“Pretty sure I just met Clyde.”
Approaching from the end of the hall, Alvarez chuckled, then lifted his radio to his mouth.
“Jennie? Can you send someone with a bucket and a mop to the first floor men’s room? Clyde struck again.”
“Ten-four, chief,” Jennie crackled on the radio. Then Alvarez raised a curious eyebrow at me. “You don’t look half as freaked out as I was expecting.”
I gave a wry grin and rolled my sleeves up to my elbows.
“With all due respect, sir, I’m in the Occult Crimes Division. It takes a lot to rattle us.”
“Fair enough,” he nodded, then motioned towards two figures waiting for us to join them near the front doors. “Your partner says she has a map she wants us to take a look at out in the parking lot. Will you be joining us, or do you need to change? We’ve got extra sets of uniforms if you want one. We’ve got jumpsuits, too . . . ” he trailed off, grinning at my wet clothes. “But I’m not sure orange is your color.”
“Nah, I’m fine,” I said, trying to be a good sport. If it was just me and my partner on the case, I might’ve taken Alvarez up on his offer. But we had a couple of killjoys following us around, and the threat of shutting down our entire department at stake. I didn’t want to risk being caught enjoying my job and having a little fun.
“What happened to you?” a confused Elena asked when I joined her at the front doors.
“Poltergeist shenanigans.”
“Ah,” she said with a knowing nod. “What was it? Overhead sprinklers?”
“Toilet geyser.”
“Nice one, Clyde!” she called out before turning back to me. “I hope you plan on changing before we go out tonight.”
“Shhh! Don’t let them find out,” I warned, and nodded towards Kozlov and Johnson, who were about fifteen feet ahead of us. “They’re looking for any excuse to throw us under the bus. I don’t want any excuse for them to say we’re not professional.”
Like a wild animal, Elena bared her teeth and snarled.
“Who gives a shit where we grab dinner? Those assholes can go fuck themselves!”
“Yeah, that’s a perfect example of what not to do,” I said under my breath as I held the door open for her.
We stepped out into the blinding, blazing hot Arizona sun. I could already feel the water starting to evaporate from my pants and the jacket tucked under my left arm. Alvarez motioned for us to all gather around closer, and I instantly recognized the map from Jillian in his hands.
“Alright then,” he began, holding up the grave plot as he looked around the parking lot. "From what I can tell, Clyde’s grave should be right about . . . here."
“Isn’t that the section of the wall that was damaged by the excavator during construction?”
“Well I’ll be damned, Agent Hawthorne. You’re right.”
“Huh. Weird,” Elena huffed under her breath. “They desecrated someone’s grave and now they’ve got a poltergeist problem. Unbelievable.”
Alvarez glanced down at the pavement and pointed to the gold sedan parked beside him. "Better not tell Susan in HR,” he chuckled. "This is her spot."
Kneeling down, he pressed his hand to the asphalt as though he was expecting to feel something.
"It's almost like Clyde climbed out of his grave and went in through the hole in the wall," Elena mused, barely hiding her sarcasm. "Or maybe he saw the destruction of the wall as an invitation to go into the building."
But Alvarez wasn't listening. He was still intently staring at Susan’s car as if he was fully expecting Clyde to blast his way up through the ground at any given moment.
“Do I have to wear an actual dress tonight?” she hissed. I raised an eyebrow at her, then sighed and shook my head.
“Surprise me,” I whispered back. “Just make sure it’s a good surprise.”
"Everything okay over there?" Alvarez asked, looking up from the ground.
"We were just wondering about Clyde’s motive,” Elena lied. “Apart from the fact that he committed suicide here, it doesn’t make sense why he’d torment the police station staff. Something tells me his anger wasn't directed at the police station itself."
Alvarez straightened himself up and dusted off the knees of his pants.
"Rivera told me about what you found out at the museum," he said. "He was covering for his Chinese fiancé. Who would’ve imagined?"
He walked away from Susan’s parking spot, but his eyes never left the asphalt or the gold car parked directly above Clyde’s grave.
"It's sad, ain't it?" he said. "Being an interracial couple back then . . . It couldn't have been easy. Think that has something to do with our poltergeist?”
“Maybe," Elena shrugged. "Anything's possible."
Johnson let out a derisive groan as he and Agent Kozlov shared skeptical looks. Alvarez moved back to the spot of his grave as though he was somehow being magnetically pulled towards it.
"It's just so crazy to think he's beneath there," he said as he looked back at the plot map in his hands. "That they're all here right beneath our feet. I knew there was an old graveyard in this area, but having a map with people’s names makes it feel wrong. Don’t you think?”
"I don't see the problem,” said Johnson, walking over to the spot. “Not when all these people were criminals."
“Clyde wasn’t,” I reminded him. "Clyde was covering for the woman he loved."
Johnson ignored my statement and carried on talking.
“With all due respect, Chief Alvarez, I think we've seen enough. Actually,” he said, glancing from Kozlov over to me and Elena before turning back to Alvarez. “I’m not sure we’ve seen anything at all. We haven’t seen a single piece of evidence in the last two days that would suggest there's any poltergeist activity, let alone any proof that it's this bank robbing murderer who's doing the haunting."
Alvarez's eyes darkened as he gripped the graveyard plot map tighter. I could tell he had a thousand things to say to Johnson that would have been less than flattering, but he held himself back.
"I'll give you evidence," he said through a clenched jaw. "The cuffs. What about the damn cuffs?"
"Those things? Clearly just a prank. You could get them from any joke shop."
"Except you can't," Elena said, folding her arms across her chest. "They were Clyde McQueen' cuffs. They were a museum exhibit for years. They weren't just some piece of crap off eBay. We verified with a local historian that these are the real deal."
Johnson bristled at her words.
“Fine. So the handcuffs are authentic. That doesn’t prove anything except that the local historian is good at her job.”
“Maybe you’d feel differently if you saw firsthand what Clyde can do,” Alvarez suggested. I thought about mentioning my experience in the bathroom, but what could I really say? That the sinks and toilets had turned the men’s room into a waterpark? The truth was that we needed something more convincing to happen.
And it needed to happen soon . . . in front of either Kozlov or Johnson. Preferably both of them.
“What about spending the night at the station?” the chief offered. “If you were to monitor the place for twenty-four hours, you’d know what we’ve been dealing with.”
“That’s actually a really great idea,” I said.
“I’ll do it, if only to prove to you that there's nothing going on that can’t be explained.”
"You do that," said Alvarez with an arrogant flick of his head. "I'd love to see you spend a single night in this place."
You poor idiot, I thought as Johnson puffed out his little pigeon chest. You have have no idea what you're in for. I actually pitied the guy. Non-believers got hit by phenomena the hardest. If anyone knew that, it was me.
“You can take the first shift,” Elena told Johnson and Kozlov. “Hawthorne and I have a report to write. See ya in the morning!”
10
Elena
I couldn’t get away from the police station fast enough. I’
d called an Uber and headed straight for the nearest mall. Monsters and demons and ghosts were all in my wheelhouse. I knew exactly how to deal with those. But getting dressed up for dinner at a two Michelin star restaurant in the wealthiest city in the entire southwest United States?
This was foreign territory to me.
I’d torn open the bag of Skittles I was saving for an emergency, and was stress-eating them as fast as I could shove them in my mouth. I had less than two hours before our dinner reservation and I was totally fucked.
I didn’t have any makeup with me, aside from a tinted lipbalm and a dried-out tube of waterproof mascara. I didn’t know what the hell to do with my hair. And I didn’t have a dress. Or shoes.
All I had were jeans, boots, and an old army duffel bag full of old t-shirts that I thought looked sophisticated, yet relatable when paired with a casual dress jacket.
“Where the hell are we?” I asked when my driver pulled up to an endless row of upscale boutiques.
“Sand Valley Mall,” the driver replied. I nearly choked on my Skittles.
“This is a mall?”
“Yep. It’s the nicest one in all of Mariposa,” the driver said. I hauled myself out of the car and walked frantically down the sidewalk, peering into fancy windows. One store was nothing but white walls and white shelves, each holding one identical plant. Another shop window was filled with gleaming copper pots and pans on display underneath those special kind of lights that make everything sparkle more than it ever would at home.
Eventually I saw exactly what I was looking for at a formalwear boutique across the street. Three mannequins stood in the window, all in some otherworldly version of the Little Black Dress.
I had a LBD in the back of my closet in DC, a wrinkle-free, sleeveless contraption made mostly of spandex to accommodate my fluctuating waistline.
But the dress in the window was so much more.
“I’d like the dress in the window,” I announced to the woman who greeted me.
“Wonderful! Would you like to try it on?”
“Nope. I don’t have a lot of time,” I explained as I took out my wallet.
“Understandable. Alright then. That’ll be eight-hundred and ninety-eight dollars.”
“I will pass on the dress in the window,” I said, tucking my wallet back into my purse. The woman gave me an understanding nod. I think she appreciated my candor.
“We have one from last season by the same designer. It looks like your size. And it’s on clearance,” she said with a smile. “I can show you that one, if you like.”
“Sure.”
I followed her to the back of the store, and bless her for actually being good at her job. The moment I saw it—I knew I’d be able to keep my end of the deal with Logan. He’d asked me to surprise him . . . to make it a good surprise.
I had no intention of surprising him. I planned to blow his socks off.
There it was; plunging neckline, long, sheer sleeves, a tasteful yet flirty ruffle along the slightly-above-the-knee hem. And it was 70% off.
Yep. That was my dress for tonight.
A quick swipe of my credit card and it was mine, along with some hot pink heels because the saleswoman said they’d look amazing with my hair. I didn’t have a lot of practice wearing platform heels but—alright, I had zero practice—but that detail didn’t seem important at the time.
I ducked into a Sephora and told Preston, the makeup artist on shift, that I was going to the fancy-pants Café Mariposa for dinner.
“Okay,” he said, studying my face while mentally putting on his thinking cap. “Help me set the tone here. Is this for a hot date or are you dining with family or friends?”
“Uh . . . he’s my partner,” I stammered as my pits broke into a nervous sweat. Shit. I could smell my faerie funk emanating from inside my dirty shirt. Hopefully Preston couldn’t smell me. “At work!” I added. “He’s my partner at work. But we’re also friends. Actually, he might be my only friend. And I think I want him to be more than that.”
Preston frowned at me. Then he grinned.
“You think you want to be more than friends, or you know you want to be?”
“I definitely wanna be more than friends,” I gushed. It was crazy how easy it was to tell complete strangers my deepest secrets. Preston’s mouth twitched as he took on an air of authority.
“Sounds like your partner might be thinking the same thing. Cafe Mariposa isn’t the kind of place you go with friends from work, unless it’s to land a business deal or something. It’s the kind of place you go to impress someone.”
“Well, do you think you can help me impress my partner?”
“Honey, please,” Preston laughed, and practically pushed me into his chair. “If things don’t go the way you want tonight, it won’t be your fault. I know just the look you’re going for,” he assured me, and got started with his tool belt of brushes. We chatted about what we found most attractive in guys and he commented on the natural shimmer of my skin. I didn’t tell him I wasn’t human, and thankfully he was too focused on my makeup to ask me.
When Preston finally spun me around to face the mirror, I almost fell out of the chair.
“What did you do to my face?” I gasped. My eyes were smoldering in shadows of amethyst, and my cheeks were kissed with the faintest hint of blush. My mouth was a shade of desert pink that I never would’ve chosen for myself, yet this was now my new go-to lipstick. I looked like a goddamn faerie bombshell goddess.
I was sexy.
Like, really sexy!
“It’s a purple smokey eye with a soft pink lip,” Preston boasted. “I didn’t think it made much sense to use a bold red lipstick if you’ll be eating and drinking and doing god knows what else all night. And with your bright green eyes and pink hair, I added some purple sparkle for some extra pop. Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I sighed. I couldn’t stop looking in the mirror. “I’ll take one of everything you used, and a pack of bobby pins.”
Ten minutes later I was in the mall bathroom, frantically trying to corral my waist-length hair into a halfway decent updo. My technique consisted of grabbing handfuls of hair and pulling it on top of my head, then jamming in a half dozen bobby pins. When one side looked too flat, I teased out some hair with my fingers to try and balance it out. It might’ve helped if I actually knew what the hell I was doing, because this girly stuff wasn’t exactly my cup of Mountain Dew. I was a ponytail girl. Most days I didn’t even bother brushing my hair.
I heard my phone buzz from where it was crammed at the bottom of my purse. It was Logan texting.
Where are you?
I glanced at the time. Seven-sixteen. Shit! There was no way I’d be able to get back to the hotel in time for a quick shower, let alone a washcloth wipe-down.
I’m at the mall. Where are YOU??
It took Logan less than thirty seconds to respond.
Waiting for you in the hotel bar . . . like we discussed. We were supposed to meet here at 7.
Dammit. He’d said that, hadn’t he? And I completely spaced it. The more I panicked, the more aromatic my armpit fae funk became.
Let’s meet at the restaurant. I’m on my way!
Catnip & Curses (The Faerie Files Book 2) Page 10