by Alyssa Day
"Yes, dear," she repeated, and I had to laugh.
"I'm riding with Jack," Shelley shouted.
"She already has an eye for the cute boys," Aunt Ruby said, chuckling. "And he's so good with her."
He was.
I stood for a moment watching my sister chatter away to my… boyfriend?
It was a word.
Not exactly the right word, but something closer than friend. Something more than friend.
Now all we had to do was find Brigham Hammermill the Fourth, so we could enjoy the festival in peace.
Maybe we could get him to wear the costume.
17
Dallas didn't call until almost four o'clock.
We'd spent the day setting up booths and stocking jam jars and eating fair food, but now I was facing my true nemesis: the swamp cabbage costume.
I took it out of its dry-cleaning bag and groaned. It didn't look any better than it had last year from the cleaning. In fact, I was sure it looked worse than it had last year. I took a tentative sniff and was relieved to discover that at least it didn't smell like flatulence anymore, but there was a definite whiff of moth balls and dry cleaning chemicals.
"One more load of jars, Tess, if you would," Lauren called out from where she was restocking the shelves of the booth. I rolled the costume up and stuffed it in the corner behind my tote bag for now. The parade didn't start until seven, so I still had time.
I studied Lauren. "Hey. You're short. You'd fit perfectly—"
"Forget it," she said. "The mayor already tried."
When I was working my way through the early crowds to Lauren's van for more jams, I passed Jack going the other way with several cases of water.
"It's handy to have the strength of a shapeshifter, huh?"
He grinned at me. "Most of the time, yes. But we do have a tendency to be asked to help set up festivals in small towns an awful lot."
I shook my head, smiling, and kept going. Shelley was with Aunt Ruby, and Uncle Mike was helping with the 4-H barn. Breathing in the scents of hot oil and cotton candy made me remember that I planned to find the biggest funnel cake imaginable as soon as I was done loading jam jars and eat the entire thing myself.
I deserved it if I was really going to have to wear that darn costume.
I grabbed another crate of jams and locked Lauren's van, and then I turned around and ran into a big guy who'd stopped right behind me.
"Excuse me," I said automatically, glancing up at him. I didn't know him, but that wasn't unusual for festival week.
He didn't move, though, and I couldn't get around him.
"Excuse me," I said again, starting to be annoyed. It was too early for people to be drunk already.
He pulled his ball cap further down but then he took off his sunglasses, sneering at me. "Of all the people I had to run into at this pathetic event, why you?"
"Hello, Brig," I said, managing to sound calm. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, just hanging out, waiting for my investments to mature," he said, and he was exactly as arrogantly offensive as I remembered. "I thought I'd waste some time here, instead of holing up in the house, for a change. And lo and behold, who do I see in the first ten minutes I'm here, but you."
"It's a pretty small town. You're likely to run into everybody you know in the first ten minutes. And why would you ever want to come back here?" I tried to edge to one side, but he moved to block me.
"Why not? There's sure as hell nobody looking for me in this Podunk town."
"You might be surprised," I muttered, trying to shove my way past him.
But he was bigger than me by quite a bit, and he easily blocked me again.
"Why'd you do it?" He moved closer to me and studied my face.
"Do what?"
"Why'd you return my gifts? You're nothing special." He blatantly looked me up and down with utter contempt. "You should have been honored that I wasted my time and money on you."
Suddenly, stalker or not, killer or not, I'd had quite enough of Brigham Hammermill the Fourth. I shoved the crate of jam jars at him, hard, catching him in the abdomen. He reflexively grabbed it, and I slipped past him and backed away several steps.
And then I started shouting.
"JACK SHEPHERD, THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME FOR YOU TO USE YOUR SUPERIOR TIGER HEARING! HELP!"
Brig gazed wildly around us and then dropped the crate on the ground, flinching at the sound of glass breaking. "Why did you do that? Who is Jack Shepherd?"
I listened for a couple of seconds and then—oh, yeah—there it was. The feral roar of an enraged tiger.
"You're going to find out very soon."
Brig stalked forward and grabbed my bare arms, hard. "You stupid woman. Do you think I'm afraid of you? I've built and destroyed entire companies. I've caused titans of industry to cower at my feet. I—"
I started to shiver but managed to stay on my feet and stay conscious, in spite of what my gift was telling me about his future.
"You're about to be lunch," I said, yanking my arms out of his grasp and stepping to the side. "Putting your hands on me was a very bad idea, Brig old boy.
At just about that moment, a quarter-ton of angry tiger flew through the air and slammed into him, so Brig didn't hear me, because he was on the ground looking up into the open jaws of a roaring alpha predator.
"Really bad idea."
Luckily for Brigham Hammermill the Fourth, Susan showed up before Jack could rip his arms or head off. She pulled him up off the ground, snapped handcuffs on his wrists and started to lead him off to jail.
"There are a lot of defrauded investors looking for you, Mr. Hammermill," she told him. "And the feds, and the SEC, and your ex-wife, and—"
"I get it," he snarled, shaking like a leaf. "Just get me away from that animal. What is wrong with you people? You're arresting me, when there's a wild animal running loose in your stupid town?"
Jack shimmered back into his human form and took my hands. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"
"I'm fine. But I have an ironic bit of news for Brig, if he wants to hear it."
Susan's eyes widened. "He touched you?"
I pointed to the red marks on my arms, and Jack's eyes flamed with amber fire. Brig whimpered and tried to hide behind Susan.
"He did," I said. "So, Brig? You know how you faked your death in a boating accident?"
"Yacht," he sneered, arrogant to the end. "
"Yeah. That. Well, guess what? You're actually going to die in a boating accident. If I were you, I'd brush up on your swimming. Oh, wait. They probably don't have pools in jail. Oh, well."
"What? What is she talking about?" He looked terrified, which told me he knew enough about Dead End to realize that he should be worried about a proclamation of his death from one of us.
"Where is Ann Feeney?" Jack growled and took a step closer. "Is she still alive?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. Sheriff, get me away from this monster!"
Susan nodded to us. "Good work, guys. I'll find out what he knows, don't worry."
They started to walk off again, but I ran after her.
"Susan. Wait. Let me ask—Brig? Why am I the apple of your eye?"
His face went totally blank, and then he sneered. "Are you out of your damn mind? You're nothing to me."
"Come on," Susan ordered him.
When he balked, Jack took a step toward him and he started howling.
"No! Sheriff, I'm coming, you have to protect me!"
Jack started to go with them, but then Andy came running across the street toward us, so Jack stayed with me.
"So, that's that," he said, sounding relieved. "Nobody will bother you now."
I tapped my fingers on the sides of my legs, considering. "I don't know."
"What do you mean?"
"Something just felt off. Did you see how he reacted to my apple of your eye question?"
"He's a criminal, Tess. They lie," he said gently, touching one of my arms where B
rig had grabbed it. I'd have bruises tomorrow, thanks to my Irish coloring.
"Oh! The jams. Jack, we need to clean up the mess over there before some kids cut themselves on the glass."
He found a broom and dust pan while I started picking up the larger fragments and putting them back in the crate. None of the jars had survived, unfortunately.
"I'll get this," he told me, an evil grin starting to spread across his face. "Don't you need to go change into your costume?"
"Jack."
"Yeah?"
"I'm starting to miss Brig."
18
I put on the darn costume.
I mean, what was I going to do? Aunt Ruby was counting on me. And Shelley and her friends from school were planning to walk in the parade with me and help me throw candy.
Funnily enough, the minute I had the darn thing on, Aunt Ruby found me.
"Tess! You look adorable!"
"I look like what happens when palm trees go to die," I said glumly, looking at myself in the mirror in the tent that served as the parade changing area.
"You have to put on the head!"
The costume's head was a giant, rounded, vaguely palm-leaf-looking thing, with a clownlike mouth and two giant googly eyes. I wondered every year why kids didn't run screaming.
"You're no longer related to me," I told her.
"Look at the bright side, honey—"
I stared at her, safely dressed in her mayoral festival clothes of a lightweight summer suit in a lovely shade of pale blue, and bared my teeth. "There is no bright side."
"At least it doesn't smell like vampire farts. By the way, did you ask Carlos—"
"Argh!"
I started to walk out of the tent but she grabbed my hand, er, leaf.
"Tess! You can't go out without your head on! You'll destroy the magic of the Swamp Cabbage Festival!"
Now she was speaking in exclamation points. Shelley must be rubbing off on her.
"This is not Christmas, Aunt Ruby. I am not Santa Claus. I am an unhappy person dressed up like a cabbage. No children will be harmed by seeing my real head."
"Tess." She tapped her foot, and I sighed.
"Fine."
I put on the head.
"Thank you, dear."
Aunt Ruby bustled off toward the jams booth, but I started to trudge over to the spot in front of Dead End Hardware where the parade floats—if you could call them that—were lining up.
The definition of "float" in a small town is very flexible.
The Peterson brothers always drove riding lawn mowers. A few people rode horses. Wolf Construction drove one of their bulldozers. John Luke Arnold had even walked an alligator on a leash right down Main Street one year.
That had been epic.
On the way there, I passed a lot of people I knew, but I didn't have to stop to talk, because nobody knew the giant green fungus tree was me in disguise. I saw Yasmine at her Tarot booth and waved and she waved back, because she probably knew who I was.
It was a magic thing.
Granny Josephine and Sue-Ellen Bishop were chatting by the lemonade tent, and Mr. and Mrs. Frost were talking to Mr. and Mrs. Quindlen in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl, which seemed like a bad idea to me, but they only had a YOU MUST BE THIS TALL sign up, not a YOU MUST BE THIS AGE sign. I hoped they didn't tilt and whirl their old bones too much.
I passed the funnel cake place and paused to inhale all the delicious, deep-fried goodness, but then I kept walking, right past the start of the parade line and on back toward the end. Hopefully everybody would go home before it was my turn to take a bow.
"If I bow at all, my head will probably fall off," I muttered glumly to myself and then flinched at the muffled, echo-chamber effect.
Great. I probably sounded like a dying tree, too.
At the end of the line, Rooster Jenkins was standing patiently, waiting with one of his many goats tied to a string. He'd cornered Mellie's cousin Vern, who looked like he'd been trying to get away for a while.
They both gave me wide-eyed stares when I walked by and then turned back to their conversation, because they didn't know who I was.
"I really need to get going, Rooster," Vern said. "I—"
Rooster nodded. "Sure, I just wanted to tell you that I was sorry. I heard about Ann Feeney. You two used to be an item, didn't you? I remember you brought her out to go fishing that one time."
Vern's head whipped around and he aimed a cold stare at Rooster. "No, you're mistaken. That was my friend Brenda Sweeney. You should be careful what you say when you don't know what you're talking about, old man."
With that, he turned and strode off so fast he was almost running, leaving both of us staring.
"Well, that was rude," I said.
"Yes, it was, Swamp Cabbage," Rooster rumbled. "That's not like him, is it?"
I shook my leaf.
No.
No, it was not.
Jack darted out from behind the bulldozer and headed toward me, making an odd face when he passed Vern on the way.
"Nice!" he said when he reached us. "You're the best swamp cabbage I've ever seen."
"Jack," I said slowly. "Why did you make that face when you walked past Mellie's cousin Vern?"
He shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. "Was that who it was? He smelled like he'd taken a bath in peppermint oil. The scent makes me gag."
Rooster stepped over to us. He was nearly seven feet tall and almost as broad as he was tall, so it took a minute. "Nah. He was eating those little candy cane candies two at a time."
Jack's real eyes met my googly eyes, or at least I think so, because my actual eyes were hidden behind a mesh panel in the cabbage's clown mouth.
"Peppermint," I said. "And Rooster says Vern was dating Ann Feeney."
"Yep. Saw 'em going fishing," Rooster confirmed.
"And he lied at the bakery and said he didn't know her," I continued, thinking hard.
"We need to call Susan," Jack said, pulling out his phone.
I nodded my leaf and then waved my stalks around. "Oh, no. Jack. The jelly donuts."
Jack and Rooster both looked at me. "What?"
"He said Mellie told him to especially be sure to bring me jelly donuts. Jack, Mellie knows I hate jelly donuts. It's like a running joke with us. What if she was trying to send me a clue? What if he has her chained up? What if he's going to chop off her finger next?"
Jack's eyes narrowed. "Dallas said she hasn't texted him back all week, either. Tess, we don't have time to wait for Susan. She's on the way to Orlando with Hammermill. I need to get to Mellie's house now."
"I'm going too!" I started running, forgetting one critical truth:
Swamp cabbages are not made for running.
No trees of any kind, in fact, are made for running.
I tripped over my own branches and tumbled leaf over stalk into the middle of the street. Jack, trying desperately not to laugh, leaned down to help me up, holding out a hand.
That's when a herd of feral children caught sight of us and started to howl.
"THAT MAN IS HURTING THE SWAMP CABBAGE! GET HIM! AAIIEEE!!"
They came after Jack like a herd of tailgaters chasing the last chicken wing on game day. I looked up through my mesh mouth and saw a flash of real panic in his eyes.
"Tess, I can't get caught up in this. I have to go get Mellie," he said.
And then my boyfriend the ex-rebel soldier, shapeshifting tiger heroically turned his figurative tail and ran, leaving me rolling around in the middle of the street, unable to get back up.
Half of the kids chased Jack down the street, but the rest of them stopped and milled around me, muttering things I couldn't catch. I asked them, very politely, to help me up.
That's when things began to go horribly, horribly wrong.
The little turds—the same kids who'd been determined to save me from Jack—turned their traitorous attention toward me.
And not in a good way.
"It rolls," a tall kid
, probably twelve or so and clearly the ringleader, shouted.
"THE SWAMP CABBAGE! GET IT!! AAIIEEE!!"
Oh, crap.
Those rotten kids started rolling me down the street with a vengeance. Since palm trees, and therefore my costume, were roughly cylindrical in nature, this was way easier than it should have been.
I was going to murder Jack.
Roll.
And Aunt Ruby.
Roll.
And even Marvin. Who said he could become a vampire when he had a civic duty to this town?
Roll.
All this time that I was plotting murder, worrying about Mellie, and trying not to throw up from motion sickness, I was screaming at the kids.
"Let me up! Let me up right now!"
But either they didn't hear me, or they pretended not to hear me, because we'd traveled all the way to the front of the parade line by now, but nobody was trying to intervene, because this was Dead End, and people probably thought this was part of the entertainment.
Finally I took the biggest breath I could and screamed as loud as I could:
"LET ME UP AND FREE FUNNEL CAKES FOR EVERYBODY!"
They instantly stopped pushing me.
"THE SWAMP CABBAGE IS BUYING US FUNNEL CAKES!! AAIIEEE!!"
They picked me up by my leaf, stalks, and any other parts they could get their sticky hands on and, when I was finally upright and the world had stopped spinning from a crushing case of cabbage-induced vertigo, I yanked the head off my costume and snarled at them.
"Finally, you little—"
"Tess!" Aunt Ruby came running up to us from her position next to the first float. "Why did you take your head off?"
I snarled at her, too. "Buy these kids funnel cakes. All of them."
And then I turned to the ringleader. "I hope you choke on it."
Rooster ambled up just then. "Tess? That you, girl? You need help?"
"Rooster. Thank goodness! Please help me out of this stupid costume. Aunt Ruby, call 911 and tell them to get somebody out to Mellie's house. She's in danger!"
Between the two of us, Rooster and I ripped that costume off me, and I started running, leaving its shredded remains right there in the street, praying that Jack—that traitor—had already made it to her house.