But if she didn’t leave, she wouldn’t be able to call the ninjas to set up my aunt’s rescue. I ran a shaking hand through my hair.
“You haven’t been very good at keeping us informed,” I said.
“Exactly.” Hudson widened his stance, as if preparing to tackle the scientist. Edmond stepped around the kitchen island, but Jenny shook her head, and he stopped several feet from Hudson.
“Fine.” Jenny thrummed her fingers on the back of the couch, then turned to Edmond. “Edmond and I will go to the nearest gas station to pick up new phones; then I’ll send him back here, and he can park at the end of the driveway.” She glanced at me for confirmation. I nodded. “I’ll call Edmond once the meeting is set up. Edmond, you’ll tell Eva where to go, and everyone gets to be a part of the exchange.”
“Why don’t we all go together?” Edmond asked.
“I’ve got to gather the information the ninjas demanded before we can make the exchange. It’ll be faster without everyone tagging along, especially Eva.”
“We’re supposed to trust you?” Hudson asked.
Jenny lifted her dark eyebrows at me. Her plan worked with my curse, but it didn’t mean she’d stick to it. The moment she stepped out of sight, she could disappear, taking my chance of saving Sofie with her.
“Make it somewhere close,” I said, choking on the words. “Please.”
She nodded. “Atlas, you’re with me.”
Hudson’s expression turned to stone and he lifted his hands like he was being held at gunpoint. Lightning bolts struck on either side of him, and one skittered through his body. Jenny stepped around him and strode out of sight, the bullet train ricocheting along its truncated track beside her. Edmond followed her, stopping to grab the gun from the silverware drawer. Atlas took two steps after them, then spun and ran to the back door. He jogged through the backyard, swinging wide when Dempsey made a face at him through the windows.
“Where’s the restroom?” Dempsey demanded. “I need to put on my war paint.”
I pointed the way.
“Why’d you let her go? What if she’s lying? What if she doesn’t call? What if Edmond doesn’t come back?” Hudson asked.
His questions mirrored my fears. I swallowed bile and held my stomach to quell my nausea. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Hudson scowled and opened his mouth, but before he could point out more flaws in my logic, scrabbling, scratching sounds emanated from the ceiling, followed by a long, low whine.
“Dali!”
I raced upstairs and followed the whimpers to the master bedroom closet. When I opened the door, Dali burst out, barking and whining. He sniffed my legs, then circled Hudson, sniffing and licking him, too.
“Why was he in there?” Hudson asked.
“I don’t know. I must have accidentally shut him in earlier.”
“Your friend isn’t going to be too happy about that.” Hudson pointed to the carpet shredded around the threshold. The door had its share of gouges, too.
“Aww, who’s a bad doggie?” I crouched to reassure Dali, managing a faint smile. “Did you slobber on Annabella’s clothes? Did you shed all over her closet?”
Dali wriggled in delight at my I-have-a-treat tone.
“Are you sure this Annabella is your friend?”
“She’s like family. She’ll understand.”
Dempsey waited in the foyer. She’d changed and washed off her clown makeup, replacing it with tasteful eye shadow and lipstick. If not for her memorable size, I wouldn’t have recognized her. Disguised under the green wig had been long, golden hair worthy of a shampoo ad. Skintight jeans and a stretchy bright blue top replaced the baggy food-stained costume, revealing a doll-like bombshell body. Had she been two feet taller, she could have been a model. She had the right face: not quite classically beautiful but still interesting.
Dali rushed her.
“Whoa!” Dempsey held up one hand like a traffic cop, and Dali slid to a stop. He sniffed and licked her fingers. His whole back end wriggled with his wagging tail, but he didn’t attempt to get closer to her when she lowered her hand.
“Do you have a phone?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Where?”
“In my truck.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. It might still work.
“You want me to get it?”
“Not yet.”
I jogged to Ari’s car and grabbed Agent Coutu’s card from my bag. Edmond pulled up to the curb at the end of the driveway and waved, but he didn’t get out of the car. So far so good. I hurried back to the foyer. My best chance at going anywhere involved staying as far from the Tercel as possible.
“What now?” Dempsey asked.
I curled the business card into a loop in my hand. “Now we wait.” I sat on the threshold, eyes locked on Edmond. Dali flopped across my feet.
“I want Attila.”
“Who?” Hudson asked.
“Her gun.”
“You named a shotgun?”
“All the best weapons have names. Now hand it over.”
I released a long, slow breath, picturing my body sinking into the ground. Still and calm, like the earth beneath me. “You’ll get it back when we leave.”
Dempsey narrowed her eyes at me. “Now.”
I pinned her with the weight of my stare.
“Okay. Fine. Later.” Dempsey backed away. I focused on Edmond again, waiting for him to receive Jenny’s call.
One constricted breath at a time, I wound my curse back into a tight vault deep in my mind. With each inhale, I pulled the stillness from the earth into my body, sweeping my worry and fear ahead of it into the vault. With each exhale, I wedged the stillness across the vault’s opening, burying my destructive emotions.
Hudson sat beside me and wrapped an arm around me. He didn’t speak. He didn’t attempt to offer trite assurances about Sofie’s safe return. He didn’t voice the hundreds of recriminations resounding in my skull.
I should have gone immediately to the police.
I should never have caved to Jenny’s blackmail.
I should never have involved Sofie.
In the comfort of Hudson’s quiet presence, I isolated each accusation and suffocated it with the rest of my curse.
“I don’t know how you can just sit there. I’ve gotta move.” Dempsey paced in front of us. “What if they don’t show? What if they’ve hurt the elephantini? What if they’ve hurt your aunt? How do you know she’s still alive?”
My breathing hitched and the vault fractured.
“Dempsey,” Hudson said. “Go somewhere else.”
“You can’t tell me— Oh.” Dempsey awkwardly patted my knee. “I’m sure she’s fine. Your aunt wouldn’t be much leverage if she were dead.”
“Now, Dempsey,” Hudson growled.
“Fine. I’m going, I’m going.” She sashayed down the driveway to the Tercel in five-inch wedges. I tipped my head up to the sky, blinking when tears rolled down my cheeks. Hudson rubbed my back.
A longer hour in the history of all time has never existed. I spent it breathing. My aunt’s life hung on the whim of violent ninjas pursuing potentially the most lucrative scientific advancement of all time, and the most productive activity I could undertake was breathing.
I bundled up my self-hatred and buried it with all my other emotions.
When Edmond lifted his phone to his ear, every muscle in my body tensed.
“We’ve got a location!” Dempsey yelled. She dashed up the driveway. Behind her, the Tercel peeled from the curb in a haze of rubber and smoke. My heart seized. Half the point of him parking at the end of the driveway was for his car to be fresh for me to ride in. I bounded to my feet and sprinted down the driveway, Dali on my heels.
“Clover Park,” Dempsey shouted as she zipped past me in the other direction. I slowed. Edmond barreled through a sleepy intersection and disappeared. I spun around and ran back to the house, easily overtaking Dempsey.
“Get me Attila. It’s go time!” Dempsey vaulted onto her truck’s running board. I planted a hand on the driver’s door, preventing her from opening it.
“Call this number.” I thrust Coutu’s creased business card at Dempsey. “Tell them Eva Parker says Jennifer Winters is at Clover Park. That’s it. Don’t tell them anything else, okay?”
“Eva, are you sure?” Hudson asked.
“Positive. We’ve only got Jenny’s word about all this. If she’s lying to us, I’m not letting her get away with it. I’m not losing my one chance at saving Sofie.” If she lied about Clover Park, I’d tell the FBI everything.
“What about the elephantini?” Dempsey asked, jumping to the ground and planting her hands on her hips.
“We save my aunt, we save the elephantini.” I’d promise a lot more to get a message to Agent Coutu.
“You want Attila? Make the call,” Hudson said.
“Okay, okay.”
I backed away so Dempsey could open the truck door and retrieve her phone. I kept my distance during the brief call.
“I’m calling on behalf of Eva Parker. She says Jennifer Winters is at Clover Park.” Dempsey paused, then said, “Who am I?” She held the phone out to stare at the screen. “Who am I? I’ll tell you.” She tapped the screen, ending the call. “That was fun. Now hand over Attila.”
Hudson retrieved the shotgun. Dempsey broke it open and looked inside the barrels.
“Where are the cartridges?”
“I must have lost them.”
If it hadn’t been for my curse, I might have tried to ditch Dempsey. We didn’t need another person involved—not in Jenny’s elephantini abduction and not in Sofie’s rescue. We certainly didn’t need another witness. But I didn’t have the luxury of skipping out on her. Ari’s car wasn’t going to make it to Clover Park.
“Let’s go,” I said. I popped the tailgate and Dali jumped into the truck.
“Whoa. I’m not your chauffeur.”
“We can take our—”
“What about the curse?” I asked, shutting Hudson down. “Come on, we’re wasting time.” I slid into the cab, banging my knees on the dash. The bench seat hunched as close as it could get to the dash, which meant my knees pressed to the radio knobs. Hudson climbed in next, his silver terrier disappearing into the truck’s motor. He scrunched to the side and yanked the door shut, squishing us together. Dempsey climbed atop a booster seat and settled her feet on the extended pedals.
“Now this looks like a clown truck.” Dempsey cackled as she peeled out of the driveway.
* * *
Dempsey drove like flames were licking the tailpipe. Under different circumstances, I would have been scared, but knowing we were racing against my curse and on our way to rescue Sofie made the succession of broken traffic laws and close calls irrelevant. After the second abrupt lane change, Dali hunkered down in the back and only whined when a sharp turn sent him sliding across the bed.
For the first time in my life, I wished my curse on Sofie. If she’d had it, she could have stalled her kidnappers and improved the odds of our rescue. Instead, I was stuck with the debilitating curse and the stupid mental block preventing me from turning it off, and my lack of control was endangering all our lives.
I blamed Annabella. My working theory was that my mother had me too young, before her gift and curse had fully developed, and she hadn’t passed on the gene that would give me control of my gift. The kind of woman who abandoned her child to be raised by her sister seemed like the kind of woman who would fail to give her unborn child working DNA so she could live a normal life.
Thinking about my curse or Annabella—especially Annabella—wasn’t going to help Dempsey’s truck, but it was better than giving rein to the horrific images of the ninjas torturing Sofie that kept pushing to the forefront of my thoughts.
“I’m sure your aunt is okay,” Hudson said, wrapping an arm around me. “They don’t want to jeopardize their chance of getting Jenny’s information.”
His words were meant to be soothing, but they fueled the panic clawing at my skin from the inside.
“She’s more than my aunt,” I said, as much to distract myself as to make Hudson understand. “Sofie raised me. She’s more a mom to me than my mom.”
“Your mom is . . . alive?”
I snorted. “Yes. Alive. Off globe-trotting as we speak.” Too busy following her dreams of travel and fame to spare a thought for me. “I was a teenage oops, one she didn’t want to derail her life to deal with.” It came out as bitter as I felt, but I was too wrung out to censor myself. “Sofie was supposed to be temporary assistance, helping Annabella until she graduated high school. But then there was acting school. In New York. Because LA doesn’t have any good schools, right?” How had Annabella explained it to me when I was three? All of the greats trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. You want Mommy to be great, don’t you? She hadn’t liked my response, either. I’d said no, that I wanted her to be with me. But she’d already known my answer. That was her gift: The divinations Annabella saw around people showed what they wanted right now. It hadn’t mattered; she’d gone anyway.
“Annabella? As in the name of the family friend whose backyard now looks like a bulldozer rampaged through it?”
“Yep. The same one who now has bullet holes in her living room and Lab hair all over her designer wardrobe.” For a moment, the corners of my mouth curled up.
“Damn. I thought I had some mom issues because I wasn’t allowed to date until I was sixteen,” Dempsey said, barreling through a corner gas station when traffic backed up at a red light. “Boy did that backfire. I had to make up for lost time. I dated five guys my senior year, Tom and Kevin at the same time. Take that, Ma!” She floored it through a yellow light. The engine whined and clacked ominously.
When we hit residential streets, Dempsey gunned it through stops signs, yelling, “We’re coming for you, Aunt Mom!” Sharks circled through the truck, and I twisted to look at Hudson. He was pale, one hand gripping the seat back behind me, the other the handle above the door. A minivan braked ahead of us, and Dempsey swerved around them, hanging out the window to shout, “PETA elephant rescue in progress!”
We spun into the Clover Park parking lot and, brakes squealing, squeezed into a spot between a sports car and a flashy SUV. Dempsey turned the engine off, and the truck hiccupped in place, clattered as if a troupe of flamenco dancers and their castanets were trapped under the hood, and died with a long, hissing sigh.
Hudson popped open his door and half fell out of the truck, catching himself against the SUV. The car’s alarm blared, and I jumped, scraping off a layer of skin on the dash. Trying to hold my ears, I squirmed out of the truck and planted my hands on the screeching SUV.
Sofie. Please be safe.
The alarm petered out on a whine, leaving my hands tingling. With ringing ears, I helped Dali out of the truck and jogged toward the park with the devoted Lab pacing by my side. Dali seemed to pick up on my mood and scanned the park like he knew we were looking for Sofie, completely ignoring other dogs walking by.
I was on the sidewalk before I realized what I’d done: I’d intentionally used my curse. Not like I had in the ninjas’ van or Edmond’s car, where I’d ramped up my emotions and waited. In that second, leaning against the blaring car, I’d pulled on the car’s electricity.
That wasn’t how this familial curse-gift thing worked, and I wondered what Sofie would say.
A fresh surge of anxiety bulldozed my surprise, and I focused on the busy park. Electricity from Dempsey’s truck and the SUV had boosted my gift, notching the apparitions setting from intrusive to overwhelming.
“Looks like Edmond beat us,” Hudson said. He pointed to the parking lot where a familiar green Tercel was parked. It was empty. “I bet Jenny’s already here, too.”
“What now?” a tiny medieval warrior demanded. Dempsey’s beaded breastplate had grown to coat her body, now in a modified houndstooth pattern with tiny bl
ack and beige shotguns instead of teeth. A bazooka peeked over one shoulder and a bronze compass circled her feet. Hudson was no better. An abyss at his feet swam with horrors from the depths of the ocean, but he wore his tarnished knight’s sword and was orbited by spinning Rubik’s Cubes.
“Come on,” I said. I jogged along the concrete walkway between the picnic tables and landscaping building, dismissing the teens making out under the canopy of trees and their apparitions of basketball trophies and stilettos, a yeti, and an endless waterfall of eggs cracking over their heads, yolks running down their bodies. “Check over there,” I told Dempsey, pointing to a rolling grass area and its miniature forest of trees that could be hiding a phalanx of ninjas. I skimmed over the tanned volleyball players but slowed to scan the playground. Clusters of adults chatted at the benches or hovered near their toddlers on the play set. Children darted through the jungle gym, plagued by angels and ice cream and blobs of color. A dog-size dragon swiped at kids exiting the slide, and a swarm of bees attacked a group of parents, but Jenny was nowhere in sight.
The squeal of children was dampened by the roar of an engine, pulling my gaze up. At the far end of the park, past the tailfins of private airplanes, a small plane launched off the runway of the airport beyond the fence line, and I remembered why I had stopped coming to this park. Open places were rare in LA, and I often took advantage of the low-electricity zones of parks to relax my perpetual stranglehold on my curse. At worse, I sucked up the electricity of a few cell phones and pointless gadgets normal people seemed incapable of leaving at home, or a water fountain would malfunction or lamp fail to click on at dusk. Clover Park, however, butted up to the Santa Monica Municipal Airport. No matter how slim the chances of my curse affecting the airplanes, after I’d killed my first car when I was ten, I refused to come back to the park.
I scrabbled with mental fingers to pull my curse in and contain it, but it was as if I were trying to collect air with my hands. Fear had demolished a lifetime of control, and I couldn’t waste precious seconds grounding myself. Achieving any sense of calm was impossible.
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 24