jenny, what the hell is going on?”
“That’s a great question,” said the chick with the dark hair. “I’d love to know what’s going on and who’s dripping in my front room.” So this was her place that Mecca was crashing in. The young woman gave Zoey a grin, and Jenny thought hearing those words coming out of most people would be snarky as hell. But they hadn’t been. She turned her gaze to Mecca. “And your friend, too.”
Mecca sighed. “This is Jenny.”
She noted the lack of “best friend,” which they’d been appending to their introductions of each other since they were seven. A piece of Jenny’s heart broke at that tiny, little thing.
“Hi, Jenny. I’m Sara.” She extended her hand with what seemed a genuine smile.
Jenny shook, hoping the awkward didn’t drop off her. “Um… Hi.”
“And your friend?” Sara spoke as if they’d run into each other at a restaurant. Not all crowded into the entranceway of her house, acting like a bunch of lunatics.
“This is Zoey,” Jenny said.
Zoey raised a hand in wave to Sara. “Hey.” Also as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Was Jenny actually the one acting like a lunatic? Everyone else seemed like this was all perfectly normal.
“Great to meet you. Now what were you saying about someone being missing?”
The blank look on Zoey’s face was almost comical. She gave her head a little shake and turned her gaze back to Jenny. “You need to talk to your—” A weird siren-sound came from her jacket. It rang out like a foghorn for a few seconds, getting louder when Zoey yanked it from her pocket.
“That’s him!”
“You have a siren as a ring tone?” Sara asked.
Zoey looked at her as if she were the biggest idiot in the room. “No. He hit his panic button.” Her attention went to the phone. She unlocked it, swiped, and tapped a couple times. “I’ve got his coordinates. I have to go.” She turned toward the door, never looking up from her phone.
Jenny peered at the others, especially Mecca, and she was sure the weird panic that had welled in her showed in her face. She grabbed Zoey’s arm. “You can’t go alone.”
Zoey paused, surprised, and yanked her arm away. “I have to go.”
“We’re comin
g with you,” she blurted.
Zoey stared at her, shock clearly etched on her face. And when Jenny glanced around at the others, the same expressions were reflected there.
“We can’t let her go alone.” Jenny grabbed her coat from the hook on the wall behind her. “Come on.”
Sara grinned now, her wet floor forgotten. “I’m in!”
“Mecca?” Jenny said. She hated the begging quality of her voice.
“I don’t even know what the hell is going on.”
“You can prove you’re not the one who’s kidnapping and killing hybrids by helping us find Jorge.” Jenny didn’t believe Mecca could be behind the disappearances. Not really.
“Who is Jorge?” She all but threw her hands up in the air.
“He’s a friend,” Jenny said. “Is that enough?”
Mecca stared at her, eyes hard. And for the first time, Jenny wondered if their friendship would survive their secrets.
Zoey huffed. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Kiss and make up or don’t. But I’m not waiting around.”
Jenny waited for some response from Mecca, but her best friend—former?—said nothing.
“Who has taken Jorge?” Will’s voice slid through the heavy silence.
“We don’t know,” Zoey said. “But I’m betting her mom knows.”
Jenny spun on her heel. “She doesn’t. The Council isn’t taking them.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Zoey shot back.
Will ignored the back and forth. “Is he Visci?”
At the word, all eyes shifted toward him.
“We all know they exist. And I can’t think of any other reason that she”—he pointed a finger at Zoey—“wouldn’t call the police.”
Zoey turned on Jenny. “Who in the hell are these people?”
“You’re asking that?” Mecca almost shouted.
Jenny puffed out a breath. “Would everyone calm down for a second, please?” How had this gotten so out of control? When they all looked at her, she continued. “Jorge is a friend. Yes, he is Visci. A hybrid.”
Sara, who’d been leaning nonchalantly against the wall, straightened up and seemed to listen more closely.
“Visci have been disappearing from the city. And other cities too. Earlier, another friend, Helen, was kidnapped too. Cops seem to be in someone’s pocket. But we don’t know whose yet.”
“Can we go?” Zoey said.
“Yes,” Jenny replied, her gaze skimming everyone else’s. She pulled her jacket on. If they had to rescue Jorge themselves, they’d try, at least. She really wished her best friend could support her. But if Mecca didn’t, then she didn’t.
Jenny tried not to think about that bit, though. She couldn’t stop it from hurting her heart.
“Do you have any weapons?” Will asked, looking at Sara.
“Oh!” Sara squealed. Well, maybe it wasn’t an actual squeal, but it sounded close enough. “I get to use my TASER again! Oh man…yay! I’ll be right back.” Her eyes shone brightly as she rushed to the door beneath the stairs. She pressed her thumb to a keypad and the metallic clunk of a lock disengaging sounded. Then she was gone, through the door.
Will looked at the others. “I doubt a TASER is going to do much good. If they’re snatching Visci, they’ll be armed and there won’t only be humans doing the job.” The intensity of his gaze made a little ball of dread settle in the pit of Jenny’s stomach.
Since she’d developed her Visci strength and quickness, she’d never feared for her safety. But Will’s words made her wonder how much good those benefits would be up against another Visci. Perhaps an older, stronger, more experienced Visci.
“I don’t have anything but myself,” Zoey said.
Sara bounded up the basement stairs and pushed the door shut behind her, as she waved the TASER she held in her hand. “Got it! Man, this is gonna be awesome.”
“Do you have anything else we can use to defend ourselves? Any guns?”
Sara gave him a blank look. “Um. No. Not a gun person.”
“A TASER person,” Zoey said, flatly.
“Yep,” Sara said with a grin.
Jenny didn’t think Sara got that Zoey was mocking her. Or maybe she did but just didn’t care.
“Can we go now?” Zoey asked, moving to the door.
Will looked at Mecca. After a long moment, she gave a long sigh and nodded.
Jenny held in a gasp of relief.
Will tossed a coat to Mecca and pulled on his own bomber jacket. “This is a really bad idea.”
They’d piled into Zoey’s car, an old maroon sedan that had looked almost black in the rainy darkness. Jenny sat beside Zoey while the other three crammed into the back. Dark grey seats had threadbare patches. Nicks and cuts marred the dashboard, and the entire car smelled like pickles. Jenny cracked the window as they made their way toward the highway. Fresh air and raindrops hit her face.
Zoey hadn’t spent much money on the car, clearly, but on her gadgets…
A full tablet-sized screen sat on a mount between their seats, with a mapped-out route on the night-dimmed display. Zoey’s phone was in a second mount on the dashboard near her door, its screen dark. Zoey herself clutched the wheel tightly, with the occasional glance at the map.
“Cool setup,” Sara said from behind Jenny. “What is it?”
Zoey rattled off a name and some specs that Jenny couldn’t follow.
“Nice,” Sara said.
“Has anyone thought of what we’ll do when we get there? Wherever ‘there’ is,” Will said. He’d been crammed in the middle.
Zoey said, “Rescue Jorge.”
“Ah,” Will said. “Well, that’s that, I suppose.”
“He’s right,” Jenny said. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. We can’t go running in. If he is in danger—”
“He is,” Zoey said. “He wouldn’t have pushed his panic button if he weren’t.”
“Why do you guys have panic buttons?” Sara asked.
“Because people like us are being kidnapped.”
Mecca muttered, “Not people.” And Will put a hand on her arm. She glared at him.
If Zoey heard her, which Jenny was pretty sure she had, she didn’t act like it, instead continuing. “About a year ago, we started noticing a pattern when the bodies of hybrids turned up.”
Jenny’s adrenaline spiked as Zoey spoke. She hadn’t even gotten to tell Mecca anything about hybrids or full bloods or the tensions between them. But Zoey kept going.
“We discovered that there were more hybrids missing than had been killed. So we connected our phones, so we could track each other’s movements and we created secret panic buttons for ourselves.” She reached beneath her sweater and pulled out a pendant.
Jenny had seen that before. “Helen had something like that, but it was a key fob. It was broken on the floor of her bathroom.”
Zoey cut her a sidelong glance. “Yes. I just told you we created them for ourselves.”
Jenny sighed. “I mean that I don’t see a button.”
Zoey flipped hers over. “It’s on the back. A big button on a necklace wouldn’t be so secret, would it?” She snorted. “Duh.”
The constant ridicule was getting on Jenny’s nerves.
Sara chimed in from the backseat, saving Zoey from Jenny’s wrath. “What exactly does the button do when you hit it?”
Zoey dropped the pendant behind her sweater again and said, “It pings the satellites. Then it connects to the nearest cell tower and sends a single text to all of our phones with our coordinates at that moment.”
Silence settled for a moment as they pulled up to a red light.
“Okay, that’s pretty cool,” Sara said.
“Thanks, I guess.”
Jenny thought about Jorge, grabbing that pendant he’d worn and pushing the button. “We still need a plan, though. If we don’t get an idea of what’s going on wherever we’re going, we could end up in the same situation as Jorge is. If that happens, we won’t be able to
rescue him at all.”
Zoey shoved the car into Park and turned bodily in the seat. “I’m not an idiot.” She tapped the tablet a few times, which brought up the satellite view of a house marked by a big purple dot. “We’ll park there”—she pointed to a street around the corner—“and cut through the side yard here.” Her finger traveled the path as she spoke. “There are enough of us to circle around the house and have a look before we go in. It’s not very big.”
The screen changed to a web page with photos of both an aerial view and a front view. It was a small ranch house with a single-car garage on the left, along with a gravel driveway. She was right. It didn’t look very big.
Zoey pointed to data on the right side of the page. “Three bedroom, one bathroom. Fourteen hundred square feet. Three-quarter-acre lot, but it looks like most of that is trees.” Her finger tapped the overhead photo, and it got bigger. “Just a couple hundred feet through the side yard.” Three more taps and the map came back up.
She swiveled and grabbed her phone. She unlocked it and tossed it at Sara, who scrambled to keep it from hitting the floor.
“Put your number in there. I’ll make a group text.” The light turned green, and she faced front again, putting the car back into gear. “And for God’s sake, turn your phone sound off. All of you.”
The four of them looked at each other. Where had all that come from?
And then they were moving again, into the turn lane to get onto the interstate.
“Apparently, we do have a plan,” Will said, as Sara handed the phone to him.
Chapter Twenty-One: Mecca
Zoey parked the car exactly where she had said, and they all tumbled out into the cold, damp. The rain had slowed as they’d driven, and Mecca was glad. Her coat was warm, but not waterproof. As it was, getting rained on when they’d left Sara’s had made the coat wet enough to send a chill through her when the wind hit as they gathered on the driver’s side. She pulled the coat tighter.
“Hang on,” Zoey said as she tapped on her phone. She looked at Mecca. “Which one are you?”
“What?”
“Sara or Mecca? Which one are you?”
Seriously? “Mecca,” she said, her voice flat. Why was she even here?
Visci (Soul Cavern Series Book 2) Page 13
