Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  His mother had been shunned from her family for marrying whom they called “The Spaniard.” They didn’t like that he was different. And it wasn’t because he was a circus performer. Felipe and Fabian had always thought it was because he was Spanish. He didn’t have the pedigree his wife had. But now Felipe understood it wasn’t his nationality they were so averse to, but his genetics.

  He was a freak, just like the sons he eventually had. And now Felipe wondered about that freak part of his father.

  He’d assumed his father was dead because he hadn’t been around, but no one had ever told them explicitly that their father was dead. Maybe he’d deserted.

  That would make all those nights during Felipe’s childhood make sense—those nights when he thought someone was in their room, and there was no one there.

  Could that have been his father?

  If so, that might have explained why his saint medallion always showed up on the table when it’d started the night in a drawer. Fabian had always claimed not to move it, and he had no reason to lie. The brothers didn’t tease each other in that way.

  Felipe felt that same sort of spatial awareness when Fabian was invisible nearby. Felipe hadn’t put two and two together.

  Their father was wind-walker.

  Could he have been out there, running away from something just like Felipe had?

  The realization sank into Felipe’s gut like hardening cement.

  His father might be alive somewhere.

  “Felipe?” Sarah whispered from the front seat.

  When he snapped out of his reverie, he saw Chauncey had fallen asleep with his head against the window. Sarah, when not navigating sharp turns, turned in her seat and watched Felipe with a concerned expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “No, querida. Just thinking about one.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Sarah waited with Felipe on the abandoned farmhouse’s covered porch as Chauncey walked the farm’s perimeter and tracked over any non-Bear scents.

  A bluish, purplish bruise had bloomed along Felipe’s jaw, and for a moment, Sarah regretted marring that handsome face.

  Then she remembered why she’d done it.

  If he couldn’t figure out what had set her off, he deserved the lick and more just like it. She should have known better than to let her guard down.

  She sighed.

  “You said you had a lead.” She met his gaze in the dim light. “We’ve got time to waste, so why don’t you tell me about it now.”

  He grunted and rubbed his jaw. “One of the fortunetellers slipped out and got word to me through Eric at the inn. She’s craftier than I’d thought. Apparently, she was the one who told Fabian about the Shrews and Patrick.”

  Ah.

  She always wondered how people got referred to them.

  “I think Patrick stumbled over her psychic tripwire when the troupe came into the area. Maybe Patrick walked past her while she was allowed out to do her shopping or something, and she did some investigation from there to find out who he was and who he was associated with. It’s easy enough for that particular fortuneteller to learn a person’s name. She said her spirit guide whispers them to her.”

  “That’s a bit more arcane than I was expecting.”

  “I don’t try to understand it, just like she doesn’t try to understand what makes me and Fabian what we are.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to understand. Sometimes, knowing too much can get you in trouble.”

  “True. Anyhow, she was able to connect Dana to Patrick with the help of a librarian. Apparently, their names come up frequently together in search engines, whatever that means.”

  “I’ll explain it later.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  She put up her hands. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable of understanding, but I think the vagaries of search engine algorithms are a high-level topic.”

  “For a man with no formal education, you mean.”

  She cringed.

  There was no doubting Felipe was intelligent—on most issues, anyway—but on others, he had to walk before he could run. He had a lot to catch up on. Before, she’d been considering a long-term volunteer gig to be his guide through it all, but she couldn’t do that if she was going to punch him every time he put his foot in his mouth.

  With him, she couldn’t help the feelings. Couldn’t power through them. She felt.

  She acted.

  She regretted.

  The drumming of his fingertips against the house’s siding brought her attention back to him.

  “Trusting her could lead to a trap, but that’s no different than me trying to take them by surprise, I suppose. They’ll be prepared either way.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “At the time of the message, they were in West Virginia moving toward Kentucky state line. They circled back around because Jacques got a big advance for a show in the area. They’d been split up into four groups to avoid detection. Hadn’t done a show in weeks, and I guess Jacques’ wallet was starting to feel light.”

  Chauncey appeared on the wood’s edge, and they started for the stairs. Chauncey would head to the back of the house where they’d managed to unlock the door without damaging it.

  “Do you a powerful enough reason to trust the fortuneteller?”

  One rickety step bowed precariously beneath their combined weights, and he grabbed her arm, steadying her until they made it down to the ground.

  “I’d like to trust her. She knew my parents quite well. Closest thing to a godmother Fabian and I have.”

  “But she’s under Jacques’s influence.”

  “I’d say it’s more like she fears Jacques. She’s an old lady. Even before I left, she’d reached the point where she didn’t care about herself anymore. I think she’s just waiting to die.”

  Just like those women at the strip club.

  She shuddered at the recollection and tried to shove the thoughts away. It was becoming harder to do.

  “Shitty way to live,” she said.

  They rounded the corner of the house, entered the kitchen, and descended into the basement.

  The two Visas leaned over a scavenged checkerboard dotted with game pieces made of found bottle caps, buttons, and scraps of paper that vaguely resembled circles.

  Judging by the smug grin on Mr. Tolvaj’s face, he was winning.

  Sarah waited for his opponent to make his move before speaking. “Saw you’ve been cleaning up a little upstairs. Hope you guys have been discreet.”

  “We have,” Mr. Tolvaj said. “Tried to get the stove to work. Couldn’t. Gas is off.”

  “Ah. Brought you meatball subs and fries. Still hot.” She pointed to the insulated bag she’d brought down from the kitchen. “And I guess Patrick was in a good mood. Sent you some beer.”

  “Bless him” Mr. Tolvaj said with a wistful exhale. “I’ve missed beer.”

  “Me, too,” his friend said.

  Sarah handed them the bag and the six-back, and they moved to the spindly wooden table they’d overturned and dusted off.

  “Been quiet here?” she asked.

  Mr. Tolvaj nodded. “Yes. No one comes except Shrews. We thought we heard a bear one night, but it may well have been a natural one.”

  Chauncey appeared on the staircase right at that moment. Upon seeing the men, he shrank back, hiding behind Sarah.

  She sighed. “I take it you recognize these gentlemen?”

  Mr. Tolvaj and his friend laughed heartily and shook their heads over their food. “He is unlike any Bear I’ve ever seen.”

  Chauncey growled, although it was so anemic it wouldn’t have frightened a house cat. “I saw them meetin’ up with them other ones what came and lured the Bears away.”

  “And what did you do, little man? You hid. You ran.”

  “Can’t fight, so what else I’m gonna do? Stick my
neck out for them folks? No sir, I sure ain’t.”

  Sarah turned and took in the cowering teenager. “How did you get onto Patrick’s property, anyway? We didn’t catch you in any of our perimeter footage.”

  “Got in the same way I got out. Attached to your axle.”

  “You could have died doing that,” Felipe said.

  Chauncey shrugged. “I would have died for sure if I’d tiptoed across your property line on foot. Y’all woulda shot my ass using one of them fancy scopes I bet y’all got.”

  Mr. Tolvaj barked with laughter. “He’s got a point.”

  “And why are y’all still here?” Chauncey asked the Visas. “Y’all can shift into pretty much everything. I done seen it. Why y’all locked in this basement?”

  Mr. Tolvaj took a bite of his sandwich, and gave his lips a dainty press of his napkin. “Perhaps it’s more comfortable to be captured than to be out there waging the war.”

  “Some mercenary.”

  Mr. Tolvaj bobbed his head in agreement. “And some Bear.”

  “When is Gene expecting you back?” Sarah asked Chauncey.

  He shrugged. “I don’t think he thought I’d actually succeed. I reckon he thought it’d be a suicide mission.”

  “Why do people think we’re so blood-thirsty?”

  Felipe raised both eyebrows and rubbed his jaw.

  Ass.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you start, Castillo.”

  “Y’all ain’t sending me back, is you? I ain’t going back. I’ll run before I go back.” Chauncey sniffed and pulled his blanket a bit tighter around his shoulders.

  She hated having to do it, but it made perfect sense. If the Bears were going to continue picking fights with the Cats over acts of war they hadn’t actually committed, their best option was to call a meeting between the two groups and try to hash things out. Gene wouldn’t go for that, though, so the next best thing they could do was send their little spy back with a gift. A sort of Trojan horse—Trojan Were-bear, anyway.

  “I see the gears turning in your head, querida. Whatever you’re thinking, no.” Felipe crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the old hot water heater, scowling.

  She rolled her eyes. “Believe it or not, this is my job.” She pried her phone out of her pocket and said a prayer of thanks when seeing it had a signal down in the basement. She dialed Dana. “Hey, is Billy nearby? I have an idea and need a couple of Cats. Smart ones if you can manage it.”

  Mr. Tolvaj snorted.

  Felipe leaned in closer, resting a hand on Sarah’s forearm in an implied warning.

  She narrowed her eyes at him and listened to Dana, who was shouting directions to someone in the background.

  “A couple of Cats?” Dana asked with a huff. “That may be a bit of a problem, my love. Billy has bailed.”

  Sarah held her phone back from her ear and checked the speaker for clogs. Surely there had to be one there.

  Nope. Perfectly clean.

  “I’m sorry. Say what, now?”

  “You heard me right. I don’t know when, specifically, but sometime in the past couple of days he, his wife, and his granddaughters up and left.”

  “They left?”

  When Felipe tapped her shoulder in question, she mouthed, “Billy’s gone,” to him.

  His jaw dropped.

  “My thoughts exactly.” She rubbed her eyes and walked some distance away from the boys to have room to pace. “And by gone, you mean kidnapped?”

  “No. That’s wishful thinking. By gone I mean they packed up their shitty little shack and hit the road. Took everything that wasn’t nailed down from the house, and bolted. A lot of the problems the Cats are experiencing right now make sense, if you think about it. Looks like he’s been mismanaging the group for his own gain for a very long time.”

  “What gain? Are you suggesting he sold them out to the Visas?”

  Mr. Tolvaj, obviously overhearing, swallowed a lump of his sandwich and said, “Nope.”

  “No, Sarah,” Dana continued. “He’s just a slimy, slack-assed, lazy motherfucker who took a lot of shortcuts and made promises he never intended to follow up on. When Patrick contacted the Werewolves and the Goats, it took him twenty minutes in both calls to get them to calm down enough to listen to what he was saying. The Cats have a bit of a reputation for being flaky. Not following up on their bargains. They left a lot of folks dangling on several occasions. That’s why the Wolves have an alliance with the Bears.”

  Sarah righted an overturned chair and slumped into it, feeling a very sudden wave of exhaustion ripple over her.

  God, not now.

  “And the Shrews are associated with the Cats. Guess that must make us flakes, too.”

  “No, not us. Me, ” Dana said. “Obviously I can’t separate myself from the Cats completely because I’m partnered with the one who has, I guess, just become the group’s leader. Until we untangle the mess Billy made, I don’t want to attach my girls to anything to do with the Cats.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, that. So, what was your plan? Can we rework it?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to send Chauncey in with a trophy, of sorts, you know? That would have gotten Gene’s guard down long enough to get one of our people in there and convince him to see reason. Now with this shit, he really does have good reason to distrust the Cats.”

  “It’s still a good idea, and it would give us some slack if Gene thought—”

  “Hey. One moment.” Mr. Tolvaj nodded at his friend and both stood, striding over to Sarah and shifting forms as they walked.

  “Hold on a sec,” Sarah said to Dana.

  Although Felipe put his body in front of hers, and thus Chauncey’s, Sarah felt no fear of their approach.

  She’d be tending to the Visas for weeks and had grown fond of them, and them her. They didn’t mean them any harm, and by the time they arrived at their corner of the room, their plan was clear.

  Mr. Tolvaj made a pretty convincing Billy. His friend, minus the ever-present tube top, frosted lipstick, and Lucite heels, was spitting image of one of his granddaughters.

  “What you need?” Mr. Tolvaj asked. “We go in with the sorry Bear—”

  “Hey!” Chauncey balked.

  “—tie us up in silver chains. Won’t hurt us. We’ll call off the Visas there. See what they know about Jacques’ itinerary. Get the Bears comfortable thinking they’ve made some coup, and then we’ll take them off guard.”

  “Why would you do that?” Felipe didn’t relax from his defensive stance.

  “For fuck’s sake.” Sarah couldn’t help her annoyance that he was inserting himself into what was, for all intents and purposes, her investigation. This was about Cats and Bears, not the circus, anymore.

  That glint in his eye, though, said it was as much his fight as hers.

  They needed to hash things out, if not personally, then professionally. They could work together if they stayed out of each other’s way.

  They’d had sex, and she’d read more into it than she should have, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be civil.

  Mr. Tolvaj and his friend shared a look.

  “Spill it,” Sarah barked.

  “Look, I’m a spiritual man. My hope was to one day go into the seminary, yes?”

  Felipe scoffed.

  “What?” Mr. Tolvaj asked.

  “I’ve seen the way you look at my woman.”

  Now it was Sarah’s turn to scoff.

  Mr. Tolvaj performed a Sue me shrug. “I’m not perfect. I can appreciate the fruits of the flesh and seek out The Spirit at the same time, yes? Look, when I die, which may be sooner than later with the lifestyle I maintain, I want to see Heaven, not Hell.” He cast his eyes heavenward, which at the moment gave him a view of the basement rafters.

  “Perhaps this is my sign it’s time to make a change. Maybe God will forgive me if I try.”

  Sarah felt the truth in what he said. She was the closest thing the Shrews c
ould get to a human lie detector test, but still, his words congealed like a brick in her gut.

  Felipe looked at her, as if for counsel.

  He didn’t have her gut—her gifts–but he’d always seemed to trust hers.

  That made her trust him.

  Defeated, she sighed. “Mr. Tolvaj, Shrews don’t like collateral damage. We don’t get civilians involved in our schemes.”

  She turned her gaze back to Felipe and he narrowed his eyes at her in a dare. He was obviously saying, go ahead and try to cut me out of the loop.

  She wouldn’t. Not this time, anyway.

  “We’ll only fail if we don’t try,” Mr. Tolvaj said. “Please let us try. If they can get their Bears back, perhaps it’ll help patch up some of the damage caused.”

  “Okay…” Sarah turned slowly to Chauncey, and found him already doing that damned rapid headshake again.

  “I don’t want to go back,” he said. “They may be nice to me at first, but they’re gonna hurt me when they get in that mood again.”

  He was probably right, so she wasn’t going to convince him otherwise. The truth was sometimes a harder pill to swallow than a lie, but trust was predicated on it. She needed his trust, so she did what she did to all those girls back at the strip club.

  She put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed, making good eye contact. Calming him with her touch. With her smile. And in a near-whisper, she told him, “I know you don’t want to go back. Maybe you thought you’d find a home there when they took you from foster care, but then you didn’t, huh? I know you want to be safe and stable. But, listen. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t important, Chauncey. I need you to help us. I wouldn’t ask if we weren’t going to send backup in with you. I promise you, we’ll get you out safely, but right now, we need you to help us make some other people safe, too. We have to be a team right now, and I understand if you don’t want to. We’ll figure something else out if it’s too hard for you. I know they’ve put you through a lot of abuse, and I don’t really expect you to be strong right now.”

  Chauncey forced a visible lump down his throat, and his gaze darted from Sarah to Felipe.