Strange Supes

by Gray Holborn

  I could feel the water pooling in my eyes. The tightening feeling in my chest was growing exponentially, stifling my breath. How was this happening? Why didn’t I just ditch Michael ages ago? Maybe he would have backed off after not learning anything. Why did we have to go to Inferno yesterday? He wouldn’t have come here this morning to explain. We’d all be safe. Home. Together.

  It was Soren who broke the tense silence.

  “I have a couple of friends.” He turned to Sam. “I trust them. They can be here by the end of the day. Help eat that food you’re so worried about, El.” He forced a gentle smile at El, her eyes were as full of unspilled tears as mine were. “They’ll keep an eye on you and the house Sam. They’ll also provide a way to stay connected with us. Keep us updated.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “But Sam and Charlotte are right. We need to leave now. I’m not keen on travelling around with a human, but maybe we can see what’s up with your sight, Black. Visualizing supernaturals on contact can still be a useful frontline against anyone after El, if you can gain control of it.”

  I tried to ignore my instinct to glare at Soren for referring to me as a human; or at least for using the term human like it was an insult. Instead, I focused on the part of his speech that hit even deeper. “Today? You want us to pack up and leave by the end of the day? Leaving doesn’t feel right. We need to do something, not just hide away forever. How does that solve anything?”

  I found myself growing increasingly frustrated. In the movies, superheroes took action—they formulated plans. They did not run away and hide.

  He turned back to me, eyes narrowing. “Not the end of the day. Ideally, the end of the hour. Feel free to stay here if you want, but El, Jax, and I are going. Obviously we can’t run forever, but we need to pool our resources, get more information about what’s going on so we can handle it smartly. You don’t run into battle without having as much information as possible, especially when fire- and space-manipulators are working together. That’s stupidity, not courage.”

  Sam stepped up, squaring off with Soren. I knew that Soren had way more power than Sam in terms of manipulation and physique. Still, the intimidation and silent threat that laced his words as Sam looked at him were no party favor. His slanted almond eyes narrowed further. “She’s going. And you will protect her and treat her with respect.”

  Sam wouldn’t have been able to really do anything to Soren. At least I didn’t think so anyway. It was still nice to hear him stand up for me, to know that he had my back. Even if his version of doing that was separating us for an indeterminate amount of time.

  “Of course Dess is coming with us. Soren, stop being a jackass. And Sam, Soren wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Plus, she’s got me looking out for her, and I’m way more ferocious and reliable than my stupid brother anyway.” El shoved her way between the two men, gaining their attention and somehow making them both flinch with her disapproving tone, despite the fact that they were both a foot taller than her. I needed to pay more attention to how she carried herself. I could learn something from El. “And we’ll leave as soon as we are packed. But Dess and I are going to at least try to say goodbye to Luis first.”

  Luis.

  My stomach tightened. In all the chaos of the morning I hadn’t stopped to think. I’d be leaving Sam, yes. That alone was creating a deep chasm in my chest that I couldn’t linger on for too long if I wanted to stay strong, or at least sane. But my brain and body hadn’t had a chance to process the fact that we would also be leaving Luis behind. The other important figure in my ragtag family.

  I left the others to continue bickering about the details, and allowed myself a solid sixty seconds to break down a bit in the safety and isolation of my bedroom. Usually I was a major ugly crier. When I cried, you could see it on my face for days after, puffy and miserable. These tears were different somehow, silent and thick as they made their way down my cheeks. The evidence of their tracks would be easy to erase, but somehow this felt worse than sobbing outright.

  Sixty seconds over, I pulled myself up, wiped my cheeks on the sleeve of my shirt and pulled out the black suitcase that was collecting dust in the back of my closet. What did one pack when they were running from a supernatural sort-of-not-really-ex-boyfriend? I doubted Google would have an answer for me, so I threw the regulars in: favorite jeans, favorite boots, clothes to train in, all the clean underwear and bras I had, which wasn’t as many as I’d hoped—I wasn’t great at many things but I was fantastic at procrastinating, especially when it came to laundry.

  After collecting all of my skincare and makeup items, I grabbed the raggedy doll I kept underneath my bed. I ran my hands over the worn curves of the face, the matted nest that masqueraded as hair. It was the first thing Sam ever gave me. He had no idea how to handle his role as guardian and was clearly misinformed if he thought fifteen year-olds still liked to play with dolls. Particularly dolls as deranged looking as this one. I didn’t think it belonged in any well-balanced child’s toy chest. Between the mismatched eyes that were slightly raised out of the plastic sockets, the slight tilt of the head, and the green-tinged skin tone, I was half convinced Sam bought it at an occult shop. Still, I could never bring myself to get rid of the creepy thing. Hell, the first year I lived with Sam, I secretly kept it under my pillow, an oddly warm presence that grounded me when it felt like my world was melting into chaos. So I smashed the doll under my clothes as I packed—that way it could comfort me without forcing me to look at it.

  By the time I entered the kitchen with a collection of my belongings Soren was seated at the table, bag packed and ready to go at his feet. His fingers tapped on the wooden surface with a hurried, impatient rhythm. I could hear Jax trying to hurry El in the other room and I grinned. That explained Soren’s impatience—at least he knew well enough that any attempt to hurry El’s packing along was doomed to fail. Best to wait it out.

  Leaving Soren with my bag, hoping he’d go load up the car, I found Sam sitting deep into the couch, his head tucked into his hands. Watching the clear sorrow in his posture, my breath hitched. When he noticed me in the room, he sat up taller—both of us trying to hide the burden of our sadness from the other.

  “I have some contacts in the city, I’m going to see if I can find out anything about Michael, keep my ear to the ground. Sooner we figure out what’s going on with the people threatening El, the faster we can put this all behind us and get back to our regularly-scheduled programming.” He leaned his head back against the top of the couch and I hunched into the cushion next to him.

  “Just be careful. I doubt Michael is still staying at his apartment. Now that the gig is up, he’s probably off planning his next move.” I paused, the image of Sam channeling his inner Batman or Sherlock Holmes filling me with a bubble of anxiety. He was powerful, but something told me that a guy like Michael was in a league of his own. And by something, I meant that sheer look of terror and surprise reflected on Soren and Char’s faces when he disappeared into thin air. “I don’t want you getting involved with any of this. Just try to lay low, keep one of Soren’s bodyguard types near you at all times. I’m sure we’ll have all this straightened out soon, now that the threat is a little more tangible, maybe it’ll light a fire under everyone’s ass.”

  “Soren’s going to stop by Michael’s place while you guys go say goodbye to Luis.” When I sucked in a sharp breath at the last three words, Sam squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I’ll keep an eye on him too.”

  “I just wanted to thank—” I started, choking on the emotion.

  “None of that goodbye shit, Dess. This is just going to be a little extended vacation. If I don’t see you within the next couple of weeks, I’m going to come hunt you down myself.” I knew Sam well enough to read the anxiety layering his words:

  “Soren and Jax know what they’re doing.”

  I think.

  “They’ll figure this out fast.”

  I hope.

  “Once you guys are safe
and let things settle, they’ll put out feelers for Michael.”

  Or I’ll kick their asses.

  “And I’ll keep trying to track down Charlotte.”

  I’m going to stalk every supe I’ve ever encountered.

  “It’s clear she knows more of this jigsaw than she’s ever let on before.”

  Holy shit, how did I not realize our crazy-but-lovable neighbor knew so much about this world?

  I couldn’t do anything but nod my head against the dip of his shoulder. If I tried to speak, I wasn’t confident I’d be able to hold back the tears. And Sam, like most guys, was terrible at handling a situation when a girl started crying. We learned that the hard way when I first moved in and was trying to process being abandoned by my last parent and living in a new city. When I let out a long sigh, an attempt to temper my emotions enough to play it cool, he pulled me into a tight hug. After a quick kiss to my forehead and a ruffle of my hair, he got up to say a quick goodbye to El and left, without another look in my direction. Sam was as uncomfortable with my emotions as he was with his own. Soren grabbed the packed bags and went outside after him, likely to try and track down Michael with the address El had given him.

  Five minutes later, El stumbled out of her room, a giant smile on her face that I knew was shielding her tears from saying goodbye to Sam. He’d been a part of her family almost as long as he’d been a part of mine. Jax followed behind with four giant purple bags, all filled to a bursting point.

  “Good to see you can pack light when you need to make a quick run for it El,” I smirked. “You are a masterful and inconspicuous runaway. Oh, spymaster, teach me your ways.”

  She walked up to me, leaving Jax to deal with loading the rest of the car up. “Hey, you never know what you’re going to feel like wearing when someone’s trying to kill you. And inconspicuous indeed, maybe we will have to dress up or something to hide our identities. You tease, but let’s see who’s laughing when I’m the only one prepared. I even found some fake moustaches from last Halloween. I have us covered.”

  I linked my arm through hers, both of us taking deep and steady breaths as we looked around the house one last time, each relying on the strength of the other as we closed and locked the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  Our ride over to Luis’s place was filled with silent tension. On the positive side, the tension was cut short since he lived so close; on the negative side, that left me practically no time to figure out how I was going to say goodbye to him for an indefinite amount of time. Especially since we couldn’t exactly give him details. We had to say just enough to let him know we were leaving for awhile, without giving him reason to suspect something was up. That was a tall order, especially since he knew I was a homebody.

  I steadied my hands long enough to knock gently on his apartment door; then they went back to fidgeting and tugging on random parts of my shirtsleeves, my body carelessly looking for a way to release the anxiety and tension. It felt wrong leaving him behind—a different kind of wrong than it felt leaving Sam behind. Usually Luis answered the door immediately, so I was beginning to think he wasn’t home as I reached up to knock a second time. Before my fist connected with the wood, the door swung open. Only instead of Luis, I was staring face-to-face with Kay. Her long red hair was tousled seductively and her eyelashes were flaking with yesterday’s mascara. As my eyes travelled down from her face, I noticed that she was dressed in the well-worn Ramones T-Shirt that I bought for Luis a few years ago; the shirt was baggy on her, but still revealed her very bare legs, making it painfully obvious that she was wearing nothing else beneath the familiar faded cotton .

  “Hey Ellie, Odessa,” her voice was cheery, but tinged with a layer of embarrassment at being caught half-dressed in Luis’s apartment. And also a little bit of a pride. If it were any other girl, any other situation, I’d be happy to see a girl owning her sexuality like that. I guess that made me a hypocrite.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but the air had been knocked out of me while I tried to make the mental jump from saying goodbye to Luis to mocking last night’s sexploits—the emotions weren’t compatible and they were throwing me for a loop. Slamming my mouth closed, I made an awkward clicking noise with my tongue while I raised my arm for an awkward wave, not trusting my voice to sound normal. My eyes were focused on the faded letters dancing across her chest and I nudged my head up to make eye contact, figuring that several inches north would be a more natural place for me to focus my attention.

  El cleared her throat and squeezed my hand. “Hey Kay, we were just stopping by to see Luis. We are unexpectedly taking a road trip and wanted to say goodbye before we left.” I could hear the strange mixture of laughter and regret in her voice.

  “Oh, that sounds fun. How long will you guys be gone?” Her fingers ran through her hair in an unsuccessful attempt to tame it down. Giving up, she began to tug lightly on the bottom of the top, willing it to cover more of her thighs.

  “How long will who be gone?” Luis’s voice carried over from the next room, the words were spoken in a flirtatious growl—a tenor I never heard Luis’s voice reach before and my cheeks colored from the embarrassment of trespassing on such an intimate moment. I listened to the soft pad of his feet on the carpet as he walked towards the door. As he reached her, he laid a hand gently on the small of her back until he came into full view of El and me. His hand instantly dropped from her back as if it were on fire. Kay’s lips pulled down into a slight frown. “Odie.” He said my name so softly I almost couldn’t hear him, or maybe that was just because of the ringing in my ears that only got louder until I reminded myself to breathe. “El. You guys are going somewhere?”

  I was too much of a coward to look him in the face and my eyes bounced away from his chest as soon as I noticed it was bare. I spent all of my energy and focus on keeping my gaze safely leveled at the worn blue chair I could see beyond Kay’s shoulder. That chair was disgusting and covered in stains, but it was familiar—cozy.

  “Hey Luis,” El started, but her voice momentarily trailed off. El wasn’t usually one to get sidetracked by awkwardness. In fact, more often than not, she thrived in situations most people found uncomfortable. But even El seemed to be slightly taken aback by the sight of Luis and Kay post-hookup.

  “You’re leaving?” He asked again. I still couldn’t bring myself to look at him, but from the soft tone of his voice I knew it would be filled with emotion—emotion I wouldn’t know how to unpack or analyze. And honestly, it was safer and smarter to just not.

  “Yeah,” she replied. Her shoulder nudged mine, reminding me that I was supposed to be a part of this conversation too. “We are going to my family’s place with Jax and Soren. I haven’t seen them in awhile, and figured I might as well make the trip now. Dessa decided to come with me.”

  Hearing my name, I snapped my eyes back towards Luis, taking in the lines of his face, the deepening blue of his eyes, the warm brown hair. It felt wrong lying to him about something so huge. I kept my ability to see supe glows from him, but that seemed like such a small thing in light of everything else that’d happened the last week. The metaphorical separation between us, soon to become physical too, felt wrong and made my skin itch, like it was stretched too tight.

  “You’re leaving?” He repeated, his eyes on me, and while before I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, now I couldn’t bring myself to look away. “Why? When?”

  “Roadtrip, babe.” Kay chirped up, answering when I couldn’t. She wrapped a possessive hand around his bicep, asserting her place back in the conversation. “Sounds super fun. How long will you guys be gone?”

  Traitorous liquid was glassing over my vision and I sent a silent prayer to whoever was listening for me to keep it together until we were safely in the elevator. “We’re leaving now. Not sure how long.” My voice cracked, like I hadn’t used it in weeks; I barely recognized it as my own.

  “And you decided this when? You guys are in the middle of the semester.” Luis too
k a step forward, reached his arm out like he was going to touch my cheek, but let it drop back down as he changed his mind, the familiar crease making itself known between his eyebrows.

  “This morning, kind of a last minute spontaneous decision. Got a call from my dad, he’s not feeling so great. Figured Dessa could come back and keep me company while he rests up. We can makeup any assignments we miss remotely, won’t be a big deal. Soren wants us on the road as soon as possible. ” El smiled sadly, and I silently thanked her for the sick dad bit. It would help to explain why we were both out of sorts about a road trip, which was supposed to be fun. Hopefully we weren’t going to hell for the lie though.

  “I can go with you guys, it’ll take me two minutes to pack. I’ll be happy to help you guys take care of him. Just give me a sec.” Luis turned around as if he was going to do just that.

  “No.” The word came out of my mouth harsh, sharp. Shit, I was so not going to win any awards with my lying. “Please,” I softened my tone. “Just keep an eye on Sam. He’s going to need more help with The Tavern with us gone. It wouldn’t be fair to take all of his reliable servers away from him in one go. I’m sure we’ll be back before you even get a chance to miss us.”

  El scooped him into a tight hug, before looking over to Kay. “Take care of him for us, yeah?”

  She nodded in response.

  I tried to tell my feet to move towards Luis so I could say goodbye properly, but I was stuck; both wanting to run towards him and away from him all at once. Without a second of hesitation, he closed the distance between us and pulled me to him, his arms somehow both gentle and firm. “I’ll take care of Sam, Odie. You guys just be careful, let me know when you get...wherever you’re going, and just come back soon. Seattle will be insufferable on my own.”