Midsummer Curse

by Megan Derr

  Midsummer Curse

  A Tale of Midsummer's Night

  Megan Derr

  Brayton is a jack of all trades. He travels from one end of the country to the other, fixing problems of all shapes and sizes for the many supernaturals who call him for help. Then a friend calls in a favor, and Brayton finds himself in the town of Midsummer to figure out who and why someone cursed a gremlin. But the town of Midsummer is the strangest place he's ever been, and the only thing stranger is his own reaction to the gremlin he's come to save.

  This is Book 2 of the Midsummer series.

  Book Details

  Published by Less Than Three Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Samantha Derr

  Cover designed by Megan Derr

  This book is a work of fiction and as such all characters and situations are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  Electronic Edition January 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Megan Derr

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-936202-15-7

  Midsummer Curse

  The sky was overcast, gloomy and gray, and quickly defeating any attempts the sun made to break through. It was barely fall, but he could already taste winter on the air. The cool weather was even now leeching the bright summer colors from everything, leaving the landscape looking flat, dull, and sleepy.

  Brayton loved it. He could not wait for the snow. Any season requiring temperatures over seventy was highly overrated. Give him fall and winter. Snow, that was what he really wanted. Feet of it—so much it took 'til May for it to completely melt away, just like in the mountains where he'd grown up.

  Geese fussed and pecked through the dry grass in the empty lot at the far side of the deserted parking lot. Fat, city-fed geese. They'd make a decent snack, but he could smell too many humans in the general vicinity. They weren't close enough he could see them, but too close for comfort. Not worth the trouble to shift, not when the fat geese probably tasted like stale french fries.

  Instead, he lit a fresh cigarette and blew the smoke out with a sigh, leaning against the driver side of his '67 GTO, his baby. He patted the car with absent fondness, wishing they were driving home and not moldering here in an empty, dirty parking lot next to a long-dead restaurant in the middle of fuck nowhere. His appointment had better show up soon, or he was going to tell Carl he'd wasted his favor owed, tough luck.

  He was just pulling out his cell phone when he saw a man walking on the side of the road, headed for him—where else could he be headed? Young, glasses, cute enough he supposed. Even at a distance, he smelled like every other gremlin Brayton had ever met: metal and machine oil. As he got closer, though, Brayton saw he was remarkably clean for a gremlin; nary a smudge of grease or oil on him, and the jeans, t-shirt, and jacket were clean and smelled more like detergent than metal. Huh. Who knew?

  Pushing off his car, he dropped his cigarette and stamped it out, then stood and waited as the gremlin approached.

  Minus the fact he smelled clean, the little thing really was like every other gremlin Brayton had ever met. Brayton was only average height himself, but the gremlin was half a head shorter. Skinny, fidgety, short black hair, and dark green eyes. His t-shirt was a faded gray with an even more faded logo for some garage, a beat up but well cared-for fleece-lined denim jacket, and an old pair of jeans that fit as only old jeans could.

  Brayton tried not to sneer at the fleece; he was in a long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans, nothing more. But the damned thing didn't look like he had a scrap of fat anywhere on him; it was little surprise fifty-five degrees or so made him cold.

  "So you're, uh, Ferdinand?" Brayton asked.

  The gremlin winced. "Ferdy, please."

  Like that was any better? Brayton didn't voice the thought. "Brayton. Carl sent me to help you."

  Ferdy nodded and licked his lips, and Brayton didn't need to smell him to know he was nervous, but that nervousness did not entirely keep Brayton from liking what he saw. Brayton didn't fuck clients, though, and even if he did, itty bitty, starving-to-death-skinny, metallic smelling gremlins were not his thing.

  "Yeah," Ferdy replied. "Sorry to be a both—"

  "Forget it," Brayton said, not in the mood for pointless apologies and other polite conversation crap. "Carl said you were cursed, and I was the man to break it. What curse was put on you, and by whom?" He could smell there was a curse, though it was faint. That meant it was either poorly done, and there wasn't much to smell, or it was very well done and someone had mostly disguised any hint of it.

  Ferdy flinched a bit and gave a weak laugh that sounded rather pathetic. "Umm—I touch any machine, and it immediately falls apart. Any machine. That's why I walked here."

  Brayton stared at him, then back at his baby, then moved them several feet away. "Touch my car, and you die."

  "Trust me," Ferdy said, flinching again, "I won't. I've already ruined two of my own cars. And everything else in and around the house." He sighed.

  "So who did it? And why, so I know just how much of a headache this is going to be."

  "I don't know," Ferdy said, sighing again. "It started happening yesterday. Carl was around; he noticed I was cursed, but—"

  But Carl couldn't magic his way out a paper box. The man could smell magic like a bloodhound, but he possessed not so much as a drop. "Look, anyone who can curse a gremlin to fuck up machines is obviously too damned good at what he does for anyone's peace of mind. That means you pissed him off well enough that you should have noticed doing so."

  "I don't know," Ferdy repeated. "I just run a fix-it shop. Everything that's come through my door lately, I've fixed or am in the process of fixing. No one has been mad at me about that, and the few times I've gone out, people have barely spoken to me, let alone long enough for me to manage to make any of them angry."

  On a scale of one to ten, the little gremlin was already proving to be at least an eleven. Brayton bet by the end of it, he'd be more like a seventeen. "I guess we'd better scope you out," he said at last. "Breaking a curse isn't so simple; the person who cast it has to break it more often than not. I can't do much until I know more about the who and the why." He glanced at his car, then sighed and turned back to Ferdy. "I guess we're walking."

  "Sorry."

  "Forget it," Brayton said and led the way from the desolate parking lot.

  They hadn't been walking more than twenty minutes when the wind abruptly shifted, and Brayton halted in his tracks. "No one told me a pack lived in this nowheresville town of yours."

  Ferdy frowned. "Why does the pack matter?" His eyes widened in sudden comprehension. "Are you a werewolf?"

  "What do you mean, am I werewolf? What do I look like? Yes, I'm a werewolf. Carl should have said that, and he should have told me there was pack here. They tend not to like stray wolves just wandering in unannounced." Especially wolves like him.

  "Um—the Midsummer pack is pretty laid back. I'm sure they'd understand. Carl might not have known about them; they've only been here about a year, and he only passes through a couple of times a year."

  "No pack is so laid back they just don't care when a lone wolf trots into their territory," Brayton growled. "No help for it, at this point. They probably smelled me long before I smelled them." Shrugging, resigned, he resumed walking.

  A few minutes later, he realized he was either going to have to figure out how to walk slowly, or carry Ferdy the rest of the way if they wanted to get there any day that year. He scowled at the little gremlin, nose twitching at the mix of detergent and metal and sweat, a sharp, sour h
int of anxiety and unhappiness, and a faint whiff of lingering sexual interest. There was something else, too, Brayton realized, now he was paying closer attention. He couldn't quite catch what it was, though. Not unappealing, exactly, but decidedly strange. Spicy? No. Not sweet either. Too hard to pin it down. Didn't matter, he supposed, but it bugged him.

  "So where exactly are we going?" he asked.

  "I live on the outskirts of Midsummer, about another two miles," Ferdy replied. “I own six acres of land with my house, shop, and garages on two acres; the rest is all field and a little pond."

  "You say the curse started yesterday?"

  "Yeah, but not right off. I'd stopped for lunch and went into town to Skip's diner. I was just starting to eat when everything went wrong. My stuff just fell apart—my watch, my mp3 player, my phone, my mini flashlight. Nothing but scrap and junk now. Ruined the first car, some other stuff; I'm afraid to go into town anymore." His shoulders hunched, and he stared down at his scuffed boots, kicking at the dirt. "Life has really sucked."

  "I guess it would," Brayton said. "You can't remember anyone who might be pissed off at you that much? What about your boyfriend?"

  Ferdy blanched. "How—"

  Brayton bared his teeth in amusement. "I'm a wolf, itty-bitty; I can smell things."

  "I don't have a boyfriend," Ferdy said, voice low, face red with humiliation. Then he said bitterly, "He's my ex now, and he wouldn't go to that much trouble."

  Brayton grunted at that, but left it alone for the moment. In his experience, though, that kind of ex-boyfriend would be willing to go to a lot of trouble to hurt. "Alright, not the ex. Doing anything special, little gremlin? Some project that someone might not be thrilled you're working on?"

  "Huh?" Ferdy said, looking up, flushing pink. He jerked his gaze hastily away again. "Um—just the old town hall clock tower. It's been busted for some fifty years. The whole building was practically condemned, but enough funds were recently raised. In the last week, the tower was made safe enough I was allowed in to start tinkering with the clockwork."

  "What are you being paid for that out of the funds raised?"

  "Huh?" Ferdy said again, looking up, and Brayton noticed his cheeks were still a bit flushed, and it wasn't really all that bad a look for the little thing. Kind of cute, really. And there went that stranger scent again; it was going to drive him crazy until he figured it out.

  "I said, what are you getting paid for fixing the clock tower?"

  "Nothing? I rarely take money. People just barter and stuff. The clock tower work is volunteer across the board. No one is getting paid."

  Brayton frowned at that. He didn't know much about such things, but he knew enough. Repairs on an historical building? That included a clock tower at least a century old?

  And what sort of pint-sized idiot traded good, hard, honest work for 'barter and stuff'?

  "So no one would resent the cut you're getting. Sure it's not the boyfriend?"

  "I don't have a boyfriend," Ferdy snapped, showing real anger for a moment. Then it just seemed to go right out of him, and he only looked humiliated. "He said—" He stopped, and clamped his mouth shut in a cute, stubborn little pout.

  Brayton realized he'd just thought the gremlin cute again. It hadn't been that long since he'd gotten laid, surely.

  "So, out of curiosity, if they were paying you, how much would work like that go for?"

  "I don't know," Ferdy said, brow furrowing in annoyance.

  It was almost—

  God above, he was not going to think that word one more time. It was stricken from his vocabulary, starting now.

  "So everyone is doing difficult, meticulous, no doubt has-to-be-historically-accurate work, and all for free? The funds for that must have been astronomical, even without having to pay people."

  Ferdy shrugged. "The local top vampire, Sally, helped out a lot. She's got connections, stuff like that, and I think she contributed most of the cash even though she'd never admit it."

  "A what? Godda—you mean to tell me this place is vamp territory? How did I miss that? The only top vamp I know in this area is hours from here."

  "Um—she's pretty low key?"

  Brayton could feel the beginnings of a headache. Something had better come along in this mess he could see forming to make all the hassle worthwhile. He started to tell Ferdy precisely that when he caught a whiff of wolf—close and getting closer.

  Then the wolf slipped out of the woods, tongue lolling like he had not a care in the world, curious but unconcerned as he spotted Brayton.

  Huh. The alpha had come himself instead of sending lackeys?

  The wolf barked, sharp and short, a command to stay put, and then slipped back into the woods. A couple of minutes later, a young man stepped out of them, still pulling on a dark green zip up sweater. Brayton waited, tense, as the man drew close.

  He really was remarkably young—not more than eighteen or nineteen, if he was a day. Handsome, in a kid next door kind of way. Smelled like medicine and of sex. Brayton wrinkled his nose. Mated, he suspected. Alphas usually were before or shortly after they came into their power.

  And kid or not, an alpha was an alpha, and only an idiot would dismiss the power radiating off of him for a lack of age.

  Purebred, too, Brayton realized. He hadn't seen another purebred in years, never mind one of comparable power—possibly greater. Interesting.

  "Hey, Ferdy," the wolf greeted. "You didn't tell me you had a wolf."

  Brayton growled. Ferdy flushed and looked completely lost. "I-uh-I don't. Carl asked him to help me. Only Carl didn't tell him wolves and vampires lived here."

  "Oh," the wolf said, looking puzzled as he glanced at each of them before finally settling on Brayton. "Huh. Uh—my name is Lowell. I'm in charge of the Midsummer pack. There's six of us right now, five men and one woman, and she's six months pregnant—so I guess there's six and two thirds of us right now. Who are you?"

  "Brayton Montgomery. I run solo."

  Lowell tilted his head, regarding him quizzically. Then his expression suddenly cleared. "Oh! Peter was telling me about that the other day. You're a true lone, aren't you?"

  Wasn't it obvious? Brayton's headache took definite hold of his temples. What sort of question was that for an alpha to ask?

  "Yes," he said, itching to light a cigarette, but he didn't smoke around other people. "I'm a true lone."

  "What do you do?" Lowell asked.

  Brayton shrugged, never entirely certain how to answer that question. "I'm a jack of all trades, if I'm anything. Mostly, I'm a fair hand at solving paranormal riddles, like miniature gremlins who can't figure out why they've been inflicted with a nasty curse."

  "I'm not miniature," Ferdy muttered.

  Brayton rolled his eyes. "Whatever you say, itty-bitty."

  Lowell laughed. "Small just means he can, uh, wiggle into places the rest of us can't go? And he's stronger than he looks; I've seen him lift some crazy heavy stuff like it was, uh, a sack of feathers? You should see what he was doing with the old clock tower."

  Ferdy flushed and shrugged and looked down at his boots again. "I won't be able to do anything else if I can't figure out this stupid curse."

  "Well, if Carl sent Mr. Montgomery here, then I'm sure you'll be okay by day's end, yeah?"

  "Yeah," Ferdy agreed, but the doubt in his voice could not have been more obvious.

  For some reason, it seriously irritated Brayton. The little thing could have a bit more faith—he'd driven all this way, hadn't he? He was walking instead of driving around in his honey, and he hadn't had a cigarette for the better part of an hour. "I'll figure out what's wrong," he snapped, barely keeping the growl from his voice. "It would help if I had something to go on. So far, I've got nothing but a bitchy ex and a moldering old clock tower."

  Ferdy cringed.

  Lowell frowned at Brayton. "Chill out a bit, yeah? There's no reason to be so mean."

  Brayton sneered. "No alpha compulsion is going to w
ork on me, and you should know that."

  "Alpha has nothing to do with it," Lowell replied. "You're in my territory and all of Midsummer falls under my protection. Be nice."

  Brayton shrugged, irritated. He wasn't being mean; it was hardly picking on the poor baby to say he had no idea yet who Ferdy had pissed off.

  Lowell started at him, eyes hard and pensive, before he finally said, "I mean it, loner. Don't hurt or upset him."

  "Fine," Brayton snarled "I'm not a damned monster. Gremlins are not my preferred flavor, even if I was. Break the curse, get out of town, I get it."

  "No, I don't think you do," Lowell said, "but maybe you will soon. Call me Low. My mate is Peter, the local paranormal doctor. Stop by or call should you need us. Take care." With that, he was gone, vanishing back into the woods.

  Brayton pinched the bridge of his nose and wished he were alone enough to have a cigarette. "Let's get going," he said at last, raking a hand through his shaggy, in-sore-need-of-a-cut, brown hair.

  "Kay," Ferdy said quietly.

  They walked in silence for a few more minutes before the way Ferdy was all but vibrating with curiosity finally compelled Brayton to snarl, "Oh, for the love of—ask, already, before biting your tongue kills you."

  Ferdy jumped, but after a moment said, "You're like Low—not a normal wolf, I mean. Purebred, isn't that it?"

  Brayton was silent then let out a brief sigh. "Yeah, purebred. It was sheer dumb luck my mama met my pop. I'm purebred and a true loner, which is even harder to find than your jailbait alpha."

  Laughter erupted from Ferdy, quickly muffled as he slapped a hand over his mouth, and that strange, niggling scent flared stronger than ever, and Brayton really wished he could pin it down. He growled in frustration and tried to ignore it.

  "He's probably close to twenty now?" Ferdy offered. "What does that mean, true loner?"

  "Means I'm alpha of a pack of one," Brayton replied.

  "Oh," Ferdy said, tone saying he didn't get anything Brayton had just said.

  Normally, Brayton would have left him to suffer. He didn't give two shits about indulging someone's curiosity. But something about the honest, simple, no ulterior motives curiosity of his gremlin just got to him. "Wolves really suck at being alone. Humans do to, for the most part. They're social creatures. Flying completely solo doesn't really come natural, except for the occasional odd duck like me. When I need company, I find it. Otherwise, all I need is me, myself, and I."