Night Owls

by Lauren M. Roy

  She waited, fighting the urge to peek in the windows. Was he in there, keeping himself out of line of sight in case she looked in, hoping she’d go away?

  She knocked again, putting more force behind the blows than she’d intended. From cheery neighbor to angry bill collector. I wouldn’t answer, if it were my house. Someone knocks like that, they’re not here for anything nice.

  Well, she wasn’t there for anything nice, now, was she? The man who’d raised them was dead and she’d landed herself in a world of trouble.

  The silence stretched. She started feeling awfully exposed, out there on the porch. It was broad daylight, so it wasn’t like there were any Creeps around, but her shoulders started itching all the same, like someone was watching her. Probably just a neighbor, wondering who the strange girl is, hanging around the run-down shack. She whipped around, looking for the telltale twitch of a curtain or a shadow ducking behind a corner, but she was alone.

  Still not a peep from inside. Maybe it’s Cavale watching me. I should take the hint and go.

  She meant to leave, to head back to her swath of trampled grass and plow through it to the street. She toyed with the idea of writing “HI” in it like a crop circle gone wrong, for him to see. But as she turned to go down the steps, she felt the sob break.

  No. No. Rule number one is DON’T CRY. She’d planned for this. It was more likely than any other outcome, really, so why did it hurt? He’d been the one to walk away from them, after all. He’d said he didn’t want to see them again, and here she was ignoring that one simple request. Could she blame him for not answering? Or maybe he wasn’t even home to ignore her, and here she was taking it personally. She stayed on the porch and leaned against the railing. A few gulping breaths didn’t stop the fat tears rolling down her cheeks or the awful squeezing feeling in her chest. Everything pressed in on her, the world closing to a pinpoint. Her knees buckled. Splinters dug into her palms as her grip on the railing twisted.

  Then someone was speaking behind her: “Are you all right, miss?”

  She squawked in surprise as she turned, flopping over onto her butt instead of rising smoothly to her feet like she’d meant to.

  The man before her in the doorway was sleep bedraggled. His hair was mussed and he was blinking against the brightness. He’s let his hair grow out since he left. Then his eyes went wide. “Elly? Jesus fuck, is it you?”

  He was there, then, on his knees next to her on the porch, pulling her into his arms. She couldn’t answer, only nod miserably as she lost the struggle with a fresh spate of tears.

  “Shhh, it’s all right. It’s all right.” He stroked her hair and murmured to her, the way he’d done when they were little and she’d woken in the dark from a nightmare. Father Value had never been good with comforting either of them, but Cavale had always made her feel better, made her feel safe.

  She clung to him now, smelling soap and shampoo and laundry detergent, and was horrified at how she must seem to him. The Clearwaters had let her shower, but that was sometime yesterday, before the Creeps had come. She hadn’t changed her clothes in two days, and now that she was smearing tears and snot across Cavale’s clean white tee shirt, she realized there were still flecks of dried blood beneath her fingernails.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m kind of a mess.” She pulled back, swiping at her nose and eyes with the cuffs of her sweater like a little kid.

  Cavale let her have her space, but kept one hand on her shoulder. “You look like hell.” He gave her half a grin, but his sky blue eyes were filled with concern. And . . . were those tears he was blinking back? “Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk?”

  “Are . . . are you sure? I know you said you didn’t want to see us again, but—”

  He cut her off, waving away the thought. “I’m sure.” He stood up and held out a hand to pull her to her feet. Now that she wasn’t snivelling anymore, or at least, not as much, they stood together awkwardly.

  The physical affection had stopped sometime after puberty hit, when Father Value had made them start sleeping in separate rooms and had held separate stumbling, embarrassing talks with each of them. There’d never been anything untoward between them, and she and Cavale had never spoken about it—even when they’d still snuck into one another’s rooms late at night to talk—but sometime ten years ago, they’d stopped touching each other at all. It was more for Father Value’s peace of mind than anything—hell, Elly’d been disturbed by the incestuous twins in Flowers in the Attic when she was twelve.

  But even with Father Value gone, it felt somehow wrong for them to touch any more than they already had.

  Cavale stepped back. He ran a hand along his jaw; his palm on the stubble sounded like he was rubbing sandpaper over his skin. “Christ, Elly, I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she said, her voice tiny. Oh God, no more crying. Then her belly growled, saving her.

  This time Cavale’s grin reached his eyes. “What would you say to burgers and tater tots?” He stepped into the front hall and turned to wink at her. “I’ll give you a hint: you should probably say yes, since it’s all I have right now.”

  “Then I’ll say hell yes.” She made one more pass at her eyes with her sleeve and followed him inside.

  10

  THE REST OF their search had yielded nothing. Val had, for the second day running, pushed until it was nearly dawn. She might still have been there, tucked away in the back of a closet somewhere to hide from the sun, if Chaz hadn’t pointed out that the police would be back and she’d be yet another corpse on the pile. Unless, that was, they didn’t zip up the body bag all the way before they took her out of the house.

  Then she’d just be fucked.

  She’d taken the backpack with her, to get good and familiar with its owner’s scent. A round of sniffing outside the Clearwaters’ house as the dawn loomed hadn’t told her which way the Brotherhood’s coward had gone—the Jackals’ reek still covered up any human scents. Chaz, by that time, had been tugging on her arm as he cast anxious glances at the nearby houses. People would be getting up for work soon, if they weren’t already, and they’d have another world of trouble on their hands if they were spotted outside by a rubbernecking neighbor.

  At home, Val had curled around the backpack before dropping into her dreamless sleep. She woke that night to the smell of myrrh. It took her a few minutes to place it—she hadn’t set foot in a church in decades—but every breath brought to mind memories of a hard wooden pew and the clanking of the thurible as the priest passed by. She remembered Father Pelham swinging it like a pendulum as the smoke curled out of the holes. When she was six, she’d been at the edge of the pew and sucked in a lungful of the incense. She’d had such a coughing fit as the bitter, sharp smoke made its way down her throat that her mother had ushered her out of the service.

  As consciousness flooded in, the smell of it filled her nostrils. It wasn’t as acrid as that long-ago incense had been, but it was close. Val sat up, still holding the backpack. Sometime during the day, she’d dug her hand into the front pocket, and now she realized she was clutching at something inside. When she rubbed her fingers together, they felt oily. She switched on the bedside lamp as she pulled her other hand out. Nestled in her palm was a lump of burnt umber resin. There it is.

  It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something. Different branches of the Brotherhood had different rituals. One lump of myrrh didn’t mean much—it might simply be something the backpack’s owner used as a salve—but when she had no other leads, she’d take it. In Sacramento, they’d anointed themselves with rosewater before a Hunt and cleansed their hands with lavender after. Myrrh meant an older sect, more orthodox. Those, she knew, were a dying breed.

  She set the resin down on her nightstand and relinquished her hold on the backpack. There was work to be done, but first she wanted to wash the stink of myrrh and Jackal out of her skin.

  Chaz was behind the register when Val got to Night Owls at eight. Pa
le purple smudges lurked beneath his eyes. The titan-sized cup of coffee beside him was nearly empty, and when Val peeked into the wastebasket, she saw two others that he’d already demolished.

  “How are you not vibrating and twitching from all that?” The sisters next door made their coffee strong enough to walk on its own most days, but Chaz’ heartbeat wasn’t even elevated.

  “I seem to have built up an immunity.”

  “Or you’re just that exhausted. Did Justin come in? He and I can handle it here. You should go home and sleep.”

  “He’s in the back, taking his break. And I caught a nap this morning. I’m fine.” He took another swig of coffee and offered her a toothy grin. “I left the newspapers on your desk. Nothing in there that we didn’t know already, but I figured you might want a look. I tried getting a copy of the police report, but no luck.”

  “Well, you’re not quite as charming when you’re all rumpled.” She took the key to the rare books room from its hook. Her own had flakes of skin and ichor stuck to it from where it had touched the Jackal-woman’s neck. Val didn’t want to touch it any more than she had to. “I’m going to go spend some time with that damned thing, see if anything jumps out at me. Try not to drink so much of that your heart explodes, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  She headed to the rare books room, smiling a little at the sign tacked to the door in Chaz’ scrawl: Room reserved for private research. Please pardon the inconvenience. He’d known she wouldn’t want anyone going in there today. The smile faded as she entered and was hit with a waft of stale Jackal scent. The book sat on the desk, where she’d placed it last night after the three had left. Why hadn’t they taken it with them? Surely the other few hundred pages were useful to them, even if a few were missing. Val slid into the chair and stared at the book.

  It seemed . . . less somehow. The air of malevolence that had emanated from it last night was, if not entirely gone, then certainly diminished. Tonight, it was just an old book on an old desk. She could have tucked it into any empty space on the shelves in that room and searching eyes would have skipped right over it. So what had changed?

  The cover was cool beneath her fingers. She looked at the box of cotton gloves, but decided against wearing any. Magic was often tactile to some degree, especially when an object had been imbued with it. Val was no sorcerer—if this thing was warded, or if spells were nestled between the lines of text, she wouldn’t know what they were by touch. Still, she might be able to tell if something had been broken. She’d heard stories of casters hexing their spell books so that if the wrong person opened it, all the letters jumbled up and became so much gibberish. She’d even seen someone perform the trick once, changing a pocket volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets into two hundred pages of lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Had this happened here?

  She steeled herself and opened the cover. Just because the Jackal bitch had opened it without repercussion didn’t mean there wasn’t something nasty waiting to give her a jolt. And yet . . . nothing. The parchment felt brittle, like dried onionskin, but it was simply parchment. The ink had faded to brown, but it was definitely ink, not blood. The book felt, well, dead.

  Val peered at the Jackals’ runes, trying to make sense of them. Some, she almost knew; others she recognized from seeing them in the nests. But her ability to actually read this book was about as strong as someone who’d learned Spanish from Sesame Street trying to read Don Quixote in its original form.

  She set about looking for patterns instead, seeking out runes that appeared in the same order across several pages. She found a few, but all she got for her troubles was a full sheet of notebook paper and the start of a headache.

  A soft knock came on the door. Chaz poked his head in and shook a small coffee at her. The liquid sloshed inside. Hazelnut tonight. “Want a sniff?”

  Val pointed at him. “Heart. Exploding. Didn’t we talk about this half an hour ago?”

  “I didn’t say I’d listen. And you’ve been in here three hours. It’s almost eleven.” He stepped inside and closed the door. Setting the coffee down in front of her was a poorly disguised cover for a peek at her notes. “Anything we can use?”

  She shook her head. “Not unless there’s a Jackal-to-English translator on the Internet.” The warmth of the coffee cup felt good on her palms. “There’s got to be something, at least the reason she left it behind. But hell if I can see it.”

  Chaz reached a tentative hand for the book. “May I?”

  She hesitated a moment, then smiled. The professor would have opened it up before he sent it along with Justin, and she’d suspected Justin of opening it up last night. If it was warded against humans, those had been broken already. Plus, Chaz was scary good at word puzzles, snagging new books of them as they came in and completing them on his break. Maybe he’d see something she hadn’t: a repetition, a symbol, some sort of Rosetta stone buried in the text. Val pulled a pair of gloves from the box and passed them to Chaz before she handed over the book. Her dead skin might not leave oils on the pages, but Chaz’ would.

  Plus it never hurt to have an extra layer of precaution between him and the page in case there was any lingering magic.

  There weren’t any other chairs in the room, so Chaz plunked himself down on the floor, the book in his lap. He donned the gloves and began turning pages. After a few minutes, he glanced up. “You can start breathing again anytime now. I’m not getting turned into a pillar of salt. And it’s really starting to freak me out.”

  Val hadn’t even realized she’d stopped, but he was right—her lungs itched and her chest felt heavy. Breathing was still a necessity if she wanted to talk, but her kind didn’t need to do it to carry oxygen around their bodies anymore. She inhaled and exhaled a few times for Chaz’ benefit. He shook his head and went back to scrutinizing the book.

  It grew so quiet in the room, Val could hear the murmur of conversations in the store. The register hummed steadily along every few minutes—not the busiest night, though she knew she should go out and relieve Justin soon. Her hovering wasn’t going to grant Chaz any sudden insights.

  As if thinking about him had summoned him, Justin’s steps came padding up the aisle. He had a timid gait, like he was afraid walking past someone might disturb them. His knock was equally soft. Val opened the door and winced. Chaz might look like shit from his lack of sleep, but Justin looked ten times worse. His eyes were red rimmed, his nose rubbed raw.

  “I’m sorry, Justin. I’m coming out now. Chaz can—”

  He spoke over her. “It’s okay, I just need help with a special order. Will you come take it? Please?”

  The tremor in his voice gave her pause. It wasn’t sorrow. She peered at him, searching beyond the grief and exhaustion. His eyes were wide, nostrils flaring. His fingers twisted together, apart, together. A jolt went through her—this was fear.

  Val’s head snapped up. Are they back? It hasn’t been two days. Did they come to check up on us? But no, if the Jackals were here, she’d have smelled them. The only person up at the front of the store right now was a forty-ish woman in an expensive-looking tracksuit—the kind made more for fashion than working out—jangling her keys and glaring daggers of irritation at Val and Justin.

  Val squeezed Justin’s shoulder as she passed by him. “I’ve got this. You go take five, splash some water on your face.” She plastered on a smile and went to help the woman.

  “Honestly,” said the woman, raising her voice for the other customers’ benefit. “I don’t know what your employee is playing at, but wasting my time isn’t funny. I have kids I need to get home to, and he’s sitting there doodling rather than taking down my information. I was very tempted to just walk out of here and order my book online.”

  Doodling? That wasn’t like Justin at all. “I’m very sorry, ma’am, I’ll speak with him. And I’m happy to offer you a twenty percent discount for the inconvenience.”

  The woman grunted. “That will do, I suppose.”

  Val smiled.
“If I could just take your name and phone number?” She pulled a blank special order card from the stack. They took orders by hand and entered them into the computer at the end of the night. It was probably less efficient than entering them directly into the computer, but Val believed it made them focus on the customer, not the screen.

  The woman recited her information, and Val jotted down the book’s title and ISBN. Justin had at least gone as far as looking it up and confirming its availability. “We should have it in two days. We’ll call when it comes in and you can pick it up next time you’re nearby.”

  “Well. Thank you. And I do hope you’ll talk to that boy. Maybe if he didn’t spend so much time partying, he’d be focused on his job.”

  Val blinked. “Partying?”

  “Surely you saw his eyes. They’re bloodshot. He’s either hungover or strung out, miss, and that’s only going to cost you in the end.”

  You bitch. Maybe she didn’t need to breathe, but Val took a deep breath anyway before she answered. Yelling at customers wasn’t good business. “Ma’am, you might not be from Edgewood, so maybe you haven’t heard, but we had a murder in town last night. That young man who was helping you was close to one of the victims. He hasn’t been drinking; he’s been grieving. I think, if it’s all right with you, I’ll cut him some slack.”

  Spots of color rose in the woman’s cheeks. “Oh. Oh my. I’d heard, about . . . a professor, wasn’t it? From the college?”

  “And his wife. They were good friends of ours.”

  She looked down at her shoes. “I’m . . . I’m terribly sorry, miss. I should have thought.”

  “It’s all right. Why don’t you head on home to your kids. We’ll take care of this order for you.”