“I don’t think I’m people anymore.”
She sat back on her heels. “No, sir. You are now one of us. You are a wyrdo. You’re supernatural!” She made it sound like a good thing. He barely heard her add, “if you survive the change.”
4
Magic is Real
Laylea turned from him and set to scrubbing at the black magic and blue paint. Starting on the upper stripe of the deformed H-like rune, she spread the baking soda with the karma water and dug into the painted floor. Better to get the magic up and ruin the finish than go carefully, she thought.
The runes around the doors and windows resembled a mutant Y or celebrating stick figure. Based on yesterday’s visit to The Psychic Eye bookshop, Laylea figured that rune was an Algiz, a rune of warding and protection. Though it hadn’t protected Mrs. Cull from whomever had broken in, duct taped her to a chair, and blown up her apartment.
Laylea looked around the open room. The brownies had done an incredible job cleaning. You could barely tell the floor had been scorched. The low bookshelf delineating the separation of the kitchen and living room had only lost a few books. Laylea was surprised to recognize the entire Little House on The Prairie collection hogging the bottom shelf. Nearly all the rest of the books were grunt-witch books. Her brother would have a field-day making fun of those wanna-be witch manuals. One blue book on the top shelf even had a spine labeled with runes rather than letters.
The cat yowled from her crate as the man on the mattress rolled over.
“Does it get better?”
Laylea paused to look at her work. “Yeah, the paint’s coming up pretty good. It’s mixed with blood though and that’s not coming out as well.”
A sigh from the low bed. “Does being a wyrdo get better?”
Laylea glanced over at him. He saw her cringe before she diverted her gaze to the dead tree painting. “What were you looking for? A comprehensive understanding of the universe?” She rinsed her brush in the water. “Overwhelming powers? Limitless strength?”
He didn’t answer and she bent back to her cleaning. After a breath, she tossed over her shoulder, “The ability to perform magic?”
A grunt.
“Magic is a part of the universe. You can learn basic spells if you want, like Mrs. Cull here was doing. But there aren’t many creatures who can do magic. Even the brownies can only do it under strict conditions.”
“You can do magic.”
Laylea pulled a teenage girl face at him. “Not really. I am magic.” Droplets of water flung over the man and the unhappy cat as she rinsed her brush again. “You may have noticed I’m not really in control of the change. Pretty much the most magic I do is holding off the change long enough to get away from humans.”
She took a breath and bent back to the work. “When we first moved to Chicago, my brother never let me leave his dorm room because I had no control. We had just fled the Consortium and sure shooting a sighting of something like me changing would send us running again. But Bailey had a full-ride scholarship. Including room and board. I literally couldn’t afford to be seen. So I wasn’t.”
“What’s the Consortium?” A collage of images flashed into his new memories, the ones that didn’t belong to him and should not be in his head. But none of them answered his question. His maker knew of the Consortium but she hadn’t known much about them.
“Dee never told you?”
“Dee didn’t tell me much about any wyrdos except herself.”
“Well, she’s a classic wyrdo. It’s easy for her to hide being a banshee.”
Kyle laughed harshly. “Except when people die.”
“Really? First time you were present for her mourning, you thought it was a freak summer storm.”
He waded through the foreign images to his own memories of fifteen years ago when he’d hounded Dee into becoming his partner. They’d found themselves at three deaths, got there right before the person died, which was new in his experience as a homicide detective. Each time, a freak wind had blown through as Dee sent him off. Each time, she’d managed to get him to leave her with the body for one reason or another. Chase the shooter. Fetch the defib from the car. Look inside for the lady’s nitroglycerin.
The fourth time. He’d come back too soon. He saw Dee, her short red hair grown out long and white and crackling in a storm localized around his keening partner and the dead sanitation worker. She’d had to tell him then that she was a banshee. He couldn’t remember how long it had taken before he believed her. Maybe now he’d understand her. He clearly had a lot to learn.
“So the Consortium hunts wyrdos?”
“Oh, the Consortium isn’t a wyrdo thing. They’re an organization my mother worked for once. She said they’re bigger than even she knows, but what she did for them was genetic manipulation—creating super-soldiers.”
“Genetic super soldiers sound weird to me.”
“Wyrdos are born. . .” She began, thinking as she did that Kyle wasn’t born as what he was becoming. Irina hadn’t been born that way either. “Or at least they happen naturally, I think. She met my dad there.”
“He worked for the Consortium too?”
“No. He was one of the super-soldiers she created. The Consortium was actively trying to recapture her. And my dad.” She sounded younger than he’d ever heard her. “And me.”
“Why you?” There was a distant memory cracking into his brain. His maker knew something. But she hadn’t cared very much.
Laylea scrubbed. “They may have created me too or maybe they just tracked my bio-mom or something. But my adopted parents decided they weren’t gonna sit back and let them harass us or anyone else. They had to protect Bailey and me.”
“What does the Consort—” he paused as a sharp pain arced through his veins. “why your brother?”
Laylea changed the subject. “Bailey worked really hard to try to help me figure out how to control the change. I feel like he sometimes sees me as a failure because I can’t.”
Kyle noted her avoidance but let it pass. He didn’t have the energy to push it. He reminded her, “You changed to distract Irina.”
“Well, I had to, didn’t I? She was going to hurt everybody in the bar. And it’s been four years. I’m getting better.” She grinned. “Yesterday was a really good day for me. I was worried when I met Orin in the morning. I couldn’t go human and he had to ride me here in his bike basket to meet Kelly. I thought I might not be able to change at all and Orin would have to make up an excuse why I didn’t come. But once we got here, no problem. I even changed back to dog to sniff the place out.”
The cat yowled and Laylea dropped the brush as Kyle silently arched in a seizure. Neither girl nor cat knew how to help him and one of them really wanted to. Laylea stood. She wanted to run to The Office, the bar that was safe for wyrdos. The bar that let her in even though she was fifteen. Seb, the owner knew all sorts of wyrdo lore. He would know what to do for a vampire bite. But Kyle had begged her to keep his problem a secret. He didn’t want anyone to know. She couldn’t call his wife and daughter. She couldn’t call his partner, Dee. She couldn’t call her brother.
His body would survive the change he was going through, or it wouldn’t. Either way, she was pretty sure he wasn’t coming out the other side human. He howled. Laylea sucked in a deep breath and picked up her scrub brush.
“Don’t worry about it, Methuselah. He’ll be fine.” She turned the cage so the yowling creature couldn’t see the mattress or the writhing figure on it. “I probably won’t let him eat you.”
Methuselah hissed at the dog in girl’s clothing and turned away.
“JK, just kidding.” She kept talking to cover Kyle’s cries. “Look, I was a puppy for the first eleven years of my life. The only reason I haven’t eaten you is because it would upset my mom and dad. And I don’t want to upset my mom and dad. Not that I ever get to see them. Or even know where they are. But we write letters and Bailey would definitely tell them if I broke the No Eating Cats rule.
He’s big on rules. Some rules.”
Kyle collapsed on the mattress, whimpering quietly as foreign memories burned themselves into his synapses.
Laylea babbled on. “We had lots of rules back in the house where I grew up. Lots of secrets means lots of rules. I miss the mom and dad.” She scrubbed quietly for a minute. “It was all so easy back then when I was just a dog. Mom was a vet. Dad did odd jobs and took me everywhere with him. Bailey was my best friend. I thought we were safe. I thought I’d live forever.”
She fell silent, rinsed her brush.
Kyle murmured, “Now you have to adult.”
Laylea laughed. “Yeah.”
“But you’re still a kid.”
His voice grated. Laylea fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and set it beside the mattress, outside flailing distance. He looked at it. He looked at her. She started talking again.
“You know, when the administration kicked Bailey out of the dorms, Orin and Dee loaned us the first and last and security for our apartment. I partly took this job because Orin said he’d forgive some of that loan if I helped Kelly. He likes Kelly. He sucks at liking girls. He also got me my first PI job.”
Kyle geared up to object.
Laylea didn’t let him. “I know. I know. You and Dee won’t let me call myself a Private Investigator because I don’t have a license. But I can’t get a license. I’m fifteen! I can’t call it a Resource For People Who Can’t Find Or Afford Professional Help job every time. I do what a PI does. And if I live to be eighteen and find a social security number and officially get my GED, I will apply for a license. Until then, what do you want me to call it?”
Kyle flung his head to one side. It took a life’s worth of energy for him to whisper, “A Preternatural Underage Person Pursuing Information.”
“A PUPPI.” Laylea grinned. “Never you mind what Dee says, I think you’re cool, Kyle Nellwin.” She glanced over at him and her laughter vanished.
The change continued to burn the cop up from the inside. The blankets covering his body dripped. His face glowed and not in the radiant pregnant-lady kind of way. Laylea returned to the bedroom and grabbed a fresh top sheet. After checking the windows again for any errant rays of sunlight, she lifted the blankets they’d stolen from Kelly’s apartment. Despite her best efforts at ignoring his body, he saw her catch a glimpse of his sinking flesh, the drenched clothes draped over an ever more skeletal figure. She dropped the new sheet over him as quickly as she could, nearly running for the porch door. Kelly’s blankets dripped a trail all the way outside. Kyle pulled the dry sheet over his face when she opened the door.
Laylea draped the blankets over the eastern railing. The sun was just cresting the taller buildings down by the lake. She’d woken up before the sun to Bailey shuffling a half dozen books around on his desk. They had access to the Internet but after a childhood without it, and because of their particular privacy issues, Bailey preferred books. Or journals, or any printed format. He was always careful to gather some Internet-based sources for his papers so his preference wouldn’t be noticed. But he did his brief surfing at the various libraries or public computers on campus and around town.
She wasn’t surprised he’d gotten up so early, or maybe never gone to bed. Her brother would be overly studious for the next few weeks. He always buried himself in work after risking their secret. Laylea had tried to reassure him that nobody at The Office had seen what he’d done yesterday but he wouldn’t listen. Sometimes he treated her like she was still just a dumb dog.
She wiped her eyes. There was movement in the windows around the little back courtyard. People getting up and ready for the day. Laylea slipped back into Mrs. Cull’s apartment. It was stuffy inside even with most of the windows open. The closed drapes limited the cross breeze but at least the air didn’t sting with vinegar.
When she shut the door, Kyle dropped the black sheet to his shoulders. He shivered and that small motion drove his muscles and his mind into another small seizure. Seeing in her drawn face a reflection of his own fear, he cried out, “Talk to me!”
Laylea backed up against the door. “About what?” She felt her metaphorical tail curling up against her belly and fought the whine in her voice.
“Why did Kelly need a PUPPI?”
With no little steel, Laylea pushed off of the door. She marched back to her bucket, spit on the rune, and scrubbed. “Kelly needs an unlicensed investigator because she’s worried about Methuselah. The vet said there was nothing wrong with the cat and the police didn’t care. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t care about it either. I mean, I am a dog. But after a short time, it was clear that Kelly was feeling off too. She’d been misplacing stuff. One look at her uber-organized apartment and I knew that was a bad sign.”
Kyle stared at Laylea. Focused on her case. He willed the girl’s memories to drive away the blood and burning and desperate sadness of Irina’s.
“Orin introduced us,” she went on. “He took Kelly outside to look for anything, like a gas leak or injured ginkgo tree, that might explain her issues. Really that was just to give me time to change and sniff out anything my dog senses could pick up. Of course then I changed like it’s nothing. But my super canine sniffer didn’t pick up much except in the kitchen. OMG, the kitchen smelled awful.” She sprinkled more baking soda over the paint. “Kelly had a tin of something, couldn’t open it with paws, that matched the distressingly disappointing smell of a plate of brownies sitting on the key table by the back door. I, of course, can’t eat brownies. Chocolate is poison to me. But I could barely even smell chocolate on these brownies they were so drenched in whatever this other stink was. I isolated valerian root and at least two other herbs. None of which had any business in brownies.
“I successfully changed to human form when Orin did our secret knock on the front door—“
“Two knocks. Pause. Two knocks.” Kyle said.
“How do you know our secret knock?”
“Orin told his sister.”
“And Detective Dee told you,” Laylea finished.
“No secrets between partners.” Kyle said and then let out a sobbing laugh. “Until now.”
Laylea turned away from her work. “Let me get her. I’m sure she can help.”
“No.”
Kyle thought she would argue. But she didn’t. His unlikely ally turned to spit on the rune and scrub. “I did my research on Kelly. She’s an orphan. No family at all. She survived the foster system in a small town downstate but doesn’t keep in touch with any of the families she was tossed among. It may have helped if she looked like any of them. But she has a distinctly exotic cast to her features. I’m not so good with races. I know people who look like Dee and Orin are Celtic. People who look like you probably have some Nigerian in them. Dogs who look like me are likely terriers. But Kelly, I don’t know. She was beautiful in a haunting way. Golden skin that would stand out in central Illinois. She’s super cool. Orin met her swing dancing and she’s working as a bike mechanic while studying for her masters in botany. And despite her being a cat person, I like her. It’d be okay if Orin brought her around.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I know.” Laylea leaned forward to tell the cat, “He sucks with girls.” Methuselah licked her butt at Laylea, the green stone tag of its collar banging against the cat’s leg.
“I told Orin to go away and gave him space to hug her goodbye and he totally blew it. She’s into him, though. So if I can figure out what’s wrong with her cat, maybe she’ll reward him.”
“You think maybe Kelly and Methuselah’s problems have something to do with whoever blew up Kelly’s landlady?”
“I do. Thank you very much, Detective Nellwin. I’m not an idiot.”
“But you don’t know who blew up Kelly’s landlady.”
“Actually. . .” Laylea spit on the runes again. It worked better than the baking soda.
Kyle wiped sweat from his eyes. “What?”
Laylea considered. Ky
le was a detective. He had a lot more experience in solving these things than she did. And if Kelly was the killer, it’d be best to figure it out, Laylea thought, before she got released from the hospital.
5
Mrs. Cull is Not What She Seems
“The fork from Kelly’s barbecue set is missing. I noticed it when I checked her back porch. After Orin left, Kelly made us tea. She offered me a choice while the water heated. ‘Pick your poison,’ she said.” Laylea sighed. “Nobody ever has liver flavored tea.”
Kyle gagged a little. It had nothing to do with him changing into a vampire.
“She had Raspberry Zinger, Orange Catnip, and Peppermint Praline or something equally gross. I asked what flavor the loose leaf was, gesturing at the tin container which was only just bearable to my human nose. She looked confused and then swept the container off the kitchen table. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That’s my landlady’s personal blend. It’s awful. I had to drink a cup when she brought it down this morning.’ She stuffed the container into a cupboard but checked three times over the next few minutes to be sure it was in there. I never did figure out if those nervous tics were her or a part of her current weirdness issues. She explained, ‘Mrs. Cull is nice and she’s helped me out a lot since I moved in. She’s really old. And’ she drew it out, avoiding my eyes, ‘you’re really young.’”
Kyle grunted. It was all he had energy to do.
“Yes. I look like an eleven year old. Every time I start a new case I have to go through this. I usually make a joke of it. I mean it doesn’t really matter. Anyone who’s even considering hiring me has got to be pretty desperate, right? I told her I’m a hundred and five, in dog years. She laughed. I distracted her from doing the math and gave her a connection to latch on to by letting her know I don’t know exactly how old I am because I’m adopted.”
“Nice.”
“Thank you. Kelly sighed. ‘It must have been nice to get adopted. My fosters were all real nice, but—’ she choked up and grabbed the cat into her lap to change the subject. ‘I don’t know if I adopted Methuselah or she adopted me. She just kept showing up and one day she stayed. Mrs. Cull gave me this collar and the bloodstone charm. You should meet Mrs. Cull. She told me she’s a hundred and four. Although, in her case, she looks it.’ Kelly is like this totally awesome chick. So why is she so lonely?”
Laylea: A Wyrdos Tale Page 2
