“And what good would a bike do to a mermaid, anyway?!” he bellowed. “It’s not like they have legs to pedal with!”
“How did a mermaid steal his waterbike?” Kegan hissed at me.
“Probably swam off with it,” I whispered back. “I bet this happened underwater.”
“Well, duh,” Kegan murmured, rolling her eyes.
There was a gigantic reservoir just outside Sky City where most of the loreleis lived. Most of them, like undines, could breathe on land just fine, even though they preferred to be underwater. But most subspecies of mermaid couldn’t stay on land for longer than a few minutes without suffocating. They didn’t have lungs, they had gills.
Because of this, most mermaids turned their babies immediately after birth. But that came with very high risks of failure, so nearly ten percent of all their kids got stuck as human. We’d gone to visit one of the waterfront orphanages once because my mom had volunteered there as a nurse. It’d been depressing.
My mom had impressed me, though. She hadn’t even seemed to notice the fact that the visitors’ room smelled moldy, no doubt because of the hole in the floor for mermaids to swim up to visit. She’d also chewed Collette out for saying that mermaids were horrible people for letting so many of their kids wind up human, a scene that both Annette and I had greatly enjoyed, because anytime Collette got chewed out was fun.
From what I understood, some weres lived in the reservoir, too, especially werefish and dolphins and stuff. I’d always sort of wanted to visit, but werebirds and water just didn’t mix. Well, unless they were werepenguins, I supposed . . .
“Yes?” the police officer behind the desk asked my dad. She was an orc, and I hoped that she was smiling in a friendly way, not threatening us. It was hard to tell with those gigantic curved fangs.
I blinked, wondering where the undine had gone. Had he gotten his bike back?
Dad took a deep breath. “We’ve come to report a tainted turning stone,” he said.
“Mm-hmm,” the orc said, typing a note into the computer in front of her, as if this happened every day. “And where did you see it?”
Dad quickly recited the address of the warehouse.
The policewoman looked startled. “Not the Spriggan Spa?” she asked.
“No . . .” Dad said slowly.
“People keep reporting their Himalayan salt lamps,” the orc explained. “They have signs up explaining those are just lamps, but we still get a few panickers every month.”
“This was not a lamp,” Dad said firmly. “This was a pink turning stone in a locked room, behind a locked corridor, within a locked filing cabinet.”
“… Right,” the orc said, looking slightly worried. “Just in case, why don’t you wait in that room over there? I’ll have someone take down your story.”
It took another five minutes for another police officer to meet us in the room she’d indicated, which felt like forever.
At last, a tiny, balding abatwa with dragonfly wings buzzed in. He looked like either a very short sprite or a rather tall pixie.
“Tell me what you saw,” the man demanded, in a gruff voice that sounded all wrong for his tiny size. I wondered if he talked that way on purpose so that people would take him seriously. He pulled a notepad and pencil out of the pocket of his uniform shirt.
Dad looked at Kegan, and she gulped.
“Will I get in trouble for trespassing?” she asked in a small voice. “I didn’t exactly have permission to be in that part of the building.”
“Was it locked?” the abatwa asked.
“Yes, but I’m a specter, so I just walked through it.”
“Did you take anything?”
“I wouldn’t do that!” Kegan exclaimed.
“Did you go substantial at any point while you were behind a locked door?” he asked, taking notes.
“No,” Kegan said, swallowing.
“Were there signs up warning you not to go in?”
“Uh uh.”
“Were you specifically told not to go in?”
“Uh uh.”
“And you had permission to be in other parts of the building?”
“Uh huh,” Kegan said.
“Then it’s not illegal,” he said, shrugging. “It’s rude, but it would be impossible to enforce a law against specters walking through locked doors, given how easily a specter could wander through one without having any clue it was locked. Especially during the full moon,” he added in an annoyed tone that suggested he had had to explain this to complainers many times before.
Good to know, I thought with a grin, wondering what kind of pranks Kegan could play without getting in trouble.
“Now, if you’d gone substantial,” the abatwa said, “the same rules would have applied to you as anyone else. The same for going anywhere you had been told not to go.”
Oh. Well, so much for that loophole. She couldn’t even spy on people because she didn’t go invisible. Still, I was glad Kegan wasn’t in trouble.
“Okay,” Kegan said nervously. “Well . . .”
She launched into a long explanation with as many twists and turns as a weresnake driving. I was amazed the police officer seemed able to follow it, but he kept on taking notes.
“Hang on,” he said at one point, holding out his hand. “They just let a specter wander off without any warnings not to go behind a locked door?”
“They assumed Kegan was a vampire because of how she dresses,” I explained.
“And there weren’t any other specters there,” Kegan added. “I checked before I went to look around. I didn’t take anything!” she added.
“You said that,” the abatwa nodded, taking notes. “Continue.”
“So then I found a locked staircase and then a locked hallway at the bottom, and of course that made me really curious, because I figured that meant they had something to hide, but it was just a boring office at the bottom with a desk and a locked filing cabinet, so I poked my head into the filing cabinet to see what was in it, but it was just paperwork, except the bottom drawer, which had a pink turning stone. So then an hour later, when we were leaving —”
“Hang on,” the abatwa said, holding up his hand. His eyebrows, which looked like bushy caterpillars, were raised. He had more hair in those things than he did on top of his head. “You found a pink turning stone, and you just hung around there for another hour?”
“I didn’t know what it meant!” Kegan exclaimed. “I thought it was just, like, different colors for every race or something! The only one I’ve ever seen was my clan’s, which is green, and —”
The policeman stared at her. “… How old are you?” he asked.
“Seventeen,” Kegan said.
“And you haven’t studied World War One in school?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Kegan asked, looking confused.
“World War One?” the abatwa asked incredulously. “Taint warfare? The entire reason owning a tainted turning stone became an international crime?”
“We’ve never studied World War One,” Kegan explained. “We just keep studying the Revolutionary War and the Civil War over and over again.”
“One year we did World War Two,” I pointed out.
“Oh, yeah!” Kegan said. “The Nazis thought vampires were superior to everybody else, right? They were the bad guys.”
A muscle in the abatwa’s cheek was twitching.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said dryly. “They’re both going to be reading a book about the last century now that I’m aware of this.”
My mouth fell open. Dad was going to give us extra homework? That was so totally unfair!
“Well, regardless,” the man said, dragonfly wings buzzing behind him as he hovered in the air, “if this is true, thank you for the tip. You said you called 911?”
“Yes,” Dad said, nodding.
“Then the buzzards will be over there now,” he said. “If there’s anything that looks like a tainted turning stone, they’ll destroy
it.”
“Thank you,” Dad said, breathing out a sigh of relief.
“You mean werebuzzards?” I blurted out. “Why werebuzzards? They don’t have a magical ability.”
The abatwa hesitated. “Well, it’s not common knowledge, but I suppose it’s not a secret . . . they do. Werebuzzards are immune to taint. Because we’ve gotten so many false alarms since that spa opened, we actually have three on call.”
“Are werevultures immune, too?” I gasped. “I’m a vulture!”
The abatwa stared at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “Do you know who Benedict Arnold was?”
“Sure,” I said promptly. “George Washington’s best friend. Betrayed him to the British.”
“He was a werevulture. And he was tainted. Being in the early stages of taint was why he betrayed his compatriots. Taint turns people into monsters, you see. And he was one of the most horrifying monsters in history.”
I felt a roaring in my ears. Benedict Arnold? Benedict Arnold?
I was beginning to understand why there were no werevultures around anymore.
Chapter 9: That Secret
So of course, Rarity Clan had the nerve to call me the next day.
Well, I guess it wasn’t really “nerve,” because they didn’t know that I’d gone straight to the police about them. Or at least, I hoped they didn’t. But still.
“Just wanted to let you know, we have a new location!” Rodrigo’s voice said cheerfully over the phone. “We’ll be meeting tomorrow at the usual time, and if you want to go, you can meet Loretta Vampireclanjiangshi at the Selkie Fountain by the public library, and she’ll take you there!”
“Wait,” I said, a little shocked. Did that mean the police hadn’t caught them? Did that meant the tainted turning stone wasn’t destroyed yet? “You’re still — uh — where is the new location?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t know yet,” Rodrigo said with a slight laugh. “It won’t be finalized until the day of the meeting. But don’t worry, Miss Vampireclanjiangshi will know where it is.”
In other words, they knew one of the teenagers had warned the police, and they’d gotten away just in time, and they weren’t going to take any chances like that again. They’d probably have a new meeting place every single time from now on.
My heart pounded, and blood roared in my ears. Did they know it was me?
“I — um . . .” I clutched the phone. Of course I wasn’t going. Or should I go? If I didn’t go and everyone else did, then they’d know it was me. Or else it was a trap because they already knew it was me.
“I . . . might have a family thing,” I said, being as vague as possible. If I chose not to go, I’d make sure I did have a “family thing,” even if it was just helping Annette with her homework. Not that she needed the help from me. “Is it required to be at every meeting?”
“Not required, no.” I could hear the frown in Rodrigo’s voice. “But encouraged, naturally. Yesterday was merely a gathering. Tomorrow, we’ll be talking about important things.”
Of course, I thought. Because we probably made them speed up their plans.
“What important things?” I asked.
“It would take too long to explain over the phone,” he said smoothly. “But one of the things we do on Thursdays is invite an adult from a rare clan to come over and speak about their experiences and their abilities. Tomorrow will be Miss Vampireclanjiangshi.”
My heart pounded in my throat. I really, really wanted to know what that secret was. I was still mad that they hadn’t told me yesterday. But I also didn’t want to go just because of that. If I did, that would be letting them win.
“I’ll have to see if the family thing is more important,” I said carefully. “Four o’clock at the Selkie Fountain if I do decide to go?”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t be late.”
I pushed the button to end the call, and I sat there for a minute holding my phone. My heart pounded with the same adrenaline I’d felt yesterday. I’d been in the middle of my English homework, and there was no way I was going to finish it now.
Of course I had to talk to my parents. But what should I say? Should I try to persuade them to let me go, or should I try to insist that we set up a family night instead?
Mom had flipped out when we’d come home yesterday night and told her about the tainted turning stone. She’d done a complete 180 in her attitude about Rarity Clan.
Collette had seemed impressed and jealous. Annette had gotten really excited and started reciting statistics about taint in the last few centuries, which she’d apparently learned in History class last semester. It seemed that in her genius school, they didn’t just learn about the Revolutionary War over and over again.
When Kegan had told her parents, they hadn’t believed her. They’d insisted that taint hadn’t been a problem in the United States for decades. It was only in the third world countries that it still ran rampant.
Kegan had told me about this over lunchtime with a really peeved expression on her face. “I know it wasn’t a fake made out of rose quartz or something!” she’d kept saying. “It was glowing!”
All the same, I somehow doubted Kegan’s parents would let her go back. She hadn’t been invited, anyway. And pretending she wasn’t a specter wasn’t a good long-term plan. She’d get caught eventually. So bringing her with me was out, if I went back.
Can I bring Dad again? I wondered.
Rodrigo hadn’t said I couldn’t. I’d certainly feel better if Dad were with me. On the other hand, if they were trying to be secretive and I brought Dad with me, Loretta Vampireclanso-called-jiangshi might leave without me. I wished I could ask, but I’d already hung up on Rodrigo, and when I checked my call history, his number was private.
I pulled on one of my tight black curls, wondering what to do. There was also always the third option: calling the police and asking them to grab Loretta Vampireclanso-called-jiangshi at the fountain. But could they hold her if they didn’t have any evidence that she’d broken the law? I was pretty sure, from watching cop shows, that they couldn’t. And then Rodrigo’d know for sure that I was the one who’d tipped them off, and I’d be in major trouble.
This is so unfair, I thought in frustration. If I’d become a werehawk, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.
But maybe somebody else would. Somebody else who bought into everything Rarity Clan said, just like all the other teenagers there. And then they’d be in danger.
A lot of people might be in danger.
I pulled my curl back and forth. I knew from cop shows that they usually sent people undercover when they wanted to get evidence against a creepy organization. There was no way the police could get an actual cop in undercover, not when Rarity Clan wanted newly-turned teenagers.
Okay, maybe they could get an adult from a rare clan to go in and give a speech or whatever next Thursday. But would Rodrigo be fooled by that? I somehow doubted it. He probably knew all the adults who were rare species in town, and might have recruited all the ones he wanted already. He’d definitely know which ones were cops.
I could get in. I was invited. And maybe I could find out enough about their plans to give the police what they needed to stop them.
If I did that, I would be a hero. I immediately fantasized about a huge parade with my face on banners and the entire city cheering me. I’d get a crown like a Prom Queen, and then that cute pumpkin guy whose life I’d saved would kiss me . . . no, wait, scratch that, he had a girlfriend. I replaced him with Bryan Giantclanogre, since my hero status would make me far more interesting than a mere cheerleader.
I grinned. I definitely wanted that.
But . . .
My grin faded.
That wasn’t the only possibility. There was also the chance I’d wind up dead. Or tainted. And that would be worse. Because if I got tainted, that would be permanent. There was no cure.
I swallowed, so afraid I could cry. Merely the threat of a taint had made Mom freak o
ut and rant about how there was no way to protect against it, and what monsters in history had done, and how she didn’t want me going anywhere on my own ever again.
Then Annette had hopped online to look for pictures of Benedict Arnold, and she’d found a painting of him in a tainted half-form, wings spread, with a pile of corpses underneath him and blood drooling from his mouth. It was horrifying.
I did not, not, not, not want that to happen to me.
On the other hand, there were no monsters in town. If there were, we’d have heard about it on the news. The police would certainly have been jumpy yesterday, instead of mildly concerned. Which meant that either Rodrigo didn’t intend to taint people at all, or he hadn’t started yet.
If he started making monsters and I’d had the chance to stop him and I hadn’t taken it, I’d never forgive myself.
I clenched my fists, summoning up my courage. That was it, then. I’d decided. I’d be going to that blasted meeting tomorrow, and I’d hope that whatever Rodrigo was planning wouldn’t start to happen right then.
I didn’t have to be stupid about it, though. I’d tell the police and get them to put a tracker on me or something. Or maybe I could wear a wire, like they did on TV. Would they check for something like that?
This was if the police allowed me to go, of course. And my parents. I kind of sort of hoped they’d completely forbid me, because then I’d have a good excuse to not go into danger. A very good excuse that wasn’t my fault.
But I knew I’d argue for it fiercely. If I didn’t do my best, it would be my fault if anyone wound up tainted, and I couldn’t live with that.
To my surprise, the police were just fine with my offer.
“Either it’s not dangerous, or else we need the information,” the abatwa police officer said when I called to talk to him. He’d given us a number to call in case we had anything else to report, and I’d chosen to call him before I talked to my parents.
“I agree,” he went on, “you should be wearing a wire. And we’ll make sure to have at least two officers tailing you.”
“What happened yesterday?” I asked in a small voice. “Was nobody there?”
Trials of a Teenage Werevulture (Trilogy of a Teenage Werevulture Book 1) Page 7
