by J. B. Garner
Now I was the one blushing. What can I say? I was proud of how far I had come in so short a time, and I’m a sucker for flattery. Just ask Aelfread. “Shush you.” I focused on the reading. “Well, depending on your astronomical definition, blue moons are either super rare or just kind of rare.” Even my thick thumbs could work a screen deftly when I put a mind to it, and I was already moving on to websites on lunar cycles and the current calendar. “Maybe this is just a coincidence but – “
“Hold on,” Bunny interrupted as she tucked her phone back into her pocket. “Let me guess: we’re due for a blue moon by one definition or another?”
I grinned. “How did you ever guess?” I glanced back at the phone and read verbatim, “’By the Maine Farmers’ Almanac definition of blue moon (the third full moon in a season of four full moons via astronomical reference), the next blue moon we will see will be on May 21st of this year.’”
“Tomorrow night.” Bunny frowned thoughtfully. “Of course, we have no idea what that actually means. I hope whatever Mother has for us is going to help.”
I nodded slowly, but my mind was already thinking ahead. If we were left high and dry, there was one person I trusted more than anyone else who knew a lot more about magic than anyone gave him credit for, Aelfread Aelfson.
6
Mother held out the stuffed manila envelope with both hands. “I know this is not much,” she said in Truespeech, her gaze down and away from both of us, “but I hope it leads you towards my mate’s scent.” The tremulous sound of her voice betrayed that she was probably close to a breakdown. “Please bring him home.”
We were all at the front door of the Sanderson home, and Bunny and I were in agreement that it was best to take a look at what Mother had for us at a safer, neutral location. After all, it stood to reason that if there was nefarious business going on that it wouldn’t be hard for the kidnappers to realize who would be brought in on the case. That made us potential targets.
Naturally, you could argue that Mother and the puppies were also targets, but we were hoping that we made the right choice.
Bunny’s jaw tightened a shade, and there was just something … off at the way she looked at Mother, something I had never seen in the stalwart Huntress before that I couldn’t quite place. For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to say anything or take the envelope, but when I was about to speak for her, she opened her mouth. “I promise, both as a Huntress and … a friend that I will bring Patches back to you safe and sound.”
“She is not the only one making that promise,” I chimed in. “His fate is in good hands.”
It was like I wasn’t really in the picture at that moment, the side character in a sitcom that shouted something from the edge of the frame. Mother smiled faintly, still not making eye contact, as Bunny gingerly took the evidence, almost as if she was doing her best to avoid touching the Corgi-were’s hands, and stepped back out the door. I watched, wondering what the heck I was seeing. A few seconds of uncomfortable silence passed before I cleared my throat.
“We had better get to work then.” I thumbed out towards the parked Kia. “If you need anything else, Mother, do not hesitate to call upon us.”
She finally acknowledged my presence with a nod. “Of course. Thank you, Lady Stone, and happy hunting to you both.” I’d say she was acting like a shy girl on prom night as she stepped back and closed the front door.
Bunny didn’t say a word as the lock clicked, either completely cool or totally numb, before turning toward the car. Switching back to English, she handed the envelope over to me. “Let’s maximize our time. You start sorting through this stuff, and I’ll drive.”
I took it, and as she began to walk towards the car, taking the same path over the stones and down the drive, I followed in her wake. “Fine, but are we going to address the elephant in the room?”
She didn’t slow as she fished her keys out of her jacket. “I thought we were done with the questions and answers already.”
“We were because I was going to be nice and not press you on some things, but I feel like I have to after, well, whatever that was.” We were to the Kia now, the lights flashing as Bunny thumbed the fob to unlock the doors. “That was intense enough that it might affect how this job goes, you know what I’m saying?”
Bunny might have shot me a glance (it felt like she did) but I couldn’t tell with the car in the way. She slipped into the driver’s seat before reaching through to open the passenger’s door for me. “Trust me, Mary, now that I have some idea of what’s going on, my past with the Sandersons will only make this job easier.” My frown must have looked as disbelieving as I thought because she rolled her eyes and added, “I swear on my badge.”
That was the one thing that she could swear on that would make me back down. “Fine.” I clambered into the passenger seat, locking the door behind me and buckling in. “My only condition is that you promise to tell me the whole story when we’re done.” I predicted her sigh and cut it off with an honest smile. “Not because I want to be a busybody … well, not too much … but more because it sounds like you really need to get this off your chest.”
Some of the tension that was hiding beneath the surface melted away as Bunny fired up the car, the engine coming to life on the first turn of the key. “You win, I suppose.” She held up three fingers in what I thought was the Girl Scouts’ salute as she pulled out. “Promise. Now, with that settled” – she pointed us towards the highway – “let’s hit my office and sort this out.”
I was feeling a lot better about this whole thing with that settled. Whatever was going on under the surface was hurting Bunny under her tough girl veneer, and I would be happy to help her sort this out once Patches was safe. Of course, minefields are made up of more than one mine, so I braced mentally for the next as I opened my big trap.
“About that,” I began as I tried to act nonchalantly, opening the envelope and taking peek inside.
Bunny was focused on the road, so she barely acknowledged me with an, “Eh?”
“I think we should go to the Easy-E-Mart.” I didn’t give her a chance to get a word in, rolling into my mentally rehearsed explanation. “I think we need to explore this ‘blue moon’ angle more than we have and I don’t think either of us has the magical knowledge to do that. Aelfie, though, I’m confident he could figure this out while we parse through these other clues.”
Bunny’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel, and she did that rabbit chuff-growl thing in her human form. Mine stepped on. She managed to keep control enough not to either shift or send us off the road and into one of the immaculate yards we passed.
“As we’re being ‘honest with our girlfriends’ right now, let me be crystal clear.” Her voice was low and dangerous now. “You have the slightest inkling now of how personal this collar is for me, and you know how I feel about Aelfson. Do you honestly think I would let that womanizing, lying, gossiping con man anywhere near this?”
I took a deep breath, reminding myself that no matter what I thought of Aelfread, how much I loved him, that he had tweaked a lot of noses and hurt a lot of people before he started to do good. Bunny had every right to feel the way she did about him, even if it was high time she began to rethink how she saw him. A few moments of steeling myself later, I decided to try again.
“I get that, Bunny,” I began diplomatically. “I can’t convince you otherwise; you’ll have to see that for yourself.” I raised a finger to ward off the incoming objection. “But it’s because this is obviously so important to you that we can’t ignore any avenue to wrap this up quickly and safely. I want to get Patches back safely too.”
Bunny was barely paying attention to the road now, red eyes squarely on me. “A couple of good deeds is only a drop in the bucket before I’ll trust him with something like this. He did something a little self-sacrificing when he realized he had gone too far. So what? That doesn’t make him some knight-in-shining-armor; that makes him a slimebag who wanted to save his own sk
in.”
The fact of the matter was that I had a temper only a little less intense than Bunny’s and now she was starting to push buttons. I met her angry gaze with my own, brows knitting in frustration and a growing coal of fury. “If you thought he was so horrible, why are you waiting until now to make such a big deal about it? It’s been months, Bunny! By my father’s beard, you’ve been playing nice all this time to spring this right now, of all times?”
“I’ve never been shy about telling you, warning you, since the moment we met, that Aelfson is no good for you,” she snapped back. “You can’t deny that, and I told you the moment you asked for him from his father that you were dumb for doing that. The reason I didn’t keep on with it is that, news flash, you’re a grown woman who can make her own stupid decisions! You didn’t need me harping on you about it!”
I wasn’t giving ground on this one as I shot back, “You didn’t answer my question!” Okay, that was a little pedantic, but all’s fair in a spat between friends, right?
She was about two seconds from shifting as she practically snarled an answer. “I wouldn’t have said a damn word if you hadn’t brought up Aelfson to begin with. Now that you have, though, I thought it was about time you actually heard this and maybe, just maybe, you’ll listen for once!”
I didn’t give two cares. I poked the bear, er, bunny almost literally as I pointed up at Bunny’s nose. “No, it’s high time for you to listen for once! You aren’t even giving Aelfread a chance here! He’s been living an honest life, staying out of trouble, and trying to do right by me this whole time. When are you going to relent a little, Ms. Police Officer, and forgive a little?”
You might be wondering how Bunny was managing to keep us safe on the road during this entire argument. It’s not like I was paying attention to the road myself so I think the proper answer would be that we weren’t safe, not at all.
The first warning that we were in trouble was the loud thump as the Kia’s left front wheel hit a curb. I let out a yelp of surprise, and both of our heads snapped forward to see the headlights perfectly illuminating the delightfully provincial red-brick mailbox dead ahead. On instinct, I clenched both the manila envelope and my messenger bag against my chest, arms crossed over them, while Bunny’s sharp reflexes kicked in.
Simultaneously, she jerked the wheel away from the danger and tapped the brakes just enough to start a short skid. A split-second later, as I imagined I heard the tap and screech of the mailbox against the front corner of the car, she slammed on the accelerator, lurching the boxy Kia forward like (no pun intended) a jackrabbit.
Instead of the mailbox becoming intimately introduced to either the engine or my lap, an ear-splitting squeal of brick-on-body tortured us as Bunny managed to turn the crash into a near-crash. From behind me, I swear I heard another squeal of an entirely different nature, but I figured it was my imagination. Either way, I winced at both the noise and the future cost of the bodywork that would need to be done on the poor vehicle. If we had had this stupid fight in real traffic, well, it’s not hard to do the math on that one.
There was another jarring hit through the suspension as my end of the car hopped down onto the street and then came the intense pressure across my waist and breastbone as Bunny slammed on the brakes, bringing us to a screeching and abrupt halt in front of a red traffic signal, one block from the still-active highway.
We sat there for a moment, breathing heavily as the adrenaline pumped through our bodies. Heart-racing and wide-eyed, I glanced over at Bunny again at the same second that she looked over at me. Cold sweat was beading on her brow just as I’m sure it was cooling my own.
“I’m sorry,” we both said in near-perfect harmony.
I think we would both have broken down into nervous laughter after that if a third voice hadn’t taken this moment to speak up, a high-pitched sound that instantly grated on my ears like a rusty cheese shredder.
“Hey,” it cried in Truespeech, “you two low-minded wenches should be apologizing to us instead!”
As we both turned to look, the voice punctuated its point with the distinct sound of racking shotguns, like more than one, accompanied by the growing buzz of more Figment presences just now coming into my senses. What greeted us was three mouse-like faces on small humanoid bodies, dressed in nothing but furry birthday suits, two of them with sawed-off pump shotguns pointed menacingly in our general direction from the open trunk area of the hatchback.
“Oh, yeah, this is also an abduction, if it was not immediately obvious,” the unarmed one in the middle commanded. “Raise your hands and surrender!”
7
I might be tough, but I wasn’t bulletproof, and I guessed that no matter how fast Garou healed, dead was still dead. Still, I had to try to do something brave, bold, and stupid. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what these rat bastards were here about and we couldn’t let Mother’s evidence get into these guys’ hands. Of course, that was assuming it was even worth risking my life for but, hey, you’ve got to take some things on faith.
As Bunny raised her hands, I quickly unzipped my work bag and stuffed the envelope in. Even as I heard the back hatch of the Kia open, one of the gun-toting rats noticed my movement or at least my non-compliance as a distinctly feminine squeak added into the mix with, “The captain said hands-up, Dwarf! Now do it! No more trickery!”
I had gotten done what I needed to do. “Fine, you dogs, er, rats,” I replied. “You have the advantage.” I raised my hands, hoping I was doing a good job at feigning defeat. As I did so, I closed my eyes for just a second, long enough to focus on activating a pair of runewords I had etched into the leather of my bag.
The biting chill of magical energy leaving my body made me want to shiver, an involuntary response I tried to bite down on, as the runes filled with power. Even as I heard the scuttle of mousey paws on the back upholstery, the bag’s zipper closed of its own accord, powered by one simple runeword, and the other, well, that was a special surprise for our new friends. It stayed primed and ready for the moment.
I had to hope that Bunny caught what I was doing, but she was now in Huntress mode, and that meant she was all stone-faced business. “Do you have any idea who you are accosting?” she snarled over her shoulder. “You know not what forces you are – “
“Of course, we do, Huntress,” the talky rat shot back. “This is not some chance banditry.” I was figuring that Mr. Leader was a male and still behind us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my new lady friend coming around my side of the car. Finally, I got something close to a good look at our attackers.
To start with, as I noted before, the ratpeople were all buck naked. At least they were as furry as Bunny was when she was in her hybrid form and that diminished the vaguely awkward feeling their nakedness put off. All the same, it wasn’t as covering as actual clothes and left little to the imagination in the sexual characteristics department, especially for the two men among them. Her fur was brown while the guy I could see coming up on Bunny’s side had black fur with white patches.
The plus side was that they had nothing on them besides their shotguns and bad attitudes.
They were also shorter than I expected. It was obvious at this point that these were rat or mouse Garou of some kind so in some ways related to Bunny as a wererabbit. So, I was surprised to see that these folks were no more than five feet tall in their hybrid forms as opposed to Bunny’s big, bad, seven feet of hopping fury. Their clawed hands and feet looked sharp enough, though, and the shotguns were plenty real.
“If you know who we are,” I called back, eyes still on my new friend as she came to the passenger door, safely outside of door-smashing range, “then surely you are polite enough to do us the same kindness.” I was finding there were a lot of strange rules and etiquette in Figment culture and maybe their criminals had them too. It was worth a shot.
Ms. Rat’s nose twitched as her lips pulled into a smirk. “Oh, trust me, love, you fine folks are going to become very fam
iliar with us over the next few hours.” The shotgun, even with its short barrel, was almost comically oversized in comparison to her as she held it steady and level at my head. “How about you open the door now? Nice and slow.”
Bunny was doing a similar dance with her own rat partner, so I did likewise, ever so slowly opening the passenger door. “Fine. You all certainly have control over this.”
With short, curt directions, the three rat Garou efficiently moved us into the back seats after a thorough search. Ms. Rat took my bag and slung it over her shoulder for the moment before finding my cell phone and wallet in my skirt pockets. The wallet she put back, but the phone was another story. After taking one quick glance at it, she tossed it off into the foliage around the mailbox we almost ran over.
“You realize that you will be reimbursing me for that,” I pointed out as the phone disappeared. “I work at a convenience store, and cellular phones are not as cheap as people seem to think.”
Ms. Rat only responded with that annoying smirk and an added snort. Well, I could only hope that the runeword I put on my phone would work as I intended it. Meanwhile, Black-and-White made a frustrated whine as he stuffed his hands again and again in Bunny’s jacket pockets, his arm going up to his elbow in them without finding anything or even deforming the fabric. Maybe what really frustrated him was Bunny’s derisive chuckle or the fact he was practically squished up against her as he tried to go deeper. Well, I can confirm the second. Being completely sans-clothes made it plain that some part of Mr. Rat was frustrated at such close contact with an admittedly cute woman.
“Look, young master,” Bunny said in an utterly professional tone, “you would better serve yourself to just take the jacket before you work yourself up into a lather. I’m sure your fellow bandits do not wish to wait while you work that tension out on your own, eh?”