by Nikki Dean
“Why’d you do that?” Everett demanded as they finally broke free and she dropped his hand. He rubbed it against his jeans, as though wiping the feel of her fingers off of his.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Nico told me that your powers work based on touch. That must suck. It doesn’t excuse your shitty attitude, of course, but it must suck.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” he replied uneasily. “But you’re a very confusing girl, Mallory.”
“I’m not,” she replied as she turned back toward the door. “I’m pretty straight-forward, actually. Maybe you’re just looking into it too much. I do expect a real explanation for this later, though. I want to know how you knew where I was.”
“I hope you’re right,” he replied, standing on the sidewalk. People flowed around them, like currents around a rock in the ocean. “How’d you do that, in there?”
“Do what?”
“I couldn’t feel you again.”
“Like... magically?” she asked. “I guess my powers kicked in before yours, even though we were touching. I pictured a wall around you, trying to give you the same protection that you gave me in the courtyard at school. Did it work?”
“I don’t know.” He swayed back a little, then stepped forward, his face tightening. “Did you know what you were doing, or were you just experimenting on me with your magic?”
“Whoa, back off there, Ev. I wasn’t experimenting on you, that makes it sound really bad. I was just trying to help.”
“Don’t call me Ev. And don’t fuck around with your magic on me. You might not like what happens.” His voice was low, threatening almost. “Stay out of my head unless you’re willing to face the consequences, and stay away from my friends unless you’re trying to get them all killed. Because eventually, you will.”
“Annnd we’re back to you trying to push me away from your little clique. That didn’t take long. Unfortunately for you, though, Nico and Matt are grown-ass adults who can decide what they want for themselves. So I’ll be considering their opinions about my place in their lives instead of yours. Have a great night, and I kinda hope I don’t see you around again.”
Chapter 18
She left him there on the sidewalk, staring after her as she flipped him off and went back into the club. The DJ had the party in full swing, and most of the crowd was on the dance floor so it was easy to get another drink.
Mallory went back up to the balcony and spent an easy rest of the evening with Amy and Eliza, not talking about the academy, Everett or even Nico or Matt any more. Too soon it was time for her to leave if she wanted to catch the last bus back to campus.
“Call us next weekend and we’ll do it again!” Eliza ordered as she pulled Mallory in for a hug. “I mean it. We miss you, and our new roommate never wants to do anything.”
“I will,” Mal promised. “I really will. You have to come meet all of my guys, anyway.”
“All of your guys? I thought there were only the two, plus Creeper?” Amy said with a vague wave back at the club. “Did he ever tell you why he needed you tonight?”
Mal shook her head. The whole thing with Everett had been bothering her since he left, and she’d only just resisted pulling out her phone to text Nico about it. The only thing that stopped her was that she hadn’t hung out with Amy and Eliza in a while, and didn’t want to be rude. She was definitely asking about it once she got on the bus.
They said their goodbyes, the other two girls climbing into a cab while Mal waited alone at the bus stop.
Mallory sat on the bench and leaned back, thinking about what she wanted to say. Finally, she just sent a simple text to the group message.
Mal: I’m at the bus stop at 18th and Lex. Be home soon. Home? Is it really? I guess so, at this point.
Nico: Matt’s on his way. Said he needs to talk to you.
Mal: Tell me about it. So did you all know he’s been spying on me and sending reports to this guy, Pohler?
No one responded for a few minutes. Mallory took that as enough of an answer, and put her phone away. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes, keeping her magic turned down low. A breeze whispered in her ear, ruffling her hair as she sat. A car roared up next to her, then screeched to a halt at the end of the block. The driver’s side door opened and Matt got out beside it. Mallory sighed and started walking.
“Sorry. Forgot where the bus stop was,” Matt muttered when she got to him. She didn’t bother to answer as she got in, leaving him standing outside his own car in silence.
He sighed.
“Look, I was going to tell you,” he started. “I wasn’t going to say anything without telling you first.”
“Except you already have,” Mallory answered. “You already filled out a report, and I have no idea what’s on it. But you’re here, and Pohler isn’t, so I’m assuming that you’ve turned the next one in to him and he’s taking it back to Captain Fitzam. In fact, Pohler probably emailed it to him the second you left his side.”
“Probably.” He drove in silence.
“So, who is he? And what did you say about me?” she finally asked.
He glanced at her in the darkness of the car. “No one.”
“Don’t fucking bullshit me, Matt. You guys don’t lie to each other, right? And you want me to be one included in your little group? Then don’t lie to me either, shitdick.”
He choked back a laugh and hit the steering wheel with the side of his fist. “You never fail to surprise me.”
“Which is stupid, since my shit is totally logical. You’d realize that if you ever stopped underestimating me,” she shot back as she looked out the window. The streets were rolling by slowly, or rather, they were driving slowly. Slower than she’d anticipated.
Nothing looked familiar.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“My apartment. I have a few things to show you.”
“I swear to god, if you pull out your dick I’m going to cut it off, Matthew Crowley.”
He grinned and patted her knee. “I’d expect nothing less.”
His apartment was about twenty minutes away from campus, leaving her wondering how fast he had driven to make it to the gym a few nights ago. He pulled into a parking spot and sat there, staring out of the windshield. Turning in his seat, he faced her from across the stick shift. “I know you’re pissed.”
“I trusted you. I thought you trusted me, enough that you wouldn’t hide things from me. I guess I should’ve known better.”
He winced. “Don’t be like that. I didn’t mean to hide it from you, I was going to tell you.”
“Of course you’d say that now. Now that I already know. My question is why didn't you tell me before Pohler did? And why won’t you tell me who he is to you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Take me home.”
He hung his head. “Just come inside for a minute?”
“No.
“Please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
She studied the top of his head, the short trimmed hair and round skull. He looked up to find her eyes on him and their gazes met.
They held.
“Why should I go inside with you?”
Even in the darkness of the car, she could feel the weight of his eyes, the way he looked into her, instead of at her.
“Please trust me, Mallory. Just tell me what to do to get you back.”
“You never had me.”
Matt grimaced, his face twisting at her words. She activated her web and looked into him, felt his regret and anger at himself. His loneliness.
It’s not my problem that he’s lonely, she told herself. He has friends, a job, could have a girlfriend if he wanted to. It’s not my responsibility to fix that for him.
“Who is Pohler?”
Matt closed his eyes. “His name is Charles Pohler, and he used to be my friend. We went to the academy together, then were stationed in the same barracks after. We fought together. He was one of
my best friends, and closest allies.”
“Until?”
“The amaroq, of course. One day we were ordered to go to a little town in Bay Nation, just over the border. It was an official inquiry to find out what had happened to our contacts there, since several special operatives had set up shop after our civilians kept reporting people going missing.”
“So you thought someone in Bay Nation was taking them? Like a serial killer, or human trafficking or something? What does that have to do with the demon?” Mallory guessed, not following why they would have sent in special operatives, of all people, instead of just working with the police to figure it out.
“Not really those options, but something like that. Let’s just say that we had reason to believe the Bay Nation government was in on it, and these people weren’t being kept alive and well. In fact, they were lucky if they were dead.”
Her jaw dropped open in shock. “Like... they were torturing them? But why?”
He shrugged. “That’s what we needed to find out. We made it there and found the entire town in ruins. It looked like a massive battle had taken place, and nearly every building was damaged. A lot of the townspeople managed to escape in their cars, or the city buses, but all of them told bizarre stories about the area in the months leading up to the attack, and the actual battle itself. They talked about hearing strange noises at all times of day, loud roaring and howling from open fields, where nothing was there. Several reported hearing something like a monkey, or elephant.”
“But those don’t live here,” Mallory finished for him. “And none of the townspeople ever saw anything?”
Matt shook his head and opened his car door, getting out. He came around and waited until Mallory did the same with a muttered curse.
“Not a thing. Until one day a huge black lion with six tails that could run up walls attacked the buildings in the town square, and systematically worked its way outward. They said it was on a rampage, tearing at the ground as it destroyed anything and everything in its path.” He held the door to his building open and led her to a first-floor apartment.
“The amaroq. But why?”
“Officially, we have no idea.”
“Unofficially?”
He gave her a rueful grin as he unlocked his door and stepped aside so she could go in. “Unofficially, we found a system of tunnels beneath the town that connected to a large laboratory and testing facility. It was full of animals, and people. None of them survived. None of them could have, after what had been done to them.”
“What the fuck?” she demanded. “And no one knows about this? Who was behind it? The Bay Nation government?”
“Officially, they had no idea what was going on, and attributed it to some kind of cult. Everything was destroyed, and the town was leveled due to ‘risky fault lines’ according to the report.”
“Unofficially?” she asked again, already dreading the answer.
“Unofficially, I saw the place before it was destroyed and no cult that I’ve ever heard of has that kind of money or interest in scientific experiments. Maybe a corporation doing illegal research and development, but a cult? Nah.”
“What were they researching?”
Matt shrugged as he walked through a small living room to his kitchen, turning on the lights after him. “No idea. But it was apparently enough to piss off the amaroq, who went after it like stink on shit. Pohler might know. He took an unhealthy interest in it.”
“Gross. On both counts.”
He ignored her. “Every building it hit was somehow connected to the tunnels. We don’t know how it knew or why it would care, but the amaroq’s attack was definitely related to whatever was happening underground.”
“Why would it do that? Did someone tell it to?”
“Ha. No one could tell that thing what to do.” He got a beer out of the fridge and cracked it open. “Want one?”
She shook her head, looking around the apartment. It was small, as she’d expected for a single guy living alone, but luckily the walls weren’t covered in pinup posters or anything quite so crass.
Instead, they had been painted a dark, navy blue, with bright white trim. Mallory glanced into the kitchen again and saw that the color scheme had been extended through out the small apartment, with white cabinets and some kind of pale marble countertops. The gray veining that ran through them matched the kitchen hand towels that hung from the oven’s handle, and the living room was simply furnished with a matching gray sectional couch.
The walls were mostly bare, but had a few large black and white photographs that had been framed in gold metal frames. It was an interesting design choice, but Mal found that she liked it. Silver frames would have blended into the overall scheme to much, whereas the gold lent a warmth and pop to the room.
A large projector screen was set up on the wall across from the couch, and a few napkins and cups were on top of the coffee table. Matt hurried over to grab them, cleaning the tabletop as though he’d done it a million times.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“About what? A few glasses and a napkin? Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve seen my tiny room. It gets dirty almost as soon as I walk in the door, much less invite you and Nico over.”
“I haven’t noticed it being dirty, just small,” he replied. “It’s easier to make small areas look messed up when they’re really just lived in.”
“This doesn’t look very lived in, now that you mention it,” she said slowly, turning around in a circle. “Everything is perfect. Even the rugs are straight, and the throw pillows. What kind of single guy has throw pillows?”
“The kind that likes to cuddle up on the couch alone?” he guessed. “The other guys never come here, since it’s only a one bedroom and there are four of them. At least in the dorms, they have their own beds.”
“Where does Everett live, anyway? You guys never mention him staying with you, even if all four of the rest of you hang out all weekend. Does Ev tag along too? Sleep on someone’s floor or something?”
He paused, clearly uncomfortable with the question. “No. He doesn’t stay in the dorm. He has his own place.”
“Let me guess - he doesn’t like all of the people in Kinsolving?”
Matt shook his head no.
“I have a feeling that you guys are bullshitting me about Everett and his people problems. The first time I met him was on campus, and tonight he came to the club and found me and my friends. Even hung out for a few minutes. I mean then he kind of threatened me with your lives at the end of the night, but whatever.”
“Everett was at the club?” Matt’s eyes bugged out and he froze. “You’re sure it was him?”
“I love how that’s the part you focus on, instead of how he swears I’ll get you all killed. I wasn’t sure it was him at first, but yeah, it definitely was. We talked for a little while, and he let me play guard to help get him through the crowd without touching anyone else. He seemed just as surprised as I was about this Pohler reporting thing though.”
“Oh, yeah. He would be, honestly. None of them know Pohler like I do, but they can’t stand him.”
“Because he’s a twatasaurus rex?” Mallory guessed.
Matt laughed. “Basically.”
“Well, then, add me to the list of avid fans with the rest of the guys. I think it’s the first time I’ve actually agreed with Damon yet, but don’t tell him I said so.”
“Roger that.”
“Now tell me what we’re doing here. Your place is nice enough, and definitely not what I was expecting, but you said you had something to show me.”
“It’s dumb. I can just take you home.”
“I swear to everything dark, evil and unholy if you do not tell me something to answer some of my questions, I might stab you,” Mallory said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Who. Is. Pohler? For real, this time.”
Chapter 19
“Everett’s nemesis, for lack of a better term.” He paused a
nd watched as she glowered at him, starting for the kitchen.
“Seriously. I’ll tell you everything. We all started doing missions together, and they just rubbed each other the wrong way. Everett wanted to get shit done and complete our objectives, but Pohler was all in for the overkill. Too much so, in my opinion. The other guys agreed, and they haven’t gotten along with him since.”
“Like what? Give me an example. And what did you mean, that Pohler was overly interested in the cult science lab?”
“One time we had to go retrieve some information, a disk drive from enemy territory. Well, it was more heavily guarded than we thought, so we had to do a smash and grab. At the end of the day we ended up with a cache of drives, instead of just the one, and Pohler insisted that we go through every single one ourselves, even after we’d found the correct drive, instead of just handing it all over to the intel team, like we were supposed to.”
“I don’t feel like that’s a bad thing.”
“It is when they’re all classified and we were told not to look at them to avoid compromising the data. Sometimes the drives have viruses or things like that on them, or they literally self-destruct after being opened. It’s pretty easy to time a deletion virus on a disk drive to ensure that it’s only opened once, but Pohler didn’t care about things like that. He just had to be the first to know everything, you know? Some of them were about the lab.”
“Oh. Yeah, that sounds like more of a dick move, then.”
“Exactly. And he put our jobs at risk by roping us in, too. He held the right disk back, pretending that he hadn’t found it so that he could keep ‘looking’.”
“I take it that’s why Everett was surprised that you’d voluntarily give Pohler any information on me?” Mal guessed. She plopped down on the couch.
“Yeah. He’s pulled a lot more shit like that over the years, sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. It’s becoming a pain in the ass. His involvement in your case is especially concerning.”
“Sounds like it. So, what was in the report that you gave him? Well, reports, now since you’ve filled out two.”