by F. T. Lukens
“No, I drove her home.”
“She went out of the front door?”
“Yes.”
“Does that mean she can go back in the front door?”
All the color drained from Pavel’s face. “We need to go.”
They moved like a well-oiled machine, like a seasoned trio of detectives in an HBO show, as if they’d done this kind of thing before. They hadn’t. But Bridger shucked his gown while Elena kicked off her sandals, then tossed her purse to him.
“I’ll run. With this traffic, it might take more time than we have to get there.”
“I’ll call the pixies, get them to send the portal, if they can.”
“I’ll drive,” Bridger said, fishing out Elena’s keys. “I might know a way around the traffic.”
“Don’t break my car, understand?”
“I’ll do my best.”
She took off in a sprint, drawing a few stares, but she quickly disappeared around a corner on the sidewalk; her hair was a brown comet behind her.
Pavel flipped open his mirror while they strode to the parking lot. He was trying to reach the pixies and cursing in a language Bridger had never heard before when they didn’t pick up their end. Bridger gripped Elena’s purse as well as his diploma; his tassel swatted against his temple.
“Bridger! Where are you going, honey?”
“Crap, my mom.”
Pavel took the purse and didn’t break his stride. “Deflect,” he said, tone clipped, accent thick.
Nodding, Bridger jogged to his mom. He thrust the diploma and his gown into her hands. “Hey, I’ll meet you back at the house. Pavel and Elena need me for a minute at work.”
She huffed. “It’s your graduation. Can’t it wait?”
“No. It’s important.”
“Bridger,” she shook her head. “No. We’re supposed to go to dinner. We have a whole celebration planned.”
“It’s okay. I’ll meet you.”
“Bridger,” she said frowning. “You know I don’t agree with your dad, but he wasn’t wrong about Pavel. He’s not your—”
“Yeah, and Dad left. So, maybe agreeing with him right now isn’t the best idea.” Yikes. That came out heated and cutting and was a low blow. Stricken, his mom clutched the diploma tighter. “Sorry, that was bitter and mean. But I won’t be long. I promise. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
He didn’t wait for a response. And he’d be apologizing for all of it later, when they were home and he wasn’t in crisis mode. Dodging cars, Bridger crossed the parking lot and threw himself into the driver’s seat of Elena’s sports car. He tossed his graduation cap behind him.
“Did you reach the pixies?”
“No.”
“Try Mindy.”
“She doesn’t carry a mirror any longer.”
Easing out of the parking space took finesse, since everyone who attended the graduation decided to leave at the same time. Sweating through his shirt, Bridger winced each time another car came too close to Elena’s, but while everyone headed for the main exit, Bridger looped around to the back of the school. He drove through the one-way bus ramp in the opposite direction, but this was an emergency.
“Try Nia and Bran again, please,” Pavel said, speaking to the mirror.
Glancing over, Bridger caught the waver of the glass, but the reflection stubbornly remained that of Pavel’s concerned face.
“If she’s there, they probably can’t answer.” He kept his foot on the gas as he went through a yellow light. “Try Elena. See if she’s made it.”
Pavel’s grip tightened around the compact. “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” he said. “She promised she’d leave. I should’ve made sure. I should’ve known better.”
“Hey, no, you’re like the smartest guy I know. Maybe a little naïve, but you didn’t know. And hey, maybe it’s not her. Maybe the pixies are just getting a little rowdy without you there and can’t answer the mirror. Maybe Nia can’t hear it over the bubbling of her cauldron. You know how I am. I overreact all the time. Maybe this is just me overreacting again, and I imagined seeing her van.”
Pavel cast him a withering glare.
“Right. Okay. Summer is there. But you couldn’t know what she’d do. You only see the good in people. It’s one of your great character traits. Take me for example; you could’ve fired me after I made a few mistakes. But you didn’t. Because you saw the good things too. And you did that with her. You looked for the good and took her at face value.”
“It’s my job to protect the myth world. I let her go.”
“Okay, so you made an error in judgment. I make those all the time.”
“You’re eighteen. I’m—”
“Really old. I know, but does that mean you have to be perfect? That would suck. Living for a long time but with the expectation that you can’t continue to learn.”
Pavel looked down to the mirror. “You’re distracting me.”
“Yes. Keeping you focused on my dialogue rather than on what could be happening at the house. It’s a coping mechanism for anxiety, keeping you in the moment rather than in your head.”
“I’m not anxious. I’m, I’m angry.”
“Well, I am anxious.” Bridger took a sharp turn onto Pavel’s street. “They’re my family too.”
He hit the gas, and suddenly Summer’s van loomed in front of them, parked half onto Pavel’s lawn and half in the street. Mindy’s car was absent; only Pavel’s death trap sat in the small gravel driveway.
Bridger slid to a stop, tires squealing, and parked haphazardly at the curb. Before he managed to throw it into park, Pavel was out of the car striding to the front door, which hung wide open. Yanking the keys from the ignition, Bridger shoved them into his pocket as he followed, ran through the front door, and slammed it behind him.
It had only been fifteen minutes since Bridger spied the van, but the house was already a mess. Papers lay strewn all over the floor. The door to the library hung on one hinge. Scrolls littered a path to the stairs and upward. The heavy curtains were thrown open, bathing the house in natural light. Dust swirled in the air from items long untouched that had been rifled through or knocked over.
Elena had got there before them. Her sundress was soaked with sweat. The pads of her feet bled. She stalked in an imaginary line at the base of the stairs; a low, rumbling growl emanated from her as her hair swished behind her. “I can’t get closer,” she snarled, eyes burning amber.
Summer peered down at them from the landing above and laughed, somewhat maniacally. “Wolfsbane,” Summer said, tugging on a rope of the plant draped across her shoulders. Another lay along the first few stairs, blocking Elena’s path. “I figured out she was the Beast of Bray Road, a werewolf, and I watched Teen Wolf. She can’t get near me.”
“Hey, guess what, we can,” Bridger yelled to her. He stepped onto the lowest stair.
“Can you?” She raised a bird cage. “Forest pixies,” she said, shaking it. Nia and Bran tumbling over each other. “Lured with sugar and bound with iron. I wouldn’t come any closer unless you want them to take a fall.” She held the cage over the banister. “Surprised? I warned you that I knew how to research.”
Pavel sparkled with incandescent rage; magic flowed from him in angry tendrils, glowing from beneath his skin. His jaw clenched, and his eyes glittered. He exuded anger and power, but Summer merely chuckled, swinging the pixies around in the iron cage.
“Don’t,” he warned, his voice rumbling with magic.
“Turn off the magic then, and they won’t be harmed.” She set them on the edge of the railing. “They are your family, aren’t they?”
“What’s your endgame?” Bridger asked, retreating. “What’s your plan?”
“Oh, clever Bridger Whitt. Beloved of witches and unicorns and pixies. Do you think I’m going to monologue my
whole plan? That I’m a Bond villain? No. Just know that soon the world will know what I know, what you know, what Mr. Chudinov knows. And I will be the reporter who broke the story.”
Bridger quickly looked to Elena. “She’s filming,” he said, voice low. “Find it. Use the blue door.”
“On it.”
“That’s what this is about then? Breaking through the industry that typecast you?”
She tapped her chin. “Your friend, Astrid, said to me the other night that I should seek the truth in the case of politics.” She shrugged. “But I can’t get near politics. Or wars. Or natural disasters. Or even local nightly news. I can’t do anything important while stuck chasing monsters through the woods in tight dresses and high heels. This,” she said, holding up one of Pavel’s books, “this will be my big story. A whole organization that hides the fact that a Dogman exists. That mermaids play in Lake Michigan. That omens of death take the shapes of dogs and prowl the Ozarks. That blood-sucking beasts attack goats and children.”
“You obviously didn’t learn the lesson we tried to teach you the other night,” Bridger said. “We’re trying to protect both sides.”
She scoffed. “You’re obscuring the truth.”
“Okay, say you reveal everything. Say this is your big break. What then? Money? Fame? I mean, we can give you money. The pixies have a profitable cosmetic line, and I’m sure—”
“Respect,” she shot back. “I break this story, I show the world that werewolves are real, that vampires exist in more than stories, and I will finally have the respect I deserve.”
“Maybe,” Bridger agreed. “But you’ll be the monster then. You’ll kill them. You understand that, right? You’ll be responsible when dumbasses arm themselves with guns and hunt them down. That’ll be on you.”
“Pavel will protect them. Won’t you, Intermediary Chudinov?” She smiled sweetly and batted her eyelashes. “It’s your job, isn’t it?”
A low growl from the landing kept Pavel from answering. Elena was furred out as she approached, eyes glowing, the scraps of her dress hanging from her massive frame. She held the remnants of a television camera in her claws.
“My footage!” Summer tossed her hair. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve been live streaming since I walked in here. Everything is being uploaded to my cloud right now.”
Bridger smirked. “Actually, the house has some great magical protections. It blocks cell phone signals. That video isn’t going anywhere.” He took a step onto the stairs. “Okay, time to admit defeat, Summer. You’re surrounded, and your plan didn’t work. Let the pixies go.”
“I still know. I still have evidence. I won’t stop until someone believes me.” She skittered backward, holding the cage of the pixies in front of her. “Don’t come any closer. You can’t come closer.”
“Pavel,” Bridger whispered, “be ready to catch them.” At Pavel’s nod, Bridger ran up the stairs.
Shrieking with threats, Summer brandished the cage in front of her, while Nia and Bran chittered in high-pitched voices.
Summer dropped the pixies over the banister as Bridger charged. Pavel caught them and ripped the cage apart with his bare hands and a surge of magic. Nia and Bran flew free and darted for the wolfsbane. Bran ripped the wolfsbane from Summer’s shoulders while Nia grabbed the rope from the stairs. Elena leapt forward, and Summer ducked and bolted, knocking her shoulder into Bridger’s on the stairs.
Stumbling, Bridger grabbed the banister to keep from falling ass over elbow to the ground floor. He couldn’t stop Summer as she sprinted. Neither could Pavel, curled over in pain, hands smoking from the use of magic against iron.
The front door opened, then closed, and Mindy walked in and blocked the exit when she paused to survey the chaos. Hands on her hips, hair coiffed into a tower, draped in an electric floral print from head to toe, she tapped her shoe on the hardwood. “What the hell is going on?” she bellowed. It was the loudest and most expressive Mindy had ever been, and Bridger welcomed every grating syllable of it.
For some reason, Summer saw safety and sanity in Mindy’s presence and darted toward her. “Help me! Help me! They’re trying to kill me.” She latched onto Mindy’s arms and pleaded, hysterical and crying, acting the quintessential damsel in distress.
Pavel approached and held up his hands. “Mindy,” he said, crisscrossed burns on his palms. “This is Summer. The individual I told you about.”
Bridger released the banister and slid down the stairs, bruising himself the whole way down, until he landed on the floor. He brushed off his pants and stood. His graceful descent hadn’t broken the tension at all, and no one moved or glanced his direction.
“Whatever he told you was a lie,” Summer said. “Do you see that?” She pointed to Elena on the landing. “That’s a werewolf. A werewolf. It’s going to kill me. And you.”
Mindy blinked, face utterly placid. “Bridger,” she said, finally, “congrats on your graduation.”
“Oh, oh, thanks, Mindy.”
“And Pavel,” she said with as much emotion as Bridger had ever heard from her, “thank you for the reference.”
“You’re very welcome. You will be missed.”
Summer stomped her foot. “Are you listening to me? There are werewolves and pixies and things in this house that are supernatural and will kill you. There’s a decapitated mannequin in the attic that was once a human.” Well, that was a lie. “There’s a book about different ways to summon a goblin. There are portraits that follow you with their eyes.”
Okay, both of those were true.
“Lady,” Mindy said, clamping one meaty hand around Summer’s forearm. “I’m well aware.”
From his angle, Bridger couldn’t see Summer’s face, but he could see Mindy’s and her frosted orange lips pulled into the same self-satisfied smirk she wore when she won a level in the games on her phone.
“I quit.”
The entire house shook.
The pictures wobbled. Trinkets and toasters fell to the floor. Dust and plaster rained down. Pavel darted across the room as the floor quaked, and Bridger was caught up in Pavel’s embrace as the house groaned and trembled. Bridger clutched back as magic gathered in the corners of the room as a storm gathers in the sky, thick with energy and potential. The side door flew open.
Bridger had never seen the side door. It was covered in vines on the outside and had no handle on the inside. It blended perfectly with the plaster and the wainscot, and even now, as it stood open with the blooming side yard beyond, Bridger could barely discern the seams in the wall.
A stiff wind blew. The floor rippled like waves meeting the shore. And between one blink and the next, Mindy and Summer went from standing in the foyer, to pitched out of the house. Summer’s scream echoed down the hall. The side door swung shut.
“What the fuck just happened?” Bridger asked.
“Mindy quit.”
“Why? Why did she quit?”
Pavel tilted his head. “You seem surprised.”
“I am surprised! This was like the easiest job ever.”
“Did you not notice the slow decline in bobbleheads?”
“I did, but she said she wanted a change. I thought that meant porcelain babies.”
“Hey,” Elena yelled from the landing, “do you think you two can stop bantering for a moment and actually check on the two people who were literally thrown from the magic house?”
They released each other and ran out of the front door to the side yard.
Mindy lay in a heap in the grass while Summer stood in a patch of flowers, brow furrowed, utter confusion clearly written across her features. She blinked, then spied Pavel, picked her way to the sidewalk, and slapped him.
“How dare you waste my time!” she screeched. “You lure me here and for what? A hoax. All of it a hoax. I’ve had some crappy dates in my time, but this one, Mr. Chu
dinov, takes the ever-loving cake. Next time you want to get in a woman’s bed, don’t bait them with promises of pixie dust.” She zeroed in on Bridger and pushed her finger into his chest. “Messages in the flour? Your voice on the EVP? Pretending to drown in a lake and scare all your friends? You’re a jerk, Bridger Whitt. An absolute jerk. Senior prank or not, there is no reason to terrorize your town, your family, and your friends. I hope you grow up, but if this guy is your mentor, I weep for Midden. Good bye to both of you, and I hope you rot.” She stomped off.
Pavel held the side of his face. A livid hand print bloomed on his cheek. He grinned. “It worked!”
“It bothers me that you sound so surprised that it did work. Is your track record with this that bad?”
Pavel waved his hand. “Mistakes have been made.”
Bridger grimaced. He didn’t want to know.
Mindy sat up from her sprawl and adjusted her glasses, which had been knocked askew. Bridger rushed to assist her to her feet. “Mindy! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she grumbled. “I just can’t believe that after a job as boring as this one all of this excitement happened on my last day.”
Pavel swallowed. “All of what?”
She pointed to where Summer had stormed. “That woman! Ranting about werewolves and goblins! Like she thought she was in a movie.”
“Yes. Well. I can’t believe she was able to break into the house in the first place.”
Mindy brushed flower petals from her outfit, then patted her hair, feeling the shape of it. “You need to change the locks.”
“I will.”
“Good. Well then. I wish you luck in finding a new office manager.”
“Thank you.” Pavel awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Good luck in your new job. I hope it is not as boring as this one.”
She huffed a laugh. “This one will be difficult to beat.” Waving, she toddled down the sidewalk; her clunky heels smacked on the concrete. Bridger stood there until she got into her car and drove away.
“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Bridger asked as he and Pavel entered the house. The door swung shut behind them.