Laylea
A Wyrdos Tale
By
Gwendolyn Druyor
Wyrdos.net
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Enjoy!
Gwendolyn
Text Copyright © 2017 by Gwendolyn Druyor
All Rights Reserved
For my dear Newcastle, who fought to live.
1
What The Cat Saw
A small cat so black it glimmered blue glared out of the neon green soft-sided pet carrier at the wet floor of her dead master’s kitchen. A new patch of white had joined the rings on her tail, like Bride of Frankenstein’s death stripes. Only a bloodstone charm dangled from her shredded leather collar. No tag declared her identity or home. Nevertheless, Laylea Hillen, known in this town, where she was known at all, as Lee Woodford had brought her home. The tiny blonde didn’t have any intention of letting her free though.
Laylea and her three brownies friends had cleaned up Kelly’s downstairs apartment in a literal flash with the boys’ magical abilities. Then Laylea had taken the trash out while the brownies moved up to the landlady’s apartment on the top floor of the three-story walk up to attack the mess in ground zero. She’d raced back in, ripped the blankets from Kelly’s bed, and rushed out again, returning with a man swathed from head to toe. The cat hadn’t seen the man’s face but she gagged and spit at the smell of his burning flesh.
“That vampire bitch bit you?” The teenager dumped him on the couch. “I thought you were shot.”
The smoking swaddled figure growled something incomprehensible. He couldn’t make his words come out right.
“Screw my freaking language. I’m not KJ. You can’t tell me not to call Irina a bitch. I’m not your daughter.” She knew she was babbling as she rushed to pull the drapes against the thin morning light. “I have to go upstairs and help the guys but I’ll send one of them to get Dee.”
“No.”
That word came out plenty clear.
“But—” Laylea froze, her metaphorical tail tucking up in fear.
“No.”
“Kyle. I don’t know how to help you.”
“Don’t.” It took every ounce of energy he had to find his words in the disaster of his mind. “Tell. Anyone.”
“But you’re—”
All three heard footsteps coming down to the back porch.
“Please,” Kyle begged.
After only a second’s hesitation, Laylea grabbed the cat’s soft crate and dashed for the kitchen door.
She whisper-yelled to Kyle while she fumbled with the knob. “I’ll come back and get you when they’re gone.” Then she’d shoved the pet carrier into the approaching brownie’s arms. “Amal, my man, take the cat.”
2
The Brownie Way
The cat got tucked away in a corner of the kitchen and pretty much forgotten as the foursome straightened up the disaster area that was Mrs. Cull’s upstairs apartment. The explosion had thankfully been pretty well contained thanks to Laylea’s quick response yesterday. She’d been investigating on behalf of the second floor neighbor, Kelly Ward when she found Mrs. Cull. Kelly wanted to figure out why she and her cat were sick and confused all the time and Laylea was looking into environmental factors. The smell of gas had led her up to the landlady’s apartment.
Thanks to her lack of self-control, Laylea couldn’t go to school. And being fifteen, there weren’t many jobs she could legally do. But she had to keep busy and try to help with the finances where she could. She was smart and knew a little more about the world than most people, so her friends directed people to her when they needed help solving mysteries with a paranormal angle. One of the brownies had put her on Kelly’s case.
Which was why all three of them had come to help her make sure Kelly’s home wasn’t condemned. That and they were brownies. Helping people was their thing. Well, helping good people. Amal, Lucio, and Orin had the power to enact karma directly on the people around them. Orin had hired Laylea to look into Kelly’s mystery when he found karma couldn’t solve it. He’d also gotten Kelly’s key and permission to clean up her apartment building. They didn’t need a key to get into Mrs. Cull’s apartment. Laylea had opened the landlady’s doors before the blast and the police hadn’t locked up after they declared her death a suicide.
They four had met shortly after dawn and straightened, scrubbed, and charmed away nearly all the damage done. You’d never suspect a gas leak had ignited and crisped Kelly’s landlady right there in that wet kitchen.
“Thanks, guys. I’ve got it from here.” Laylea flapped the knees of her sweatpants, trying to dry them as she hurried the brownies to the door.
Orin ducked back past the bookshelf separating the kitchen space from the living area and knelt down to comfort the cat. “Hang in there, Methuselah. I’ll bring Kelly home later.” He looked up at Laylea. “You’re gonna tell Kelly it was the gas leak causing her problems?”
“Probably.” Laylea hadn’t decided yet, but it was a good idea to blame the methane leak. There was no need to let Kelly know that black magic was causing her problems. No need to tell her about the black magic embedded in her landlady’s upstairs apartment. No need to let Kelly know that magic existed at all.
“Probably for the best.” Orin sounded disappointed.
The youngest brownie, Lucio, swiped an imaginary speck of dust from his lapel. “Wish we could help with the runes, little weregirl.”
“No, we don’t.” Amal, the oldest, ducked out the porch doorway though he had a full inch of clearance. He leaned on the old wooden banister to reach a low ray of sunlight as it cut through the crisp October air.
The guys had cleaned up everything they could in their way. The blue runes around the doors and under the massive oriental rug could not be brownied away.
“We could help with them, you know.” Lucio combed a real smudge of dirt from Laylea’s hair and tried to fluff the slightly longer than a buzz cut do the girl preferred. “I could help with this too.”
“Long hair doesn’t work with canine-me.” She batted his hands away. “Could you really help with the runes?”
“Sure we could, sweets.” Lucio tapped the rune painted over the doorway like a kid touching a battery to his braces. “You know we serve bad karma same as good.”
Amal looked over his shoulder at them. “And this apartment is filled with bad karma.”
“So, how?” Laylea asked.
Orin Morton, the brownie who had once, a long time past, dated Laylea’s mother, stood from the soft cat cage. He lifted a bucket of water from the sink and set it on the old wooden table. “We could clean them up by burning the apartment down.”
Lucio grinned. “Yep.”
“Only solution for black magic.” Amal ducked back inside and blinked at Laylea, magically cleaning the dirt from her classy outfit of uggs and sweatpants topped with a t-shirt advertising The Office, a neighborly bar. Lucio leaned past him to rub a thumb over a black smudge on her specially-made collar. The brownies had commissioned a Renn Faire artisan to create the wide fabric choker with pockets and hidden elastic bands to serve Laylea’s special needs.
“Only way?” She pushed Lucio’s hand away and rushed both boys towards the door. She had things in those special pockets she didn’t want the brownies finding. “You said I could clean up the runes the old fashioned way.”
“Well, there’s that too, sure.” Lucio spun out the door into the cool sunlight. “If you’ve got that kind of time.”
“And I have.”
Laylea kept learning that magical problems sometimes required elbow grease answers. It was kind of her specialty.
Orin poured vinegar into the bucket. “Your best bet is water, vinegar, baking soda, and good karma.” He spit into the water for good measure.
“Where does a non-brownie get good karma?” she asked.
“You get it by just being you, puppy-dog.” Amal bent low to kiss her on the cheek before he joined Lucio on the porch.
“By volunteering to clean up this place.” Orin finally came out of the kitchen. “I can come back and help after we get the shop open.”
“Isn’t it inventory day?” Laylea asked.
Lucio echoed, “It is inventory day.”
“Right.” Orin took a last look around the open central room of the apartment. “Well, I’ll check in on you if you’re still here when I bring Kelly home from the hospital.”
“Ooh, I bet she’ll be grateful,” Lucio purred.
Even Amal grinned at Orin’s embarrassment.
A panicked thought stopped Laylea from closing the door on them. “You don’t have a car. How are you getting her home?”
Lucio leapt on the opening. “She’ll have to ride on his handlebars.”
“Can’t ride in the basket like you, Lee,” Amal added.
Orin sighed. “I’m borrowing Dee’s squad car.”
Amal stopped on the stairs. “Didn’t your sister’s superiors impound that car after Kyle was killed in it?”
Laylea caught her breath.
Orin didn’t notice. “Sure. But they gave her a replacement for the meantime.”
“They should put her on leave,” Amal said. “Kyle Nellwin was her partner.”
“Kyle was her best friend,” Orin shot back. “You try telling my sister she’s not allowed to investigate what happened to his body. She mourned for him.”
“Orin,” Laylea had to know, “will Dee be driving you from the hospital?”
“No. Captain Morioka is making her meet with a psychologist. She’s letting me use it while she’s there.”
“Oh. Good. I hope it helps her feel better.”
“I don’t think she’ll feel better until she finds Kyle’s body.”
Laylea’s cheeks flushed and Orin, misunderstanding, softened his tone.
“Sorry. Thanks so much for cleaning up here and taking care of Methuselah and helping Kelly figure out what’s wrong with her apartment and all.” He stepped back towards her. “Are you sure you don’t need my help? The guys can do inventory without me. What if you change?”
Laylea put a hand up against his approach. “Y’all lost a demon trapped in a box that’s been sitting on your consignment shelves for like fifty years. You need to go do inventory.”
That made Orin’s fair skin glow right up to his strawberry-blond hair.
“Get to work, Orin. The cat and I have it covered.”
“Methuselah.”
“Right.”
She smirked and shut the door in his face as he scolded, “You be nice to the cat!”
3
A Comfy Death
Alone at last, Laylea took a deep breath. Then she dashed into the ex-Mrs. Cull’s bedroom. She came out wrestling a full sized mattress through the small doorway. The mattress threatened to crush her but the tiny teenager prevailed. She dragged it over the rusty blue rune which had been revealed when the brownies rolled up Mrs. Cull’s singed oriental rug. She dumped the mattress midway between the front windows and the wall featuring a floor to ceiling painting of a dead tree, in sight of the open kitchen and the back door. Sniffing out fresh linens in a musty trunk, Laylea stretched a black fitted sheet over the used one before it occurred to her that the brownies had probably already cleaned and changed the sheets. Those boys were pretty thorough when they straightened up.
She hustled into the kitchen and dropped to her knees by the cat’s prison. “Hey, Methuselah, I know we didn’t exactly click earlier. Some of that may have been my fault. I’m Laylea.” The girl scratched behind an ear. “Nope. Wrong name. I’m Lee. Forget that other thing I said. Your mom, Kelly, is in the hospital but she’s okay. Orin’s gonna pick her up later and bring her home. Until then, it’s you and me and a friend of mine who needs a dark place to crash because he seems to be developing, shall we say, an allergy to the sun. I’ve got to go get him. BRB.”
Laylea Lee Hillen Woodford bounced to her feet and ran straight into the wooden table, nearly toppling Orin’s bucket of hot water, vinegar, and brownie spit. She ducked around it and then, pulling Kelly’s key from a pocket in her special collar, skipped out of the apartment and down the back steps.
She returned moments later supporting Kyle. She lost her hold on him when he slammed into the open doorway as if hitting a barrier. He fell to the porch, scrambling to keep his skin from seeing sunlight.
Laylea fell inside. In the instant before her face would have smacked the linoleum, she transformed into a twelve pound fawn terrier with a white diamond over her eyes. The dog struggled for a moment in the pile of clothes around her. The hidden elastics on her collar had done their job and tightened so it still fit perfectly. But her sweatpants weren’t so accommodating. The cat hissed and Laylea popped back into girl form. She wriggled around to straighten her outfit, breathed into the fading pain at her core, and turned to face the figure crumpled outside the door.
“Hey Kyle, you’re here to help clean, right?”
The sun scorched detective grunted a yes from within the blankets tangled around his head.
“Great.” She crawled forward. “I invite you in to help clean.”
She helped the man stand. He gripped the doorway with one strong black hand and pulled himself up. Then the two of them stumbled inside.
“Awesome. I was afraid Kelly only had authority to invite us into her place.” The small girl escorted the big man to the mattress and dropped him there as she chattered. “Keep the blankets on just a minute.”
She rushed around the room, from window to window, pulling thick, dark curtains to cover each. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Been a busy— well, it’s only seven a.m. Yesterday was a busy day. And I didn’t get much sleep. I guess you didn’t either.”
Kyle grunted.
“You can sleep now if you want. If that’ll help.” She grabbed a pillow from the comfy chair and knelt to slide it under the man’s head, rearranging the blankets to reveal his ashy face. “Do you have any idea what would help?”
His deeply sunken eyes caught hers. Laylea struggled not to recoil at the skeletal image before her. He watched her reaction then slid his gaze beyond her.
“Nice art.”
Laylea turned to take a closer look at the floor to ceiling painting of a dead tree. “It’s kind of romantic. In a dark way.”
“Old lady died?” he asked, sniffing the air.
“Once a cop, always a cop?” she asked.
“Till death.” Kyle choked out a wry laugh and reached up to rub at the bite marks on his neck.
Laylea decided the landlady was a safer topic. “Yeah, someone made a bomb of her kitchen. She was solidly unconscious before the explosion though so I’d bet she didn’t feel much.” Laylea glanced over at the now spotless kitchen. “She might have survived if I’d figured it out sooner.”
She’d first turned off the burners and the stove after discovering the unconscious woman duct taped to a chair in her kitchen. Next she’d raced around and opened all of the windows and flung the doors wide. It hadn’t helped much. She’d barely made it out herself before the alarm clock sparked. Now the kitchen was clean and quaint again. The police had taken away the remains of Mrs. Cull and the wooden chair. But the brownies had recovered the two-person table from near ashes and refinished it to its like-new charm. Or to it’s like-newly-acquired-from-an-antique-shop charm, at any rate. The classic alarm clock sat again in the center of the table, though it now had its bell ears restored. When Laylea had last seen it, the bells had been replaced with flint.
“W
hy don’t you smell edible?”
Laylea’s mind jerked from the dead woman to the dying man. Kyle’s voice sounded as rough and burned as his skin looked. It similarly lacked a roundness, a fullness that had previously characterized the man. The girl felt tears welling up in her brain. But it wouldn’t help him to see how his condition distressed her. She reminded herself she was in human form. As a human she could lie. She wasn’t very good at it, but it was possible. If she were a dog, her ears would be so flat you could mistake her for a seal. As a human, she could joke, “You’re American. We don’t eat dog.”
“The cat smells edible.” He wrinkled his nose. “Rotten, but edible.”
“Should I put her downstairs?”
“No.” The dull brown eyes closed. “Keep it close.”
“You can’t eat Methuselah. Kelly likes her.”
Kyle scoffed, then broke down in a coughing fit. When he could breathe again, he paused to wonder why he was breathing, then reassured Laylea, “Won’t eat her. Stronger than that.”
“You sure?” Laylea raised an eyebrow.
“I quit smoking.”
Considering and rejecting three jokes about his scorched skin, Laylea rolled her eyes. “Like seven times.”
“I promise I won’t eat the cat.”
“Okay.” She nodded and turned away to gather her cleaning supplies. “I trust you.”
The cat yowled.
Memories seared Kyle’s brain. Not his memories. He grimaced as scene after scene reappeared for the first time in his mind. Men, women, children turning their trusting eyes away long enough for her to sink her fangs into their soft flesh. His own trusting face. He focused on the present, on Lee. She said she trusted him. He whispered, “Why?”
“My mom trusts Orin. Orin trusts his sister. Dee trusts you. Plus, in dog years, I’m a hundred and five. I’m old and wise and dogs are known for having good instincts about people.” She sprinkled baking soda over the blue paint and dunked a scrub brush in the good karma charged vinegar water. She barely heard the cop’s quiet reply.
Laylea: A Wyrdos Tale Page 1
