Who was Oscar afraid would get in? What was he afraid they’d find in the books? Had they been here already? Had they done something to Oscar?
No answer from my newfound intuition.
I shook my head to clear it. Turned around and studied the desk one more time. Laptop and printer off. The walk-around phone for the land line in its cradle. Notepad, pens, and pencils stacked neatly in the corner. Sea glass paperweight holding down a stack of bills. I thumbed through them with not inconsiderable pain. I had to find something to help the tips of my fingers. All I found out from the looking was that the electric this month would be a ball-buster.
I searched the drawers. Found files, a pack of peppermint gum, a cigar wrapped in plastic, a box of matches. And Oscar’s journal.
I read the last couple of pages, or tried to—the dude had nearly illegible handwriting. At this point, I caught about three-fourths of what he tried to say.
There had been portents. Signs of something super bad on the horizon. Starting with an entire murder of crows perched in the oak outside about two weeks ago. Around the time Melody said she’d melted the wheel of that car. Since then, there’d been water on his stovetop that boiled without a fire under it, two fender-benders in the Honda, and a red sunset. He mentioned the portal outside the pub and the info that nefarious characters would be coming through tonight. The end.
I stuck the journal into the waistband of my shorts. I didn’t want the thing out of my sight. If I left it in this room while I went to look someplace else, it might not be there when I got back. Despite the fact that the house was empty except for a dog and me. Again, no reason for that except that my world—for all I knew, the whole world—had gone to hell in the proverbial handbasket and my eyes were black and Oscar was missing and everything was w.r.o.n.g. wrong.
I looked at the books again. Meticulously, from the top of the first shelf all the way to the bottom of the last. I didn’t see anything Oscar would’ve had a reason to hide. I considered taking it all apart, but I had no idea what to look for. And I didn’t want to undo any kind of magic he’d used to conceal.
I felt dangerously close to raw panic again. I fought it long enough to make myself see that, at least for now, there was nothing else I could do here. I had Oscar’s journal. I could figure this out. I had to.
I whistled at Zach.
His ears perked up. He watched me until I got to the door, then hurried up after me.
I went to the bathroom. Fumbled through the medicine cabinet until I found what I was looking for. Oscar had fried his palms on a mission three months ago. He wouldn’t tell me what’d happened. Where he’d gone or who he’d gone up against. I only knew he’d come home and headed straight for urgent care, where they’d set him up with a special ointment for the burns and a whole lot of sterile gauze and tape.
By the time I finished fooling with it all, I had what appeared to be ten miniature mummies on most of my fingertips. If I looked ridiculous, so what? Who was I going to impress? The dog?
I led Zach back to the front door, re-scanning the living room from the corner of my eye. And froze. The TV. There might be something about what had happened on TV.
I found the remote on the coffee table and perched on the edge of the recliner while the cable kicked in and the big screen came to life. Oscar had the thing tuned to one of the networks. Probably he’d been watching the local news. Now? Nothing but snow.
I flipped through channel after channel. Nothing.
I pulled out my phone. Tried the ‘net. I couldn’t get to it. Not to any of my social networks. Not even to a search engine. I had no bars and a message at the top of the screen that read No Service.
No Internet. No phone. Weird, since the electricity still worked. I guess there was no accounting for magic.
Still, that backed up my worry that whatever had happened hadn’t just happened to the city, but the world. How could one girl do all that? How?
What had happened to all those people outside the bar? The people in the cars? Where had everyone gone? Was everyone gone? My friends? My family?
I flew out of the chair and outside so fast I almost forgot to close the door behind me. I fumbled the key, but managed to get the lock turned. As fast as I could, I buckled the dog into the passenger seat and drove the half mile to my house like a NASCAR champion.
I ran every light. No one stopped me. There was no one else on the road. Zach barked all the way there and up the long driveway that ended in the shadow of my parents’ two-story McMansion.
Two Range Rovers in the garage. So they had to be home.
Zach followed me through the backyard gate, through the wet grass grown up over the stepping stones, and through the glass French doors that opened into the kitchen. We tracked mud on the tile.
The clock above the stove ticked away a minute. The night light near the sink glowed gently over an empty water glass, still wet from a middle-of-the-night sip. The refrigerator’s motor kicked in.
I took the stairs two at a time, making all kinds of thump-and-squeak noise and not caring if I woke up the whole neighborhood. Zach climbed hot on my heels. We ran down the hall, past the guest room and my room. The door to my parents’ room rested half-open.
They were light sleepers. One of them ought to have turned on a lamp and sat up in bed by now. But no one had.
I pushed the door open all the way and stepped inside. Two shapes lay under the covers, one on his back and the other curled on her side, a tuft of auburn hair sticking up. How they always slept. I breathed in the familiar scent of vanilla potpourri, Mom’s favorite. The dog nuzzled the backs of my knees.
I walked over to the bed and knelt. Shook Mom’s shoulder. No response. Not a single sound. I leaned down near her face. Felt her breath on my cheek. I shook her harder. No effect.
Nausea bloomed in the pit of my belly. “Mom?”
Nothing.
“Mom!”
She slept on as if I wasn’t in the room at all. Like I didn’t even exist.
I tried Dad. He was also alive, but wouldn’t wake, either.
Something was very wrong. Not people-disappeared-while-driving-their-cars wrong, but bad. Worse. These were my parents. Was their super sleep magical? Or medical?
And how come I found my parents in their own bed when so many people had just up and disappeared?
Goddamn magic. Not that I was complaining. Just confused.
I made myself take slow, methodical breaths and looked at my folks with every ounce of my seer’s eyes. Their edges glowed. It was faint, but it was there. They might still be in the world, but they’d changed somehow. Whatever Melody had done, she’d done it to them, too.
I backed out of there on shaking legs. I kept going all the way to my own room. The backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed. I went down in a heap on the floor. Buried my face in my hands.
Mom and Dad wouldn’t wake up. Mom and Dad in some kind of demon-induced sleep. Would they stay that way forever? Was there some kind of spell I could do to put them back they way they ought to be?
I didn’t know any spells that could do that. My stuff was super specific. How to get Otherworlders to go home. How to blunt bad magic. How to see things.
Oscar would know what to do. A full seer like him would have a lot more tricks up his sleeve. But Oscar had gone away. Or he’d been taken. Or demon-magicked away. He wasn’t there to ask. Or to help. Or to anything.
I was on my own.
Zach nuzzled the top of my head. So, correction. The dog and me, we were on our own for now.
I had friends—four of them, plus other assorted freaks—who might be in the same sitch as my parents. Or disappeared like Oscar and the people who vanished from their cars and the sidewalks and the streets. I had to know. And I couldn’t call or text. I had to find them the old-fashioned way. Going to their houses or otherwise tracking them down. Starting with my best friend.
Which meant getting up and getting out. I had second thoughts about leaving my
parents, but I couldn’t do anything for them here. Not yet. So I wiped my eyes and looked up and got an eyeful of my desk with its docking station for my tunes and my laptop, my backpack full of books on the chair. Walls plastered with a mix of Houston Texans posters and folk art related to my seer gig. And one wet dog, who I’d be taking with me. Couldn’t leave him alone in a strange place. Besides, he was the only normal I’d seen since the world went to hell.
I pushed to my feet and walked into the bathroom. Gazed into the mirror. My eyes? Still black. My face had an energy around it that looked a lot like Melody’s. Muddy and brimming with no good.
Had she rubbed off on me? Like, just by touching me? Had her magic done this? What did it mean? What did everything mean?
I had to find my friends. I had to figure out what exactly had happened. What Melody did. How to fix it.
Think, dude. Think.
My parents. The state of Oscar’s library. My black eyes. All the people who’d vanished from their cars and from the sidewalks and the streets. All of them clues.
Plus one more, very large and important clue. The tattoo on Melody’s back. It’d moved on her skin.
I knew one person—and one person only—who created ink like that.
CHAPTER THREE
I parked the Explorer at the curb in front of Snake Bite Tattoo as the rising sun flooded the street with first light. Zach took one look at the place and whined, but he followed me onto the street and stayed by my side. At least it’d stopped raining.
This neighborhood ought to have been shut down so early in the morning. Quiet and peaceful. But heavy metal poured from the open door of the leather bar across the street, where nobody appeared to be partying but where everybody had left their Harleys and Hondas in the lot. On my side of the road, a guy with a half-empty bottle of whisky in his hand slept propped against a wall. He muttered to himself, maybe talking to somebody in his dreams. But he didn’t look anything other than asleep, thank God.
A couple of grackles landed on the roof in front of me. They looked at me with intelligent eyes. Crazy spooky. One of them flapped its wings. I jumped like a scared child.
Focus, Davies.
My heart raced. I tried to calm it by taking deep breaths. No luck.
A Closed sign hung in the Snake Bite’s burglar-barred window. The lights in the front room dim, but not dark. I banged on the glass. Glimpsed a shadow move in the back.
“Malek!” I yelled.
The drunk, sleeping guy stirred for a second, then settled down.
A face flashed on the other side of the shop window, pale and pissed and making me jump back half a foot from surprise. A beat later, the door opened.
Malek narrowed his dark eyes the minute he glanced up at mine. He wore his traditional uniform: pristine, white wifebeater and a pair of black jeans with black combat boots. His bald head gleamed, even in the dark. His mouth, blood red inside the frame of his dark goatee.
Once upon a time, he’d been a god. Not just a tempter, Oscar said, but the tempter. As in the serpent from the Garden of Eden. Crazy, right? But I’d met the dude once before and he scared the shit out of me. Not because he did anything. Just from proximity.
Oscar said he’d tempted one too many humans and been punished for it. He’d lost his silver tongue. Actually, he’d lost the ability to speak at all. Which was why when he had something to say, he raised his hands to sign. Like now.
Where the hell have you been? he asked.
All the hairs on my arms stood at attention. I wondered if he’d been to Hell. And whether he’d liked it. I pushed the thought out of my mind.
“Traffic,” I said. A whole slew more of abandoned cars and trucks to steer around or push out of the way.
One corner of Malek’s mouth curved. Who’s the mutt?
“Found him.”
Where’s your boss?
“Missing,” I said.
And your fingers?
“Long story.”
Malek stepped back from the door and let us in.
Even in the dark, the floor looked eat-off-of-it clean. The coffee table held a perfect fan of tat magazines. Normal for Snake Bite. The unusual? A gun rested on the front counter next to the cheap jewelry for piercings and a rack of comics.
“Who’re you planning to shoot?” I asked.
Maybe him.
Malek cocked his head at the vinyl sofa by the window. Someone had been stretched out on it, and I hadn’t been able to see them from outside. Now they—a guy, by the shape—sat up and swung his legs front and center. The way he stood up, he looked familiar. Way too big around the shoulders, but still.
I blew out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Relief shook me to my core.
I took a step toward him. “Kevin?”
“Mostly,” he said.
“What’s that mean?” It didn’t sound like a joke.
“Means something magical went down last night and now I’m fucked.”
“How’s that different from every other day?” I asked.
“That would so be funny if it was, like, funny.” He stepped out of the shadows.
He had on the same T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers he always wore, but he also had on a jean jacket, and it was summer hot outside, and he had brand new, linebacker shoulders. His brown hair hung extra-shaggy to his shoulders. Something white poked out. Really thin and almost translucent. Something feather-shaped.
“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” I said.
“Sorry, man.”
“Tell me what happened to you.”
“Showing you is better.”
I looked at Malek. Who pointed back to Kevin.
Who slipped off his jacket to reveal a bulging, black T-shirt. Then peeled off the tee to show off his study-too-much, work-out-too-little physique. And the pair of white, finely feathered wings that had been plastered against his shoulder blades.
My mouth fell open. “What?”
“Faery wings. Can you believe this?”
“No.”
“Well, try. Because it’s real. They’re real. I was down at the bus last night visiting the Singer. All of a sudden the world went wonky. We passed out, both of us. And when we woke up, I was like this. The Singer took one look at me, booted me out of the bus, and sent me here. Then the bus disappeared in a flash.” Kevin snapped his fingers. “She took it back to Faery, man. She had the most frightened look on her face. Like she’d seen a ghost.”
I blinked at him. The Singer was a Faery girl who lived in an old school bus in an alley downtown. She’d been human. A rock ‘n’ roll singer with a voice that made people feel what she wanted them to feel. Magic without actually being magic. The Faery King heard about her and came to see a show. She mesmerized him so much, he turned her from human to Faery against her will.
Not in an instant. It took a long time. Couple of years. When she couldn’t hide her transformation anymore, she left home and went to live in the bus with her oil paintings and a bottomless bottle of patchouli. She still sang from time to time, the kinds of shows where people literally laughed or cried or jumped each others’ bones right there on the floor.
And she helped idiots like me. I introduced her to Kevin during his kidnapped-father catastrophe. No one could lay it on me that she fell hard for him. Hard and completely.
She helped Kevin get his father back. To do it, she used a special kind of magic that sped up the transformation process. She gave up what remained of her humanity for him. Not the kind of gift you can ever repay.
Problem was, Kevin had a girlfriend. And he wasn’t an asshole, so cheating? Not an option. Even if he felt something for her, which he denied, but which he totally did. It didn’t take a seer’s apprentice to notice, either. His girlfriend, Amy, noticed. She hated the Singer.
Kev loved Amy. He told her that over and over. She didn’t believe him a hundred percent. I couldn’t blame her for that. But I didn’t think Kevin lied about it, either. I trusted him with my life,
so I hated to even have to ask the question out loud.
“Why’d you go to the bus, Kev?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I hadn’t heard from her in a month. I wanted to make sure she was okay.”
I knew that wasn’t the whole story, and Kevin knew that I knew. “Was she?”
He shrugged. Or I thought he did. Hard to tell under the circumstances. “Did she say anything about your shiny, new wings before she kicked you out?”
Kevin nodded. “She said it’d happened before. That the borders would have to be sealed. They couldn’t risk the realm becoming contaminated. I asked her what she meant. She just told me to come here and wait for you. How do you know this guy? No offense, man, but this place gives me the hardcore creeps.”
Malek grinned. The sight of it scraped my brain like fingernails on a chalkboard.
I chose my words carefully. “He’s a friend of a friend.”
“I don’t understand anything he says.”
“You need a crash course in American Sign Language, dude.”
“The Singer didn’t mention that. She just said you’d be coming here, Rude. She said you’d know what to do.”
“Awesome. With awesome sauce.”
“You don’t know anything, do you?” he asked.
“Working on it.” I turned to Malek. “That’s why I’m here. You do a tattoo lately on a girl’s back? A full back piece?”
I’ve done seven, Malek signed.
“This girl’s name is Melody. She goes to our school. Blond, blue eyes, worry line in her forehead. Please tell me you remember her.”
Yeah. What about her?
“She started all this.”
Kevin shook his head. “You’re kidding.”
“Afraid not.”
“How?” Kevin asked.
“She’s part demon.”
“How did we not see that? We see her every day in class. In the halls.”
“It’s kind of new. With the manifesting, anyway,” I said. “Malek, what did you ink on her?”
He studied us a minute. Then he waved for us to follow him into the back. The overhead lights seemed extra bright after the darkness up front. It took a second for my eyes to adjust. Okay, a lot of seconds of abject misery. Blinking, tears, the whole nine. Even when I could see pretty clearly without searing pain, I prayed for a pair of sunglasses. Wished to God I’d brought mine in from the car. But who thinks about that kind of stuff before the dawn?
Demon (The Faery Chronicles Book 2) Page 3
