by Zoe Arden
"Come on, Dad. Ease up," said one of the younger men. "Me and Robbie have it. You take a breather."
"Are you saying I'm old?" Max asked. He couldn't have been older than forty-five, though he was in such good shape I'd have believed he was much younger.
"You're not, you're impossible," the younger man said back.
The younger man's brother, who must have been Robbie, said, "Theo was trying to be nice. We're here to help. Let us help. You're gonna be here all day, the least we can do is unload the truck and set things up for you."
Max's face softened. "All right," he said, wiping his hands on the yellow apron he was already wearing. "I'll take that break. You two finish up and when you're done, let me know. And thank you."
Robbie and Theo smiled and continued about their business. I followed Max as he took a seat beside a little juice stand that had already opened for business. He was sipping on a large glass of something that looked like a sunrise when I approached him.
"Hey," I said.
He looked up. "Snowball's mama," he replied, smiling.
"Ava Fortune," I told him. "I'm not sure I properly introduced myself last time."
He shrugged. "My memory's not great with names. Even if you'd told me, I'd probably have forgotten it by now. But a face... a face I never forget."
I stored that information away for future reference and asked if I could take a seat.
"Go ahead. My boys are fixing up the stand for me this morning." He said it proudly, like he was happy to have two sons who cared enough for him to handle business.
"That's nice."
"You got any kids?" He squinted at me in the rising sun. "Nah, you're too young for kids. I bet that cat of yours keeps you on your toes, though. How is Snowball, anyway? You know a tourist almost caught her talking to us the other day."
"Really?" I asked. This was news to me.
"Yeah, she saw Snowball's mouth moving and took a second and third look. Snowball just stared blankly at her, and she ended up thinking she'd gotten too much sun." He laughed. It was a light sound coming from such a large man. "That cat of yours is pretty clever."
"That she is," I said, making a mental note to talk to Snowball about speaking in front of humans later.
We sat in silence a minute. "So, what brings you here?" he asked. "More questions about your missing friend?"
I nodded.
"I already told you everything I know."
"Yeah, but I thought maybe one of the other vendors might know something."
He tilted his head to the side as if considering that. "Maybe," he said with another shrug. He was still wearing his apron. I could tell it had been washed recently because there were clean patches on it, but the fish stains from this morning were already beginning to smell.
Max finished his juice and stood up. "Good luck with your friend," he said and started away.
"Hey," I called, running after him. He turned to look at me but didn't stop walking. "You go out on these waters a lot, right?"
He grunted a laugh. "Every day of my life."
"Have you ever seen anything... unusual?"
He looked at me and laughed again. "You'd have to be more specific than that. There's lots of unusual things out there." He nodded his head in the direction of the ocean.
"Have you ever seen any merpeople?" I asked.
His steps slowed. He ran a hand over his mouth. "From time to time, but mostly they keep away."
"Have you ever seen anything that's..." I racked my brain for the right way to phrase it so that he wouldn't think I was crazy. "Anything that's maybe only part merperson?" Was merperson even the right word? I wasn't sure. "Like half-merman half... werewolf?" I gulped and waited for his reaction. I was expecting him to laugh or run away from me, but his face sobered.
"There's rumors," he said almost under his breath. "That doesn't mean a whole lot though. There's always one kind of rumor or another. Most of them don't pan out."
"What sort of rumors are you talking about?" I asked, holding my breath.
He rolled his shoulders back. "Not mermen-werewolf hybrids exactly, just mermen who've been... changed."
"Changed?" I asked.
"Evolved," he said. "They're not just mermen anymore. They're something else entirely. A new species altogether."
I looked at him and felt my heart begin to race. "How is it that these mermen are supposed to have... evolved?"
He shrugged. "No one knows."
"Have you ever seen one?"
He shook his head. "No, but Robbie has."
"Your son?"
He nodded and started walking again. We stopped in front of his stand, and he called to his son. Robbie came over. He was a tall man with a light beard and hair cut short to his head. He was wearing a yellow apron like his dad, only his didn't appear to have been washed in months. There were no clean patches, just lighter fish stains and darker fish stains.
"This is Ava, Snowball's Mama. Tell her about that time you saw that thing out by Old Blue."
I arched my eyebrows, wondering how Robbie would react to the question. A lot of guys would clam up if asked to explain the time they saw some weird half-breed sea creature that wasn't even supposed to exist.
Instead of clamming up, Robbie's eyes lit up. He obviously enjoyed telling this story.
"Dad was sick that day, so me and Theo were out alone."
"I had the flu," Max interjected. "Ain't a man alive tough enough to brave the waters when he can't even keep his coffee down."
Robbie continued, "Old Blue is this lighthouse that fell out of use ages ago. It's starting to crumble away, but the area right around it makes for good fishing. So, we were set up with our nets and everything, and I turned around, and sitting on a rock right in front of Old Blue was this thing."
I couldn't help but notice how Robbie's words mirrored Damon's. Thing. As if there were no other words to describe it.
"It was like someone took a merman and a lizard and smushed them together."
My brow crinkled. "A lizard? Not a wolf?"
"No, there was nothing wolf-like about this thing. It was half-merman, half-dragon."
"Dragon?" my eyes widened.
"Not one of those fire-breathers you hear about in fairy tales. I mean a real dragon. What are they called? Komodos."
I licked my lips. "Are you sure you weren't just seeing things?"
"There's no trick of the light that could make you see something like that," he said, somewhat defensively.
My mind was still trying to wrap itself around this newest information. "Your brother didn't see it?"
"No. Theo was setting some stuff up on the other side of the boat. I called him over, but by the time he got there, the thing had slipped off the rock and gone back into the water."
I thanked Robbie for his time and for sharing his story with me. I stopped to ask the other fishmongers if they'd seen Damon recently or had ever seen Grace come around, but no one had any information to give. Either they really knew nothing, or they didn't want to share it.
I headed back toward the bakery, taking a shortcut I knew, so that I could make it back before we opened. I followed a path lined with orange and blue palm trees that curved around a large boulder and eventually came out on the main road. There was a noise behind me.
I turned to look but saw nothing, so I shrugged it off and kept walking. A minute later, I heard the noise again, only this time it was closer. I spun around.
"Who's there?" I shouted. There was no answer.
Footsteps started running toward me. I panicked and started to run. The path I was on started to curve up ahead. The main road wasn't far. If I could just get to it, I'd be surrounded by people. A rock jumped out at me, and I tripped and landed flat on my face.
"Umph!" I grunted as I put my hands out in front of me to soften the landing.
Two hands grabbed hold of me and pulled me up.
"Get away from me!" I yelled, slapping at my attacker.
"Ava!"
a man's voice yelled back at me.
I opened my eyes, which I hadn't realized I was shutting. "Damon?"
"Yes. Stop hitting me."
I stopped struggling and stood with my hands on my hips. "Are you following me?"
"I saw you talking to Max. You've got to stop looking for me. It isn't safe. For either of us."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you don't stop, then whoever's after me is gonna go after you next."
"So, someone's still after you?"
He paused and slowly rolled up his sleeve, exposing a large gash on his arm. "
"What happened?" I asked, grabbing hold of him. "That cut looks bad. You need to see Dr. Dunne."
He rolled his sleeve back down. "I was sleeping in a park the other night, I thought I was hidden pretty well but I guess it wasn't well enough. Someone tried to stab me in the middle of the night. I was lucky to get away."
My shoulders ached with tension. "Damon, you can't go on like this. You've got to protect yourself. Turn yourself in. At least then you'll know no one's gonna stab you in the middle of the night."
He hesitated then shook his head. "I can't turn myself in until I find a way to prove that Burch is behind all this."
"You think he's the one who tried to stab you?"
"Either he did it himself or he hired someone to do it. I'm not sure which, but I need to find out."
I pressed my fingers together. "I have an idea."
He looked at me cautiously. "Something tells me I'm not going to like it."
I smiled at him. "You'll just have to trust me."
* * *
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
.
.
.
* * *
* * *
.
Standards Warehouse was a large though rather unassuming warehouse in a relatively isolated area of Mistmoor Point. It took me two hours to get there using a speed spell, though about half that time was because I'd gotten lost.
It wasn't that it was so hard to find, at least not once you knew where to look. Damon had reluctantly given me the address, but when he'd started to give me directions, too, a group of beachgoers had come walking by and he'd ducked out of sight. He must have decided to stay out of sight because he hadn't come back. Part of me had thought he'd show up at my bedroom window during the night and try and talk me out of it, but he never had.
I didn't plan to do much at the warehouse other than have a look around. It clearly wasn't safe for Damon to come here himself, but even if someone saw me, I didn't think it would amount to much. The building was fenced in, but the area around it was open to anyone who cared to use it. If anyone asked me what I was doing here, I could just say I was out for a walk and got lost.
It wasn't far from the water, hidden amongst a grouping of trees that some people might call a forest but which I thought looked rather artificial. As if the trees themselves had been planted there specifically to provide cover for this warehouse. They were just too neat. The trees fell in rows and columns, more like a planned subdivision than an actual forest. If this was Beggars Forest, trees would be scattered everywhere. There would be no logical order to any of it.
I walked around the chainlink fence that circled the perimeter. There was a loading dock in back and a front entrance that required a pass card to get in. A few security guards hovered nearby. I wondered if one of them was Damon's friend, Gordie Peterman. It might be helpful to talk to him if I could somehow swing it.
I'd called Eleanor and explained my absence at the bakery by telling her that Lucy was having a minor crisis she needed help with. Then I'd called Lucy and told her about my cover story.
"What do you need a cover story for?" she'd asked. "Why don't you just tell them you went to Mistmoor to check out the warehouse?"
"Ha!" I said. "Eleanor and my dad would flip out. They don't want me investigating this stuff. They think Damon's guilty."
Lucy paused. "They said that?"
"They didn't put it quite so bluntly, but yeah."
She hesitated then asked, "Are you sure he's not?"
"Yes, I'm sure,” I snapped. “Are you gonna help me or not?"
"Okay, okay," she said. "Sorry."
She promised that if Eleanor or anyone else came looking for me, she'd burst into tears about how Wren, the new guy she was dating, had made her split their dinner bill the other night, and I'd gone to have it out with him in her honor.
"That's a terrible cover story," I told her.
"Would you rather I said you got drunk and decided to swim to Florida?"
I sighed. Lucy enjoyed teasing me way too much.
"Tell them whatever you want as long as they don't know what I'm really doing," I said and hung up.
I watched the warehouse a while, sitting nestled amongst the trees that covered it. There was a rock that made a nice bench. I took a seat and followed the guards with my eyes as they made their rounds, searching for a sign that there was something out of place, but there was nothing particularly interesting or out of the ordinary about any of it.
After an hour, I began to get bored. This was getting me nowhere. From what I could tell, the warehouse sometimes received visitors on business. A couple of men had come and gone since I'd been watching. They hadn't swiped a pass card, they'd simply approached the front gate and pushed a buzzer. When the gate opened, they went to the front doors and pushed another buzzer, showed their I.D.'s, and were allowed inside. A couple of younger women had come by as well and gone through the same procedure.
I didn't know what these visitors might be doing inside, but I did know that if I didn't do something soon, this was all going to be a big waste of time.
I went to the front gate and pushed the buzzer as I'd seen the other visitors do.
"Who is it?" a man's voice responded. He sounded irritated that I'd dared to buzz.
"Um... my name is... Clarissa Pauline and I... um... am here about...." I mumbled something incoherent, hoping he'd think the speaker was just malfunctioning.
This wasn't going quite so smoothly as I'd envisioned. I'd had a plan in my head before hitting the buzzer, but now that I was actually speaking with someone, it seemed to have flown right out of my head.
There was a horrifying moment of silence, and then the voice said, "Did you say you're here about the job?"
"Yes!" I shouted, jumping at the chance the voice had just offered me. "The job. Yes."
There was a buzz, and the gate opened. I walked through it, going up a narrow path that led to a door. A security guard patrolling the outside of the building passed me, looked me over once, and continued on his way having decided I was not a threat. I stopped outside the main door and pushed another buzzer.
"State your name," said the same voice I'd just spoken to. He sounded bored.
"Clarissa Pauline."
"Purpose of visit?"
"I'm here about the job."
The buzzer sounded, and there was a clicking sound as the door unlocked. I stepped into the building and was greeted by a man in his late twenties dressed in khaki pants and a dark blue polo shirt that said Standards in white lettering in the upper right corner. Beneath that was a name tag that read Howie. He was sitting on a stool behind a high counter and stood to grab something before sitting back down.
"Miss Pauline," he said, pushing a clipboard toward me. "Please sign in."
I looked at the sign in sheet. It asked for my name, address, and purpose. In the address section, I just put "Mistmoor Point" and hoped it was enough. He typed something into his computer and looked at me suspiciously.
"You're not on our list of interviewees," he said.
My heart began to pound.
"I'm not? Oh, well, that's probably because I just got a call about it this morning. They told me to come down, so here I am."
Howie didn't look convinced.
"Oh?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest like he was challenging me. "Who called you?
"
I hesitated. "Kip Burch." It was the first name I could think of that might mean something to this man.
Howie's eyes widened. "Mr. Burch called you? Himself?"
I nodded.
Howie looked befuddled. "I-I'm sorry," he said, quickly uncrossing his arms. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed a number. "The next interviewee is here," he said then he turned away from me and whispered, "Mr. Burch called her himself."
I heard whoever was on the other end of the line say something that sounded like an expletive, and a few minutes later, a balding man with dark gray eyes appeared.
"Miss Pauline," he said warmly, extending his hand. "I'm Mr. Jaggers. Mr. Burch didn't tell me he had anyone personally in mind for the secretarial position."
"No problem," I said.
He led me down a hall and into an office. I gulped as I caught glimpses of the warehouse, which looked ten times bigger than it did from the outside. I was suddenly terrified that Mr. Burch would walk by any second and out me.
"How do you know Mr. Buch?" asked Mr. Jaggers, offering me a seat opposite his. When I stared blankly back at him, his face began to glow red. "I mean, if you don't mind my asking.
I smiled sweetly. "Kip told me not to say how I knew him. He said it might color people's perception of him. Tee hee." I giggled girlishly and blushed, hoping to convey the idea that whatever was between me and Mr. Burch was personal and not to be questioned.
Jaggers nodded. "Yes, of course. I understand."
I almost dropped my jaw open I was so surprised that had actually worked. Instead, it gave me an idea.
"In fact, Kippy told me that if I saw him here, I should pretend like I didn't even know him, and he would do the same. He's such a silly goose, but I'd do just anything for him." I said it all in a sickly-sweet sing-song voice that, I hoped, illustrated I was madly in love with Jaggers' boss, a man he clearly feared.