by Zoe Arden
I peered into the glass, trying to see what was inside. The tank was larger than the others, and with the water so dark, it was impossible to see anything. I tapped on the glass.
"Hello?" I said, feeling silly.
Nothing happened. I tapped on the glass again.
Suddenly, a figure moved forward and a light inside switched on, creating soft yellow waves that filled the tank and made everything visible. I drew away from it unconsciously, my mind ceasing to think as pure terror flooded it.
"Oh, my..." I whispered, unable to finish the thought. The creature that stared back at me was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Damon had been right to describe it as half-merman half-werewolf.
Its face was covered in hair that clung to it in long, wet strips. Its eyes were yellow, and it had an elongated snout. Its torso was long, and it had no legs. Well, there was a tail that had a seam running up the middle as if it could split itself open and turn into legs. Or maybe it was more akin to a scar, denoting the place where legs once were. The body itself was covered with a combination of scales and hair that was either dark brown or black.
It took all my strength not to scream. While the other creatures in their tanks seemed to be in a kind of stasis, this one seemed painfully awake. It looked at me with eyes that spoke of the kind of pain and despair most people would never know. Instead of feeling frightened of the creature, I felt bad for it.
"Poor thing," I said, touching the glass. There were chains coming up from the bottom of the tank with special cuffs attached to its arms. The arms were the only thing about it that looked halfway human, and even those would have been difficult to pick out. Like the rest of it, they were covered in scales and hair, though the semblance of fingers still remained.
"Are you related to Grace Beyers?" I asked it. "I mean, Grace Kendall?"
It looked at me and blinked once.
"Are you her father?" There were two blinks.
"Her brother?" One blink.
"You're her brother?" I asked. One blink.
It looked longingly at me, as if desperate to communicate something. I realized then that I'd been mistaken. Its eyes were the most human thing about it.
"Who did this to you?" I asked.
It continued to stare at me. Its mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.
It began to pound on the glass. I backed away and it stopped. Its mouth opened and closed again, and a sudden understanding came over me.
"Are you asking about Grace?" One blink.
I licked my lips. "She was looking for you," I said, unsure whether I should tell it, him, the truth. He had already suffered so much. He would find out sooner or later though; perhaps it was better he found out now rather than wonder about her. False hope might be even worse than the knowledge she was dead.
I inhaled deeply. "Your sister was murdered."
The creature—Owen, I told myself, his name is Owen—looked at me with widening eyes, then he seemed to curl up and draw back into the tank.
From behind me, a voice said, "You shouldn't be here."
I gasped and turned around. A man was standing there. I recognized him.
"Gordie," I said.
I smiled at him. He hesitated, then smiled back.
"I don't think you're supposed to be here," he said, then bit his bottom lip. "Are you?" He was looking at me hopefully.
"Are you?" I asked.
"I'm a guard, I can go anywhere in the building."
"That's great," I said. "I was just running an errand for Mr. Burch, but I'm heading back upstairs now."
I hurried out of the room.
"I haven't seen you in a few days," he said, following me. "I thought you'd quit."
Burch and Jaggers must have kept quiet about what had happened with me. Of course, they wouldn't want it spread around that a witch had tricked them.
"I've been on special assignment," I said, opening the door onto the main floor. The workers were just coming back from lunch. There was lots chatter and people kept stopping to talk to their friends. Guards hurried back and forth, racing each other to get to the front of the warehouse. Red lights were flashing.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Oh, some woman tried to poison Mr. Burch."
My heart stopped. "What?"
"This woman came in disguised as a delivery person. She gave him some poisoned cookies. I think they're arresting her."
"What?! There was no poison in those cookies!" I shrieked and ran to the front of the building. I made it just in time to see Lucy getting handcuffed and hustled out the front doors. One of the guards turned in my direction, and I quickly turned away, hiding behind a vending machine.
Gordie was watching me with a somber expression. "You don't work here anymore, do you?"
I bit my bottom lip. "No. I'm a friend of Damon's. I've been trying to help him."
"Damon?" Gordie asked, his eyes widening. "Is he okay? Where is he?"
"I don't know where he is right now. Hiding. But I do know that he's not a thief or a killer."
Gordie hesitated then said, "There's a side door you can get out through." He cocked his head and indicated I should follow him.
We moved quickly, and when we got to the door, he blushed and said, "Be careful. I think you're an important person, too, and Mr. Burch has a bad temper."
I nodded and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, which only deepened his blush, then hurried from the warehouse before Lucy and I received matching handcuffs.
* * *
CHAPTER
THIRTY
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Lucy and I had borrowed Eleanor's car for the ride over to Mistmoor Point; it was easy since she kept it at our house.
"You use it more than I do," she'd told me after she'd married Sheriff Knoxx. "Keep it and when I want it, I'll know where it is." But she'd also given me a warning. "You wreck it, you bought it."
Those words ran through my mind now as I turned a corner and the tires squealed. I caught a glimpse of a passing motorist who was looking at me as if I was driving the wrong way on a one-way street. I didn't have time to worry about whether I'd offended them.
There was only one person I could think of who might be able to help me out of this situation. I dialed her number.
"Felicity," I said, breathing hard as I turned another corner. "It's Ava. I need your help."
A few minutes later, I pulled into the sheriff's station. Sheriff Lincoln Maxwell was a good man. In his late twenties, he had bronze hair, blue eyes, and was well-liked by the people of Mistmoor. Unlike Sheriff Knoxx, he didn't have a temper, and he always listened to everyone's side in a dispute, even if he disagreed with you. But if he thought you'd committed a crime, he'd go after you with everything he had. I'd seen it before, and it made me afraid for Lucy.
The station itself was similar to the sheriff's station in Sweetland Cove. The main difference was that they didn't use their interrogation rooms for storage as Sheriff Knoxx did, but then Sheriff Maxwell was also known as something of a neat freak. He liked everything in its place and wasn't one to let things slide organizationally.
"Hi, Sheriff Maxwell," I said when I entered the station. I tried to smile but my mouth wouldn't work. It would only allow me to pucker and pout.
"Ava," he said, nodding politely. He didn't ask why I was there. He didn't need to.
I forced my feet to stop shuffling and stood looking at him a moment before I blurted, "The cookies weren't poisoned!"
He nodded. "That's good to know. I sent them to the lab, and we should have the results back by the end of the day."
"You sent them to the lab? Already?"
"I like to act fast when attempted murder is involved."
"Attempted..." I felt my neck burn red.
"It might help if you tell me what was in those cookies you gave Lucy to feed Mr. Burch. And why."
I sighed. "It was a
combination of happiness, exuberance, and desire extracts."
"That's quite a happy little cookie. I'm not sure it explains the reaction Mr. Burch and his guards had when they ate them, though. They ended up at each other's throats. Mr. Jaggers called us and when we got there, they were ready to kill each other over those cookies. Hardly sounds like the happy little cookies you claim you were going for."
I rubbed my temples; my head was starting to ache. "I quadrupled the extracts."
His eyes widened. "Quadrupled them?" He uncrossed his legs, suddenly more alert. "Sounds like things backfired. Now why don't you tell me why you did it. And why send Lucy to do your dirty work for you?"
"How do you know I'm behind all this?"
"Easy. The cookies came from your bakery. When Lucy gets herself into trouble, it's usually coffee related. When you're the instigator, it's baked goods."
I cringed at how easy we were to predict. "What's gonna happen to her?"
"Nothing. Yet. If the cookies just had extracts in them and not poison like you say, which I'm inclined to believe, by the way, then all Lucy's really in trouble for is instigating a riot."
"A riot?!" I shouted louder than I meant to. "There were only three people involved. It hardly seems fair to call it a riot."
"Not if you'd seen what I'd seen," he said, shaking his head. "Mr. Burch had one of his guards in a leg lock, and the other guard had him in a headlock. And they were still grabbing for those darn cookies."
"But Lucy wasn't responsible. You said so yourself. Lock me up, if you've got to lock someone up."
"Actually..." he said, rubbing his chin, "I might just do that."
I blinked. "Really?"
He stood up. "Ava Fortune, you're under arrest for conspiracy to incite a riot."
Heels clicked down the hall, and Felicity Redfern appeared in the doorway. She was a mass of wild, red hair that framed her perfectly pale skin and highlighted the rosiness of her cheeks and lips.
"Lincoln Maxwell," she screeched. "Did I just hear you place Ava under arrest? My friend. My good friend."
Sheriff Maxwell blushed. He frequently did around Felicity. They'd been going together for some time now, and he still got goofy around her, especially when she was mad at him.
"Now hang on, Felicity," he said, coming around his desk. "Ava just confessed to plotting against Mr. Burch at Standards Warehouse. She fed him cookies with quadruple amounts of happiness, exuberance, and desire extract."
Felicity's eyes lit up, and she turned to me. "Quadrupled? Really?"
I shrugged. "I had to make sure it worked."
Felicity's head snapped back to focus on Lincoln. "Do you know why she did it though? Did you even bother to ask her?"
"Of course, I asked her," he said. "She hasn't answered."
I stepped forward. "Standards is hiding mutants in their basement." I shook my head, afraid I was mucking this up. "Not just hiding, creating."
"Creating mutants?" Sheriff Maxwell asked. Even Felicity looked doubtful. I hadn't had time to fill her in on everything on my way over. I'd just given her the basics—Lucy had been arrested, and I needed help getting her out. She and Lucy were good friends; Lucy had introduced me to Felicity, so I knew she wouldn't say no.
"It's true," I said. "Kip Burch is responsible for the missing tourists over in Sweetland and—"
Sheriff Maxwell interrupted. "I heard one of those tourists was found alive and well. Sheriff Knoxx called to tell me about it."
"Well, yes, she was," I said. I'd momentarily forgotten about the writer who'd skipped out on her bill. "But the other two are still missing, and how many more might there be?"
"You're saying that Burch is the one behind these missing people?" Sheriff Maxwell asked.
"That's exactly what I'm saying," I told him. "Look, I have proof." I got my phone out of my pocket and opened the picture gallery. Everything was black. "Oh, no," I said, scrolling from one black screen to another. "There must've been a spell in the basement that mucked with my pictures, or else my phone is broken." I turned it off, horrified. This had all been for nothing.
Felicity was staring at me, and I could tell she was less certain now, but she steeled her gaze and rolled her shoulders back anyway. "Lucy doesn’t deserve to be in jail," she said. "You need to let her out. Now."
Sheriff Maxwell sighed. "I can't just let her go. We've already filed charges."
"Do you really think she poisoned those cookies?" Felicity asked.
"No, I believe Ava when she says it was nothing but overdone extract."
Felicity smiled triumphantly. "Then you have no reason to keep her."
"She still instigated the fight that broke out."
Felicity scoffed. "Burch isn't exactly known for his soft temperament. How do you know it was Lucy who got things going and not him? You know what he's like."
Sheriff Maxwell considered what she was saying.
I wanted to jump in and say something useful, but I was smart enough to know when to back off and let someone else take the lead.
Felicity said, "Did Lucy try to break into the place?"
"No," said Sheriff Maxwell.
Felicity smiled sweetly at him. She walked slowly over and put her arms around his neck. "Lincoln, if Lucy didn't poison anyone and didn't try to break in, then you have no reason to hold her."
He let out a long sigh. "All right," he finally said. "Burch will try and tan my hide but you're right. Technically, there was nothing illegal about Lucy's actions." He shot me a look. "Or yours so far as I know." He paused. "Where were you while all this was going on anyway?"
I hesitated. "I, um, was waiting in the car."
I could tell he didn't believe me, but I could also tell that it didn't matter anymore. Felicity had done what I'd asked, thank the witches.
"I'll let her out," he said. "But the two of you need to get out of here. Go back to Sweetland and don't go playing any more practical jokes on people."
"Of course not," I said, just happy he'd agreed to let Lucy out.
He narrowed his eyes at me then went into the back and returned a moment later with Lucy at his side. Felicity gave her a hug, and Lucy promised to call her later. Sheriff Maxwell watched us go.
"Are you okay?" I asked her when we were in the car. "What happened, anyway? Everything seemed fine when I left you."
"It was. Only I didn't get out of there in time. That guard came running back to his station and grabbed a Taser gun. He went after Burch and the other guard with it.
My eyes widened. "A Taser?"
"Yeah. So, I got worried and ran after him, trying to hit him with a spell so I could get it away from him. Then Burch grabbed me and tried to use me as a shield, and that guy Jaggers came out and started yelling."
"Wow," I murmured softly as I got the car moving. "I'm sorry I missed all that."
"Sorry you missed it or sorry it happened?" she asked, somewhat irritated.
"Both," I said. "I'd never have left you alone if I'd known what was gonna happen."
She smiled. It was thin, but at least it was there. "Anyway, Jaggers took one look at Burch and knew he wasn't in his right mind. Did you know he's a wizard? He accused me of poisoning Burch and called the sheriff."
She let out a heavy sigh, and I shot her a look. "You are all right, though. Aren't you? You didn't get zapped with that Taser, did you?"
"No. Jaggers managed to calm them all down."
"That's good." I bit my lip. Jaggers was a wizard? So was Burch. "You know what I think? I think that all the management level guys are wizards, and all the workers are human."
She nodded. "Makes sense. They figure they can control humans a lot more easily than other witches and wizards." She hesitated. "There's something else."
I looked at her as I headed down the main road to get us back to Sweetland Cove. "Yeah?"
"While we were waiting for the sheriff, I overheard Burch and Jaggers talking. They're onto you."
"What do you mean?"
"They know that name you gave them while you were working there was fake. They figured it out pretty easily, it sounds like."
Uh oh. I'd wondered about that.
"And?" I asked. "Do they know my real name?"
She nodded. "Some other guy who works for Burch figured it out. I think it was the same guy who broke into Damon's apartment."
"Crud. That's not good."
"Yeah. They know who you are, and when they learned I was from Sweetland, they figured I was connected to you somehow. They're afraid you're gonna blow the lid off their creepy little experiments. Burch told Jaggers to get rid of the evidence."
"Get rid of the evidence? What evidence? You don't think they mean..."
"I think that's exactly what they mean. Burch wants those mutants destroyed. We got too close. He's worried."
"Did he say when he wanted to do it?"
"Seventy-two hours. After that, he doesn't want a trace of those creatures anywhere near Standards."
* * *
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
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I hadn't been back to Bridal Barista since the night of the stabbing. I'd torn up the bill they'd sent and took it as a good sign they hadn't sent another. Maybe they'd come to their senses.
A woman rushed up to me as I walked in. "Good afternoon." She smiled. "Welcome to Bridal Barista. Do you have an appoint—"
The smile dropped off her face.
"You!" Her smooth skin suddenly crinkled, and her eyes went from phony but kind to hateful. "I remember you." She turned around as if looking for help.
"Rachel," I said, trying to calm her down. I didn't have a lot of time. Seventy-two hours was ticking quickly away.
Her head snapped back around. "You can call me Miss Underwright." She glowered at me with an expression equal parts hate, scorn, and irritation.