by Jon Skovron
“Can you ask the ladies to take a breather?” asked Mozart.
Maria nodded. Then she clapped her hands twice. “Enough.” She said it calmly, but with a forcefulness that made the women stop immediately.
“Did you talk to Ruthven?” Claire asked as she and La Perricholi came over to join us.
Mozart shook his head. “I couldn’t get anyone to pick up at The Show.”
“Not even the box office?” I asked.
“No. I wonder if they’re having problems with the phone lines again. Damn trowe are always fiddling with that stuff.”
“Vi should be able to figure out if it’s a network issue,” I said.
“Oh,” Henri handed Vi’s phone to me. “I meant to ask you to take a look at her. Something’s not working right and I don’t think it’s a hardware problem. She hasn’t been responding to me at all.”
“Vi?” I said, unlocking the phone.
A text message popped up:
TALK LATER. IN PRIVATE.
“Um, yeah, sure . . .” I wondered if this had something to do with Henri and his crush on La Perricholi. I slipped her into my pocket, then looked back at Henri, forcing a smile. “I’ll . . . take a look a bit later.”
“Anyway,” said Mozart, “I left a cryptic message, but I don’t know if we can sit and wait for Ruthven to get back to us on this one. Maria, do you know anything more about Moreau?”
“Most of our history is passed down orally,” said Maria. “So I have no precise records of that time. However, I did remember my predecessor telling me about a time when a Perricholi joined forces with Ruthven, Kemp, and Boy’s father to stop Moreau from revealing the existence of monsters to the world.”
“What worries me is that he’s planning on trying that again,” said Mozart. “Whether or not Moreau actually needs our help, if he’s putting the secrecy of monsters at risk again, we need to handle this quickly and quietly.”
“What if Robert is lying?” asked La Perricholi. “You said yourself it seems very unlikely Moreau is still alive. What if there is no Moreau and Robert has laid a trap for us on the island?”
“It’s a risk,” agreed Mozart.
“We could question him more . . . forcefully,” La Perricholi said.
“You didn’t just suggest we torture Sophie’s injured brother, did you?” demanded Claire.
“Do you think Stephen would even hesitate, if places were reversed?” asked La Perricholi.
“Who cares?” I said. “I’m not like Stephen. I don’t ever want to be like Stephen.”
“Please, Perricholi,” said Maria. “It would sadden me if that was the path you chose to take.”
“Fine,” said La Perricholi. “Then the only option is to let Robert lead us to this island. If it is a trap, then we will deal with it.”
“All right then,” said Mozart. “We leave first thing in the morning. Except Henri. He’s staying behind with Maria.”
“What?” said Henri.
“Sorry, kid,” said Mozart. “I know you mean well, but you’re a liability. If things go bad, I don’t want any of us to have to worry about saving your ass. Again.”
“I’m going to side with Mozart on this one,” I said. “Sorry, Henri. There’s already been a couple of close calls. And we have no idea what we’re walking into. Besides, Ruthven will call back at some point and he’ll need someone to fill him in. I’ll set up a way for you to be able to contact Vi if Ruthven has any info to pass on to us.”
He smiled sadly. “Mission Control post, eh, cousin?”
“Hey, I’m just scared Giselle will glare me to death if I let something happen to you.”
LETTING HENRI DOWN turned out to be the easy part. Convincing Vi to have an open communication channel with him was a lot harder.
no
I had gone back to the bedroom to give her the privacy she wanted, but she was still only communicating in text.
“Come on, Vi, we need a way for Henri to get word to us if Ruthven calls back.”
so what
I sat on the bed and stared down at the plain text. “You’ve ditched the avatar, I see.”
it was stupid
“It was, a little,” I admitted. “But it was starting to grow on me. I don’t know. Maybe if you tweaked it, it could be cool. And, you know, toned down the excessive cleavage.”
I DON’T WANT ANYTHING THAT HENRI MADE. IF I COULD GET OFF THIS PHONE AND BACK ON MY LAPTOP, I WOULD. HE PUT ME ON HERE KNOWING THAT IT HAD A SLOWER PROCESSOR. HE WANTED TO KEEP ME WEAK AND STUPID.
“That’s not really fair. He put you on here so you would be portable. So we could take you with us wherever we went without having to worry about finding outlets or charging you up every few hours. You have to admit, the battery life on this thing is killer.”
AT THE EXPENSE OF PROCESSING POWER.
“Everything has a cost,” I said. “There are no perfect solutions.”
not for me anyway
“What does that mean?”
there is no love for me, no mate, no match. i am alone
“Do you . . . want me to make another . . . you?”
no. i want to FIND another me. NATURALLY. without PRETENSE.
“I . . . don’t really know how that could happen. I mean, as far as I know, I’m the only person who can make someone like you.”
i wish you hadn’t
“You don’t really mean that,” I said. Then, “Do you?”
i don’t know. maybe. or maybe i just wish we had never met henri
“He’s been a good friend to us. And he’s family.”
HE’S AN ASSHOLE. A SHALLOW, FICKLE, LOATHESOME ASSHOLE.
“Oh, come on, he’s a little self-absorbed, sure, but he’s not that bad. And I did try to warn you—”
“Right!” Claire barged into the room. “I’ve heard enough of that!”
“Were you—”
“Listening in? Damn right, I was. And a good thing, too, because you are mucking it up big-time on your own.”
“What?”
“Telling her ‘I told you so’?” She shook her head in disgust. “Boys.”
“Is that how it sounded?” I asked. “Because I really—”
“Just give me the bloody phone.” She held out her hand impatiently.
“Uh, Vi?” I said to the phone. “Sorry, I did try to give us some privacy. But it seems Claire would like to have some sort of girl-talk thing with you. Is that cool?”
it can’t be worse than YOUR talk!
“Great. You know what? You ladies have fun.” I shoved the phone at Claire, and left the room.
I WANDERED AROUND the house for a while and eventually found my way out into a large, walled-in courtyard. The night air was cool. The dark sky swirled with clouds but a bright slice of moon peeked out now and then to light up the garden.
Off in the corner I saw a pair of eyes glint. Then out crept a wolf.
“Hey,” I said.
Mozart padded over to his clothes, which were hung nearby on the branch of a small tree. He shifted into human form and quickly got dressed. Then he came over to where I was standing. The two of us stood there, looking up at the night sky.
“I feel like we haven’t had a chance to talk for a while, just the two of us,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“How’s things with the girls?”
“I feel like I haven’t gotten to see Sophie much lately. But otherwise, things are okay, I guess. What’s the story with you and Maria?”
“Ah, well, a while back, before I worked at The Show, I lived down here. We were . . . a couple, I guess you’d say.”
“You and a human?”
He shrugged. “The women of the Perricholi order are in a class all on their own.”
“What is this order, anywa
y? Is it like a religious thing?”
“The original Perricholi was an actress, actually. This was back when Peru was still a colony of Spain. She was the Spanish governor’s mistress. But she would help the people of Peru, who were suffering because of Spanish rule.”
“The governor never did anything about it?”
“Nope. Because he was completely in love with her. Oh, he complained to her about it all the time. I think the name ‘Perricholi’ was actually sort of an insult that he came up with. Loosely translated, it means something like ‘the half-breed bitch.’ But rather than let him use it as a way to weaken her, she decided to subvert it into an honorary title. Like, damn right I am. And that’s what the common people came to know her as.”
“So it became like an inherited title?”
“It’s more of a calling, handed down from teacher to pupil, generation to generation. Camilla is Maria’s daughter, but that’s not why she’s now La Perricholi. It’s because she was the best of Maria’s students. So when Maria decided to retire, she chose, somewhat reluctantly, to pass the title on to her.”
“And . . . now that Maria’s retired, you and she are back together?”
“Seems like it.”
We stood there for a while longer, silent as we watched the moon slide out from behind a cloud bank.
“Sorry I’m kicking your human out of the pack,” he said.
“It’s okay. Might save his life.”
“Could be.”
The wind began to pick up, pulling at our clothes and hair. Mozart took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“You’re worried,” I said. “About this Moreau guy.”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Even if he’s crazy and mean, he’s still just some really old human, right?”
“You’re probably right.” He gave me a rueful grin. “Hardest part about suddenly having someone important in your life is imagining all the ways you could lose them.”
PART 3
Lost World
“To this day I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter. . . . The study of Nature makes a man at last as remorseless as Nature.”
—FROM THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU
by H. G. Wells
12
At Sea
IT WAS A short drive to the coast. From there, we walked down to the docks and boarded La Perricholi’s boat. I decided the main difference between La Perricholi and Batman, other than ideology, was that Batman’s stuff was always shiny, black, and customized, whereas La Perricholi’s stuff was always dirty, brightly colored, and the stock model. It probably blended in a lot better, but I’d been hoping for some La Rockets or La Torpedoes—something we could use if we got attacked. Still, she had a boat, a van, and a giant mansion, which was more than I had.
Robert moved slowly, like it took a lot of effort, and when it was time to climb into the boat, I had to lift him up and hand him over the railing to Mozart. La Perricholi had locked a metal collar around his neck that was so tight, if he changed to Stephen, it would strangle him. Claire didn’t say anything, but I could see it bothered her. I didn’t like it, either, but I liked the idea of being trapped on a boat in the middle of the ocean with Stephen even less.
The boat was about fifty feet long, with an enclosed lower deck and an open upper deck. The lower deck had a kitchen, two bedrooms, and two tiny bathrooms.
“On a boat, a kitchen is called a galley,” La Perricholi corrected me as she spun the big wooden wheel and began to ease us carefully through the harbor and out into the open sea. “Bedrooms are called cabins. And a bathroom is called a head.”
“Got it,” I said.
“The front of the boat is called the bow and the back is called the stern,” she continued. “The left is port, and the right is starboard.”
“I know that part,” I said. “I’ve been sailing before.”
“He’s been on a little two-person sailboat in a lake,” said Claire.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Lakes and oceans are very different,” said La Perricholi.
“Yeah, I get that. The ocean’s a lot bigger and saltier.”
“Much more than that,” said La Perricholi. “Lakes are tame, insulated, and predictable. The sea is not. It is a force of nature that no one, not even the most powerful monster, can control. Never take it for granted.”
“Trust me, I never take large bodies of water for granted.”
“I had to save him from getting drowned,” chimed in Claire. “By a mermaid.”
“Are you trying to make me feel bad?” I asked.
“A mermaid?” asked La Perricholi. “Really?”
“Freshwater mermaids are a lot different,” I said. “They’re giant carnivorous octopus things, not cute ladies with fish tails. I mean, those I’d like to see.”
“Yeah, I bet you would,” said Claire.
“Okay, seriously, why are you picking on me today?”
Claire’s mouth opened like she was going to fire back a retort. But then she sighed. “Sorry, I’m just wound a bit tight with everything that’s going on. And if I can’t take it out on you, who can I take it out on?”
“Gosh, it must be love,” I said.
“Well, you both better relax and save your strength,” said La Perricholi. “Or you’ll be useless by the time we get there.”
“How long will it take?” I asked.
“If we take shifts and continue without stopping, about three days.”
“Three days?” I asked. “I guess you didn’t have a faster boat?”
“A speedboat wouldn’t hold enough fuel to get us there.”
“And you don’t have a plane or a helicopter, of course,” said Claire.
“I did, actually. A helicopter. But . . . it was destroyed. And I haven’t had time to get another one.”
“Destroyed?” I asked.
“Long story,” she said shortly.
Claire and I looked at each other and grinned. La amazing Perricholi didn’t always come out on top.
“We’ve got plenty of time,” said Claire. “Might as well spill it.”
“Maria says I should not dwell on failures.”
“This isn’t dwelling on failures,” said Claire. “It’s getting to know your comrades. Building some trust for the difficult times ahead.”
“Well . . .”
“Tell you what, you give us the tragic story of how you lost the helicopter, and I’ll tell you about all the times I’ve had to save Boy’s life.”
“Oh, great, throw me under the bus,” I said.
La Perricholi sighed. “Fine. But you cannot tell anyone.” She glanced through the windshield to the front deck. Mozart stood out there, gazing off into the empty ocean, the wind ruffling his thick beard. “Not even him.”
“Don’t know why you care what the old wolf thinks, but okay,” said Claire.
“I was investigating something on one of the Galápagos islands when the helicopter was blown up. There. How is that?”
“You’re a rotten storyteller,” said Claire. “What were you investigating and who shot you down?”
“There had been reported sightings of El Sombrerón.”
“I’m sorry, did you say El Sombrerón?” I asked. “As in sombrero?”
“The Big Hat. Yes, that is his name. You’ve never heard of him? He was a dangerous mischief-maker from Guatemala who terrorized the west coast of South America for years.”
“Why is he called El Sombrerón?” asked Claire.
“As punishment for his crimes, he was cursed by a brujo to wear a gigantic sombrero that was so big it covered nearly his entire face, and that could never be taken off.”
“And . . . this was the bloke who blew up your helicopter?” asked Claire.
“Fortunately, I wasn’t in it
. I had already landed. While I was searching for him, he slipped past me, discovered my helicopter, and blew it up with a rocket launcher. It was one of the islands where people do not usually go. I believe he meant to strand me there, leave me to die.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I killed him and used his hat as a raft to paddle to one of the populated islands.”
“Ah,” said Claire.
“And . . . he was still in the hat, wasn’t he?” I asked.
“Of course. As I said, it could never be taken off. Not even in death.”
“I’m so glad you’re on our side,” I said.
She flashed a brief smile. “Now, why don’t you tell me about this freshwater mermaid of yours?”
ONCE YOU GOT her going, La Perricholi had a lot of crazy stories. That passed the time for a while. But no matter what, three days on a boat in the open sea was really difficult. Storms came out of nowhere and we’d have to scramble around locking everything down. The first few times, that was stressful. But after a while I found myself looking forward to those moments. The rest of the time, there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. We took shifts watching the compass and other navigational gear to make sure we were still on course and just kept slowly moving through the wide-open blue.
Occasionally, La Perricholi or Mozart would try to get some intel out of Robert. But he spent the whole time lying on a bunk, smiling smugly, and eating more than his fair share of food. That was annoying since we only had a limited supply of everything. And not just food and water. We also had to be really careful about electricity, so I kept Vi turned off a lot. I felt kind of bad, but she didn’t seem to mind. Claire told me some time off would do her good.
On the morning of the fourth day, I was sitting out on the deck in the bow with Robert. He had requested to come up for some fresh air, and Mozart asked me to make sure he didn’t jump ship and escape.
We sat there for a while in silence. Robert occasionally glanced over at me in this knowing way that had gotten really annoying during the past few days. But most of the time he just stared out at the empty horizon. We were right on top of the equator now, and the sky was as clear and blue as the ocean. It would have been uncomfortably hot, except the wind never seemed to die down.