Laylea looked up at the painting again. A tall withered oak painted in shades of sepia and black rose from melting snow into a cloudy sky. She wondered why Mrs. Cull would feature such sadness and anger in her home?
“Kelly sat with me and told me about how she’d been coming home to find things moved. I thought she meant little things like the mail or her glasses or something. But no. Her trash can and the litter box were moving around in the bathroom. Her clothes were being rearranged in the closet. Must be nice to wear nice outfits. I’m pretty much guaranteed to lose my clothes a few times a week.”
Kyle knew some people in college like that. The muscles of his neck threw his head back as his brain stacked up images of Irina’s silken dresses burning away as she burst into flames over and over and over, trying to destroy herself. He dragged his thoughts to the times he and Dee had driven by alleys and the backdoors of shops to gather up Laylea’s discarded sweats, uggs, sun dresses, and t-shirts.
A spike of sunlight struck the floor near Kyle’s mattress and Laylea hopped up to readjust the curtain. “Kelly said she left her windows open for the cross breeze and would come home to find them closed, every day. I thought maybe her landlady was shutting them. Control freak type, maybe. But Kelly had me try to close one. They’re heavy, old-style windows in frames that have been painted too many times. I closed it, but I had to get on a chair to get all my weight on the window.”
Laylea turned back to the window she’d just fixed. This was an old building. It made sense that Kelly’s windows were hard to move. These were the same old windows in the same old frames, but she’d opened them when she smelled the leaking gas yesterday. Had she been pumped with adrenaline? She reached under the curtain and easily slid the window down.
“‘Okay, that’s definitely odd.” She turned away from the window to see the cat in its crate. “Of course, as soon as I sat back down with my tea, the cat hawked up a fur ball on the kitchen carpet. Kelly watched her do it and her face turned green. Orin told me she’d been feeling queasy and it was morning, so naturally I wondered if she was pregnant. I asked.” Laylea circled back around Kyle to her half-cleaned rune. “When she’d pulled herself together, Kelly just choked out a quick, definitive, ‘no.’ As she cleaned up the cat barf she told me Methuselah was her real concern. She’d been lethargic. She wasn’t eating much. She’d lost a lot of weight. Which I thought would kinda follow, right? Then she dumped the cat in my lap.”
Kyle smiled. The feline in question hissed from her prison.
“Sure, the cat smelled strange, but what do I know from cats? I’m not allowed to eat them and why would I want to play with them? I decided it was time to go when Kelly offered to get me a stool sample.”
Laylea put her back into scrubbing to wash away that thought. Kyle laughed his muscles into cramps.
“Yeah, real funny. I told her I’d look into the history of the building and the neighborhood and talk to her neighbors. I asked if I could bring by my doctor colleague—”
Kyle objected. “Bailey’s a med student.”
“Yeah, I fessed up to that.” Laylea glanced at Kyle over her shoulder. “But he does have veterinary experience.”
“With dogs.”
“A dog,” Laylea conceded. “Still, he’s the resource I’ve got and she said he could come over. She’d be home after three. She walked me to the back door, thanking me the whole way and complaining about how dismissive the cops were. She’d told Orin all about how horribly she’d been treated at the precinct.”
Kyle chuckled. But Laylea didn’t hear him.
“You know, until we were outside on the porch, I didn’t realize how stifling her apartment was. It was permeated with the stink of those herbs in the tea and the brownies. One breath outside and my brain felt like it had taken a shower.”
Kyle struggled to roll to his side. “I could use a brain shower.”
Laylea sniffed at him. “You could use an actual shower.”
“Let me finish dying first.”
Laylea stared at Kyle’s back. The sheet stuck to him, outlining his skeleton form in dripping black fabric. Would he change when he Changed? He was still Kyle now. But as he died more, whatever that meant, would he turn evil? He’d said she didn’t smell edible but was that Kyle being nice?
She stretched to standing and went into the bedroom for fresh linens. She hollered even though she felt like she was really just talking to herself. “Before I left, I warned Kelly I might have to call in a good cop to help if I found anything illegal. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her.” Laylea grinned to herself as she pulled the last clean top sheet from the trunk. ‘If I find we need cops, we’ll call Orin’s sister. She’s a homicide detective.’”
“Ha!”
Laylea came out of the bedroom to see if Kyle was laughing or choking.
“You told her his sister is a cop. Smooth.”
“Oh, her face was awesome. Totally mortified. ‘He never said anything!’ she cried. ‘I told him all about the precinct. I had some very definite opinions.’”
Maybe the other sheet would dry on the porch, in the sun. Sun dried fabric wouldn’t hurt him, would it? She wondered. And decided to cross that bridge after he’d sweat through this sheet.
As she swapped sheets, she amended her thought to if he sweat through this sheet. He was so thin now, it looked like he might crumble into dust or really, mud considering how wet the bottom sheet and mattress looked.
“Do you . . . .” She cleared her throat and pulled out her adult voice. If any situation called for adulting, this one did. “Would you be more comfortable if I changed the bottom sheet?”
“Nothing is going to make me more comfortable. If changing the top sheet makes you more comfortable, do it. I’m—”
She could tell he wanted to say ‘fine’ but at the same time he couldn’t. Certainly not and be believed.
She changed the top sheet.
Kyle examined the bones of his hand. He could see their shape through his desiccated skin. He could see Irina’s dying hand superimposed over his own, the memory of her first death snapping into his brain unasked for. Was this normal? Did all vampires feel this pain? Would it ever stop? Kyle knew that Seb, the bartender at The Office might have answers for him. But if Seb knew, he’d never be able to keep it from Dee. And if Dee knew he’d become a monster, he couldn’t live. Although, if he was honest with himself, if he stopped to listen to his silent heart, if he admitted the breathing was just a habit—he’d go mad.
“What did you do after you left Kelly? How do you investigate something like that?”
Laylea heard the begging in his voice. She forced a cheeriness into her voice that she didn’t feel. “Well I was gonna go check city records of the building and see if that gave me any clues. But first I checked the porch. Before I could start though, Kelly opened her door again and pulled me back into the apartment. After the fresh air I nearly choked on that subtle stink inside. I thought she had more info for me but she just tried to give me the brownies. I asked, ‘Mrs. Cull?’ and she deflated.”
“Throw them out.”
“That’s what I said. When I got back outside, I looked around. Only thing weird downstairs was the fork was missing from a pristine set of grill tools. Then I came up here and noticed there was no stink of herbs on Mrs. Cull’s porch.”
“I smell something rank.”
“Probably the cat.”
Methuselah hissed. Kyle grinned.
Laylea continued. “There wasn’t any scent of the herbs on the porch. I sniffed around the windows. No stink. But I found the runes. She had an ankh nailed to the doorway where you would find a mezuzah in a Jewish household. Completely burned away in the explosion, by the way. I found one rune hidden under a frayed doormat decorated with washed-out daisies. Creepy.”
Laylea glanced around the dark apartment. Daisies on her doormat. Dead tree on her wall. “This whole place is creepy, don’t you think?”
Kyle groaned his assent. The
cat mrowled.
“Her sheets are black. And not like garage-sale-or-Goodwill-worn-out-all-she-could-afford black. This is,” She flicked a corner of the latest top sheet, then wiped her hand on her sweatpants, “well, was, a crisp new black sheet. You know any other old ladies who sleep in black sheets?”
Kyle sucked in a breath. “Or decorate their doorknobs with cat toys?”
Laylea looked around. She hadn’t noticed the scratchers and mice hanging from the doors because like the sheets they were all dark.
“Did you have a friend, Methuselah?” Laylea hopped up. She trotted over the bathroom. “There’s no litter box. Maybe she used to have a cat and—” she stopped when she found a bag of cat kibble in the pantry. “Weird,” she mumbled.
Kyle called her out. “Are you eating cat chow?”
“I’m just testing to see if it’s stale.”
He didn’t buy it. “You’re not even a dog right now.”
“Kyle. I’m always a dog. I just sometimes have thumbs and a facile tongue.” She unzipped the soft-sided crate to toss a handful in and suddenly found herself battling a ball of fur and claws, none of it hers. “Stop it!” She shoved bits of Methuselah back into the crate, impressed she was managing to stay human shaped despite every instinct. “It’s not safe for you to be roaming around up here. We don’t know what these runes mean.”
“Let her out, Lee.” Kyle’s voice dropped low and lost its dry, desperate edge. “I’m hungry.”
Methuselah stopped fighting.
“Bad Methuselah.” Laylea zipped the bag. “Bad Kyle.” She kept her tone light as she dragged her bucket to the farthest spoke of the rune. “No eating cats. House rule.”
She scrubbed. She breathed. Kyle fought a battle with himself.
Eventually she whispered, “Irina did this to you, didn’t she?”
“I’m sorry, Lee,” Kyle rasped. “I didn’t mean it. I won’t eat the cat. I won’t eat you.”
He could tell the promise did not reassure her.
He listened until her scrubbing slowed just a little. Then he prompted her to go on, to get back to the safe conversation. “What happened next? Did you go research the building?”
He thought she might not answer him. She thought she might not.
But if she didn’t, they’d fight again. And she was afraid to fight him now. She wanted to talk to Seb. She just wanted to leave. But if she did, she’d never be able to face Dee again. If she left Kyle to die and change alone, she could never face anyone at The Office again.
“I meant to.” She focused on yesterday. “I walked down to The Office to use Seb’s Internet and ask him about the runes and the herbs.”
“You already thought Mrs. Cull was involved.”
“Sure, all evidence pointed to her. I didn’t know she was the target of someone else’s wrath.” She sat up as an idea occurred to her. “Do you think whoever it is will go after Kelly next? Maybe this mystery murderer gave the tea and brownies to Mrs. Cull who just regifted them to Kelly.” She scratched behind an ear. “There’s no scent of the herbs up here.”
“There is.” Kyle sniffed. “Go dog. You’ll find it.”
Laylea concentrated. She focused on that constant prick of not-right in her gut, thought of her long muzzle, tried to feel her tail growing, but her psychic tail was tucked tight up against her belly, her ears flattened, and the fur she could only imagine stood up along her spine.
“Can’t,” she whispered honestly. “I’m too scared.”
“Of me.”
He was almost relieved when she didn’t answer him.
“The Office was pretty busy for ten in the morning on a Wednesday.”
When she didn’t continue, Kyle said, “Glög season.”
“Yep.”
He realized why she’d fallen silent. “That’s when you met Irina.”
6
Irina and the Key
Laylea took a deep breath. Her voice shook for a moment until she got it under control. “Yep. All the regulars were there to taste the first batch of Glög. It should have been subdued. Writers typing. Beth counting quarters. That stock analyst staring at his computer and whispering urgently into his cell phone. Ned knitting.”
He started, “But—”
Laylea cut him off. “But there was a new woman in the bar. A pale woman with high cheekbones and long straight hair. I clocked her inappropriately thin dress of silky peach because it was pretty much the opposite of my uggs, sweats, and t-shirt. I caught the lingering, too-sweet, almost rotting scent of her on the real fur coat draped over the bar by the brownies’ usual stools. Amal’s current book was tented on the bar nearby, breaking the spine, but Amal wasn’t around.”
“Could you tell she was trouble?”
“If anyone can smell trouble, it’s a girl who’s usually a dog. But Seb saw it too. He brought me a cup of hot water and the box of tea bags and asked, in that perfectly subtle Scottish accent of his, ‘and just what do you think is going on there, Lee?’ I admitted she didn’t smell as pretty as she looked. He told me he’d called Dee and you were on your way. ‘But I’m doubtful he’ll get here before she starts the bad happening,’ he said.”
“And I didn’t.”
“No. The bad was already happening. I pointed that out to Seb. I said ‘Look what Amal has done to his book. And you’re so distracted, you haven’t fixed it.’ Seb cursed in some foreign language that way he does in front of me and left to put a coaster in to hold Amal’s place. But even as he set the book flat on the bar, his eyes were glued to Irina.
“I picked out the vanilla crème Earl Grey and dipped the bag in my water as I watched everyone in the bar vying for the creepy new chick’s attention. I decided if things didn’t get any worse by the time my tea was done steeping, I’d wait for you.”
“What was your plan if things did get worse?” He bit his lip as Irina’s memory of playing with the fools at The Office bled into his brain.
“I have fifteen years’ experience as an adorable twelve pound puppy. I can take down an ice-cold seductress with one paw tied behind my back.” She barked a laugh and Kyle’s heart lightened. “That would actually have been a good idea. A limp would have gotten her attention twice as fast.”
Laylea and Kyle both giggled. Until the iron scent of blood washed up from the rune beneath her knees.
She had reached the joining of the cross bar to the far upright. The paint bubbled. Hot fear rose from the rune. Laylea scrambled backwards, stopping only when her hand squished on the mattress where she ran up against Kyle’s chest.
He buried his nose in the warm crook of her neck and hissed, “What is your plan now if things get worse?” Not waiting for thoughts to catch up to instinct she let her legs carry her and the dripping scrub brush away from the mattress. She snagged a knife from the butcher’s block in the brownie-cleaned kitchen. When the steel hit her hand, her brain caught up, suggesting she find silver weapons. Never a girl to believe in one answer per problem, she also racked the cabinets for some means of restraint as she answered the baby vampire’s question. She needed to remind Kyle the black and white of good and bad. She needed him to remember how important it was to him that he was good.
“Which worse do you mean?” She asked. “The black magic runes activating? You turning full vamp? Or the cat getting out of the cage?”
Kyle pulled his bony knees to his sunken chest. He hugged himself into inaction. “The cat,” he answered, eyes swiveling to the green bag. Reflective eyes glared back at him. He dropped his gaze to his trembling, skeletal hands. “Of course I mean the cat.”
“Say, where are your handcuffs?”
“In my car.”
“And Dee’s got your car.” She spotted Kyle’s phone on the carpet by the back door and dove for it. “Here’s my plan, by the way. You go all fangy, I tell Dee.”
“You are a terrible negotiator. If I go all fangy I won’t care if you tell Dee.”
“But you care now.” Laylea tried tu
cking the phone in her collar. It was too big. She found two rubber bands in a junk drawer and secured it to her arm instead. The junk drawer yielded a sale flyer for The Psychic Eye as well. So Mrs. Cull was familiar with the new age book and magic shop. Not surprising. Maybe she even knew her killer like Kyle knew his.
“Irina cared.” The thought popped out as Laylea remembered. “She has to be an old vamp and she still cared what you thought.”
“She only cared because she was lonely.”
“No. She could have gone for anyone in that bar but she chose you. She liked you. She was just playing with everybody else.” She searched Mrs. Cull’s cabinets as she continued the story of her day in a slightly shriller tone. “I slipped into the storeroom and successfully changed before I wiggled through everyone’s legs to distract her. Jeffrey, the accountant, was so focused on Irina he almost stepped on me. I bit him.”
“Lee,” Kyle scolded.
“Really?” She spun. “The man contemplating sucking my blood is bad dogging me for biting someone, gently, through blue jeans?”
The cat yowled.
Laylea dashed back to the rune. She sucked saliva from the membranes of her mouth, reared back, and remembering every lesson her big brother ever gave her, hocked a loogie on the frothing rune. The paint reeled back like grease will from a drop of Dawn as she dragged the point of the carving knife through the paint, saliva, and blood to create a bare space where the bars of the character had connected. As soon as the rune was split the heat, bubbling, and anger died away. Laylea looked up again at the painting on the wall, feeling the dead tree’s despair.
Kyle almost reached out to her, but she shook herself and returned to the kitchen. She tossed the knife with its still bubbling blade into the sink and went back to searching for silver.
Laylea: A Wyrdos Tale Page 3
