by Erin Johnson
Kenta nodded. “That’s not bad—we should offer a reward if anyone’s seen him—or better yet, found him.”
The prince grinned. “I think I can provide a sizable reward for Sam.”
“Sounds like we have a plan.” Princess Imogen beamed at all of us. “I think you all know what this calls for.” She stuck her arm straight out in front of her, palm down.
Her little flame groaned, and even most of her friends looked less than enthusiastic.
I leaned close to Madeline. “What’s she doing?”
The reporter shrugged.
The princess threw her head back and huffed. “Oh, come on!”
Her friends and husband reluctantly circled up around her and stacked their hands on top of hers. Madeline and I followed suit, and I found myself turned sideways, smashed between Yann, the big redheaded dude, and Rhonda the Seer.
“One—two—three—Go team take down Ludolf and find Sam!” Princess Imogen threw her hand up and the others and I followed suit, though I had no idea what I was doing. As awkward as it was, I just felt grateful—and jittery with nerves. The royal group was on my side, and we were actually going to take down Ludolf… or die trying.
15
THE DOOR
After some discussion, we decided it’d be best to move the shifters who were still trapped in their animal forms out of my apartment and into the much safer—and larger—royal palace. I knew Heidi would miss taking care of them—especially the sloth, who she carried everywhere like a baby—but it’d be way safer for them and her.
Ludolf’s goons had been keeping an eye on my place. And while Peter had made sure to send police patrols around as often as he could, it still made me uneasy that Heidi was there alone so much of the time.
Amelia, the event coordinator, had promised to pop over to the jail and pass a message along to Peter, filling him in on our plans. I knew he wouldn’t like that I was going down into the sewers, but when it all turned out fine, I was sure he’d forgive me. Hopefully, it would turn out fine.
A few of the group stayed behind, but Prince Harry; Princess Imogen and her flame, Iggy; Maple; her boyfriend, Wiley; Cat; Francis the vampire; and Rhonda the Seer snuck out of the palace and came with me back to the Darkmoon District.
I bit my lip and glanced at the royal group to gauge their reactions as we passed three drunk men stumbling through the street, arms over each other’s shoulders, singing sloppy sea shanties. One of them rushed to the gutter and vomited up his dinner.
I bit back a grin, half worried, half amused. Welcome to the Darkmoon.
But the princess just shrugged at her blond friend, Maple. “Eh. No worse than the Rusted Wreck on a Saturday night.”
Maple giggled.
The prince leaned close to me to be heard as we passed a lively bar, dancing spilling into the street, a bass beat thumping so loud it made my teeth rattle. “The Rusted Wreck is our favorite dive bar in Bijou Mer. We visit it anytime we’re in town.”
I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets, chilly from the fall night air. Clouds drifted across the moon, and bats winged overhead, chirping.
Weeeee!
Josh—bugs over here!
I frowned, amused. “No offense, but I have a hard time seeing you lot hanging out in a dive bar.”
We took a shortcut down a dark, narrow alley. The ancient buildings leaned in overhead to the point that they nearly touched.
Wiley, the tall one, fell in behind me, Cat riding on his shoulders. The strange little creature chirruped and chittered, and I had the uneasy sensation of again not being able to understand him. I’d gotten so used to speaking to animals that it felt deeply uncomfortable to not be able to converse with this one.
Wiley chuckled. “If you’d have met me a couple of years ago, you wouldn’t have a hard time picturing it. I practically grew up in dive bars.”
Maple let out a disapproving noise.
“Those days are behind me now.” Wiley dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “Mostly.”
Maple clicked her tongue. Someone was in the doghouse. I grinned to myself—Daisy would not have approved of that saying. Weird—I kind of missed the furry mutt.
We emerged from the alley on the other side and wound our way toward my home. I tried to take as many alleys and side streets as possible to avoid the busy shopping and dining areas. Francis and Rhonda were so well known that despite their disguises of sunglasses and hats, it’d be hard not to recognize the world’s last vampire and the famous psychic—who pulled down her glasses and winked at her reflection in every window we passed.
I checked my street and found it mostly clear—except for the debris blowing through the gutters, the pulsing bar below my flat, and the usual beggars, partiers, and general riffraff. I turned and waved the group forward.
I grinned back at them. “Now, prepare to be underwhelmed, this isn’t quite on par with your palatial digs.”
The princess snorted. “I lived in what was basically a closet back in Seattle, so don’t sweat it.”
“Before you burned it down?” Iggy sweetly asked.
She shot him a look, and he cackled.
There seemed to be a story there.
“Oh!” I held up a finger. “And to the tall guys, watch your heads. The stairwell’s steep and—” I stopped dead in my tracks. The metal door to my apartment—the one we’d given Heidi strict instructions to keep locked—stood ajar. Icy dread flooded my stomach.
“Oh, no no no no no!” I rushed forward, shaky with panic. My door was plastered in peeling band posters and graffiti and through it all, a symbol had been carved into the metal that looked like a crooked letter t—Ludolf’s symbol.
“No! That sea slug!” I pounded my fist against the door. It boomed like a drum as the swinging door slammed against the brick wall.
“What’s wrong?”
“You okay?”
The voices of my new friends sounded miles away. I gripped the doorframe and pulled myself inside, then dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Heidi! Heidi?!”
16
MISSING
Gasping, I stumbled through the beaded curtain and into my kitchen. Footsteps thudded up the stairs behind me. The prince and Wiley shoved past, wands drawn, and Francis swept into the room in bat form. He squeaked and swooped near the ceiling, then in a black cloud of smoke he materialized as a man again, his toes dangling above my stained carpet.
My chest felt as though someone were sitting on it. The place was empty. No Heidi, and none of the two dozen trapped shifters. They were all gone. I knew, even before the prince and Wiley finished sweeping through my bedroom and bathroom—there wasn’t the usual sound of monkeys and parrots and bouncing antelope.
I wanted to collapse into one of my kitchen chairs, but whoever had done this had broken them to shards. The couch had been overturned, stuffing scattered everywhere. The torn curtains hung askew on the window that looked out into the street. Even the clock on the wall had been smashed.
I put a trembling hand against the cracked countertop to steady myself. Ludolf’s goons had ransacked the place. I pressed a hand to my stomach. What had he done with my friend and all the shifters?
Imogen, Maple, and lastly, a huffing Rhonda, emerged from the stairwell behind me. They stared wide-eyed around my trashed apartment.
Maple sucked in a quick breath. “Oh, it’s, uh—” She swallowed. “Homey?”
I shot her a flat look. “It doesn’t normally look great, but it’s not this bad!”
She winced. “Sorry.”
I blinked back tears, my hands clenched into tight fists. “Ludolf did this.” And what was he doing now to Heidi and the trapped shifters?
Wiley, the prince, and Francis emerged from my bedroom.
“Is anyone in there?”
They shook their heads.
“Looks like someone torched all your clothes, though.”
“Oh.” I let out a humorless chuckle. “So that’s what that smoke
smell is.”
“Oh.” Maple bit her lip. “I thought the smell might be the animals.”
I huffed. “Yeah, okay, some of the odor is the animals.”
“Jolene?”
My heart stopped, and I spun around to find my landlady standing in the doorway behind me. Her nickname around the Darkmoon was “the dragon,” not only because it was rumored she was a dragon shifter but also because she had the personality of one.
I glanced around at the utter destruction. Cabinet doors had been ripped from their hinges, insulation poured from holes in the walls as big as my torso, and the whole place reeked of smoke and animal droppings. As horrified as I was that Heidi and the shifters were missing at Ludolf’s hands, I was nearly as terrified of my landlady’s reaction. She’d once yelled at me for putting holes in the wall to hang my beaded curtain. I could only imagine the tirade I was about to face.
I held up my palms. “Mrs. Kim, I can explain. I just—”
She cut me off with a sharp swipe of her hand. “No need. I know what happened.” She narrowed her dark, glittering eyes. “You can thank me later.” She sniffed and glanced around the room, all eyes on her. “You can pay me later, too. You have rich friends, I guess.” She sneered, revealing several missing teeth.
I froze. Had I been transported to a different reality? Who was this, and what had she done with Mrs. Kim?
I frowned. “Uh… what did happen, exactly?”
She studied me for a long moment, her expression hard and difficult to read. She shuffled in her sandals and half turned toward the beaded curtain, as though about to leave. “Ludolf’s little busybodies showed up, carved on door, wanted in!” She threw a hand up. “Ha! They think they own everybody.” Mrs. Kim narrowed her eyes at me. “I know what you’re up to. You think you’re so clever with your sound spell? Ha! I know you have animals up here, whole time.”
That was news to me. “Really? And you didn’t evict me?”
She paused a long time, her expression growing stony. Finally, she lifted her chin. “My father was a very good man. Ludolf took him from us. I have no love for the sea slug. I told Ludolf’s little errand boys that if they wanted in, they had to go through me.” She jerked her head to the side. “Gave your friend time to get everyone out through the fire escape.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling as though I could breathe again. “Heidi got out? And the shifters, too?”
My landlady nodded. “She said to tell you they’re at Will’s now.” She shrugged. “Whatever that means.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I swiped them hastily away. “Thank you.” I let out a breath and with it all the tension and adrenaline coursing through me. I suddenly felt like I could collapse and take a long nap.
“Ha!” Wiley chuckled. “These guys ran away from a little old lady? We should probably just send Annie into the sewers after them.”
Mrs. Kim glared at him for a long time, then smirked, just the tiniest bit. “They didn’t run from a little old lady.” She drew herself up taller, though she still probably only came to my shoulder. “They ran from the dragon.”
Oh, shoot. I couldn’t wait to hear about this from Heidi.
“Sorry about your clothes, by the way.” Mrs. Kim shrugged. “Fire breath, couldn’t be helped.”
I curled my lip. “That was you?”
Mrs. Kim looked arch. “Yeah, well, you ask me, I did you a favor.” She looked me up and down. “About time you wore something not filled with holes.”
I nodded. Touché, Mrs. Kim, touché. Buying a new wardrobe was a small price to pay for my friend and all the shifters being safe.
Apparently, the prince felt the same way. He started forward, hands clasped, an earnest expression on his face. “Mrs. Kim, allow me to thank you on behalf of all—”
She whirled and shook a finger at him. “Don’t come at me with fancy words. You see this place? You see how we live? You want to thank me, how about you fix roads in the Darkmoon, huh? And you notice how all the buildings are crooked and that smell of sewer? How come it doesn’t smell like sewer on top tiers of island, huh?”
Prince Harry blinked at her, wide-eyed. “Um… I don’t know, actually.”
The dragon raised her brows. “You think I want to be a landlady of crabby apartments? No! But you think I can go get a loan like a nonshifter? Ha! And even if I could, you think anyone would sell building to me on upper tiers? Why you think you don’t know any shifters in the palace or in the government or in the fancy parties you go to, huh?”
Prince Harry blinked rapidly, then swallowed.
“Ooh!” Iggy burned bright. “She’s got you there!”
The prince looked to the princess, who pressed her lips together. “Uh—she makes some pretty good points.”
Rhonda the Seer munched on a piece of licorice she’d apparently found in one of my cupboards. “I like her!” She winked at Mrs. Kim, then pointed at my mostly empty cabinet. “By the way, there’s a cockroach in here.”
I nodded. “That’s Gary.”
The seer froze for a moment, then ripped off another hunk of licorice and shrugged.
A smile tugged at the corner of the prince’s mouth. “Mrs. Kim, you’ve got a lot of opinions.”
And shockingly, a lot of her points were pretty valid.
“How about, in a few days, you come up to the palace and tell us more about your concerns? I’d like to hear about ways the palace could make life better for our citizens here in the Darkmoon.”
Mrs. Kim gave the prince a long, hard look. Finally, she sniffed. “Yeah, okay. If you make it out of whatever scrape you’ve gotten yourself into with this one”—she threw a hand my way—“I’ll come share all my good ideas with you.” She pointed at me. “Remember—Darkmoonies stick together.”
I grinned and nodded, and Mrs. Kim pushed through the beaded curtain and tromped downstairs, the slap of her sandals on the steps growing fainter.
“And they never say die!” Princess Imogen grinned at all of us. “Come on—like the Goonies? Goonies always stick together, and they never say—” She waved it off as we all looked at her, dumbfounded. “Oh, forget it. I need some human friends—no one gets how funny I am.”
“Oh, Imogen,” her little flame said kindly. “I’m not sure it’d make any difference.”
“Uh!” She gaped at him, and Iggy devolved into cackles.
17
THE CLINIC
As eager as I was to see for myself that my friends were alright, I didn’t look forward to the lecture from Will that I was sure was waiting for me. As I led the royal group through dark alleys, I smirked. Then again, having the prince and princess with me might shock him into silence. I chuckled as I pictured my big bear of a friend. As if.
We soon reached Will’s back alley veterinarian clinic. I rapped on the metal door, and the eyepiece slid open. Heidi’s dark eyes blinked at me, smiling. “Jolene! You’d better get inside, the craziest thing hap—” Her gaze slid to the group waiting behind me. Her eyes grew wide, and she sucked in a gasp. “Sea snakes!”
Locks clicked and then the door was flung open, sickly fluorescent light spilling out onto the broken cobblestones. The waiting room inside teemed with animals, the trapped shifters from my apartment. Heidi, the sloth on her hip like a baby, peeked around the door and waved us inside. “Get in! Hurry!” Then she seemed to catch herself. “I mean—please hurry, your highnesses.” As we scurried past, she did her best to dip into a curtsy, wobbling and almost tipping over onto the sloth.
As soon as we’d all made it inside, Heidi slammed the door shut. Will, clad as always in his white lab coat, pushed through the swinging door to the exam room. I caught sight of the llama curled up on the elevated metal table, the monkey and the lemurs perched on the back counter.
“Jolene!” Will did not sound happy. His already enormous eyes bugged out of his head as he stalked toward me, shaking a long finger. “First you rob me of my assistant so she can babysit, then you put her li
fe in danger with your escapades? Do you know what would’ve happened if your landlady hadn’t bought her time to skedaddle on out of there? Huh, Jolene? Heidi would be dead! Dead!”
He didn’t even pause long enough to suck in a breath before glancing around the room. “Oh my goddess!” He folded in half into the lowest bow I’d ever seen—and this from a man who had to duck through doorways. “Your highnesses, welcome.” He was still bent in half as his eyes slid to me. He bared his teeth and hissed, “Why didn’t you stop me?!”
I snorted. “Oh, now you yelling at me in front of the royals is my fault, too?”
He hissed, “Keep—your—voice—down.”
I smirked and leaned against the tall front desk that Heidi normally sat behind. A mouse scurried across it and nibbled at the corner of a piece of paper. I cleared my voice and spoke loud enough that everyone could hear. “Will! Am I embarrassing you in front of our special guests? Oof!” He stomped on my foot.
“These are my new boots!” I collapsed in pain onto Heidi’s stool. She, meanwhile, tried to shoo the peacock and the lion off the waiting room chairs while simultaneously curtsying and offering the prince and princess and their friends seats. I’d have chuckled—if my toes weren’t still throbbing so badly. I shot Will a dark look, and he returned it.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, for sand’s sake, stand up already.”
Will glared at me but straightened and tugged at the lapels of his lab coat. “Uh, welcome to my humble abode. Mi casa es su casa.” He winced but kept his strained smile on his face.
I gave him a double thumbs-up and mouthed, “Classy.”
The prince, princess, and their friends seemed stunned by the number and variety of animals—well, trapped shifters—that swamped the small clinic. They gaped at the packed room.
The princess spoke first. “Thank you. And I’m glad to see everyone’s safe.” She turned to Heidi, who immediately dipped into a curtsy—again.