I shook my head. I didn’t trust Isabel, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was I wasn’t sure I trusted Mr. Pitt.
Stuffing Medusa back in my purse, I sipped my smoothie and returned to spraying citos, mixed feelings churning in my gut.
* * *
I limped out of the mall nearly ten hours after I’d arrived. Night had long-since fallen, and the slanting rain was illuminated in conical streams beneath the light posts. An exodus of vehicles splashed past, and I hugged the bumpers of the parked cars I passed to avoid the spray from the tires.
Chafing my upper arms, I winced when I grazed my bicep bruise. Old women and their bejeweled purses were going to be avoided tomorrow, no matter how large their citos. I’d also be avoiding the toy store. My right pinkie toe had been broken or possibly completely severed (I was too afraid to look) by a two-year-old boy in tiny cowboy boots who had spontaneously thrown a fit on top of my foot. I’d used up an entire bottle of spray in the toy store, then fled.
I didn’t even want to think about the bits of rice stuck in my hair. Raw male territoriality usually reserved for lions battling over prides had roared to life between two middle-aged fathers over a four-seat dining table in the food court. By the time I reached the screaming pair and their flaming-red citos, they’d been slinging Chinese food at each other.
The whole day, images of the active crater in the garage hummed in the back of my thoughts until I couldn’t tell if it called to me or if my curiosity pulled me to it.
At least twice an hour, I talked myself out of going back to the garage for another peek. I’d placated myself with the promise of marching straight to the office and demanding answers at the end of my shift.
Now, trudging to my car through the rain, I decided to save my righteous march for tomorrow. All I wanted now was a good book, my feet up in my recliner, and Mr. Bond on my lap.
I was three empty spaces from my car when I realized I’d made a mistake. The car I’d been angling for already had someone at the driver’s door. I stopped and looked around. There wasn’t another Civic in the poorly lit overflow lot. Sluggish thoughts engaged and I checked the license plate, then looked at the person next to the car again.
A long wire glinted in the lights of a passing vehicle. Someone was breaking into my car!
Adrenaline broke through my exhaustion. I sprinted across the remaining space. At the slap of my shoes in the puddles, the burglar spun around. We recognized each other in the same moment.
Sam froze, hand on the wire half buried between my window and the rubber seal around it. I barreled into him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled. The last time I’d seen Sam, we’d been on the other side of Roseville in my region, and he’d sworn I’d scared him straight after catching him burglarizing my car. The scrawny liar! At fifteen, maybe sixteen, Sam weighed less than me, but he was all muscle. What he lacked was my anger’s strength. I pressed him to my wet car, holding him at arm’s length. “What did I tell you last time I saw you? That if I caught you doing anything like this again, I’d shoot you!”
His green eyes widened to perfect round circles. He raised his hands as if I were holding him at gunpoint. “I swear, I didn’t know this was your car.”
“That’s your excuse?”
He nodded energetically, loosing tufts of orange-red hair from beneath his gray beanie.
“God, you’re stupid and you’ve got the worst luck.” I held in a sigh and considered my options. During our prior confrontation, Sam had been unwittingly hosting baby imps. I checked him now in Primordium, and sure enough, they were back, feeding from his wrists and throat.
I glanced around; we were alone—no other imps, no other people. Where was mall security when I needed them?
I reached for Sam’s neck, passed my hand through the imp, and wrapped my fingers around his throat.
“Whoa,” he whispered. I wanted him quaking in his ratty Vans, but at best, he looked uneasy. I tightened my grip and pumped lux lucis through the imp, disintegrating it, then continued to feed more lux lucis into Sam to wipe out the flecks of atrum and gray spots on his throat. I left my fingers where they were for the moment and leaned in to emphasize my point.
“You’re in big, big trouble, Sam. Why are you targeting me?”
“How was I supposed to know this was your car? I just, you know, heard Civics are easy to jimmy.” He rolled his eyes down to look at my breasts. “Where are your boobs?”
“I left them at home.” I ground my teeth together. The last time he’d seen me, thanks to my peripheral involvement in a video game convention, I’d been in a costume I’d more happily burn than wear again.
I squeezed Sam’s neck to remind him now was not the time for conversation. Counterintuitively, he relaxed against my car. I wanted to shake him, but I resisted.
“Do you want to hold hands again?” he asked hopefully.
I sighed. Yes, I needed to hold his hands to kill the imps feeding off the residual negative energy of his criminal actions. The brainless fluffs of atrum would feast on a pure soul, but they tended to gravitate toward those who’d already tainted themselves. The exact algorithm of how an imp selected a victim was a mystery to me. I might ask Valentine about it later. Right now, it didn’t matter. Without the imps, Sam should have less desire to steal.
Of course, removing them last time hadn’t changed his habits. Maybe two times was the charm. The teen years were formative for souls. If I convinced Sam to make better choices and started him off with a cleaner soul, I might be able to change the entire trajectory of his life.
Or I was deluding myself.
I took my hand from his throat and leaned back, lifting my other hand from his chest. He straightened with a cocky swagger. I shoved him back against my car. He grinned and held up his hands. I slapped his left wrist first, then his right, pumping lux lucis into him until the imps there exploded and the dark gray bands around his wrists and fingers disappeared. Then I took a step back, crossed my arms, and blinked to normal sight.
“I think you’re scary and hot, even without the big tits,” Sam said.
“Gee, thanks. That means a lot to me.” I reached into my purse for Medusa. “I seem to have left my gun at home, so we’ll have to settle for calling the police.”
“No! You can’t.” Sam stepped toward me, hands pleading. “My dad will kill me. I won’t do it again. I swear!”
“That’s what you said last time. So how do you explain this?” I reached for the wire hanger protruding from the gap between the Civic’s window and door and yanked it free. My lock clicked open.
“See, Civics are easy.”
“You’re not helping yourself. What were you planning on stealing?” If he said my stereo, I’d hit 911. I’d just replaced the last one he’d stolen.
Sam shrugged. “Nothing, really. Just practicing.”
“Practicing?”
“You know, so I can be quicker when there . . . ah . . . Well, I don’t know.”
“So mine was a trial car?” Was I offended? Yeah, a little.
“You did park it way out here where it’s all private-like, and you didn’t even park under a light.” He sidled toward the bumper.
“Are you saying I deserved to have my car broken into?”
“You really should be more careful.”
“You really should be in juvie.”
“No need. You’ve made me see the error of my ways.”
Medusa rang, the sounds of “Sweet Home Alabama” completely out of place in my rain-soaked showdown with the teenage thief. Sam used the distraction to back up several steps. He was going to escape, scot-free, and my only option was to pretend it was my idea.
“I’m giving you one more chance, Sam,” I shouted over the upbeat song. “Think of your fondest body part. Got it? The next time I see you, that’ll be the first place I shoot.”
He gave me a cheeky smile. “You want to see me again?”
“Hang on. I think I left
my gun in my glove box.” I opened my car door and leaned across the driver’s seat. Through the back window, I watched Sam sprint into the darkness.
I was chuckling when I answered the phone.
“Hello, Madison,” Mom said. “Am I interrupting?”
“Nope. I just saw something funny.” I swiveled into the seat and closed my car door. The knife hilt bit into my back, and I wriggled to a more comfortable position. Switching Medusa to speaker phone, I placed the cell phone on the center console and tossed the wire hanger to the passenger floorboard. If I was honest, I doubted my chat had done anything but cement my weirdness in Sam’s mind.
“It’s not Friday anymore,” Mom said.
I groaned. The truce had ended. For the next ten minutes of my drive home, I fielded and dodged questions about Alex. Dad joined the conversation on the other line, which made my evasions easier. Dad didn’t want to hear the details Mom did and was more easily distracted.
“Any more fires near you?” I asked in a lull in the interrogation.
“Two today, even with the rain. Isn’t it terrible?” Mom asked.
My lungs constricted. “How close?”
“Other side of town,” Dad said. “They were put out almost before they started. It’s the damn dogs that need more press. A pack swarmed the grocery store lot today. One of them bit a man. He was carted away in an ambulance, and the rest of us had to wait inside Raley’s until the catchers could nab all the beasts.”
“You didn’t get bitten, did you?” My heart pattered in my throat. That didn’t sound like the behavior of normal dogs; that sounded like hounds.
“Of course not. I see a dog snarling and drooling and I know to go the other way.”
I relaxed my stranglehold on the steering wheel and turned into my apartment complex. I should have gone to the office to pick up tomorrow’s cito spray, but I couldn’t face getting out of my car anywhere but at home.
“Stop scaring her, Oscar.”
“You guys should consider a vacation.” I’d be a lot happier if they were out of town until the evil died down.
“If this storm dumps snow, we’ll be riding the rails next week,” Dad said.
“I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear about trains right now, dear. Oh, is that Earl and Margaret in the walkway?”
“Shoot. I’ve got to get Earl that motor,” Dad said. “Bye, Son.” He hung up his line before I could respond.
“Uh, bye.”
“Gotta go. It’s screwball night. Bye!” Mom said.
“I don’t want to know what that means,” I told my dead phone.
* * *
Anxiety about my parents’ safety made for restless sleep, and I woke with a gloomy outlook despite it finally being date day. Again. Mr. Pitt refused to discuss the garage, and his gruff “Good job staying focused yesterday” grated despite the words being the most glowing praise I’d received from him in days. My region and my parents’ region were under attack while I twiddled my thumbs at the mall, I wasn’t allowed near the most interesting bit of Primordium I’d ever seen, and how it related to the uptick in evil or how to counter it were the best-kept secrets in the CIA community. Even thoughts of Alex and our date couldn’t cut through my pessimism.
Showing up at the mall to find the parking lot scattered with more vervet than seagulls at a dump was the best thing to happen to me in days.
10
Laugh, and the World Laughs with You; Plan, and the World Laughs at You
I slid out of my car, Valentine at my hip, purse stuffed with bottles, and a smile on my face. A pair of mothers pushing strollers took one look at my expression and crossed to the other side of the aisle. I quashed the desire to tip my head back and laugh maniacally. It was perverse; the sight of all those evil creatures should have upset me. Instead, they provided a much-needed sense of purpose.
I flexed my hands and checked my soul: With my stomach full of lux lucis–filled yogurt and the few connected hours of sleep I’d managed, I looked bright and strong.
The vervet nearest shuffled closer, attracted by my shiny soul, but those farther away scuttled across acres of parked cars, sampling from the people unloading and heading for the mall. Oddly, there were no imps to be seen. One usually meant the other. Maybe they were inside.
Humming, I locked the Civic and mentally marked my location: four spots from a light in the most patrolled section of the mall. Take that, Sam.
I didn’t have to hunt down any vervet; they came to me.
Three jumped me from the back of a Jaguar. Two clung to my legs. The third buried its face in my bosom. I burst them all to sparkles of atrum dust without slowing. I was a total badass.
I swung into the mall through JCPenney’s home section. A half hour after opening, and already mounds of terrycloth cascaded down display tables, pillows littered the aisles, and someone had stuck a mannequin headfirst down a display bed’s duvet.
The mess I’d expected. The imps, too. Contemplating wiping out a herd or two, with frequent trips back out for the vervet, added a spring to my steps. Destroying atrum was a productive and welcome relief from the monotony.
It was the citos that stopped me in my tracks.
Everyone had a cito on them. Not wee little garden-size spiders or even creepy tarantula citos. Football-size citos.
I rubbed a palm against my stomach, dread curdling my breakfast yogurt.
A group of teens jostled me on their way into the store. I stumbled forward on flat feet, cringing away from the shortest girl and the bulbous fuzzy red cito wriggling finger-length legs at me. Ducking behind a plastic display tower filled with teapots, I scanned the store.
Two women across the aisle pawed through a bin of shower curtains, shoving and pushing each other out of the way. On top of each of their heads were saucer-size green citos. As they struggled, the citos doubled in size. From their flailing hairy pedipalps to their shiny eyes—four apiece and as large as cat eyes—every detail of the grotesque Primordium arachnids made my skin crawl.
Something soft brushed my neck. I slapped my skin, spinning in an uncontrolled heebie-jeebies dance before realizing the culprit was my own hair, not a spider. Just in case, I spritzed my head and upper body.
Reminding myself I’d yet to have a cito jump me, I palmed a spray bottle and darted past the women. Dousing them without detection proved easy; they wouldn’t have noticed if I’d taken their purses at the same time. The citos shrank ever so slowly, like air mattresses deflating. Even when the citos disappeared, the women’s actions remained frantic.
“I demand a refund right now!” a male voice boomed.
I turned to see a giant man towering over a rotund salesclerk. He had a garnet ostrich-egg-size cito bulging from his neck like an obscene Adam’s apple; she had a tall and skinny splotchy red cito perched on her forehead, braced forward on all eight legs to stare the man’s cito straight in its many eyes.
The man pounded the counter. The woman yelled back at him. I pushed to the front of the line and spritzed the pair, dousing the people in line as I went by, killing a cito per person. I didn’t even have to be discreet about it—no one paid me the least bit of attention.
A stroller bounced off my shins.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” the mom yelled. “My kid’s in there.”
Yikes! A maroon cito the size of her child’s head bounced around her shoulder, agitated.
I ducked around her and gave her shoulder a quick spray when she stalked by. A few minutes later, I abandoned JCPenney and escaped to the mall, praying only the one store was affected.
My prayers went unanswered. Everywhere I looked, the citos were out of proportion and the people out of control. Crap. Crap, crap, crap. Please don’t let this be my fault.
I hid in a shadowy nook on the mall side of the store and opened Valentine with shaky fingers, refusing to let go of the spray bottle to pull out Medusa. People whisked by me, citos of all sizes urging them in frenzied haste. No one glanced at me, an
d if they did and they thought I was talking to myself—or worse, talking to a book—I was still the sanest person at the mall today.
“Hi, Valentine.” Nothing. Just a blank page. I clutched him in a white-knuckled grip. “I know I was mean to you, but I could really use some company right now.”
You called me stupid.
“I know. I’m sorry. The thing in the garage scared me.” I was scared now, too. I imagined rioting mobs had citos smaller than those scuttling around most people’s heads.
It wasn’t much fun for me either.
“Sorry, partner.” I struggled to not push Valentine. I needed his help, and yelling got me nowhere. Maybe I should give him to Mr. Pitt so my boss could learn that lesson, too.
You think of me as a partner?
It sounded better than fella or book buddy. “Yeah. Sure.”
Technically, my experience far outstrips yours. I should be senior partner. Or chief.
“Let’s start with coworker,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just two, ah, individuals who share an equal status and respect each other.”
It’s an interesting concept.
“Darn near revolutionary.”
I’ve never had a partner before.
I opened my mouth to ask how it usually worked between him and enforcers, then decided I had more pressing concerns. “Have you seen the citos today? You said they couldn’t get much larger than, what, a baseball.”
They can’t. This is most abnormal.
“Is it my fault?”
I don’t see how.
I sagged against the wall and let my crossed fingers relax. “What about that crazy thing in the garage? Are the citos reacting to it?”
Maybe.
“It’s the cause of all the evil in our region, isn’t it?”
Our region? The text swirled across the page in whimsical cursive, then disappeared. His next words were in his normal font. No. Maybe. I don’t know.
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 14
