“Yes.” He was silent for so long that I listened to the lyrics again, to try to keep from losing my bravado. Standing this close with the silver cord glowing was a bad idea on my part. The silver cord wanted to pull me closer, to touch him rather than glare at him. That wasn’t a hard temptation to pass up, because why would I want to touch him? Right…?
I was going to end this. Leave all this. I would end it, and he would be gone after today. No more weird stuff. I could make it through one more day. I stood a little straighter.
We stood, still as vampires. Okay, I made that line up, but vampires are stiller than statues. I guess you have to know one to get the reference, though.
Finally, he spoke. “So, I hear you’re moving away. Giving up your siren abilities, all that fun stuff.”
“Yup.” I looked down at the lighted cord. “Wanna stop with the special effects now that you have my attention?”
“I’m not doing that. Call it Fate. She is quite the bitch.”
“Lemme guess, you know her?” As I mentioned before…if I feel insecure, I get cocky. Major personal flaw.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I have been making her life interesting for years. I guess this is her revenge…no, not that, because even this is my own doing.”
“Okay, Spongebob Crazypants, to what do I owe this unwanted visit?”
He arched a brow at me. “Actually, I thought you might need my help again.”
“For what?” I looked at him doubtfully. “I am leaving Weirdsville in the morning. We beat the bad guy and all is well.”
“Yes, but you left a couple of strings untied.”
I arched a brow at him. “Oh, yeah? Name one?”
“Two come to mind. We will go with the more pressing matter, and I will remind you that no one defeated Max.” He took my arm and began escorting me from the arcade.
I dug my feet in. “Vance said she was hired by Gregorian. He said she would no longer be a problem.”
“Yes, that might be true, if anyone had told her that the contract on Vance was null and void, and therefore you were no longer of interest to anyone.”
I looked up at him, allowing him to move me another few feet. “Which you did and now”
“She didn’t believe me, for starters. She is under the impression I’m helping you and that I would lie to her to save your delectable ass.”
I yanked my arm free. “Delectable?”
“Tasty, appetizing, enjoyable”
“I know what delectable means. So, what does that have to do with me?”
He tilted his head.
I blew out a breath. “What does Max and what Max thinks have to do with me?”
“Nothing with you directly.” He looked as if he lied, but I wasn’t about to call him on it.
“Well, then, although I do so enjoy your visits, you will have to excuse me because—”
“You’re here to pick up your daughter,” he finished.
“How did you know that?” I stopped again and looked at him.
“Would you rather wait around for her to show up or go get her?”
I glared at him. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Vickie. We could go get her because I am willing to help. Or you can wait around for her and then go looking for her by yourself when she doesn’t show up.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “My ex-husband is a lawyer, very precise. He will be here.”
“He already was. You got Vickie, and he left.”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t.”
He began to change into me before my eyes. “Thank you, James.” He sounded just like me. I looked at an exact replica of me.
“Oh, my freaking God.” I backed up a step.
“Vickie, come on, dear.” Chance motioned to my daughter who was not there.
I stepped back another step and hit my back into a game. I stared. “You can copy me?”
He reverted to his usual form in the time it took me to exhale.
“I can copy anything. One of the many perks of being me.”
I stared at him, still uncomprehending.
“Max has Vickie, and I had no choice in the matter. If you want me to help get her back, I will. I feel…responsible.” The last word came off his tongue funny, as if it wasn’t one that he typically used.
I stared at him stupidly. “Max has my kid?”
“And Max is a naughty girl.” He did not look as happy as I might expect.
“Oh, God, my baby.” My limbs trembled, and my stomach rolled. Tears clouded my vision, and I fell to my knees.
People were beginning to look at us, and Chance caught my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Whah, whah, poor mommy. Got it. Moving on. Are you going to bemoan it or are we going to go kick some ass?”
I blinked. Horror wracked my body, coming out as dry sobs. The monsters have my baby. The cool wind voice spoke up in my mind. Go get her, it said. Leave bodies and let God sort them out. I blinked. I blinked again. Light flashed behind my eyes.
My spine straightened. I stood and shoved off Chance’s arm. It was hours until sunset. I would go alone. I breathed in slowly and let it out. I never wanted to be a monster.
But I would be one today. That bitch had my baby, and she was going down. I strode out of the mall and got into my car. I stuck the slushie in the cup holder and the keys in the ignition. I glanced over at Chance when he jumped into the passenger side. “So, are we going to kick butt now?”
I glared at him. I put in my Linkin Park CD and jammed the volume to twenty five and hit pause.
I let my hair down and shook it out. An unseen wind picked it up and blew it out behind me. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that my eyes were glowing a little. Good. Let the bitch see what she had caught in her trap. If a spider catches a praying mantis, do you think the spider has the sense to fear?
I guess we’d find out.
“Where to?” I awaited direction and gazed at him expectantly.
He sat back and smiled. “Jefferson.”
I jammed the car in reverse, sped out of the mall parking lot and hit pause again. The words to One Step Closer blasted out of my speakers. I nodded along with it, adrenaline pumping. Chance reached out and flicked the stop button. I glared at him, sped up and hit play.
He hit stop again.
I sped up, and we were now going about as fast as my car would go. I hit play again. Unlike Vance, Chance did not seem in the least worried about my speed. I took a moment to find this strange.
He hit stop again, and I slammed on the brakes. He jerked forward against his belt. That would have been somewhat more satisfying if I hadn’t suffered the same trauma.
Breathlessly, I glared at him. “Quit touching my stuff.”
“Quit blasting crap music.” He reached for his fedora.
“No, it is my car, and we are on my rescue mission, and we will do this my way. No one asked you to come along.”
“Are you always this big of a pain in the ass?”
“Do you always have a death wish? I could have jammed your head through the dash at that speed.”
“I am not very easily frightened.” He leaned back. “If you want to listen to that big business bred band, fine, but do so at a decibel level that your speakers can take.”
“Remind me...” I pulled out into traffic again. “Why are you tagging along?”
“Because it is Fate. Because otherwise years of my work will go down the toilet because of stupid human pride. Because I want to.”
“Okay, that was three and I didn’t get any of them. Did you or did you not impersonate me to kidnap my daughter?”
He shifted in his seat to face me. “Are you or are you not vowing never to sing again and moving away from here?”
“Yes, to both. So?” I shot him another dirty look and pulled off the Jefferson exit.
“Okay, then I did what I had to do in order to save you. As a side perk, it will save your friends, Vance and Mia, further harassment
by Max. By the end of today, everyone will live happily ever after.”
I slid a little on the snow-slicked roads, found traction and then sped back up. “How is kidnapping my kid going to do any of that?”
“Fate, my dear, won’t be denied.” He gave a little enigmatic smile. “You drive very fast. Pull into the Galley.”
“Nothing good ever comes of a night at the Galley,” I mumbled.
“Depends on your point of view. I am about to have a ball. Come, let’s not keep Maxine waiting…” I got out and stiffened my back. I walked in front of Chance and opened the door to the Galley.
And then everything went dark.
Dammit, I thought as I went down. The bastard koshed me on the head.
~
I awoke in a room with sunlight pouring in on me. I blinked and moved my head to bury it under my arm.
But I couldn’t move my arm. I tugged and struggled for a minute before any of it made sense.
Oh, okay, I’m tied up in a chair and freaking Chance put me here. I looked around, and had no idea where exactly here was.
“Can you get loose?” A feminine voice floated in the air.
I tried to turn my head and only got so far because of my restraints. I could kind of see a woman tied in a similar fashion to a rack filled with bottles of wine. She had jet black cornrows in her hair and polished mahogany eyes. Her dark skin reminded me of the color of coffee.
Hmm, coffee. I could use some coffee.
“Nope.” I tried to loosen my hands from their bonds. “Who are you?”
“Shawna Peterson.” Her voice trembled. “They have had me down here for two days. Are you FBI?”
I blinked at her. “No. Why? Are you?”
“Yes.” She shrugged in the semi-darkness. “I was kind of hoping you were the second line, coming in to rescue me and all that jazz.”
Her smooth and melodic voice sounded calm—even though it had a slight warble that may have been fear or exhaustion—for a woman who had been tied in a…wherever we were. I wouldn’t have been nearly as calm after two days. By two days of this, I would have been a blubbering idiot.
Hell, I had only been awake for two minutes and I was considering trying out the blubbering already. And where was Vickie? Wait, question the other prisoner. Yeah, that was what Bruce Willis would do. I had a bad feeling I was closer to parodying a B-rate movie than a Bruce Willis flick, but hey, this is my head, not yours. And I wanna be Bruce…dammit. On with the questioning.
“Why do they have FBI tied up down here?”
“Max owns the Galley. Word got out that she was making local law enforcement do her bidding, collecting debts and things of that nature. So, they sent me in. I pretended to be with the local paper, the Beacon, and that I was doing a story on her.”
She shrugged as much as you can when tied up. “I am not sure how they knew I was lying or if they caught me just because I asked too many questions.”
I looked at her. “You said you were working for the Beacon?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Small town. Everyone knows everyone’s business here. If you were really with the Beacon, they would have known it three days before you got hired.”
“Hadn’t thought of that. I am out of Detroit, and I just transferred here. There is a lot of crazy shit going down in this little town, isn’t there?”
“You have no idea.” I redoubled my efforts to free myself. “Have you seen a little girl, looks like me, blond hair…”
“No, why?”
Max entered the room right then, followed by two henchmen. Why do all the bad guys have henchmen? I want a henchman. A big, burly one. If I am going to be one of the good guys, I am going to start a new good guy trend and get me a henchman. Oh, wait. Good guys have henchmen, too. They’re called side kicks. I want a henchman though. Side kick is just not as impressive of a term.
They picked up my chair, me included, and carried me up a staircase. Music played in the distance. “Are we still in the Galley?” I strained to look around me.
“Uh, huh.” The henchman did not look at me when he spoke. No one ever properly introduces their henchmen, either, while we are on the topic of henchmen. So, me, I like to give them names. Gregorian’s two lead henchmen I named, by appearance and demeanor, Lug and Weasel. So let’s name Max’s, too. We will call henchman number one Fugly, because he wasn’t just ugly, he was freaking ugly. Hence, Fah-ugly.
That done, I was pretty sure I had also figured out where we were.
“You kidnap people and keep them in the bar?” I tried to look back at Max.
“Shut up, honey.” When the second henchman spoke, I immediately named him Stupid. We will call him Stupid because he called me honey. As I mentioned before, not fond of being called honey unless the caller is over eighty. And if I got out of this frigging chair, he was going down for calling me honey as he was no where near eighty. I was gonna jam some “honey” down his frigging throat.
I glared at him. “Where is Vickie?”
“Who?” Max looked confused.
“My daughter, you bitch. Where is my daughter?”
Her eyebrows twitched up. “You lost your kid?”
“No, you kidnapped her,” I informed her.
She laughed. “I didn’t even know you had a kid.”
I stiffened. “What?”
“I do believe that Chance has been making things up again. Chance, lover, come here.”
Chance entered from the room they’d hauled me from. I glared at him.
“So, you didn’t kidnap Vickie?”
“That would have been Max’s next move, had she figured out there was a pawn to steal. Look at it this way, we have all the benefits from actually doing the deed, but none of the trauma to your lovely child. Everyone is better off my way.” He brushed his dark reddish brown curls back from his forehead.
“You bastard.” I threw the words at him, wishing I could hurt him with them.
“I have been called that before, but it is neither accurate, nor creative.” He gave me the happy golden-retriever-harmless-smile. I was finding out that golden retrievers had a bite. Ah, well, I had always been more of a cat person anyway.
“Why? Twenty-four hours from now, she and I would have been out of your hair. Why? Why suck me back in?”
“Maybe because this is where you belong?”
Another man entered from the bar and a wave of noise came into the room. He mumbled something in Max’s ear, and she said in a hissing voice, “Take care if it.”
He mumbled again, borderline frantic and Max threw up her slim hands. “Fine, I will come fix it.”
She snapped her fingers and Stupid and Fugly went with her. I was alone with the two faced jerk.
“Who are you to decide where I belong? Why would you do this to me?”
Tears threatened as a wave of helplessness washed over me. Thank God they didn’t have Vickie, but I was still in some serious trouble here. I mean, last I heard, people who tie you up generally have some nefarious intent.
“You are going to have to sing. You are going to have to grow a fucking spine and take care of this shit that you were going to run away from. You have to do this for yourself. Don’t you see that the whole life you have pretended to have has been for others? What others say you should be, how you should act…it is all fake. Be real, be yourself.”
I glared at him, knives in my gaze. “Oh, yeah, because you say so. That is so much better.”
He knelt in front of me. “Look, I only want for you what you want, but are afraid to take. Do you think you are a good guy…filled with human compassion and all that sop?”
“Yes!” I spat the words at him.
“You aren’t. You aren’t even as good as your cronies Vance and Mia. Here is the big difference. They are, or once were, human. They honestly have human compassion. You aren’t, and never will be, human. It is all fake, learned behavior picked up and aped so that you could fit in. You have no real human compassion because to
have it, you have to BE human. You aren’t. Accept who you are, and live with it. Quit living this half life. Be you.”
“Once again, I reiterate, because you say so.”
He stood and brushed off his knees. “Fine, keep pretending to be a nice little human, disgusted with all of the weird stuff. Fake it the rest of the day. If you do, you will die here in this back country bar. Makes no difference to me. I can’t stand to watch you do this anymore, and if you aren’t here, you won’t. Or, embrace it. Quit pretending to be a nicey-nice human, and fess up to what you are. Not human. You don’t care if you hurt Max’s feelings. You don’t care about any of it. Take what you need to survive and to allow those you love to survive and live. Or die. You pick. I won’t interfere.”
He stalked to a wall and leaned on it casually.
“I can’t do this. I can’t be this.”
“You can’t not.” Double negative equals a positive, I thought.
I blinked back tears. I wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
Oh, who am I kidding. I was crying. Tears and boogers…the works.
He’d put me in a corner. If I wanted to see my kid again…if I wanted to live, he was going to make me become one of the monsters. Vance wouldn’t be awake for hours. Mia had no idea I was here…no help was coming. It was me verses the night world.
I stopped blubbering and stared at my legs.
Max reentered the room. I’d mostly made up my mind that I would die.
She sat across from me. “What are you?”
I looked over at Chance. “Hasn’t your spy told you?”
“No. He said I could find out for myself.” She gave him a glare similar to the ones I cast at him. Chance was not the most likable guy. “I want to know what you are.”
“I am a normal woman who happened to be friends with a witch who was friends with a vampire that you wanted to kill. Six degrees of separation and all that.”
“Try again.” She took off a necklace that looked to be polished obsidian. It winked black in the low light of the room.
Odd Stuff Page 22
