by Rob Cornell
“Probably not,” she said. “But her story might hold a grain of truth that we can then exploit.”
“Just give me another chance,” Odi said. “I’ll get her to talk.”
“I’m sorry, Odi,” Mom said with sincere regret. “But your thrall is too fragile. You know that.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Fine.” I kicked the chair to get Fiona’s attention.
She snapped her gaze up to me.
“Just tell me. I won’t let you go until you give me some story.”
“I said you won’t—”
“It doesn’t matter if I believe it. Tell me.”
Fiona looked over at the totem on the table. She took a deep breath, then let it ease out. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks. Her black shirt’s damp collar stuck to her skin. She looked like she had just come home from a heavy workout at the gym. She never went to the gym, though. Her naturally enhanced shifter’s metabolism kept her lean and trim all on its own.
I started to think about what that lean and trim form looked like naked. It was a sight I had never gotten tired of. My heart pinched. I wanted those days back. I wanted to erase the memory of her betrayal and go back to the way things were. Instead, I had to interrogate her after she broke into my house.
“I told you I’m trying to help you, and it’s true,” she said.
I resisted the urge to argue. Let her get it out. I could tell her how full of shit she was all in one go at the end. More efficient that way.
“The totem is blessed by a trio of Buddhist monks based in New York City. They sell them online.”
“Seriously?” Odi asked. “Dude, you really can find anything on the internet.”
“What do you think I need help with?” I asked.
“With Sly,” she said. “He’s sick, right?”
A rattler came to life in my stomach with a slither and buzz. She’d been following me closer than I figured if she knew about Sly. But not close enough to learn he’d died in the hospital. I wondered if she had magical help in stalking me. Probably, but nothing too fancy like a vision or tracking spell. Fiona had picked up some tips from her herbalist mother, but she didn’t come close to qualifying as a real practitioner.
Maybe she ordered some spells online, too. Who frickin’ knew these days?
I decided to keep my cards close. “What do you think you know about Sly?”
“Not much. Just that you rushed him to the hospital. And you’ve visited a few times.” She paused. “And something strange went down at the hospital that required Ministry attention.”
Damn, she had stayed close. The idea gave me a paranoid itch between my shoulder blades after the fact.
Odi strolled back to the wall and leaned against it. “Wow.” He hooked his thumbs into his pockets. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you could shadow walk. How long have you been stalking him?”
She gave Odi a flat stare. “I wasn’t stalking him.”
“Yes you were,” Mom said. “Whether you want to admit it or not.”
Fiona shook her head, flustered. “Can we just agree to disagree on the terminology?”
I glanced at the clock. Midnight. Roughly lunch time for me on my Odi schedule, and my stomach reminded me with a grumble. I was surprised I could even think about food with how sick Fiona’s presence made me. Sick and, at the same time, longing.
I backed up so I could see both Mom and Odi on either side of me.. “Can you guys give us a moment?”
Odi bounced off the wall. “Alone?”
“Yes,” I said. “Alone.”
Neither one of them looked like they liked the idea, but they only argued with sidelong glances and disappointed frowns on their way out. Once I heard their footsteps in the front room, I grabbed the other chair from under the dining table, parked it in front of Fiona, and sat down across from her as if sitting down to work a Ouija board, knees only inches apart.
“I seem to recall another instance where you were tied up like this.”
Her mouth formed a straight line. “This where you get all nice with me, walk down memory lane, pretend everything is okay?”
“Why would I do that?”
She shrugged. “This is an interrogation, right?”
I exhaled through my nose, shifted in my seat, and stared into her eyes. “I’m not going to be nice to you. Don’t worry. And nothing is okay between us. But memory lane? I hopped on that bus the moment I saw you sprawled out on my kitchen floor, and now the driver won’t let me off.”
Her expression softened. “I’ve been following you for a while.”
“Why?”
“Because I was looking for a…a way in. A chance to make things right.”
“Never happen.”
“I can’t believe that.” Her arm jerked, and she cursed under her breath. I got the feeling she had meant to reach for me. “Sebastian, I love you. That was real.”
“Pretty sure you said that already. Pretty sure I said I believe you. But if you really think stalking—”
“I’m not—”
I shot my hand up like a traffic cop and lit that sucker with bright blue flame.
Fiona flinched. The blue light shined in her eyes. She stared at it, trembling. “What is that?”
“New trick,” I said. “In a weird way, I can thank you for helping teach it to me. That night with Goulet, I learned to tap my emotions like I can tap my magic. Pretty scary what you can cast when you mix the two.”
“Are you going to burn me?”
“I want to.” I extinguished the fire and dropped my hand in my lap. “But I won’t.” I leaned forward. “Unless you start talking about your love again. I won’t be held responsible for my actions if you bring that shit up.”
I looked for the hurt in her eyes, but she hid it if there was any to see.
“How did you plan on helping Sly?” I nodded toward the totem. “What was that supposed to do?”
“Bring luck,” she said. “Nothing super special.”
“Well, Sly’s luck ran out before you got here.”
Her lips parted, and she let loose a small gasp. “He’s dead?”
My throat felt like it was closing up. I nodded.
“Sebastian, I don’t know what happened, but you have to believe me. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I found it strange she assumed I would blame her. I guess she had a good idea how much I had come to resent her. I cleared my throat. “Don’t flatter yourself. I know it wasn’t you.”
She exhaled a relieved sigh. “Do you believe me about everything else?”
“You mean about this?” I scooped the totem off the table and held it up in front of me. I turned it around in my fingers, studying all the statuette’s sides. Then I looked up at her. “Or is there something more?”
She hesitated a second. I knew she wanted to get into her reasons for stalking me, or “helping” me, or whatever she thought she was doing, and how she was doing it all for love, and yada yada yada. But, apparently, she thought I really might burn her if she did. (Not sure what that said about me.)
“No,” she said. “Nothing else.”
“Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”
I held the totem with both hands, pinching its head between my right fingers, and its legs with my left. Whatever kind of stone it was made from felt like it had some give, like chalk. When I tried to bend the statuette, it snapped cleanly in half. I noticed a small spark of magic come from it, then disappear, the blessing destroyed.
I tossed the two pieces onto the table where they rattled like dice.
“But I don’t want your fucking help.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After I told her I would kill her if I saw her again, I let Fiona go. Odi and Mom didn’t like the idea, but when faced with reality—”How long can we keep her captive?”—we all knew it was best to focus on the real problem.
The Maidens of Shadow’s Moms.
Mother Maidens of Shadow?
Whatever. We had a coven of black witch mommies to deal with. Unfortunately, we had to wait on Angelica for any news before we could act. We still had a few hours of night left, but I didn’t feel up to practicing magic with Odi. From the looks of him, I don’t think Odi was in the mood for a lesson, either. Mom looked gaunt, and she stared off into space a lot.
We needed rest, probably food.
Odi needed to feed, too. I could tell by his pale, flaky skin, like a peeling sun burn without the flaming red.
I told him to hit the fridge, then took Mom out to the living room. The ceiling fan had three separate lights, the shades shaped like flowers. One of the bulbs zapped out when I pulled the chain to turn them on. The remaining bulbs cast a lopsided light in the room without the third doing its part.
One corner looked like the dark side of the moon. Mom chose to sit in an arm chair in that shadowed corner.
I took the sofa.
I heard the fridge open in the kitchen, then the clink of the metal lid to the mason jar as Odi set it aside on the counter. I could picture him lifting the jar to his lips, tilting his head back, and drinking down my blood.
A shudder ran through me.
Somehow, Mom knew exactly what had gone through my mind.
“How long do you plan on doing that?”
I played dumb, hoping she might drop the subject. “Doing what?”
“Feeding him your blood.”
No such luck.
I stared out the front window. The nearest streetlight sat half a block down, but enough moonlight illuminated the outside so I could see the cars parked along the curbs on either side of the street. A particular dark compact car caught my attention. For a second I thought I saw someone sitting in it. Then I realized the car was a Ford, not a Honda, and only a shadow sat behind the wheel.
Despite my (admittedly hollow) threat, I figured I’d probably see Fiona again. I would have to do some hard thinking before then. If this stalking shit kept up, I might have to go to the Ministry, get the paranormal world’s version of a restraining order. Magic worked so much better than a plain old court order.
I didn’t really want it to come to that. I wanted to forget the whole thing. The good and the bad. It would have been easier that way.
“Well?” Mom prompted.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think—”
I swiped a hand through the air. “I know what you think, Mom. Do you really want to argue about this now?”
She hung her head. The shadows covered her face like a cowl. “No.”
“Good,” I said. “We need a meal. What are you in the mood for?”
“Nothing.”
“Me either, but we have to eat.”
“Whatever you want. You decide.”
I stood, planning to check the fridge, then nixed that plan as I realized Odi was still in there drinking a part of me. And even if he was done, facing him right after one of his meals felt like running into someone I’d had a one night stand with, awkward and a little shameful.
“I’ll order Chinese.”
After we ate, Mom settled in at the dining room table and dealt herself a game of solitaire. Odi streamed The Matrix on the TV. I tried to read a Lawrence Block mystery, but found myself reading the same page twenty-eight times. When dawn came, I nearly burst into song. Time to get some sleep.
Odi went downstairs to his coffin. Mom and I went up to our rooms.
I think I started dreaming before my head hit the pillow.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A tiny trill woke me up. Took me a second, as I fumbled my way out of sleep, before I realized it was my ring tone. I sat up in bed and looked around me, eyes crusty with sleep, a streak of drool across one cheek.
My room had as much decor as the sparse dining room. Only the essentials. My full-sized bed, an IKEA dresser and night stand, a slowly growing wardrobe in the closet, and a laundry basket in the corner I was using as a hamper. Judging from the smell in the room, I needed to do some laundry.
I blinked away the last bits of sleepiness and scooped my cell off the nightstand. I didn’t know the number, but I hoped it was Angelica.
“Hello?” At least, that’s what I’d meant to say. It came out more like “Heyo” with a phleghmy garble.
“Did I wake you?” Angelica said with too much saccharine in her tone. “It’s after three. You’re worse than some of my sisters.”
I had the shades drawn, but enough afternoon light snuck around the edges that I had to squint when I looked toward the windows. I cleared my throat. “I’m on vamp time these days.”
“How nice for you.” She paused a moment. Seemed a long moment. I was about to check if the call had dropped when she finally spoke. “I have news. But it won’t be the kind you want to hear.”
I felt what little hope I’d been nurturing evaporate. I ran my hand over my bed head. “Why should I expect anything else?”
“Not all is lost. But there will be…steps.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Look, I literally just woke up. You’ll have to turn down the cryptic for a minute. M’kay?”
“My mother wants to meet with you.”
“All right. So she didn’t say no.”
“She didn’t say yes.”
“If she’s not interested in dealing, why would she want a meeting?”
“That’s the part you’re too sleepy to grasp, I think. She wants to deal. But are you ready to deal with her?”
I’d been up, what? Ninety seconds? It wasn’t fair I had to make these kinds of decisions before I even had my teeth brushed. But, in the end, it was a simple question with a simple answer. If I wanted to help Sly, it was the only answer.
“Yes.”
“All right, then get a pen and some paper. You will need to follow these instructions precisely.”
“What are we talking here? Can’t you just give me an address?”
“I told you,” she said. “There will be steps.”
Chapter Forty
Step one was simple enough.
Come alone.
Step two was not too unusual.
Go to Ford Field and stand outside Gate A.
From there, Angelica said step three would be self-explanatory.
I took her word for it.
Mom was still asleep, so I left her a note. She would probably be miffed that I took off without waking her, but going alone had been a condition of the meeting, so it was better she not be up to argue with me about that.
I had to use a parking deck across from the stadium. Street parking was a big no go at that time of day, creeping close to rush hour. I stood outside of the stadium’s entrance labeled Gate A as Angelica had instructed. The afternoon sun had a clear shot, no overcast, and had melted away the little bit of snow we had gotten. If not for the biting air, I could have convinced myself it was spring looking up at the sky.
Kitty corner from where I stood in front of Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, sat Comerica Park, the Tigers’ ball field. A massive screen faced out from the ballpark, currently blazing an ad for Ford Motor Company. A pair of striped tiger statues stood along the top of the screen on opposite sides, each frozen in mid-prowl. From street level they almost looked real.
The smell of grilled meat and savory grease wafted over from the Elwood Bar and Grill directly across the street from me. Because of the abrupt timeline Angelica had given me, I hadn’t had a chance to eat. My stomach growled, and my mouth watered.
I didn’t have to suffer the glorious scent long. A limo quickly pulled up to the curb in front of me, tinted windows all around. They must have been watching for me to arrive. The driver came out, his barrel chest ready to bust the buttons of his dress shirt. His tie hung too short because most of it had to wrap around his thick neck.
Without a word, he opened the back door for me.
I he
sitated. The last time I got into a limo it had belonged to the mastermind of the Ministry conspirators, a man who had tricked me into trusting him, despite the trust issues Fiona had left me with.
The driver cleared his throat in a menacing way. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.
I raised my hands. “I’m going.”
When I slid in, I expected to find Angelica’s mother. But nope. Looked like I was riding solo.
A confused vertigo came over me when the driver climbed in behind me. He had a cloth clutched in one hand. No. Not a cloth. A black hood, which he yanked over my head. The hood had a drawstring, and he jerked it tight enough around my neck that I began to hear my pulse thump in my head.
“I can barely breathe,” I said.
“Barely is good enough.” He tied the drawstring at my throat. A second later, the door slammed shut.
I scrabbled at the knot with my fingers, but I couldn’t dig in enough to loosen it. The driver must have been a damn sailor in a former life.
Thankfully, the hood smelled clean, but I felt certain I was going to suffocate every time the fabric got sucked against my gasping mouth. The new age music the driver listened to the whole time didn’t help. He kept the partition between the back and front open as if he wanted to torture me with the noise. Lucky for me, I made the thirty or forty minute trip without dying. But if I heard another electronic xylophone any time soon, I’d tear my ears off.
When the engine quit, the music finally did as well. Sweet mercy!
I heard the partition whirr up behind my head, then the muffled sound of the driver’s door opening and shutting.
I waited for him to come back and let me out, too. Instead, I sat in the hood’s darkness for at least another ten minutes. At least the wait was silent.
Finally, the back door opened and let in a gust of winter air. What little filtered through the hood felt wonderful against my hot cheeks. I listened as someone entered the limo. Then I felt the seat shift as that someone sat next to me.
The door slammed shut, blocking out the wind.
“Hello?” I asked. “Can you take this thing off me?”
I heard a distinct snick that took me only a second to recognize.
