Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  “So it was luck that you stumbled across the monster,” Temi mused, “and luck that brought it to your camp last night.”

  “As far as I know.” Since Simon had ridiculed me for thinking we had something that might be drawing the creature, I didn’t bring up the theory again. It seemed even more unlikely now that I knew the whatever-it-was had come from out of state. Surely we didn’t have anything that intriguing in the back of the van.

  “Where do the Harley riders come in?”

  “They were at both spots too. And both times, they showed up after the creature had killed someone.” I felt silly saying creature over and over, but I didn’t know what else to call this mystery being. It wasn’t a bear, no matter what the newspapers said, and I wasn’t ready to add jibtab to my daily vocabulary yet. I’d filled Simon in on Eleriss and our strange conversation, but using such terms would draw confused looks from the general population.

  “What is the plan now?” Temi asked.

  “I’ve been instructed by the police to avoid monster hunting. It’s also been suggested by multiple parties that I might want to get out of town. Or out of state.” I thought of Eleriss’s proclamation that Alaska would be a suitable destination. I wish I remembered more of that conversation. He’d said something about finding “that which can destroy” the creature. Some super powerful tool or weapon? Located in Prescott? That seemed about as likely as a week passing without our van needing one repair or another, but it wouldn’t take much to convince me to run off into the woods after some unique relic from a bygone era.

  “Will you heed either of those suggestions?” Temi had known me at a time when I would have ignored any advice to stay out of trouble, but I’d grown up since then, at least a little.

  “Believe it or not, I probably will. I’m insanely curious about those riders and their strange language, but we need to focus on our business and on activities that pay the bills. You know, grownup stuff.”

  “Wise.”

  To Temi’s credit, she didn’t sound shocked or disappointed by my choice. I guess she’d grown up a little too.

  My phone flashed a text message alert. Simon.

  Van is fixed. Ready to roll? I have an idea.

  I must have frowned because Temi asked, “What is it?” in a concerned tone of voice.

  I showed her the message.

  “An idea? What does that mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing related to grownup stuff, I bet.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Simon ordered a burger from the bored man cleaning glasses at the bar—business still hadn’t picked up—then veered over to join us. He dragged over another chair, and I pushed my laptop to the side. We could have moved to a bigger table, but he didn’t suggest leaving the sacred outlet. Also, he’d been bouncing from foot-to-foot while he placed his order, so I knew he was impatient to share his news. He gave Temi a nervous glance though, apparently remembering his shyness around girls now that we weren’t busy chasing motorcycles.

  “What’s your idea?” I asked him. “And how much will it cost?”

  “Nothing.” He focused on me and grinned. “It’s already been implemented.”

  “Irrevocably?”

  Somehow Simon managed to shoot me a dirty look without losing the grin. “No. Do you remember those collars I made for your uncle this summer?”

  “The GPS tracking collars for his hunting dogs? I mostly remember you cussing out Taos because you couldn’t find a decent electronics store.”

  “Yes, I made that app and a few trial devices before I had two that were sturdy enough to stay on a pointer hurling itself around in the brush. I still have those prototypes in the van, or had rather.”

  I glanced at Temi and lowered my voice. “You didn’t... put the collars on someone, did you?” I imagined some homeless fellow sleeping on a bench under a newspaper with a dog chain around his neck before it occurred to me to wonder why Simon wanted to track someone anyway.

  “No, of course not. But I took the trackers off and taped them on something.”

  “On what?” Temi asked, her chin propped in one hand. She seemed to find this admission of clandestine detective work amusing rather than alarming. If she started working with us, she’d learn better soon enough.

  “It’s more of an in really.”

  “Simon,” I whispered in exasperation.

  “The tailpipes of a couple of Harleys.” He pulled out his phone and opened an app. A map of Prescott came up.

  I leaned back in my chair, trying to decide if I was horrified or intrigued. Or both.

  “Why do you want to track them?” Temi asked.

  “Del said they’re trying to find some tool or weapon to kill that monster. If it’s something old that they’re prying out of the earth, I’m sure she’ll be interested. She also wants a sample of their language. If they don’t know we’re around, I’m sure they’ll speak freely.” He held up his phone, which happened to be opened to a voice recording application.

  “You’re being awfully... considerate of my interests.” I squinted at him. “Why do I have a feeling you have ulterior motives?”

  Simon smiled innocently. “I’m certain I don’t know.”

  “Anyone been by our blog to read your story?”

  His smile widened. “Oh, we’ve had oodles of visitors. I had to talk to our hosting provider a while ago, because we crashed on account of all the traffic using up our monthly bandwidth quota. In two hours.” He waved like some self-important Vegas prognosticator and proclaimed, “It all happened just like I thought it would. Wired and BoingBoing picked us up, and I don’t know how many lesser blogs.”

  Temi’s mouth quirked, as if she didn’t know if she should be impressed or not.

  “Uh huh, and did we get any orders?” I asked.

  “No, but that’s not how it works,” Simon said. “It’s the links from these big sites that count. The traffic is cool, but you’re right in that it won’t be targeted to our business. It’ll all be people interested in the monster story. Although...” He drummed his fingers in his Star-Wars-Imperial-March pattern. “If I acted quickly, maybe I could put together some T-shirts or something. We wouldn’t make a ton, but merchandising could be good for a few bucks.”

  “Merchandising?” I mouthed to Temi.

  She shrugged back at me.

  “I don’t have any artistic talent, but maybe I could do something with the pictures I got,” Simon went on. “I wish I had one of the monster. I mostly have mutilated bodies. That’s kind of garish for a T-shirt, right?”

  “You think?” I asked.

  Temi was more tactful than I, forgoing sarcasm to simply say, “Yes.”

  “I did put some impression-based advertising on the site when I saw all the traffic,” Simon said. “We’ve already made thirty dollars today.”

  I kept myself from rolling my eyes—barely. Money was money, I supposed, but I wanted to succeed doing something that added value to the world, or at least made someone happy. True, an antique steam shovel probably wouldn’t grant anyone eternal bliss, but that fellow had been pleased to find one for his collection.

  Simon switched to another app. “They’re not doing anything.”

  “Still parked outside the Vendome?” I asked.

  “Yup.” Simon’s hamburger was delivered, so he stopped staring incessantly at the screen for a moment. He didn’t, however, stop plotting. “I wonder how much traffic we’d get to our site if we somehow slew the monster and saved the town, thus ushering in a period of peace and prosperity.”

  I shook my head at Temi and pointed my thumb at Simon. “This from the guy who made me march into a men’s room shower at a campground to get rid of a spider.”

  Simon pointed a sweet potato fry at me. “It was a tarantula, not a spider. Huge difference. You all have some wicked critters down here in the desert.”

  “If you find Arizona’s wildlife alarming,” Temi said, “I recommend you never visit the Australian Outback.”

>   “You’ve b-been?” Simon asked, stuttering for the first time since he’d sat down. It was also the first time he’d looked in her direction.

  “Yes, I was in Melbourne for... work and went on a safari afterward.”

  “He Googled you,” I told Temi, not sure why she was being evasive about her tennis career. Well, I guess I could understand, especially if she was being judged heavily by her old colleagues, but Simon didn’t care. I didn’t care. Heck, I’d never admit it out loud, but I was perhaps the teeniest tiniest bit contented that she’d fallen from that lofty pedestal and was here asking us for work.

  “I see,” Temi said, then dismissed this information with an elegant shrug. How one managed to shrug elegantly, I wasn’t sure, but she did it. “The Outback was extremely hot that time of year—I was there in January—and we saw quite a few dangerous creatures. Did you know that the bite of a funnel-web spider can kill a human being in two hours? Also, I was told that the Inland Taipan has the most toxic venom of any snake in the world. It paralyzes you and eats away at your muscle tissue. It gets dissolved and passed through your kidneys until you start peeing out reddish-brown urine.” She wriggled her eyebrows, clearly going into the garish details because Simon seemed like someone who’d appreciate them. And she was right.

  He chomped on his burger as she spoke, listening in rapt fascination. Or just rapt... enrapture. In truth, she could have recited the plot of her favorite chick flick for him and received a similar result, but this would be better in Simon’s eyes. If he hadn’t been in love before, he would be now.

  I shook my head and stole a couple of his fries. “If one of those snakes shows up in your shower, I’m not going in to get rid of it.”

  “Understandable,” Simon said. “But you’ve got my back on the funnel-spider, right?”

  “We’ll see.” It must be a testament to my oddness, but these tales actually filled me with a longing to travel to the continent. I wanted to travel anywhere, really, having never been farther afield than California to the west and Texas to the east. Maybe someday we’d do well enough with the business to finance a few out-of-country excursions.

  “Actually,” Temi said, “I understand the Inland Taipan is non-aggressive.”

  “Until some idiot runs up to take pictures of it for his blog?” I asked.

  She smiled faintly. “Maybe.”

  “Hmmph.” Simon picked up his phone again. “They still haven’t left the hotel.”

  “Perhaps they’re brainstorming their next move,” Temi suggested.

  “Or maybe they found your transmitter and tossed it in a storm drain,” I said.

  “No way. It’d be flowing away under the city if that had happened.”

  I filched a few more of his sweet potato fries and found a corner of the table on which to open my laptop. I skimmed the local news sites to see if there’d been any recent updates on our creature. According to the Daily Courier, people had been calling in all morning and reporting sightings. Supposedly, it’d been spotted everywhere from the community college to Thumb Butte Recreational Area to the back aisles at Home Depot. There weren’t any pictures to support these claims, and every person described it in a different way. A seven-year-old girl in the Prescott Lakes neighborhood blamed it for a missing cat and said it looked like a rainbow unicorn with two horns and a goatee. You had to love kids.

  If the creature continued its west-to-east trek, it might already be on its way out of Prescott and headed to Camp Verde or Sedona. I imagined the legions of tourists in Sedona running out on the red rocks to take pictures of it... right before they were eaten. But if the monster had left, wouldn’t our Harley friends have left too? Either way, if the creature preferred nighttime excursions, it wouldn’t be out and about today.

  “Temi, why don’t we go check out some of those estate sales?” I said. “I can show you the other half of our glamorous business, and maybe the scarcity of people on the streets will let us find uncrowded spots and get some good deals.”

  She’d long since finished her meal and nodded agreement at this.

  Simon was busy refreshing the screen on his phone so I swiped his last couple of fries. “You staying here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, might as well. I’ll trade you the van for your laptop.”

  “All right, but don’t get ketchup between the keys again. And don’t slip anything into my laptop bag that we didn’t pay for.”

  Unlikely since the Raven served condiments in little bowls on your plate rather than leaving squeeze bottles out on the table, but one never knew what he might find. He’d never touch the paintings listed for sale on the walls—his thefts were always food-related and usually never for items worth more than a buck or two—but he might think the linen napkins would make nice souvenirs.

  CHAPTER 11

  Temi lifted up a rusty bicycle rim with most of the spokes broken. “When you said estate sales, I was picturing mansions full of antique sofas, priceless paintings, and marble busts.”

  “You were picturing that in Prescott?” I asked from beneath a picnic table where I was sorting through old apple crates full of vinyl records and self-help books from the 60s. Older books were more my forte, but I put aside a signed first edition of Sex and the Single Girl. That one was still in print and ought to bring a few bucks. “I know there are some trophy homes up in the hills, but I think most of them are the second houses of well-to-do Phoenix entrepreneurs rather than the twenty-third homes of blue bloods with way too much inherited money to spend.”

  “I suppose I was at least thinking that there’d be fewer cobwebs.” Temi swatted at a nice collection in the door frame. We were in the back of an old garage that had started its life as a barn. It was packed to the rafters, with a single path winding its way past the precarious junk piles.

  “If the dust isn’t to your taste, you could join the people admiring the furniture in the house.”

  “When you say furniture, are you referring to the green plaid sofa with the broken springs or the coffee table made out of plywood and cable spools? I simply ask because I wasn’t sure if those qualified for such a lofty label and thought perhaps you’d seen something someone might actually want.”

  “Nope.” I squirmed between the legs of the table and poked into another crate. “That’s what I meant.”

  “I don’t mind the dust.” Temi took a deep breath—a bracing breath? “What can I do to help?”

  I pulled myself out from under the picnic table and pushed aside a laundry basket full of car parts, possibly related to the half-assembled car in the backyard, but just as likely not. Once I could see her, I decided tall, athletic, and well-dressed Temi looked out of place in the dust-and-rust-filled garage. She might have fit in once, but nine years had changed her a lot more than it had changed me. I wondered if it was harder to have never had money and prestige than to have had it and lost it. I doubted I’d ever know. With my grubby hands, stained jeans, and faded T-shirt, I fit right into that garage and I probably always would.

  “Look, Temi, you don’t owe me any explanations, but I’ve been wondering why you’re here. If tennis isn’t an option for you anymore, why not go back to school? I’m sure you could stay with your parents to save money while you’re studying.”

  She grimaced. “I can’t go back there. I stopped in for a couple of days, and it was... awkward is a nice way to put it.”

  “I don’t get it; your parents are nice.”

  “My parents didn’t think much of my decision to leave for Florida all those years ago. If I hadn’t been given a full scholarship to the academy...” Temi plucked a cobweb off her shoulder. “My parents were fine with tennis when I was a prepubescent girl and it was a hobby, but Yaiyai never thought it was appropriate for girls to run around hitting balls with sticks.” This last part she said in her high-pitched Yaiyai-imitation tone, one of an eighty-year-old woman who had a cane she swung like a cudgel at all the young men in the neighborhood, because she was certain they were thinking imp
ure thoughts about her. “My parents became less and less enamored with it when it started taking more of my time.”

  “I remember that. They wouldn’t drive you to the tournaments, right? You had to get rides and stay with the other girls on the team?”

  Temi nodded. “You only saw the tip of the iceberg. We had a lot of disagreements. Once I was offered that scholarship, I believed I could be independent and didn’t need them. We had a big blowup on the night before I left. If you give up your studies and do this, you’ll never be welcome in our house again. Words of that nature. I threw some curses around, too, words a young lady shouldn’t know, much less say.”

  “Yeah, I had a lot of those in my vocabulary too.” Though I’d never dared fling them at my parents.

  “They forbade me to leave and wouldn’t help me get to Florida. I basically ran away from home. I hitchhiked and stowed away on freighter trains to get there.”

  “I didn’t know that. At fourteen? You’re lucky you didn’t get mugged... or worse.”

  “I know. There were a couple of scary incidents. When I got there, I handed over a parental release form with forged signatures. That first year, I kept waiting for the police to come and haul me back to New Mexico. I guess my parents never filed a missing person’s report though. I got the feeling they were waiting for me to fail and come back with my tail between my legs. That made me more determined than ever to succeed. I put an insane number of hours into my training, and when it paid off, and I started winning tournaments at the pro level... I don’t know. I thought they’d be happy, that they’d admit they were wrong, and that my choice had been right. That it’d all been worth it. But they always thought it was a crime to pay people money to play sports. And they never agreed with the jet-setter lifestyle, flying all over the world to compete. A waste of oil and the precious few resources the world has left.” This time she was imitating her dad’s voice—I’d known the family long enough to recognize the words without the impersonation though. “Even when I was succeeding beyond my own expectations... it didn’t matter to them. They never called or wrote, but I heard their words through my cousins’ mouths. They felt they hadn’t raised me right. They saw me as a failure.” Temi’s usual equanimity had faltered during her soliloquy, and she leaned back, blinking rapidly with her eyes toward the rafters. “I can’t go back there and prove them right.”