"How'd the reading lessons go?" I grilled him as I grabbed a tea towel from the oven door. I balled the towel around my fist and scoured the inside of the bowl so hard I'm surprised I didn't punch a hole in the glass.
"Reading?" Victor's brow creased into a slight frown. "To be honest, we didn't do much reading."
"Why am I not surprised?" I gritted.
For several moments Victor considered me thoughtfully. He probably knew I was baiting him and I doubt he appreciated it. "Maybe we'll get around to it tomorrow," he drawled, his tone somewhat taunting as he stepped down into the family room.
"Tomorrow!" I barked. He was seeing her again tomorrow? What the hell? The bowl snapped suddenly between my fingers and several large pieces of glass rained down on the tile floor.
"She's picking me up at nine," he confirmed without looking back at me. "And she got us into that first aid class at the rec center, by the way. We need to be down there at seven o'clock."
I stared at the chunks of glass scattered around my feet then lifted my gaze and caught MacKenzie's startled expression. "I'll clean this up," I muttered.
"I'll give you a hand," Valor offered, and finally released his hold on his girlfriend.
With Valor's help, we had the floor cleaned up by the time the cupcakes came out of the oven. Predictably, Havoc was sitting on the barstool approximately two seconds before the baking pans touched the counter. And with five recently-baptized chocolate-lovers in the house, the cupcakes were gone before dinner.
While we were loading the dishwasher, MacKenzie got a phone call from Whitney. Her family had whisked her off to the mountains for two weeks of skiing so we hadn't seen much of her lately, which probably explained why Defiance was so moody.
As we listened in on the conversation, we realized we'd overlooked the fact that New Year's Eve was tomorrow night. Normally, MacKenzie would probably have had a babysitting job but with her foot in a cast, she was in no condition to herd kids around. MacKenzie told Whitney that Mim was coming over to spend the night and they'd decided a Parcheesi tournament was the best way to spend the hours waiting for midnight.
"Does that sound okay with you guys?" She put her hand over the phone's receiver and looked around at us.
"Sounds jolly awesome," Havoc replied cheerfully as he rinsed a mug and set it on the top rack of the dishwasher. Parcheesi is an old board game that originated in India. It was a big craze like a hundred years ago. Havoc was mad about it and was our resident champion.
As MacKenzie returned to her chat with Whitney, I racked my brain for useful information about New Year's Eve. All I really recalled about the modern celebration was that it involved kissing at midnight. As you can imagine, the idea of watching Victor kiss Mim didn't do much for my mood, which was already dark. At the same time, my stomach tied into a ball of knots that felt like a nest of snakes trying to hang each other. I guess I didn't do a very good job of hiding my feelings.
"Are you okay?" Valor asked me.
"I'm good," I muttered. I was okay. Really. I just needed to find a way to get through the next twenty-four hours.
Chapter Eight
I was ready for Mim when she drove up to the house the next morning. I was showered and dressed and waiting for her. In fact, I tore open the front door before she had a chance to knock.
"Hi," I said, though not without an accusatory edge to my voice.
She lifted her gaze to my face. "You cut your hair," she exclaimed quietly.
"I'm surprised you noticed," I muttered.
"What?"
"Do you like it?" I asked, faking cheeriness.
"I like it both ways," she answered, and sent me an uncertain look. "Short or long."
"You liked the white ends?" I grilled her through my tightly clenched teeth.
"I think they're very attractive," she said as she leaned to one side and looked behind me. "Is Victor here?"
"Where else would he be?" I growled.
She seemed agitated and even excited, somehow. Impatient to be on her way. "Oh, I don't know. I guess he might have gone flying or something."
"We're careful not to let others see us fly," I reminded her curtly as I moved aside to let her enter.
"That's right," she agreed awkwardly and stepped through the door. "I should have remembered that. Sorry."
She had nothing to apologize for but I jumped on her words and used them against her. "I'm sorry, too," I said coldly. "I'm sorry you prefer Victor's company to mine."
Mim's eyes widened in surprise. She stared up at me like she couldn't understand why I would say something like that. But how the hell did she think I'd feel? One minute we're holding hands down by the fire and the next minute she's spending all of her time with Victor. But before she could say anything that might suggest I was on the wrong track, my cousin came down the stairs.
"Ready to go?" Victor asked her and she nodded silently. With his hand on her lower back, he ushered her out through the door. "We'll be back before midnight," he threw over his shoulder.
"Great," I muttered beneath my breath. "Fine. Whatever."
I wheeled sharply and started back toward the stairs but Havoc stepped from the living room and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. Despite my growling attempts to shrug him off, my younger brother was determined to cheer me up. And when Havoc's determined, he's a force of nature. You might as well try to stop a hurricane. He steered me through the house into the garage while calling out for the others to come and watch him dance.
Almost hopping with excitement—which was hard with one foot in a cast—MacKenzie followed with Valor and her iHome. She balanced it on the hood of her Jeep and turned on some Flogging Molly. I slouched against Jeep while Havoc gave us a show, his heavy wooden shoes clacking thunderously in the empty garage bay while MacKenzie cheered him on. It was hard to stay angry while Havoc was so blatantly making a fool of himself but I managed to pull it off.
"Can you still catch your shoes?" Valor asked after about ten minutes of ear-splitting banging and hammering that had MacKenzie snorting with unladylike laughter.
"I guess we'll find out," Havoc panted as he jumped and clacked and kicked one foot upward. MacKenzie put her fingers in her mouth and let out a deafening whistle as he repeated the step with his other foot. One wooden clog lifted into the air and he caught it expertly. The other shoe almost took my head off. It rocketed over the Jeep, smacked the garage wall and dropped to the floor.
"I'll have to work on that," he laughed as he stood on the concrete slab in his bare feet, catching his breath. He pointed at Mac. "You," he wheezed. "You gotta show me how to whistle like that."
Still sulking, I retrieved Havoc's shoe from the other side of the Jeep and shook my head when he asked if I wanted to have a go. Although dancing was pretty common back in our time, I never had much talent for it.
The phone rang inside the house and Valor alerted MacKenzie, knowing that she wouldn't be able to hear it. He took her arm and helped her to the mudroom door. While they were gone, Defiance had a turn with the clogs and knocked around for a while. The difference was that when Defiance danced, the whole process was a lot more elegant. True to form, he managed to pull it off without disturbing a hair on his tightly bound ponytail.
"That's how you do it," Defiance murmured as he handed the shoes back to Havoc.
"My way works just fine," Havoc argued good-naturedly as he slipped the clogs back on his feet. "None of the girls back home ever complained before."
"That's probably because they were unconscious," Defiance returned coolly.
Even I was laughing by the time we collected the iHome and headed back into the house.
As we stepped through the mudroom door into the kitchen, MacKenzie was just returning the telephone to its cradle. "That was the shipping company," she announced, her anxious gaze flitting toward Defiance. "They finally gave me some information about the missing crates."
"What did you find out?" Defiance asked, clearly eager for news about his
missing brothers.
MacKenzie reached for Valor's hand before she answered. "Evidently, the delivery van was in an accident. It happened about a month ago."
Defiance's normally nonchalant attitude was shaken. "Accident!" he exclaimed. "The van crashed?"
MacKenzie nodded unhappily. "It happened outside of Limon, about eighty miles east of Denver."
I sensed there was more bad news. So did Valor. "What is it?" he asked gently, pulling her hand against his chest. "What's wrong, Kenz?"
She looked up into Valor's eyes and her voice faltered. "The van caught fire. Nothing was saved."
After a few heavy moments of silence, Defiance started talking rapidly. "Courage, Force and Chaos wouldn't have been harmed. They were in their stone forms. Did the shipping company say if it was day or night when the van crashed?"
"They didn't say," MacKenzie admitted haltingly. "They just said there was hardly anything left of the shipping van when the emergency vehicles arrived. The driver survived but only because he was thrown from the van."
Defiance paced across the kitchen floor. "My brothers and Chaos must have flown away before anyone arrived at the scene of the accident."
This scenario wasn't entirely unreasonable. The crash could have broken open the packing crates. Or the fire could have burned the wooden boxes to cinders. Either way, my cousins could have survived in their stone forms then escaped in their living forms.
"Do you think that's possible?" Valor questioned MacKenzie.
When it came to the twenty-first century, we counted on Mac for modern-day logistics. She would know what the van was made of. How it would withstand a crash and a fire. How long it would take for the emergency vehicles to arrive. And how many people might be around to witness the accident.
MacKenzie nodded energetically. Like Defiance, she wanted to find an explanation that involved the gargoyles escaping with their lives. "Limon isn't very big and the accident took place outside of town. They could have gotten away without anyone seeing them."
Abruptly, Defiance stopped pacing. "Can we go out there? To Limon? Now? Maybe we can find where the accident happened and talk to some people. Dare could drive. Or Valor."
Normally Valor and I limited our excursions to short trips around Pine Grove. The longer the trip, the greater the risk of being pulled over by the police. But if we went to Limon, Valor or I would have to drive. Mac wasn't supposed to operate a vehicle while she had that cast on her foot.
MacKenzie shared an uncertain look with Valor. "Maybe," she answered. "But…"
"But what?" Defiance demanded impatiently.
"What about Reason? Will it be okay to leave him here…alone?"
She had a point. One of us, usually Victor, had been keeping Reason company while he was trapped in his stone form. We all assumed the fallen gargoyle could still see and hear. He'd be safe enough on his own but it seemed inconsiderate to leave him alone.
From the other side of the room, Hooligan barked as if to say, "What am I, then?"
Havoc laughed and scrubbed his knuckles behind the big dog's ears. "Hooli's right. He can stay here with Reason. Rees couldn't have any better company, could he old boy?"
"We could leave some music playing for him," Defiance suggested. "He likes classical. Do you have anything on your iPod?"
"We can do better than that," MacKenzie replied. "We can turn on the computer and leave it on a classical webcast station. But…shouldn't we wait for Victor?"
Defiance hesitated, his desire to quickly learn something about his brothers warring with his loyalty to the leader of the pack.
I, on the other hand, wasn't feeling a whole lot of allegiance toward Victor. I pushed away from the kitchen counter. "Screw Victor," I growled. "Let's go."
I was the designated driver and Havoc was the copilot as we took off for Limon in Mac's Jeep. I'd never driven on the highway before and it was great to watch the speedometer finally move past forty-five. It was almost like flying…close to the ground. For the first few miles on I-70, MacKenzie was nervous. But the roads were relatively empty and once she decided I wasn't gonna kill us all, she settled down and quit trying to steer the car from the back seat.
As the Jeep ate up the miles, the idea that Victor and Mim might return and find us gone filled me with a bitter sense of satisfaction. 'Course MacKenzie insisted on leaving a note which would definitely ruin the effect I was going for. And Victor's claim that they might not return before midnight didn't help, either. But I was determined to ignore the cold, hard facts.
The Colorado skies remained overcast and dreary as we headed east. Having spent most of our lives in England, we were used to dim days. It was what we called stay-put weather because, without any direct sunlight, it meant we couldn't change forms and we had to stay put.
When we got to Limon, we drove past the town and continued into the plains another ten miles. Then we doubled back to search the highway for any signs of an accident. The foot of snow that had fallen a week earlier in Pine Grove hadn't amounted to much at the lower elevation so the roads were clear, which made our search easier.
About five miles later, we found a wide patch of blackened grass on the side of the road and stopped to investigate. But all we found were a few slats of charred wood to suggest we might be in the right place. And nothing to indicate what had happened to our missing kin.
Back inside the car and traveling west, we were a silent group. Nobody mentioned the size of the scar on the side of the road or how big and hot the fire must have been. I glanced at Defiance in the rear view mirror. His distant gaze was fixed on the horizon. I imagine he was telling himself the same thing the rest of us were thinking. The guys were safe as long as they were in their stone forms when the van crashed.
As I steered the car back into town, MacKenzie suggested that we try to find some kids our age so we could ask them some questions. For some reason, she was sure the small town would have a local hangout. So we drove slowly down the main street and scoped the place out for teenage activity. When we located a diner that looked like a used car lot, she decided we'd found the right place.
The building was a bit dismal, the previously red franchise roof repainted and faded to a sad shade of dull olive. But the interior was clean and well-lighted with green leather booths lining one wall and a counter running the length of the other. In between, a few tables were spaced out on the linoleum floor.
The diner was doing an energetic lunchtime business, but we managed to find an empty table at the back of the place. As we made our way through the tables, Havoc brought up the rear. His clogs clomped on the floor and several customers turned to stare at his feet.
Defiance dropped into a chair and pushed his sunglasses onto his head while he gave Havoc a blunt look. "I don't suppose you could have worn normal shoes," he muttered.
"I could have worn my purple high tops," he answered and smiled at the waitress who dropped off a bunch of menus. "But that's about as normal as I get."
We ordered some hamburgers and fries and tried to make a few new friends. The booths closest to us were full of girls and they seemed curious about us. At least, I assume they were curious. They kept sending glances in our direction. As soon as we got a chance, we asked them if they'd noticed any new guys in town.
"What did they look like?" asked a tall, plain girl who slid a steady stream of fries into her mouth, without hardly taking a breath.
"What did they do?" asked a young strawberry blonde trying to be clever. "Kill somebody?"
While her friends giggled, Defiance shook his head and flashed her one of his slow, warm smiles. "Two of them are my brothers. They might have been dressed in leather vests and long shorts. They're fair like me."
"Fair?" questioned a freckled redhead.
"Blond," Defiance corrected himself.
"We ain't seen nobody as fair as you," the tall girl snickered while her friends broke into another round of giggles.
But the girls' laughter slowly faded as a crowd o
f young cowboys sauntered through the doors and found places at the counter. I could tell they were cowboys from their boots and their denim jackets…and their hats, which we'd seen in old western movies we'd watched with MacKenzie. Havoc elbowed me and lifted his chin toward the newcomers. We were all gobsmacked to find ourselves in the presence of real western cowhands. I thought Havoc was going to ask them for their autographs.
Strangely, the locals didn't seem as impressed as we were. The young girls seated across from us kinda shrank back in the high-backed booth as if they were trying to disappear, while the waitresses took their time serving the young men. Maybe the locals were just used to seeing cowboys, but I got the impression that they knew the five guys and wished they didn't.
By that time, we were finishing up with lunch and Mac decided we should try to find a hardware store where we might find some more people to talk to—maybe some men this time. She caught the waitress's eye and motioned for the bill. As the waitress delivered the slip of paper to our table, the girls in the booths started teasing her.
"Seen any flying monsters, lately?" the strawberry blonde taunted the older woman.
The waitress took the ribbing in stride. "Not since last week but if I see it again, I'll send it your way."
While the local girls snickered in response, over at our table I think we all stopped breathing.
"What was that about a flying monster?" Defiance choked out, turning his head toward the graying waitress as Valor counted out the money to pay our bill.
She waved her hand dismissively. "You don't want to hear it, honey. You won't believe it. Nobody else does."
"Please," he insisted. "We're really very interested."
The waitress sighed and wiped her hands on her white apron. "About a week ago, I was on my way home after work. Our farm's a few miles east of town. It was just getting dark and I saw something huge flying through the trees alongside the road."
The Greystone Bundle (Books 1-4) Page 28
