Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance

by Chastain, Rebecca

  “Why would someone be in the trunk?” Edmond shuffled over, eyeing the trunk like it was going to burst open and the ninjas were going to leap out. His apparitions remained food-centered, but a stork-size needle and syringe hovered over his neck, poised to plunge into an artery.

  “No one’s in the trunk. The damn trunk doesn’t work,” Atlas said. “Remember?”

  Edmond looked at Atlas and visibly relaxed, the syringe disappearing and a waterfall of chocolate cascading down his chest. “Right. Don’t worry, Eva. No one could have gotten in there.”

  I was more reassured than I should have been by his apparitions, thanks to the soft buffer of fatigue.

  “Where’s Jenny?” I asked Edmond.

  “Hudson’s house.”

  “What!” Hudson shot up from where he’d crouched over his engine, knocking his head on the hood. Rubbing the spot, he rounded the car and glared at Edmond. “How does she know where I live?”

  Edmond shrugged.

  “How do you know she’s there?”

  “We called her when the ninjas got you. She said she would meet us there.”

  “How did she know you would rescue us?” I asked.

  “That’s what we do,” Atlas said.

  “So what was the plan?” Hudson asked, rounding on Atlas. “If the van hadn’t broken down, what were you going to do?”

  “Pretty much the same thing. We had a gun. They had kung fu. Gun wins every time.”

  Hudson shook his head. The sharks still circled him, but the silver terrier stood guard at his leg now. Atlas’s apparitions flickered nauseatingly, and when he mentioned the gun, a bright white halo floated above his head—false advertising, if I ever saw it.

  “Let’s go,” Hudson said. He slammed the hood closed and locked his car; then we squeezed into the back of the Tercel again. I hugged my bag on my lap.

  Edmond drove to Hudson’s house without any prompting from Hudson. I clamped down on my emotions so tightly my mind numbed, but I couldn’t tell if it had any effect on my curse. I’d spent more time in cars in the past three days than I had in the previous three months. I wasn’t used to restraining my emotions for such long stretches, especially not under such extreme circumstances. My thoughts kept bouncing from my violated apartment to the terror of masked attackers to the panic in the back of my van, and each time a thought surfaced, I shoved it back down and replaced it with a memory of Dali playing in Sofie’s yard or Chatter’s crazy antics on a walk. I felt like a mental patient.

  I held together pretty well until Hudson covered my hand with his. A tremor vibrated my body. The dam burst on my emotions, and I couldn’t breathe through the onslaught of fear and anger and adrenaline and relief. When exhaustion swaddled me again, I welcomed it.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  I blinked. We’d parked in a minuscule driveway in front of a generic single-story house lit by a yellow porch light. Edmond and Atlas had already gotten out, and I scrambled after them.

  “Where’s Jenny?”

  “She’s inside my house, isn’t she?” Hudson said. He pushed past Atlas and Edmond and marched up the short walkway. The doorknob twisted and the door opened without him unlocking it first. The sombrero topped his spiky hair, and instead of fuzzy balls hanging from the rim, tiny metal cities glinted in the porch light.

  I rushed through the doorway a step behind Hudson. The lights were on in the front room, and Jenny sat on a worn sofa, a notebook open on her lap. She glanced up and smiled at me.

  “Oh, good. Atlas caught up with you. I need to talk with you, Eva.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Do you know the hell we’ve been through because of you?” Hudson asked. He didn’t raise his voice, but his neck flooded scarlet and a vein throbbed at his temple. He clenched and unclenched his hands.

  The smile on Jenny’s face, as if we were buddies happy to see each other, not blackmailer meeting blackmailee, sliced through the last of my cotton buffer. I’d kept my end of our fragile bond. I’d found Kyoko a hidey-hole—two, actually. I’d kept Kyoko safe; Jenny was supposed to do the same for me. She’d failed me twice in the same day.

  “Please sit. I need to tell yo—”

  “Sit? You want me to sit? Do you see this?” I pointed to the abrasion on my nose. “What about that?” I gestured to the blood crusted on Hudson’s forehead. “We were kidnapped. By ninjas! So, no, I don’t think I’ll sit.”

  “If you would listen, there are things I need—”

  “We’re through with listening,” Hudson said.

  “There are things you need?” I yelled, my voice reaching a glass-shattering octave. “Someone trashed my house. They broke everything.” I stomped into Jenny’s personal space and shoved a finger in her face. “You’re going to—”

  “You didn’t have information there about where you’re storing Kyoko, did you?”

  My jaw worked but no words formed. Clamping my mouth shut, I inhaled and exhaled noisily through my nose. Slowly, I lowered my hand and clenched it into a fist. No one spoke or moved. I started to walk away, then whirled back to face her. “What’s with you and your family handcuffing me?”

  “That was a misunderstanding.”

  “Really? In the trailer? Were you having an out-of-body experience when you cuffed me inside with an elephant?”

  “Wait, there really is an elephant?” Atlas asked, coming up behind me.

  “What if Hudson hadn’t been there, Jenny? How was I supposed to get out?” The question had niggled my thoughts the last few days, a plus one in the Jenny-is-crazy column. “Anything could have happened to me! Then who would have hid your stupid elephant?”

  “You could have called—”

  “I don’t have a cell phone.”

  Paper clip snakes writhed up Atlas’s arms and he sidled away from me. “No cell phone?”

  Jenny blinked owlish eyes at me, then racehorse blinders dropped into place on either side of her head. When she looked back down at the notebook, I couldn’t see her eyes. “It all worked out.”

  “I don’t know how you got it, and I don’t care. I don’t care who you’re hiding it from. I want that damned cursed elephant out of our lives,” Hudson said.

  “Cursed, Montague? That’s an . . . unexpected correlation. But, no, the elephant stays with you.”

  “Montague?” I repeated.

  “It’s my first name. That I never use.” Hudson swiveled his glare from Jenny to Atlas, who covered his grin with a hand. “Which means, Jenny, you’ve been checking up on me.”

  “Of course. All my research on Eva showed her single right now.”

  “Research on me?”

  “I didn’t pick you at random to take care of Kyoko. Aside from your special assets”—she gave me a hard, warning look—“you had a variety of necessary key factors.” Jenny ticked a finger for each point. “No children. Flexible job. Limited friend network. Wealthy enough to get things done but not so wealthy that you think your money can solve any problem. And most important, you’re exceedingly difficult to track. I needed someone Adorable Creations could never connect back to me. And transferring Kyoko to you at the gallery was completely untraceable—until you started playing detective.”

  “I’m so thrilled I fit your criteria. Lucky me. Now, take her back.”

  Edmond ambled in, carrying my overnight bag and satchel. My hand lifted to my shoulder. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d forgotten my satchel anywhere. When Edmond set the bags down, I quelled the urge to rush across the room and hug my satchel. Ari was right; it was my security blanket. If only it could offer protection against blackmail.

  Edmond glanced around the tension-filled room. “What’d I miss?”

  “There’s a real elephant,” Atlas stage-whispered.

  “A real one? But she said it was an elephantini.”

  “It is an elephantini,” Jenny said. “One Eva and Montague’s amateur sleuth tactics have put in danger.”

  “Eva and who?
” Edmond asked.

  “Elephant, elephantini. I don’t care,” I said. “She’s all yours. Let’s go pick her up right now. Then you won’t have to worry about us endangering her anymore.”

  “It’s not that simple. I need Adorable Creations to believe she’s dead. With the ninjas in play, it’s more important than ever.”

  “You’re trying to fake the baby elephant’s death? Why?” Hudson asked.

  “I told you, she’s not a baby elephant. She’s an elephantini, the first of her kind.”

  “And I told you, I don’t care,” I said.

  “That’s what Adorable Creations does,” Jenny continued. “They genetically modify domesticated animals to create miniature pets. They’ve been perfecting chromosomal alterations on cats and dogs for years, but I was brought on to work in the wildlife division. Kyoko is the result. She’s a full-grown elephantini.”

  “You shrunk an elephant?” Hudson asked.

  “I didn’t shrink anything. I reset the genetic markers that control growth. She was never a big elephant. And she never will be.”

  “Cool,” Atlas breathed.

  I would have gone with creepy or unnatural or bizarre. Hudson wore his silver top hat again, canted at a precarious angle. The silver terrier stood on the jail square. He was as frustrated and suspicious as I was.

  I paced across the room and propped myself, arms crossed, on the edge of a barstool at the high counter leading into a stark kitchen. Distance would help prevent me from throttling Jenny. “Congratulations. You stunted an elephant’s growth. But I don’t care how special she is—we’re done watching her.”

  “There’s more. My real job is with an American company, Evolution Solutions. I’ve been working for them since my junior year of college. They needed an inside eye at Adorable Creations, so I went.”

  “An inside eye,” Hudson repeated flatly. “You’re a spy. A corporate or a scientific or whatever you want to call it spy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Get out!” Atlas said. “I always thought you were just a nerd, and this whole time you’ve been all James Bondette.”

  “So give Kyoko to this American company,” I said.

  “I can’t.” Jenny’s blinders disappeared, replaced by thick, dirty glasses I couldn’t see through. “They need to believe she’s dead and the experiment failed. Everyone does. Otherwise she and a whole lot more elephantinis will spend their whole lives isolated in labs, and that’s not fair to them. Elephants are wild herd animals.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Hudson said. “Why would you take the job if you didn’t want elephantinis to exist?”

  Jenny ignored him, focusing on me. Her expression looked calm and her body language relaxed, but her apparitions hadn’t gotten the memo. Hummingbirds buzzed back and forth through her body, and the blinders swelled in size until they blocked both sides of her face from view.

  “No part of our arrangement involved you investigating me, Eva. Your job is to keep Kyoko safe and hidden. That’s it.”

  “We don’t work for you and—” Hudson began, but she cut him off without even looking at him.

  “That house you so cleverly found? The house I abandoned months ago? It was being watched—by the FBI, by the ninjas, and for all I know, by the retrievalist. You don’t know what you’re up against, and your incompetence is endangering everything. The ninjas found you; it’s only a matter of time before the FBI finds a reason to question you, too. Stop trying to find me. Stop looking into my past. You’re going to contaminate everything I’ve done and ruin more than you can imagine.”

  “My bad. I didn’t know you had a master plan,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster. “There’s a real easy solution here: Take the goddamn elephant back!”

  Atlas and Edmond flinched back a few steps in my peripheral vision. I didn’t look away from Jenny—I couldn’t. A pyramid of squirming, naked newborns piled at her feet, five on the bottom row, the pinnacle baby reaching her waist. The babies writhed, one enormous fleshy pink and brown creature with a sickening number of arms and legs. I fell off the barstool and caught myself against the counter.

  “The ninjas work for AC’s rival, another genetic company in Japan.” Only Jenny’s apparitions belied her serene tone and posture. She appeared as oblivious to my outburst as Hudson’s, as if she couldn’t hear disagreements. “They’ve been hunting for Kyoko since she was just a DNA sequence, and they’re ruthless. Thanks to your bumbling, they figured out you know something about Kyoko, too—hence, tonight’s abduction. They’ll be back, so don’t be stupid. And don’t screw up with the FBI; tell them nothing.”

  “What makes you think we’re not going directly to the FBI?” Hudson demanded.

  “You won’t.” Jenny locked eyes with me as she stood.

  “Hang on. You’re not going anywhere.” Hudson grabbed Jenny’s arm.

  A metallic click froze everyone in place. I glanced past Hudson’s shoulder at Atlas. He held a small black gun and aimed down his straightened arm at Hudson.

  “And you wonder why I don’t trust you,” I said. Atlas shrugged.

  “Don’t breathe a word about the elephantini,” Jenny said. The babies convulsed and grew by three layers, almost obscuring her.

  The insane scientist eased around Hudson, who pivoted, hands raised, to get Atlas in his sights. I lunged around him, desperate to keep Jenny there. I needed off this crazy train.

  Atlas shoved the gun’s muzzle to my forehead. I stopped short and glared down the barrel into his wide eyes.

  “Whoa. Easy.” Hudson pulled me a step back and slid in front of me. I’d been too slow, anyway. Edmond had already whisked Jenny out the door, and Atlas followed, backing out, his gun centered on me until he slipped through the door. Enormous red velvet curtains pulled closed on either side of him, framing him. A bright spotlight illuminated his gun. He tossed me a wink, then shut the door just before the curtains snapped closed.

  “Goddamn it!” Hudson slammed his flat hand into the wall. He stomped to the door and put his eye to the peephole, then slammed the dead bolt home. “She’s full of it.”

  “There must have been some truth in there. But what?”

  He ran his hand through his hair and released a long breath. “I don’t know. A spy? It’s so Hollywood.”

  “Her fear seemed genuine.” I shuddered. The pyramid of babies topped the list of creepy apparitions. “Either way, we’re stuck with Kyoko still.”

  I flopped onto the couch. Its worn cushions embraced me. Hudson dropped into the lone recliner. My heart twisted with worry for Sofie. The ninjas had found me; it wasn’t a stretch of the imagination that they would find her house, too. Thankfully, we’d moved her this morning. If the ninjas or the mysterious skip tracer thought to check out my aunt, they wouldn’t find her. No one would connect me with my mother. Annabella didn’t go to great lengths to acknowledge my existence, and I returned the favor.

  “I don’t like this,” Hudson said. “I don’t trust Jenny. I want to call the police. But . . .”

  “But we can’t,” I said.

  “You’re sure?”

  I looked away from Hudson’s probing gaze. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew I had a reason for going along with Jenny’s mad plan. But since I couldn’t tell him the truth, I couldn’t give him an explanation.

  “I’m sure.” My stomach growled.

  Hudson sighed and pushed up from his chair. “I can at least solve one of our problems.” He ordered pizza, then opened his microwave. Inside sat a bakery box. He pulled it out, grabbed two forks from a drawer, and set the box in front of me on the coffee table. “This should help.”

  It was coffee cake, an entire loaf.

  “You had coffee cake?”

  “I was optimistic this morning.”

  The whole world got a little brighter. I grabbed a fork, then pulled him to me for a kiss.

  “Thank you.”

  “This isn’t exactly how I pictured the evening going. I thought
we’d be enjoying this after hot monkey sex.”

  “I’m listening.” Memories of last night made my body tingle and helped me focus on something other than my sore body.

  “Hold that thought.”

  Hudson went back to the kitchen to call a tow truck. I paced myself, breathing between bites of the delicious cake, letting the brown sugar and cinnamon mask my problems. When he hung up from the towing company, he placed another call.

  “Matvei, I need a favor. It’s personal . . . Nope, not like that. I need you to watch my place tonight.”

  I turned to look at Hudson over the back of the couch. The sofa wasn’t positioned well. I would have shifted it to the right, moved the TV to a different wall, and opened up the room.

  “I don’t know who I pissed off,” Hudson said after a pause, “but I need to know it’s safe for me to sleep tonight. Can you keep an eye on things?”

  The coffee cake in my mouth turned dry and tasteless. Tonight’s sleeping arrangements had nothing to do with exploring my relationship with Hudson, no matter how much I’d prefer to pretend it did. I’d been chased from my home, hunted down on the streets, and now abandoned again by Jenny with more questions than before. Memory flashes of the ninjas leaping from the van and rushing us choked me. I set my fork down and grabbed my duffel. Doing something, anything, helped push the panic back.

  Following the dark hallway toward the master bedroom, I put as much distance between myself and the phone as possible. I might luck out, and Hudson’s hot water heater might run on gas, but I didn’t have more than another hour or two of working lights in his house.

  Like the front room and kitchen, Hudson’s bedroom was minimalist. The California king had matching nightstands on either side, though only one had a lamp. The bright sky blue comforter with an enormous silver oak tree embroidered on it lay smooth across the bed. I smiled at the sight: Hudson really had been optimistic this morning. From the state of his jumbled closet, which he’d forgotten to shut the door to, he wasn’t normally the kind of guy to make his bed.

  I froze in horror on the threshold of the master bath. The tiny room contained a sink, a toilet—and a shower stall. The stall was square. It had a three-inch lip at the bottom with a glass door. There was no tub. How did a person survive without a tub?