by R. L. Naquin
Still, it didn’t take much nudging on Maurice’s part before she let go of my hand and followed him into the house. Maurice amazed me with how he took care of her. To my knowledge, Sara never let anyone do that for her. Maurice had a knack for taking care of everyone, but Sara was a special case.
Once Sara was safely inside, I moved closer to my mother at the edge of the fairy ring. We waited while our friends examined the Terrible Thing that floated in the air and was preparing, no doubt, to smite us.
We stood that way for a few minutes, watching. Waiting. Listening.
No. Not listening. If I’d been listening, I might have registered sooner the weird, low chanting coming from up the street.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
Kam tilted her head. “Somebody’s singing.”
“A lot of somebodies,” Riley said.
I took a step down the driveway, but Mom grabbed my arm. “Let them check, Zoey. That’s why they’re here.” She shook her head. “All these people around you wanting to help, and you jump into the fray every time. I’ll never understand how you’ve managed to stay alive.”
She folded her arms against the chill and, still shaking her head, turned and walked up the steps into the house as if washing her hands of me.
My shoulders slumped. Having my mother back after twenty years was a miracle. The last six months with her had been a gift I’d never thought I would have. But she wasn’t who I’d always imagined she’d be—and I wasn’t who she’d imagined I’d be. People told me we were so much alike.
But I didn’t see it.
Mom was content to take directions and allow others to protect her. I didn’t seem to have the knack for either of those things. I wasn’t sure which one of us that bothered the most—her for thinking I was stubborn and prone to irrational flights into danger, or me for thinking that she was... Well, weak seemed like a harsh word to put on it.
It ate at me a little that what she called my recklessly jumping into the fray was why she was alive at all.
The best thing to do was accept our differences and move on.
Riley had watched the exchange and my mother’s exit. He gave me a look of sympathy. “I’ll go see where the singing is coming from. I’ll be quick, I promise.”
Kam wandered over to keep me company while the menfolk checked on choir practice in the street. “Somebody’s got to keep an eye on this thing from now on,” she said, waving at the portal. She leaned down and adjusted one of her short white socks, then straightened, fiddling with the wide gold bangles covering her wrists.
I nodded at the jewelry. “How much juice have you got saved up these days?”
She peeked at me from the corner of her eye. “Not as much as you think I should have, but more than you might expect.” She slid a bracelet up her arm to show me. Three jewels imbedded her skin, two of them swirling with colors and light. The third gave off a slight shine, and reds and golds flashed at intervals, but didn’t remain lit.
I nodded, impressed. “Not too bad. That last jewel looks like it could be recharged in—what—two weeks? Three?”
She smiled and slipped the bracelet down to cover her magic. “About that, yeah. If all goes well.”
“And if you don’t get the urge to blow it all to dress up like Marie Antoinette.”
Her black eyes grew wide. “That would be awesome!”
Riley and Darius strode up the driveway, their faces sour.
“It’s that damn religious group, The Church of Hidden Wisdom,” Darius said. “And they’re marching their way here.”
Chapter Four
The Church of Hidden Wisdom had been making a nuisance of itself lately. The church had been a thing for a long time—possibly centuries—but until a few years ago, its membership had been more concerned with Wednesday night choir practice and the occasional bake sale. I had no idea what had changed, but they’d gone from quiet, private worship in small numbers to vocal protests, aggressive recruitment and tasteless displays.
They were harmless, but annoying.
Up until six months ago, I’d never heard of them. A lovely couple, Jamie and Alex, had contacted Sara and I, asking to hold their wedding in my protected backyard. The Church of Hidden Wisdom had been giving them trouble for being of mixed mythologies, and the two women—an attic monster and an elf—requested sanctuary on my property, as well as the expertise Sara and I could offer as professional wedding planners.
Once we’d agreed to do the wedding, vague threats started to show up through notes shoved under our office door or left under my windshield wiper. Fed up, I’d once followed a pair of hooded parishioners back to the nondescript building in San Rafael where they held their services. The inside had looked like any community center that rented out space to self-help groups and tap dancing instructors.
The pastor had been both appalled and apologetic. The Church of Hidden Wisdom did not condone such bigotry.
Shortly after that, the threats stopped. Whatever the pastor had done put an end to it.
There wasn’t really a whole lot those rogue members could have done anyway. After all, the congregation was made up of various Hidden creatures. They could hardly march up Main Street with a bunch of protest signs that said “The Hidden gods hate Mashups” or “Myths with Monsters Are an Abomination.” Even crackpot fanatics have to stay out of sight of humans if they can’t pass for humans themselves.
And as they came up my driveway, chanting and marching, I could say with a hundred-percent certainty that these people could not pass for human.
They tried. But I’d met harpies before. An overcoat buttoned over the telltale bird body didn’t fool me a bit. And right next to the harpy, a small gargoyle woman in a blue pantsuit lumbered along, dropping bits of rock and pebble in her wake, destroying the disguising makeup job she’d applied to her stony face. A satyr hobbled behind, looking uncomfortable in shirt and trousers, but the particular gait of a goat-man is easy to pick out, no matter how he tries to cover himself.
The species of some of the others wasn’t as obvious to make out, but none of them moved quite like a human. In all, there were eight shambling figures, holding hands and chanting nonsense words in a steady stream.
None of the church members seemed at all concerned that a djinn, a reaper and a mothman blocked their progress up the driveway. They stopped, formed a circle a few feet behind the portal, and continued to chant.
Someone could have knocked me over with the wispy breath of a newborn fairy. The absolute ballsiness of these people marching up my driveway without any regard to either Hidden laws or polite society left me gobsmacked. I had no words.
“Hey,” Kam said. “This is private property. You people need a permit to do a séance here. Or whatever you’re doing.” She squinted up at the sky, as if expecting the strange gathering might cause a rainstorm.
Riley placed a hand on the satyr’s shoulder. “Listen, I’m all for freedom to be a douchebag, but you have to do it somewhere else.”
The satyr shook him off, and the entire group chanted louder.
Darius didn’t even try. He grabbed Riley by the elbow and Kam by the back of her sweater and dragged them across the fairy ring to my side.
“I think we need to regroup,” he said. “Unless you’ll allow me to physically remove them, regardless of whether I do them harm?” He gave me a hopeful look.
I shook my head. “You know I won’t agree to that.” I glanced at the strange mix of creatures waving their hands over their heads and working themselves into a fervor. “Not yet, at least.”
Sometimes being the good guy and doing the right thing kind of sucked. It was certainly more time consuming than allowing the mothman to play bouncer. But that way led to violence, and somebody would get hurt. After all, they were only singing.
How the hell they got my home address was a question I wanted an answer to, though. In the past their weird activities hadn’t been much more than a nuisance, and it had stopped eventually. In b
road daylight marching up my driveway, the problem was literally too close to home.
The chanting continued, a low hum of monosyllabic words strung together to form a repetitive murmur of disjointed sounds. To be honest, I was pretty sure it was nonsense they’d made up for show.
“At what point does a religious organization cross the line into being considered a cult?” I asked.
Riley gave a dry chuckle. “I think that line was at the end of your driveway.”
“Alright,” I said, pushing my sleeves up past my elbows. Obviously whatever their pastor had said to make them stop harassing us hadn’t stuck. Time to go up the food chain. “We’ve got police for this sort of crap. We need to call the O.G.R.E. squad.”
For a few months, maybe a year or so, we hadn’t, in fact, had police for this sort of thing. They’d all walked off the job. But Kam and Darius, along with several other teams, had moved around the country putting the squads back together. At one point, Riley and I had gone out to help.
“I’ll call,” Kam said, pulling out her phone. “The foreman is a friend of mine.” She winked. “Or at least I’d like him to be a friend of mine.”
I took a step closer to the chanting crazies and raised my voice. “We’re calling the O.G.R.E.s, folks. You don’t have to stop your little prayer group, but you can’t hold it here.” They didn’t move or alter their tempo. “Anybody want to stop with the singing and actually talk to me?”
Nothing.
Maurice flung the front door open and strode from the porch. With each step, he grew bigger, more muscular, and fiercer.
I stared at Maurice, transmonstrifying into a terrible monster with each step, then scanned the crowd in confusion. It took a lot to set Maurice off like that, but I couldn’t tell exactly what—or who had been the cause.
“Pansy!” When he snarled, acid dripped from his jaws and sizzled at his feet. “What the hell are you doing?”
The gargoyle woman, startled, let go of the hands she held and turned to face the now eight-foot-tall closet monster bearing down on her.
The cohesion and organization of the group—impressive a moment before—unraveled with astonishing speed. When Pansy let go and stopped chanting, the others dropped off, one by one, until they all stood in a loose circle, waiting to see what Pansy would do.
I couldn’t do anything. Even if crossing the protective fairy ring had been an option, my feet wouldn’t move. My surprise had to be apparent across my face, but no one was looking at me anyway.
All eyes were on Maurice and his never-before-seen wife. Or ex-wife. I was pretty sure that once she’d sent him the men’s loafer he’d exchanged for her daisy flip-flop during their wedding ceremony, the divorce had been final.
I was a little hazy on monster marital laws.
Pansy straightened her spine and spoke in a gravelly voice. “Maurice, your cheese is caught in the fortuitous fanbelt!”
And with those words, a mystery nearly a year old was solved. Pansy’s brother, Phil, had stayed with us for a few days. Nothing he’d said made any damn sense, though Maurice acted as if it was all perfectly clear. I’d wondered if it was a Phil thing or a gargoyle thing, but since Maurice apparently heard something completely different from what I heard, he didn’t have an answer for me.
Now I knew. All Gargoyles didn’t make a lick of sense to me when they spoke.
“Me?” His terrifying yellow eyes glared down at her from several feet above. “I live here. Take your damn cult buddies and get off our property.”
She frowned, her eyebrows scraping together and creating poofs of dust. “Maggot balloons?” She gave me a disdainful onceover. “Nobody likes a spotted lamb with a watchtower on its belly.” She sniffed and turned away from me, flicking her hand in dismissal. “Cranberry moccasins.” She gestured at her little group, and they linked hands again.
I had no idea what she’d said about me, but it was bitchy as hell, I could tell that much.
“Oh, hell no!” Maurice said. He snagged Pansy’s arm at the elbow—a feat he had to bend to perform—and spun her toward the street. “All of you. Out. Now. Pansy, I took a lot of crap from you when we were married, but this isn’t just about me. I swear to the gods, you will not ruin what I have now and you will not hurt the people I love.”
He sounded like himself, mostly, with a little extra snarl thrown in. I wasn’t concerned for anyone’s safety, nor for the acid-burned spots on the grass next to the driveway. It was all illusion. As soon as he calmed down, Maurice would be back to his old skinny self, and the grass would as it had been too. The only person I might’ve been concerned for was Pansy, but I didn’t give a damn what he did to her. As far as I was concerned, the bitch had been asking for it ever since she’d cheated on my friend, then treated him like a housekeeper while she’d carried on with her affair.
He frog-marched her toward the street and, after a moment, her stunned companions followed. At the road, he gave her a little shove before letting go. “Don’t you ever set so much as a toe on Zoey’s property again, Pansy. I don’t know what the hell this is all about, but you leave us out of it.”
I heard Maurice because he was still shouting. I couldn’t hear anything that Pansy said—not that I’d have understood it. I could see her, though, standing out on the road in front of my house, surrounded by a mismatched group of monsters dressed as humans.
She lifted one arm in a slow, grinding arc and pointed at me.
Whatever she said, it pissed off Maurice further, and he threw his head back and howled.
I’d never heard him make that noise before—something like a grizzly bear’s growl in a wind tunnel crossed with the echoey call of a beached humpback whale. I rubbed my arms to get rid of the goosebumps that appeared.
Pansy ran, and the others followed.
After a minute, Maurice made his way toward the house, shrinking and looking less terrifying with every step.
I reached for him when he came near, and he gave me a halfhearted smile. “I need a drink.” He walked past me and into the house.
“Holy shit,” Kam said. “Should we go in with him?”
I shook my head. “Mom’s in there with him. Give them a bit.”
“And Sara,” Riley said, folding his arms.
“Hmmph.” I wasn’t sure what to make of Maurice’s relationship with Sara. They were friends. He was protective as hell of her. And I knew she had feelings she hadn’t shared with him. To compound matters, his childhood sweetheart—an under-the-bed monster named Stacy—had recently joined our little family.
For a few months, Stacy had been living with us, working for Maurice as a punishment I’d given her for going on a walkabout in the middle of tourist season in San Francisco. Had I realized the two had a past, I might have offered a different penance for her to perform. When they were young, Maurice had broken Stacy’s heart and dumped her for that ridiculous, mean-spirited gargoyle he married. But neither Maurice nor Stacy had been forthcoming about their past heartaches until Stacy had been with us a few days. By that time, I figured they probably needed to sort their baggage anyway.
Even without being an empath, I could tell Stacy still had feelings for Maurice. And Maurice had feelings for her—even if a large part of those feelings was guilt.
After a month or so, they’d seemed at peace with each other. Stacy went back home a few weeks later, but the damage was done. Stacy’s feelings had expanded, and any idiot could tell she had fallen completely in love with Maurice again—any idiot but Maurice. Stacy was a frequent visitor now, helping of her own free will, fluttering her eyelashes and trying to get Maurice to notice her.
Despite Stacy’s best efforts, Maurice remained oblivious.
I didn’t want to get involved, but the Stacy/Maurice/Sara triangle was looking pretty firm from where I stood.
I returned my attention to the portal hanging in midair a few yards away from my front door.
“What do we do about that?” I asked.
Darius
squatted on the porch steps. “We keep someone on guard at all times until we figure out where it goes. I’ll take the first watch.”
“The O.G.R.E.s are on their way,” Kam said. “I know the religious nuts are gone, but it seems like we probably should have help with this thing too.” She gestured at the portal. “Somebody should know about it, anyway.”
I sighed. “I’ll let Bernice know. If Wales has one of these things and so do we, I’m guessing there are others. We’d better find out.”
* * *
The Oversight and General Rule Enforcement (O.G.R.E.) squad showed up about a half hour later, led by a blond, blue-eyed pretty boy I disliked instantly. Not a problem. Kam liked him plenty for both of us.
He introduced himself as Lionel, and bowed low over my hand as if we were at a ball in a royal court. His hand was clammy, and I resisted the urge to wipe mine on my shirt once he let go. I was wearing my Smurf shirt, and I didn’t want Smurfette polluted with new guy’s sweat.
“It’s an honor to meet you.” His voice flowed thick and sweet, like dripping honey. “Word of your deeds has spread across the country.”
For no reason at all, Kam giggled and tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. I gave her the stink-eye.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this guy—not that I could put my finger on, anyway. But he felt wrong. Dishonest, somehow.
Artificial.
Dimples flashed in his cheeks as he spoke, and his hair feathered forward around his face in that fussy, Justin Bieber look that used to be popular.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, gesturing to a tree sprite and two dwarfs. “My people will be watching this thing at all times. If you want one of your guys on it too, I won’t object. For now, though, I think that would be a waste of manpower. If something comes out, we want everyone to be as rested as possible, in case we have to take it down. Don’t you agree?”
Kam nodded so fast and hard, she looked like a bobblehead.
The skin on Lionel’s face fascinated me. It shifted as he spoke—not a lot, but enough for me to notice, as if the muscles weren’t attached to the skin or rippling fluids ran beneath the surface in tiny waves.
