“What do we do?”
“You’ve got the spray bottles, right?”
I pulled out a vial and handed it to him. “I don’t have to touch them?” I wanted to be very clear on this point. Real spiders were creepy; supernatural spiders were in a realm all to themselves.
“No touching; just point and spray. It’s not the difficulty of the task. It’s the volume. There’s one.”
I blinked and followed the line of his finger to a tall woman with a light gray soul at the shoes sales counter. The salesclerk rang up box after box of shoes, oblivious to the two-inch-high brilliant green spider sitting on the customer’s shoulder. I gawked at the tiny spider.
“Why isn’t it black?” Everything evil in Primordium was black.
“They’re parasites, nuisances, but not evil. They feed on the uglier emotions and strengthen them. When people’s moods turn dark, they’re more prone to do bad things. That’s why it’s our problem. Or your problem, this year.”
That didn’t explain why the cito’s body was in Technicolor, but in the grand scheme of my job, its color wasn’t important.
“Watch and learn, grasshopper.” Jacob sauntered toward the woman. As he approached, the cito scuttled across her shoulder and onto her bare neck. I gasped and clutched Valentine tighter. They’d better not jump.
When Jacob passed behind the woman, he raised his hand to adjust his collar and discreetly sprayed the cito. The woman brushed at her neck, feeling the rush of air but not seeing the fine spray of glittery lux lucis. On her neck, the cito shrank in size until it winked out of existence.
Jacob trotted back to me. “What’d you think of that?”
“Very smooth. She didn’t even know you were there.”
“That’s the idea. You don’t want to attract attention. ”
“No kidding.” With my mom in tow, discretion suited me just fine. Plus, Mr. Pitt was big on the idea of me blending in as a normal human.
“Your turn. There’s one coming off the escalators.”
The woman in question was hardly old enough to drive. Her threadbare layered tops screamed high school, as did the skimpy jean skirt paired with midcalf Uggs. She scanned the store as if looking for her paparazzi, a cell phone pressed to her ear, gum smacking. A flat, four-inch-wide red spider sat atop her ponytail, its legs extended to hold on like a demented cap. I shivered and ran my hand through my hair. Jacob snorted.
“Are you sure you don’t want this one?”
“She’s all yours.”
Jacob held out the spray bottle. I moved Valentine to my left hand, grabbed the cito spray, and marched after the girl.
“My best Coach bag was, like, so ruined. I should make him buy me another one. I know; totally, right?”
When I stepped within arm’s reach, the cito scuttled around her head to stare at me. I froze. The girl sashayed onward, scanning the men’s department for fans. The cito kept its many eyes locked on me. I glanced helplessly back at Jacob. He was on the phone but watching me, and he mimed a quick spray.
The teen tugged open a door. It was now or never. I raced up behind her and doused the cito before it could jump on me. White glitter enveloped the girl’s head, and the red cito popped out of existence. The girl raised her hand to her head and shot a dirty look over her shoulder at me.
I spun to the right and waved my raised hand like I’d seen someone across the store. “There you are,” I called to no one.
“O. M. G. You should see what people are wearing here.” The girl pushed through the exit doors.
I relaxed my arm.
“Not bad,” Jacob said. “A little overkill on the amount and a tad obvious, but good save at the end.”
“Thanks.”
“I think you’ve got things covered here. I need to take off. Isabel says there’s a problem on Industrial.”
My stomach flipped. “You can’t leave!” There were at least a hundred people visible from where I stood, another thousand in the mall. I couldn’t check them all.
“Remember, the citos going to multiply throughout the day, so stay on top of them. I normally swing through the mall for an hour or two a day during the Christmas season to wade through them, but with you here full-time, it should be a breeze.”
Once or twice a day? Why hadn’t I gotten that option? Why had Mr. Pitt agreed to sequester me here all day?
“What happens if I don’t catch them all?” This was a huge mall, and I was just one woman.
Jacob shrugged and edged toward the doors. “Sometimes they dissipate on their own; sometimes citos make their hosts do bad things, and our life gets a little harder.”
His nonchalance sat sour in my stomach. The underlying message was clear: Taking out citos wasn’t important. It was busywork.
“Don’t worry,” he said, misinterpreting my furrowed brow. “You took on a demon; this will be no big deal.”
Jacob slipped outside and trotted into the parking lot. I watched him go with envy so raw it made breathing difficult. Today was going to suck.
8
Don’t Believe Everything You Think
“Who was that?”
I yelped and spun around. Valentine bounced off a mannequin’s hand. Mom and Evelyn stood behind me, a bag on each of their arms.
“You’re jumpy. Was that the vet?” Evelyn asked.
“Please tell me it wasn’t. He’s too young.”
I blinked to normal vision while steadying the mannequin. “He was no one. A coworker.” I palmed the spray bottle and gave Valentine a pat.
“Well, then, no more dillydallying. We’re behind schedule.” Mom checked her list. “We’ve got twenty minutes to get to Sears for the deal on the tool set your dad wants.”
We surged into the mass of shoppers traversing the center of the mall. Single file, we wove past families, loiterers, and women with strollers and toddlers. Mom and Evelyn managed to keep a conversation going, but I caught only snippets over the din of hundreds of voices and the competing Christmas music of the mall and stores we passed.
I hugged Valentine with my right arm to protect him and shifted the spray to my left as I passed a couple moving in the opposite direction. The woman’s hands were free, but behind her tromped a man laden with bags. A crimson cito slightly larger than his eyes twitched back and forth across his forehead. I sprayed a cloud into the air and slowed to watch the man pass through it. The cito disintegrated, and the man’s dark scowl softened to a look of tolerant indifference.
I considered a laundry list of negative emotions, the topmost being anger, hate, and greed. If people left the mall with those emotions rioting beyond their usual control, it would do more than make things difficult for enforcers, as Jacob had said. Actions based on those harsh emotions would result in atrum, either on the person’s own soul or spread throughout the environment. Jacob hadn’t been worried, though, so the problems with citos must be the quantity not potency. If one person left the mall with a cito attached to her, a warden might be hard-pressed to find her blip on their radar. If a hundred hosts returned home, there’d be an uptick in evil for sure.
Was an overpopulation of citos responsible for our regions’ current problems?
I almost pulled out Medusa to call Mr. Pitt and tell him my theory before realizing its major flaw. If the increased evil in our area could be blamed on citos, Mr. Pitt and everyone else at the meeting would have known. I was the only enforcer who’d never seen a cito before.
Scurrying to catch up, I fell back in line behind Evelyn before she or Mom noticed.
After a mall full of women and couples, we found the single men and hiding husbands in the crowded tools and outdoor equipment department of Sears. Mom and Evelyn disappeared into the small tools section, but I was sidetracked by the sight of the pale red—dare I say pink—citos hopping excitedly on shoulders of twenty-year-old men and grandpas alike as they covetously examined tools of destruction and mayhem. Sidling behind them, I gave the area a general spray, watching with satisfact
ion as the citos disappeared. One by one, the men looked up and blinked at their surroundings, as if seeing the store for the first time. More than one checked his watch or phone and roamed away.
“We’ve got it,” Mom said, proudly carrying a hard plastic box filled with one hundred tiny tools. Neither of us could have said what those tools could be used for, but looking at all the tiny implements, I knew Dad would love it.
Evelyn checked the time as we pushed our way back out into the mall. “We’ve got to hurry. The bra sale ends in forty minutes at Vicky’s.” She set a brisk pace through the crowds, and Mom and I trotted in her wake.
“Why don’t you slip your notebook into a bag?” Mom asked.
“This is easier when I need it.”
“I haven’t seen you use it once.”
“That’s because I’m so sneaky.” The woman next to me made an expansive gesture as I passed, knocking Valentine out of my hand. I swooped to rescue him from being trampled and dropped a spray bottle. It clattered across the floor and rolled up against the front of a children’s clothing store. I fumbled to pick it up, dropping my purse in the process. Evelyn and Mom stopped to wait for me.
“Look at those adorable outfits!” Evelyn exclaimed, pointing at some booties with giraffe heads and a matching giraffe-adorned cap.
“Are you sure Megan doesn’t want another child?” Mom asked.
“They’re determined to stop with two.”
A pregnant silence fell between them, and the weight of their contemplative stares settled on the top of my head. I stood with a huff.
“I’m working on it!” I said.
“Working on what, dear?” Mom asked with false innocence, slipping back into the perpetually moving throng.
“I think that’s part of what we promised not to talk about today,” Evelyn said, nudging Mom in the side with her elbow. “Mr. Love and all that.”
“It’s Dr. Love,” I grumbled.
Mom and Evelyn shared a look. Evelyn giggled. “There’s hope yet.”
I shook my head but couldn’t contain my smile.
We swept past a bustling bookstore on the way to Victoria’s Secret and I had a flash of genius. “I’ll catch up with you guys in a minute,” I said.
“I’ve seen the sad state of your bras. You better not take too long,” Mom said over her shoulder as they trotted off.
Pretending I was invisible to the half-dozen people in hearing range of Mom’s announcement, I ducked into the bookstore. Whether it should have been public knowledge or not, Mom was right. It wouldn’t hurt to buy a few sexy bras, maybe something lacy with matching underwear.
I wove through the shoulder-high racks of the bookstore in search of a salesclerk, stopping to send a shot of cito spray over the heads of two teens crouched in front of a pile of mangas. A green cito hunkered down on the closest girl’s neck like a malformed parrot, darting in anxious bobs back and forth from her ear to her shoulder. The other teen, a boy in skintight pants and a long baggy shirt, had a daddy longlegs–size burgundy cito slinking around his ear. Both citos disappeared under the spray. I rubbed my shoulders and spritzed myself, just in case.
“May I help you?” An overweight clerk with a formidable neck beard materialized at my elbow, frowning disapprovingly at the spray bottle. I self-consciously tucked my hand behind my back and examined his soul. Despite his scowl and beard bib, the man’s soul was fairly clean. No citos crawled along his shoulders or head.
I explained what I needed and left the store minutes later, the owner of a specialized nylon strap. Padded loop on one end, rubber loop on the other, the fully adjustable book strap was designed to hold an armload of books; I needed it to hold just one. Sliding Valentine through the rubber-lined loop, I tightened the strap to secure him; then I slung the larger loop across my chest and tightened it until Valentine rested against my hip. I examined myself in the glass of the storefront. To the casual observer, it looked like I carried two purses. It also looked like Valentine could still “see” easily, and I’d freed both hands for spraying.
Pleased with myself, I hustled to Victoria’s Secret.
I found Mom and Evelyn elbows deep in the underwear sale bins. After saying hi, I nudged my way through the self-conscious men and sale-hungry women until I reached the back of the store, where matching underwear and bra sets adorned the walls next to a larger-than-life poster of a nude woman. She sat with her legs crossed and propped in front of her to keep the picture G-rated. I wasn’t sure how a nude woman sold underwear. Maybe it was one of Vicky’s secrets.
I couldn’t shop in Primordium, since I wasn’t able to see the colors of the fabrics, so I assessed the crowds, found no citos, and blinked to normal vision. Tasteful hints of red and green decorated the sales floor. Ironic, since everything else nudged toward gaudy. I got a kick out of the mannequin models in G-string underwear and push-up bras sporting fluffy red Santa caps.
Scooting away from the leopard-print rack and past a rainbow of pastel bras—my usual choice—I searched for bras with more pizazz. Lost in my fantasies, I was dithering between a bra with black lace flowers and one with white lace butterflies when a sharp elbow knocked me sideways.
“Let go! I saw it first.”
“What are you, two?”
Two women faced off over a single bra, both clutching the hanger. The woman facing me was old enough to be my mother but tanned, Botoxed, and made up to look closer to my age to the undiscerning eye. The other woman had her back to me. She was shorter, plump, and younger, with a yellow butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and surprisingly pointy elbows. A leopard-print lace bra with a glittery “Sexy” front clasp jiggled between them.
“You want to see childish? Are these yours?” Butterfly Tattoo grabbed a handful of lacy fabric from the table next to Botox and tossed it over her shoulder. A polka-dot thong smacked me in the face. “That was childish!”
Botox’s face turned scarlet. Her eyes roved up and down the plump woman, disgust undisguised. “At least a thong looks attractive on me.”
“Like a raisin in a G-string.”
“Jealous? I’ve never been mistaken for a sumo wrestler in my underwear.”
“Oh, that’s it!” Butterfly Tattoo threw her bags to the floor and yanked a strap of the bra off the hanger. “You’re embarrassing yourself over a bra no one wants to see you in.”
“This is only a thirty-six, honey. You’re going to need a much larger size,” Botox said. She snatched up a strapless bra, swung it by one end like a lasso, and smacked a padded cup into Butterfly Tattoo’s shoulder. A hook caught on the woman’s shirt, and the bra hung down her back like an emaciated, malformed cape. Botox used the distraction to grab the leopard-print strap on her side. The plastic hanger clattered to the floor. The bra stretched between the women.
“Put a little weight into it. You’ve got plenty to spare,” Botox said sweetly. She gripped her strap with both hands and yanked. Pins fell from her perfect French twist, and tufts of bleached-blond strands flopped above her ears like fuzzy horns.
“I am not fat, you plastic bimbo! I saw this first. Let go!”
Butterfly Tattoo backed up a step. The elastic of the bra creaked.
I jumped to the side before a flailing elbow hit my breast. The movement snapped me out of my shock, and I blinked.
Both women possessed normal, gray-splotched souls. Both women also had avocado-green tarantula-size citos tap dancing on their foreheads. Ducking to avoid another face full of thongs, I scrambled through my purse for the spray. The spectacle held everyone in the vicinity riveted, and no one glanced in my direction. I gave Butterfly Tattoo’s cito a spritz.
It disappeared. She released the bra, and it snapped into Botox’s face.
“Ow! You fat cow!”
Butterfly Tattoo twisted to unhook the bra-cape, avoiding eye contact with the audience. I sidled past her to Botox, gave the woman a spray, and made my escape. Even after Botox’s cito dwindled to nothing, she lost none of her righteousness
. With a triumphant flip of her mussed hair, she flounced to the nearest sales counter.
“You can’t be thinking of these.” All the customers who had been watching the bra fight turned in unison toward the first person to speak into the quiet: my mom. I blinked. I stood in front of a wall of boring beige bras. “He’ll fall asleep when you take off your clothes. Here. Try this.” Mom thrust an all-lace black bra and matching thong into my hands.
I fought the urge to crawl under a nearby table and herded Mom toward a different part of the store, grateful when the noise level returned to normal. “It’s not like I’m eighty, Mom. I’m pretty sexy without the added props.”
“Tell that to my grandkids.”
“You don’t have—” I fell into the trap before I saw it.
“Exactly.”
I bought the black lacy underwear.
* * *
Several hours later, I avoided an excursion into the claustrophobic Hallmark store by suggesting I take bags to the car.
“What a great idea,” Mom said, unloading her handfuls into my arms. Evelyn squeezed in a few more and tucked the rest of her stuff into the bags already hanging from my fingers.
“Hurry back, dear,” Evelyn said.
Groaning under the weight of their purchases, I struggled through the thickening crowds toward Nordstrom, passing dozens of cito hosts. With my arms full, I couldn’t do anything about them.
Not counting this overburdened moment, though, I’d done a good job keeping up with the citos and Mom and Evelyn. Between killing citos, I’d even found a belt and some discounted Egyptian cottons sheets for me, plus a few gifts for Mom and Dad when Mom wasn’t looking. Not too shabby for my first cito-hunting excursion.
After spending one long embarrassingly minute hugging a mannequin until a fellow shopper unhooked my snagged bags, I stumbled out of Nordstrom into fresh November air.
Horns blared. Cars stacked three deep in front of the doors as people dropped off and picked up shoppers. Behind them, impatient drivers ranted within the confines of their cars. Tiny red citos perched on the shoulders and foreheads of many drivers, but I couldn’t do anything about those, either.
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 11
