“I'm your buddy!” Morgan crowed. “Oh, that must be so painful to you…”
“So, you can't have her for that one night,” said Victor then, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Sorry about that. It’s not like I want a buddy date,” he sighed, raising his eyes to the heavens, “but I seem to be on a date shortage lately.”
“Well, I hope that shortage clears up soon?” I said uncertainly, then sighed and glanced at Morgan. “And I suppose I can get along without her for one night…” I gave her a wistful look, though. I mean, I would miss her. I was falling in love with her. But I was sure I could find some mischief to get up to on my own…
My phone rang, filling the air with the tinny sounds of Tchaikovsky and startling all of us—including Winnie, who jumped just a little (she was currently floating at the very top of the stairs. She was apparently too interested in our conversation to sequester herself away).
“Sorry, I have to take this…” I muttered when I glanced down at the screen and saw who it was. I got up, trotted quickly to the front door and let myself out into the night. “Hello… Mom?” I said warmly.
“Hi, sweetheart!” she crowed through the receiver. “How is my baby girl?”
“Fabulous!” I smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear as I glanced down at my shoes and put my other hand into my jeans pockets. “Like, really, really good, Mom,” I told her then, hearing the glow in my words.
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s wonderful,” she said, and on the other end of the phone, I could hear the door to the oven opening and shutting, and what sounded like a tray being set on the counter. Of course she was multi-tasking while talking to me. “Can we talk about your love muffin?” she asked then.
I chuckled so hard that I had to stop to catch my breath. “Love muffin? Oh, Mom,” I said with another chuckle. “I’d love to, really,” I told her, glancing up at the still-threatening stormclouds hanging over Wolf Town, “but I have company over right now—”
“Say no more, sweetheart. I won't keep you, then! But the girls and I were talking, and we were thinking that we all might make the trip up to Wolf Town for Samhain weekend! We wanted to see the café, and isn’t that when Bette is supposed to be getting back into town?”
“Um,” I began, but I was cut off.
“And we could see how you were getting on... And celebrate Samhain, of course! Isn’t that a wonderful idea?”
I swallowed, glancing backward into the café and to Morgan, who was chuckling at something that Victor had said. Seeing my mom again would be wonderful, obviously—but, I mean—the whole coven?
Morgan was a werewolf, sure. But she’d never faced an entire coven of witches before.
“Sure!” I said weakly. “That'll be fun! But, Mom,” I said then, raising an eyebrow, “are you just totally bringing all of the ladies up to judge Morgan? To see if she’s good material for your one and only daughter?”
“You see right through me, sweetheart,” she said, without a touch of guilt. Which meant that, yes, absolutely, that was a major reason for her trip. “So, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad that we could discuss this!” she sang into the phone. “We'll come up Thursday night!”
“I can’t wait to see you guys,” I told her sincerely. “And you’ll probably love it. There’s supposed to be a big carnival and all sorts of fun stuff,” I told her, glancing back into the café again. Morgan and Victor’s heads were bent together as they discussed something serious.
“I'll call you later!” said my mom, and—making some smooching sounds—she hung up.
I smiled as I pocketed my phone and went back into the café, the door’s bells ringing behind me as I shut it.
“So,” I began, but Morgan glanced at me with a sly smile and held up her hand.
“I heard it all,” she said, then looked a little penitent. “Sorry, a wolf has very good hearing,” she said, tapping her right ear and straightening in her seat. “I'd love to meet your mom,” she said, completely sincere as she gazed up at me.
I leaned against the wall, folding my arms as I winced. “That’s very sweet of you,” I said then, trying to find the words with which to prepare her for this coming weekend. “But my mom is going to be bringing her entourage. Are you sure you want to meet all of them? I mean, they get kind of crazy...”
Victor and Morgan exchanged a glance, the vampire throwing up his hands to encompass, I assume, the entire town.
“It’s Wolf Town,” he said, with a shake of his head. “We deal in weird like it’s our own currency.”
“True,” I said with a small smile. I sat down next to them again, indicated Victor’s empty plate. “Good?”
“Almost as good as blood,” he promised, tossing his napkin onto the empty plate.
I…suppose that was a compliment.
Chapter 13: The Lake Monster
I made myself a cup of tea and waited for Morgan on the front steps of the shop, wrapped up in my sweater, the late afternoon sunshine washing the entire main street of the town in gold.
The many dirty dishes would wait until early tomorrow morning; I hadn’t realized how busy the café could get, since there weren’t that many people in the town to begin with, but, my goodness, the café had been crowded today. The tables were full until after I’d closed. Is this what I should expect every day?
I watched the leaves of the oak in front of the Café drift down, teased off the branches with a fine wind. There was so much possibility in the air, in the wind, in the leaves and the steam that curled up like spirals from my teacup. I was exhausted, but it was a good kind of exhausted; I’d made my aunt a lot of profit with tasty diner food that put smiles on people’s faces.
It’d been a tiring but good day.
Morgan came up the street, her long red coat open, hands buried deep in pockets and her beautiful, strong face bent toward the ground, as if she were deep in thought. But as she approached me, I saw her nose begin to twitch, and then she glanced up. When she saw me, the smile that lit up her face was astronomical in its span, and when she came close, she offered her hands to me; she helped me up and into her warm embrace and kiss and hello.
She tasted like coffee and spices, and her mouth was as warm and inviting and lovely as she was.
I was waiting for cartoon hearts to start appearing around us, accompanied by an extremely sappy love song pumped through some invisible speakers, but the moment didn’t last. We broke apart as Burt neared us, stalking down the sidewalk in an extreme hurry, face cast in a downward-swooping frown.
“Oh, no,” said Morgan the moment she saw him, raising her brows to the heavens. “Burt, what’s wrong?”
“Something terrible, I’m afraid, Morgan.” He shook his head. “It’s the water pipes again. I really need to talk to your father about this, about what’s happening with the town and its safeguards. They don’t appear to be functioning at all, at this point.”
“There's another break in the pipes?” I asked Burt, eyes wide as I tightened my grip on Morgan’s right hip, fingers curling reflexively as I thought about the creature that had tried to attack us in the abandoned factory. “I thought the mermaid left,” I told him.
“I think that the mermaid was only part of the problem, unfortunately—not the entire problem,” said Burt, looking miserable as he kind of sagged there, standing on the sidewalk and leaning back on his heels, like he wanted to declare “uncle” to the universe. “I'm not certain what it could be this time. But there are a few breaks in the pipes, and we have to turn off the water again, Amy. I’m sorry about that.”
“I wanted to wait to do dishes until tomorrow, anyway,” I assured him with a smile. “Don’t even worry about it.”
“Burt, we really need to get to the bottom of this,” said Morgan, voice low, hackles raised as she bit off the last word with a growl, her lips over her teeth. “This is getting ridiculous,” she snapped. “After we find out what’s wrong,” she said, nodding to Burt, “I’m going to talk to my f
ather about it again. He wasn’t very helpful when I brought it up with him last time. Have you gotten a chance to talk to him about it?”
Burt shook his head. “He said he’s been in too many meetings.”
Morgan stared at the man, her eyes narrowing. “Really? That’s odd…” she muttered.
“But, yes, if you want to help, be my guest. I could really use the help. I’m kind of at my wit’s end. Do you ladies want to come to the plant with me and look at the old break? Maybe it's broken through again, and maybe this time we can find, once and for all, the root of this problem and fix it.” He sighed. Burt looked more haggard than he ever had before, haggard and defeated.
I looked about, at the sun setting, at the encroaching darkness. Going to an abandoned factory that may or may not contain a monster, and so close to Samhain, wasn't really my idea of fun. But he did look desperate, and he was such a good guy. I couldn’t imagine dealing with this problem by myself, and so far, that’s exactly what he’d had to do.
“I’ll go with you guys,” I offered with a small smile. “It’s okay, Burt,” I told him, zipping up my hoodie as we turned and together walked down the sidewalk in the direction of the outskirts of town and the abandoned factory. “Try to think positively?” I suggested, with a grimace, and then another small, encouraging smile. “It’s probably not another killer mermaid, right?” I joked. And then I realized that was a terrible joke.
“It could be anything, including another killer mermaid,” said Burt with a groan, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes with a tired hand. “Anything in the whole damn mystical ocean, deciding to flop upstream, using our pipes to do it in!”
I bit my lip and trotted after the both of them as darkness descended over Wolf Town like the beginning of a nightmare.
---
“You know,” I said, as Morgan struck a match, lighting the candle in the old-fashioned lantern, “if you could have told me a few months ago that I'd be searching through an abandoned shoe factory with a werewolf, looking for a possible sea monster in some water pipes, I would have thought you were slightly crazy. Or a writer. Which is sometimes the same thing,” I pointed out, as she shut the lantern door. It was warm to the touch already from the small flame.
She shot me a half-smile in the guttering candlelight. “Well,” she said softly, reaching across the space between us to take my hand, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Burt’s flashlight had been out of batteries, so he’d remembered there had been a few lanterns in the broken-down shed behind the factory. Now, together, we walked into the abandoned factory with only the light of the lantern to guide us. This wasn't ridiculously terrifying at all, walking into an abandoned building at twilight with only a guttering lantern and a werewolf between whatever monster had decided to mess up the flow of water again and us. But I trusted Morgan, and, anyway, I’d picked up another big stick outside of the building, and Burt was brandishing his pen. Plus, I'd spun an energetical shield around the three of us as best I could.
We would probably be okay.
Probably.
We moved through the abandoned factory at a snail’s pace. Morgan walked through it a little more confidently than the rest of us, thanks to her wolfish qualities, but it was almost too dark to see anything other than the nightmarish structure of the factory, which thoroughly creeped me out. I remembered that there was a gigantic hole in the floor, and I wanted to avoid falling into it…
But there it was, in the center of the room, clearly visible by the lantern’s light. Morgan crept up to the edge of that hole and peered down and in, her brows furrowed.
“Welp. That’s odd. It's still fixed. The water’s flowing through completely undisturbed,” she announced, lowering the lantern a little. “There's nothing down there.”
Of course, a tentacle chose that exact instant to come up and over the lip of the hole and wrap itself around her legs. It was like a very bad horror movie; the tentacle had suction cups, and looked, for all intents and purposes, like a gigantic octopus arm.
Morgan glanced down at the tentacle wrapped around her legs, sighed, set the lantern down on the ground and with effortless grace stepped out of the loops of the tentacle. “Really?” she asked sharply, glaring down into the hole.
The tentacle sheepishly sank back down into the hole.
“It's one of Ellie's kids,” she said, crouching at the edge and lifting the lantern up and then down into the hole. “Aw, c'mon, little guy…”
There was a hiss, much louder (and, admittedly, much scarier) than a cat's.
Burt and I came to the edge, too, mystified.
The baby, if something that large could be called a baby, didn't look much like Ellie, though it did have a long neck and a horse-shaped head. Instead of flippers, it had about six tentacles at varying lengths around the edge of its oddly shaped body. The body reminded me a little of a pool floaty. The creature crouched in a corner of the level below us, down in the hole. It had its head lowered, sharp teeth bared, hissing very slowly at the three of us, like a tire with a slow leak.
“Okay, so where did it come from, if there isn't a break?” I pointed to the solid pipes.
“Maybe farther down the pipes. Either way, I think they're trying to sneak from Wolf Town out to the ocean again,” said Morgan, shaking her head. “I mean, I can understand it. They’re wild creatures. Ellie loves Henry, but her kids have no such feelings and want to be free.”
“Understandable to want to be free,” agreed Burt. “But how do we move her now?”
We were at a loss for a long moment, until we saw her glide across the floor as effortlessly as if she were on wheels, tentacling (is that even a word?) after a rat. She pounced on it, devouring it in one nasty little gulp, tongue flicking over her pin-sharp teeth. She was about the size of a small pony. Which gave me an idea.
“Is…is she friendly? Did Henry raise her? If Henry raised her…I mean, can she be, well, ridden?”
“Ridden?” Morgan snorted. “You want to ride a lake monster?”
“Not me,” I said, waving my hands. “But if you want to...”
“Oh, nice,” she laughed, grinning. “Volunteer the werewolf. Everyone always volunteers the werewolf.”
“So, is that a yes?” I asked with a small smile.
She glanced down into the hole with her brows raised. “I don’t think I’m going to become a rodeo champion anytime soon. Sorry, but I’m going to have to sit this one out.”
The three of us looked down into the hole.
“Any other ideas?” asked Burt weakly.
“Well…” I began, as my cell phone went off. It was the ringtone I used for my mother, Toccatta in Fugue.
All of a sudden, the little beastie's head swung up as quickly as if a string had been pulled. She (for whatever reason, she struck me as female) cocked her head; then slowly—frighteningly, like the stuff of nightmares—she began to climb up the vertical wall toward us, her little tentacles flailing, her suction cups keeping her stuck to the wall as she inched ever forward.
She came up and over the edge of the hole in the floor even as we backed away. Her equine head was down, her big eyes blinking slowly, and her long lashes fluttering. This close, with the lantern flickering, she looked less frightening, though still strange. At least she was no longer hissing.
My cell phone chose that exact moment to stop ringing, and she paused, too, as if surprised, her head up, eyes blinking slowly.
But my mother is a very persistent lady.
The phone began to ring again.
Again, the creature began to tentacle toward me, albeit a little slowly.
All three of us looked to each other.
“So, I think we have a plan, then?” asked Morgan, her arms crossed.
“Well,” I said, holding up my hot pink phone. “It’s better than creating a lake monster rodeo, admittedly.”
My mother was persistent, but she wasn’t more persistent than a couple of phone calls. I dialed up
a browser on my phone and then played a video of a tinny version of the song. It was about a mile to Henry's house. That song was never going to get out of my head, but as we walked slowly out of the factory and toward the broken sidewalk on the edge of town, the strange creature followed us with a docile, calm expression, occasionally snapping at a moth that fluttered too close to the lantern.
“We’re officially lake monster wranglers,” said Morgan with a chuckle, wrapping her arm around my waist as we walked together.
“I’ll make sure to put that on my resumé,” I chuckled.
We moved through the well-lit streets of Wolf Town, all the way to Henry’s place. All of the lights were on in Henry's impressive household, causing it to light up like a beacon on the edge of the small lake/pond/monster-home behind the house.
Henry had obviously realized that one of his pet’s babies was missing, because he was sitting on his porch, his arms folded and his foot tapping nervously. When he saw us, he leapt up and bolted down the steps, quite quickly for an older gentleman.
“Oh, my goodness, Sasha!” Henry exclaimed, trotting past us, right up to the little monster that towered over him but was still subjected to a very big squeeze, the man tenderly placing his arms about the beast’s neck.
“I was so worried about you!” Henry said, and when he stepped back, it looked as if he had tears in his eyes. He wiped them away with a sigh, shaking his head. “I hope you know that you are in so much trouble…” Henry began as the beastie, Sasha, lowered her head, batting her long-lashed eyes at him in what I presumed to be some semblance of being sorry. “Go home!” intoned Henry, pointing down to the lake, where Ellie splashed about in the shallows anxiously.
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