by Alex A King
We were on the move again, limo slicing down the road, tires blistering the blacktop. I'd spent so much time gawking at my idiot cousins that I'd barely had a chance to look outside.
Darkness. More darkness.
And look at that: more darkness. Night had hastily thrown a blanket over the country. This part of Greece, so far, was very dark. But an ancient kind of darkness. That kind that could hide insane gods and bizarro mythical creatures. The way my day was going, I half expected a Minotaur to leap out of the bushes and Hulk smash the limo. The headlights revealed a short stretch of road that looked like something from a horror movie. Gnarled and grumpy trees along the sides reached for us. A faded line marked the center of the road, barely keeping us on course. The road's edges suggested something inhuman had been gnawing on the blacktop.
Then my grandmother said, "Uh-oh, it is the police."
Chapter 3
Sure enough, the back window was filled with dancing red, white, and blue lights. It was disco central up in here.
Grandma jerked to a neck-snapping stop. "No license," she said. "Quick, swap seats."
The person she said it to was me.
Me.
"I don't have a Greek license."
"But you have a license, yes?"
"Yes."
"Okay," she said. "It is good. Move."
No, not good. In what way was this anything except bad? My driving record was virginal, untouched by parking tickets, speeding tickets, and DUIs. One of those little voices inside me often liked to lip off about how traffic violations were a gateway drug to more serious crimes.
But I slid over anyway, because I remembered Grandma's deadly glare. Family ties seemed to be fastened in loose bows around here, not tight knots. She could kill me with a withering gaze and not even miss me. I knew her about as well as any random religious proselytizer who came banging on my door.
For the record, I was always nice to them. Partly because I believe in stacking the deck in my favor. While I'm not tight with God—or even sure He's (or She's) a thing—it doesn't hurt to be decent to everyone, just in case He's waiting to rubber stamp my exodus to hell. The other part of me is nice to them because you just never know if they're unhinged. These are people who believe we can sit in a garden paradise and break bread with lions, tigers, and bears. Maybe the bears could be bought off with the bread, I didn't know, but I was pretty sure lions and tigers preferred their meat hot, fresh, and yelling for backup. While I was being nice, I reminded them that I was doing them a favor, saving their organization money by saying no to their paper goods.
Grandma hadn't tried to sell me on anything yet, but our fledgling relationship had the solidity of quicksand. And me, I'd had a childhood fear of quicksand. They made it out to be such a huge deal in those days. As an adult, I still expected it to be like spiders: they say you're never more than three, six, or ten feet ('they' are fuzzy on the math) away from a spider, at any given moment. Every day I didn't step in quicksand was a mild shock.
My grandmother was surprisingly spry. She scrambled past me and buckled herself in while I was trying to get a grip on the situation. While I was doing that, a policeman swaggered up to the window, tapped on the glass with his big stick.
Using one finger, I rolled down the window and tried to be cool. "Can I help you?"
He crouched until he was at eye level. I immediately recoiled, because who looked like that? I mean, who looked like that outside of a magazine? Nature doesn't normally Photoshop people, but it Photoshopped this guy. He looked big and bad and delicious buttoned into the pale blue shirt of his police uniform. The bottom half was navy blue. Each epaulet on his shoulders was marked with a six-pointed silver star. He was maybe five-eleven or six-foot. Dark hair with a wave that probably turned unruly fast without a regular clipping. Skin the color of melted caramels. His eyes were a soft brown that were clearly entertained.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
Laughter came from the passenger seat. "Stay out of my granddaughter's pants, eh, Nikos?"
That charming smile melted away. He glanced from her to me and back again.
"Your granddaughter, Kyria Makri? Since when?"
"Since my son ran away to America and had sex with an American woman."
"Hey," I said. "They were married."
"In the Greek church?" my grandmother asked.
Uh … "No." Not big on ceremony, they'd thrown a quickie wedding at the courthouse, followed by a boozy reception at a brewhouse.
"Then it was not a real marriage, but that is okay, you are still my granddaughter."
The two goons in the back were quiet—real quiet.
"What do you want, Nikos?" Grandma asked.
He shrugged, gaze stuck to my face like sun-warmed gum. "I heard a story that you were out zooming around the streets of Volos without a license."
"Who was zooming?" She glanced around the limo's very nice, very fancy interior. "Only Katerina was driving, and she is a very slow driver. Americans," she said, waving one hand. "They drive like old women."
Not like this old woman, I thought. Grandma could go NASCAR if she wanted.
"Where is Xander?" he asked.
"Busy."
Officer Nikos, Constable Nikos—whatever—rapped his knuckles on the car door. "Okay. Do you need a police escort?"
"What for?" Grandma asked.
He shrugged. I could sit here and watching him shrug all night long. What the movement did to his shoulders was intoxicating.
"Word is these are difficult times," he said.
"Times are always difficult."
"Especially difficult, then."
Grandma wagged a finger. "Nikos, Nikos. You are a good boy. Go home, drink a beer, watch some TV. Think about getting married and having a family."
His gaze cut to me.
"Tsk. Not my granddaughter. Someone else. I have plans for her."
Wait—what? My mouth opened to launch a protest, but the old buzzard chose that moment to lean forward and pat the policeman's hand. She timed it perfectly with a sharp elbow to my gut. A clear and present shut-up.
"If you're sure …" he started.
"Of course. Go home. Do not worry about an old woman."
He flashed me a smile. My chest did this involuntary thing where it tried to evict my heart via my throat.
"Yia sou," I said (Yia sou is multifunctional. It's the aloha of Greek), but by the time it came out he was out of earshot.
Takis made kissy noises in the back seat. "Yia sou, Nikos."
"Enough!" my grandmother barked.
I tapped the gas—hard—then slammed the brake. Takis lurched forward, spilling onto the limo's floor. As skinny as he was, he collapsed like a pile of coat hangers.
Grandma cackled. "Yes, I like you very much, Katerina. You remind me of me."
Somewhere down the road we played musical seats. Takis drove the rest of the way, at a speed bordering on coma, while I was relegated to the back with Stavros.
"Don't touch me," I said.
Grandma glanced back. "If he is a problem, he can get in the trunk."
I was starting to like her, too.
This was a first, having a grandmother. Mom's mother was a witch who took the express train to hell when Mom was a newlywed. After condemning my mother to a childhood without junk food, my maternal grandmother choked to death on Peanut M&M's. My grandfather blew his aorta one morning, screaming at a neighbor's crapping dog. The mutt—a Great Dane—decided Granddad's newspaper was the perfect place to unload the memory of past meals. I was seven at the time. No big loss. Granddad was a firm believer that children should sit up, shut up, and eat up. Even Mom was kind of relieved when he keeled over for one last mouthful of sod.
Dad's parents were a mystery. Not just any mystery—they were a mystery stashed in a safe, buried pirate-style on some remote island. And there was no handy map with an X on it that I could ever find. I'd looked. Half my childhood I spent looking for clues about Dad's past. Tu
rned out all I needed to do was wait for him to disappear, and then his family would drug me, throw me onto a private jet, and whisk me away to Greece. If only I'd known it was that easy.
The limo was cruising uphill. The road was weaving and tilting, so Takis had no choice but to hug its curves and hope for a non-fatal outcome.
"Where are we going?"
"To my home," Grandma said.
"Where's that?"
"Up on Mount Pelion."
Mount Pelion—if you look at a map—is Greece's prehensile tail, located in Central Greece. It's got the Aegean Sea at the back of its peninsula, and the bulk of the tail curls around the Pagasetic Gulf. The port city of Volos sits on Pelion's foot. Don't ask me how many hours I've spent poring over maps of Greece; if they were billable I'd be sitting on a tall stack of greenbacks. Google said the mountain was splotched with tiny villages. It also said Pelion used to be home to Jason and his Argonauts, and the centaurs. Mythological events that transpired on Pelion lead to the Trojan War.
The place was oozing with history that may or may not have happened.
Which village were we headed for? Hard to say in the dark. Somewhere along the way, Takis turned the limousine off the main road and onto a narrower capillary showered with dirt and rocks. The headlamps were focused on the road, but some of the light bled over onto trees crowding sidelines. Unlike the trees on the main road these ones stood at attention, dutiful, vigilant soldiers.
"Nice road," I said.
My grandmother made a face. "We could have it paved, but a dirt and rock road is a good early warning system if someone is coming."
"Like who, the Persians?"
Grandma glanced at Takis who flicked a look in the mirror at Stavros.
"Company," Takis said.
Before I could squeeze an explanation out of any of them, the limousine shone light on a tall set of iron gates, the big, fancy curlicued kind that usually meant a mansion or insane asylum was on the other side. It was attached to a tall wall. Solid. Made of rocks piled on other rocks, and frosted with mortar so the whole stack would stick together for something close to eternity. Just outside the gate there was one of those little guardhouses, and in it, a guard.
I raised my eyebrow. "The White House?"
Takis looked in the mirror. "Yes, the house is white. How did you know?"
I slid down in the seat. Never mind. Some things were just destined to be lost in translation.
He grunted, rolled the window down, inched up to the guardhouse. Up close I could see a smaller door built into the wall, for foot traffic in and out.
The guard was built like somebody had grafted a lowercase b onto a p. His uniform was trying to do the decent thing, but it was running into trouble around midsection. A small flatscreen television had him captivated.
"Did you get him?" He spat the words out of the corner of his mouth, along with a spray of sunflower seed.
"No." Takis hooked his thumb at the backseat. "We got her."
The guard peered in. "Nice." Then he pushed a button and the gates parted. They weren't pearly, but I had to admit I was pretty impressed.
Behind the gate and wall there was a house. A lot of house. And Takis was right, it was white. A big box of a place, porch wrapped around both floors. Dead center there was a massive stone archway where a front door would normally be. To the right of that, a long stretch of garage doors.
"That is the family house," Grandma said. "Much of the family lives here—and some of our employees."
"Cool," I said. "Do I get my own room?" Not that I was staying. I had to find Dad.
Grandma glanced back at me. "Not in the big house. You will stay with me."
Did I look bewildered? I felt it. "Don't you live here?"
Takis looked at me in the rearview mirror. He grinned. Lots of teeth. Some of them were even straight.
The ground was flagstone, the fountain marble, the gardens—what I could see of them—well-tended to an obsessive compulsive degree. Two stone lions flanked the archway, one sitting, the other lying down. On the far side of each big cat sat a tall cactus in a bright red pot, offshoots reminding me of bent and broken fingers.
This was the end of the line. Takis cut the engine, jumped out and rushed around to get my grandmother's door.
Stavros looked at me, his expression wary. "You want me to get your door?"
"I've got it, thanks."
He shot me a relived smile.
I got out of the car, death grip on my handbag and its overflowing sanitary products. "Are we going to see Baboulas now?"
All eyes swiveled in my direction. They stuck to my face like those face-hugging creatures in Alien.
"Where did you hear that name?" Grandma asked in a casual, passive sort of voice, the kind one often hears moments before they're pushed out the penthouse window of a thirty-story building.
"From my father. And from them. They said Baboulas might know who took Dad." Both men were frantically waving their hands behind her in a, No, no, don't! fashion.
Her lips pressed together, hardening along with the rest of her face. Her wrinkles became deadly ravines, and I half expected her black eyes to shoot lasers, obliterating my cousins.
"No," she said in a voice dripping acid. "We are not going to see Baboulas. I am Baboulas. How can I go and see myself, eh?"
My jaw unhinged itself for a moment, then snapped back into place, trapping a chunk of my tongue between its teeth. Tears rushed to my eyes as I beat back the string of curse words.
"You're the boogeyman?" I asked.
"If that is the creature that hides under your bed and in your closet, waiting until you are asleep before it snatches you away, then yes."
"You don't look like the boogeyman."
"Oh?" She raised both eyebrows. "Have you seen the boogeyman before?"
"No." But I was pretty sure I heard it heavy breathing under my bed once.
"Then you are obviously an authority on the subject, yes?"
"I used to be a kid. That means I'm completely qualified to talk boogeyman."
My grandmother laughed and looped her arm through mine. "I like you. I hope nobody kills you, because I am not a big fan of revenge. Always it is complicated."
Fear tiptoed over me, carrying a large rock under one arm. One slip and—CRACK—my nerves would shatter. "Why would anyone want to kill me?" Besides the fact that it was my job to gently arm-twist people into paying their debts.
She shrugged. "Business."
"What business is that?"
"Michail never told you?"
All those stories Dad spun over my bed when I was a kid flooded back. Like the one about Baboulas washing gold coins in the river so nobody would know where it originated; or the one about Baboulas ripping the top off a boat with its claws, and stealing the bottled water; or the story about Baboulas climbing Mount Olympus to threaten the gods with destruction if they didn't lower capital gains taxes.
In hindsight, his boogeyman wasn't a closet-dweller, but a person. And that person looked nothing like my grandmother. Every kid knew the boogeyman wasn't a black-clad Oompa Loompa. Even now, looking at her I couldn't help wondering if she was going to break into song and dance, warning me about my character flaws.
"Maybe he did." My forehead scrunched. "I'm not sure."
"Like anybody, I am in the business of making money, Katerina. Maintaining and expanding the business my husband—your grandfather—and I worked so hard for. Now he is no longer with us, except in a container I keep the kitchen."
"Why the kitchen?"
"The kitchen is where I do business. People come to talk with me, to ask for favors and blessings, and maybe eat a little of my baklava. Yiannis said it was the best in Greece—even better than his mother's, and that woman … po-po, that was a woman who could cook."
"What kind of business?"
"A little of this, a little of that. Same as any good businessperson."
Very specific, my grandmother.
"Tha
t way." Takis nodded to the arch cut into the cement-rendered house. He took the vanguard position, while Stavros took the rear. Between them, Grandma and I were the sandwich fillings. Possibly they were making sure I didn't run away.
Which wasn't happening while these people—family or not—could potentially point me towards Dad. I was going home, but not until I'd squeezed every ounce of information out of them. As soon as twenty-four hours were up, I was calling the Portland Police Bureau, then the feds, ransom demand or not.
The arch opened into a huge courtyard. Now I could see that the front of the house was just one side of a square. Not so much a house as it was a massive compound, a giant palace of a place, with gardens and a conservatory and fountains. The only thing missing was an elaborate hedge maze.
Everything looked amazing, until my eyes snagged on the dive that sat dead center of the courtyard, the fly in the sugar-riffic cake frosting.
The rickety square box had been renovated sometime in the past to tack on a dog's hind leg. The main building itself was white stucco; the addition, neatly stacked stones, mortar slapped between them to hold the whole thing together. Someone had tacked a metal fence around the whole mess. Probably it was a hazardous zone. An optimist would call it a house. A pessimist would call it a Godforsaken dump. Me, I was just a guest here—I wasn't calling it anything until I knew what it was, for sure.
"That is my house …" Grandma said.
Oh.
"… and you will stay there with me."
Yeah, no. That thing couldn't be up to code. It was already on the verge of condemnation. What happened when the Earth got to shaking the way Earth does here? Greece was Earthquake Central.
"Uh …" I started.
"My house is the safest place in the country. Nobody uninvited can get in there without a swift death."
Well, that was vampires taken care of, but what about people? One fat sparrow and that roof was going bye-bye.
"Goodnight," Takis said. Stavros waved for both of them.
"Where are you guys going?" I asked.