Pack of Freaks: Beasts Among Us - Book 2

by Jennifer Zamboni

  I was asleep in the tub until the cold finally got to me around 3 a.m. I threw on the complimentary bathrobe, staggered shivering to the bed, flipped open my side of the blankets, and crawled in.

  With my knees drawn up to my chest, I soon warmed up, and I was able to sleep in earnest. It wasn’t my bed, but it was certainly better than a park bench in November, or whatever month it was, I was a little befuddled on the matter of the date.

  It didn’t matter. Sleep was good.

  Sleep was awesome.

  Sleep was over because it was morning, and I had to get up.

  Percy shook me, and I groaned, pulling the blankets up over my head.

  “Come on, missy, you’re going to miss out on breakfast,” she promised.

  “What food?” I sat up and ran my fingers through my tangled curls.

  Percy handed me a hair elastic. “Get dressed, or at least fix your robe.” She indicated the bathrobe I’d fallen asleep in. It was still tied around the middle, but the top was askew.

  I picked up my clothes off the floor of the bathroom and yanked them back on, then dragged my frazzled hair through the bright pink elastic Percy had handed to me.

  I hadn’t been wearing any makeup, so at least I didn’t have to worry about that being a mess. I glanced in the mirror and grimaced at the circles under my eyes. For all the sleep I’d supposedly been getting, I looked more like a vamp than a were.

  After filling up on pancakes, sausage, and OJ, we were on the road again. Hopefully without anymore lengthy pit stops.

  After a couple of hours, we glided through the New Hampshire border, gassed up, and continued on. We all breathed a silent sigh of relief after pulling through the expensive toll coming out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, over the Penobscot River bridge into Maine. Only three or four more hours left to go, depending on how Hades was feeling about the speed limits as the drive continued.

  Apparently, he didn’t approve of the man-made restrictions, and finally pushed his combat boot-clad foot down on the accelerator, pushing the car to 130 miles an hour. At this steady pace, things would have gone smoothly if it weren’t for law enforcement.

  Despite Hades’s lack of respect for human laws, he had to play nice with the boys in blue and their obnoxiously bright lights.

  I pretended to be asleep, with a smirk on my face while Hades played innocent with the cop, telling him, no officer, he didn’t know how fast he was going. And oh my, I’m so sorry. Than graciously accepting the ticket the officer handed him, which he would later pay someone to hack into the system to remove once we got home.

  It was nice to be able to pay for anything you can dream up, but not the brightest idea to draw that much attention to oneself.

  “We can’t afford for people to get curious about us,” Percy lectured.

  I no longer had to pretend to be asleep, so I sat up. “Right, nothing ostentatious, like trying to dazzle the cop with one’s brilliant good looks, right Percy?”

  She had flirted a little with the cop, in full-on goddess mode. Apparently, his sunglasses had made him immune to her immense super-charms.

  “Oh, you caught that?” She blushed prettily.

  “Everyone driving by caught that. Every male in the state of Maine was rubbernecking to catch a glimpse of the hot chick the cops had pulled over.”

  “I suppose I should tone it down a little.”

  You think?

  My tall blond, curvaceous friend, was replaced by a pleasantly plump, normal looking Grecian woman.

  Hades frowned at his wife’s new look but didn’t say anything.

  “Hades?” I addressed the male offender of the dynamic duo.

  “Oh fine.” He huffed and toned down just enough to make the average woman drool instead of faint away stone cold.

  “All right, now that we’re all behaving again. Can we go home, and maybe not get caught?” I asked, leaning back in my seat next to a napping Doug, who had missed the whole thing.

  “I’d take side roads, but the highway is faster,” Hades grumped.

  “Why don’t you get a scanner and radar detector, like me?” I suggested. With supernatural reflexes comes boredom with being told what to do. Was it right of me? No. Did I still do it? Well, yeah.

  “I don’t think your old truck can go fast enough to grab anyone’s notice, unless it’s going uphill, and you can’t even hit the speed limit.”

  “Why does everyone pick on my truck? I love my truck.” I did too. It was old, I could afford to take good care of it, so I did, and in return, I didn’t draw unwanted attention that cars like Percy’s BMW and Hades’s Porsche drew. And they were just stupid cars to be driving in the winter. In Maine. I mean, the roads were awful. I saw a sign on one back road that read “Caution- crater” preceding a frost heave/pothole combo that would have swallowed either of those cars whole. As it was, I had to slow to 25 miles per hour to make it through unscathed in my truck.

  My thoughts wandered to motorcycles for the summers. I it was fun for those hot summer nights to ride a hog, instead of being stuck inside my truck without air conditioning.

  Plus I didn’t have to resist the urge not to stick my head out the window. It wasn’t like I needed a helmet. Even if I did get in a wreck, unless I hit my head just right, or blew up, I was unlikely to sustain any serious damage. And if I did die . . . Dude, I’m 180 years old, it’s not like I haven’t been around the block a time or two. People are supposed to die.

  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t suicidal, I just felt really old sometimes, no matter how young I projected myself to be. I turned 24 every year, and I had yet to have a client comment on my lack of aging in the eight or so years that I’d been working for Percy.

  My mind stuck on that jag right up until we pulled into the salon parking lot, also known as our driveway.

  It was late afternoon, and I’d already had a bath, but I didn’t care. I marched straight up to what I thought was my room but turned out to be Lacey-Marie’s old digs, which had been hidden after Doug moved in.

  I sat down on her satin, pink bedspread, then curled up into a ball and cried. I doubted anyone would find me there. No one would think to look for Lacey-Marie’s room when I had a perfectly good suite to myself.

  Apparently, the house was still trying to make up with me.

  After about 15 minutes of the pity party, I made my way to Lacey’s black bathroom with its bricked up windows and drew myself up a bath and lit some rose scented candles.

  It wasn’t lavender, but then, I wasn’t wolfy.

  The house did provide me with a nice bottle of raspberry wine, which appeared already poured into a glass on the edge of the tub. I sank in the bubbles up to my chin, and sipped my drink daintily, and enjoyed being alone and human.

  If only there was chocolate.

  “Uh, how about some milk chocolate and a jar of peanut butter,” I said to the darkness.

  Sometimes the house took requests, though, usually, it did its own thing.

  I ended up with chocolate covered coffee beans, which I left to their own devices. The last thing I wanted was caffeine; I wanted to relax, not wake up.

  Sinking further into the bubbles, I turned to see the coffee beans had disappeared, and so had my wine glass.

  Fine, if the house wanted to play games, I was done with my bath. The water was getting cold anyhow, which I took as an invitation to get out, as the water doesn’t normally get cold in a living house.

  Of course, I’d never been in another living house, so I’m assuming that’d be the way it would go in another one.

  I took one of Lacey’s way-too-short-for-me pink bathrobes, wrapped it around myself, and headed for my own room.

  I stuck my head out the door into the hall, making sure no one saw my escape, then went in search of my room, which was thankfully right where it belonged.

  The key to the door between my and Doug’s rooms was not where I had left it. I hoped that the house had it, and not my neighbor.

  I shru
gged it off, dressed in my own clothes once again, opting for bare feet instead of my boots. The house was plenty warm enough for that. Maybe it had done its research and had finally provided us with heated floors. If the house actually did research.

  If I had been hoping for a nice quiet supper with the family, I was in for a rude awakening. When I got down the stairs with that anticipation, instead of seeing Percy, Hades, and Doug sitting around the kitchen table, the kitchen was empty.

  I heard voices in the dining room, so I headed that way.

  Around that table was Percy, Hades, Doug, and a variety of circus freaks that were Doug’s former co-workers.

  “What the hell is this? Hi, Sabrina.” I waved at the petty sorceress seated at the foot of the table.

  “Um. Yeah, I forgot to tell you. I got a call from Sabrina last week, the sideshow got shut down, so these guys are out of work. Percy said they could stay here for a while.” Doug shrugged his shoulders and ducked his head sheepishly.

  I walked past the empty seat, which I figured was set for me, and made for the window, which looked into the backyard. There, parked on Percy’s pristine lawn, was a row of beat-up RVs.

  “You’re joking, right?” I turned away from the window to stare down the table at Doug.

  “Uh. No?”

  Was that a question or a statement?

  “Where’s the fish boy?” I felt bad for not remembering his name.

  “His tank is in the tack room so the water will stay warm without too much difficulty,” said Sabrina.

  “He’s all by himself?” Poor kid. He may be simple, but he could still get lonely.

  Percy raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “For now.”

  My lip curled in a silent snarl. “Do you guys at least go out and visit him?”

  There were guilty glances being passed around the table.

  “Seriously? Seriously!” I moved to my seat, picked up my plate, piled this and that on it, and left the room.

  It was still new moon, and it was freezing out, and I didn’t have on a coat or shoes, but I didn’t care. They had no right to leave Caleb all alone.

  I gave myself a mental pat on the head for remembering his name, small accomplishment that it was.

  I marched right into the tack room, which functioned mainly as a changing room for me, during that time of the month. Caleb’s small tank was set up by the little space heater, which was going gung ho. It wasn’t a large room at least, and well insulated, but still not the most pleasant place for a kid to live in solitude.

  “Hey, Caleb,” I said, pulling up a chair next to the tank.

  I wondered if he could hear me at all, as he was underwater and behind glass.

  He’d matured a little since the last time I saw him, but his face still split into a gleeful smile that exposed a mouthful of pointed teeth.

  He put a webbed hand up to the glass, just as he had the first time I saw him. Was that a trick that the circus master had taught him to attract attention, or did he just like to pretend he was a part of the world on the other side?

  I didn’t give it much of a debate, just placed my hand on the glass, matching my light brown fingers up to his green-tinged digits.

  His smile grew as he studied the difference in our hands, and I left it there, scooping food into my mouth left-handed. I may have been less than coordinated, but I didn’t care. There was no one to see me besides Caleb.

  The movement drew his attention away from our hands and towards my plate. He pointed excitedly at the mound of food, then back at himself, repeating it several times.

  I picked up a cooked baby carrot off my plate, stood, and lifted the lid of his tank, which was surprisingly heavy. Was it to keep him in, or keep trouble out?

  I held the carrot just over the water and waited as he turned and lifted a hand up to grab the tidbit. His skin grazed my own, and I was surprised by how oily it felt. He took the carrot gingerly, taking a moment to hold it so close to his face that his eyes crossed. He took an experimental lick. His brows knitting together, frowning.

  I couldn’t imagine he got much flavor from a lick.

  He stuck the carrot in his mouth, chewed a few times, then spit it out and shook his head before swimming the short length of his tank to get away from the floating bits of chewed food.

  What was I supposed to do now, pick it out?

  I looked around for something that might aid me in the task. When nothing came to me, I was left to pick out the bits by hand and toss them on the floor.

  He waited, floating on the other side of the tank, avoiding the bits of carrots I couldn’t remove, and me, I think. He had a glare on his face like he couldn’t understand why I would feed him something so repulsive.

  “Sorry, wanna try something else?” I picked up a piece of barbecued chicken and held it above the water.

  Caleb remained stubbornly seated on the other side of the tank. Something occurred to me: there was no freaking way it had fit through the narrow doorway of my tack room-cum-changing room.

  I took mental measurements, just to be sure, but I was pretty positive that the tank was at least four times as wide as the door. In fact—how did it not fill up the whole room? The house is alive, the barn is not. But there was enough fae on the property at every given moment that they must have been able to finagle something sparkly and magical. All for the benefit of the freaks, of course.

  There weren’t that many of them. And I was happy to note that Demothi, the circus’s fake vampire had not come. The freaks that were all seated around the dining room table up at the house right now were at least legitimate human freaks or messed up fae-human crosses, developed by stupid scientists, not actual relationships, like Jerry and Rochelle, who were male and female conjoined twins. Tsarina and Burne must have been out in their RVs, away from any trouble they might like to cause. They, like Caleb, were true freaks. Tsarina looked like a psychotic angel masquerading as a little girl. Burne was a fire-breathing lizard/dragon/thing/boy. They weren’t exactly housebroken, just like they weren’t exactly human.

  Tsarina, more than anything, was a spoiled child, just like any other 12-year-old girl, or at least that’s what I guessed her age was the last time I saw her.

  As for Burne, I had less experience with him. I didn’t know if he was simple, like Caleb, a terror, or normal.

  Those crosses were never meant to happen, and those poor kids were the result.

  I waited as patiently as possible, but my arm was getting tired, and the chicken dipped into the water. As soon as that sauce hit, Caleb was back on my side of the tank; he grabbed the chicken with his nimble fingers and shoved the piece practically down his throat.

  “Not a fan of vegetables are ya, kid?” I picked up another piece of chicken, which had a piece of spinach stuck to the side. I’m not a huge salad girl, so the chicken must have come off a platter right next to the fresh veggies.

  He gobbled the chicken again, leafy greens and all.

  When I wasn’t forthcoming with another chunk, he waved his hand excitedly out of the water, in an attempt to gain my attention. Or at least my supper.

  Most of my meat disappeared down the kid’s throat, while I made do with veggies and potatoes. Not a very satisfactory dinner for a carnivore. At least it was new moon for a little while yet, so I could palate the flavors, and deal without the protein.

  “Well, Caleb, it has been a blast, what do you say we do this again in a couple of hours?” I stood to leave.

  I wanted to check out the last moon month’s worth of news, to see if I’d done any damage while my human side was conspicuously absent.

  Caleb pulled a fat, sad lower lip.

  Without thinking, I knelt down by his face, put my lips to the glass, and blew out, so that my cheeks puffed up and my teeth showed like a chimp hamming for the camera.

  When I pulled back, Caleb was laughing, holding his sides, then swam up, and repeated my foolishness from his side.

  “Funny boy,” I said, smiling
.

  I waved good-bye, which he returned with a smile on his own face, and I left him alone. I hated to do it, but what else was there for it?

  I procrastinated my way back to the house, walking as slowly as possible, and ignoring the pebbles and twigs that dug into my calloused feet. Even at my most human, my feet were tough. I kept the muscle too, just not the extra wolf weight.

  There was no one in the kitchen, so I rinsed my dishes, and placed them dutifully into the dishwasher, before hunting for the library.

  The first door I tried was a linen closet, the second, Lacey-Marie’s old room. Third time’s the charm.

  The house had been so good lately too.

  Thankfully, it was empty, and the light switches were working. A double positive if there ever was one.

  Our ever updating computer took only seconds to start up, and what I found wasn’t giving me the warm fuzzies.

  The headlines had nothing to do with me, but there was an unusual amount of carnage in rural America lately. The first article I stumbled on was about a beheading on a bus. A man had gotten on a bus going from New York on south to Florida. Somewhere around the halfway point, he had stood from his seat, turned to the man seated behind him, pulled out a 12-inch knife, and lopped his head off.

  It had happened so fast that the other passengers were too flabbergasted to stop him. When the bus driver saw the torrent of blood paint the ceiling, he slammed on the brakes. The killer picked up his bag, walked calmly down the aisle, nodded at the driver, and wished him a good night, before disappearing into the woods.

  Now, I wasn’t there or anything, but I was willing to bet when the witnesses said he disappeared, it didn’t mean he’d walked off into the dark night. I bet he’d stepped off the bus, and, pop, vanished into thin air.

  Not that the newspaper article that the headline belonged to could mention such a thing without making the writer look like a total imbecile.

  There was another article that stated the students in a particular 3rd grade class swore their teacher turned blue when angry. Not red—blue. Electric blue, to be specific.