by R. L. Naquin
She touched the bandages on her wrist with tentative fingers. “Do you think I screwed it up? Will it still come in?”
I gave her a hopeful smile. “As much as you keep scratching, I’m sure it’s fine. It wouldn’t itch like that unless it was trying to finish its job.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was so hopeful. So trusting.
“It’ll be fine. You’ll see.” I scooted to the edge of the bed. “You thirsty? I’m going to the vending machine.”
“I ate too much. Can you get me a ginger ale to settle my stomach?”
I gave her a goofy face. “Sure thing, Grandma.” I walked to the door and patted my belly. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Be right back.” I snagged the ice bucket on the way out.
We kept the food truck parked out of the way of the other residents and their vehicles. I checked on it as I walked down the sidewalk. Its shadowy bulk hovered at the back of the parking lot. Still there. That was good since, as much fun as I was having working the toast crowd in my costume, I missed Darius’s truck—my truck. I missed my truck. This case was an adventure, but it wasn’t my life.
My life was...well, my life hadn’t really begun yet. Eventually, I’d have to face the music and go back home to the djinn world. I missed my mother, father and brother, but I wasn’t ready to face them quite yet. I wasn’t ready to settle into my fate. Until then, I wanted to have all the adventures I could cram into the time I had left.
I continued down the sidewalk, turned left into the space between buildings, then left again into an alcove that housed the ice machine and two vending machines. I set the ice bucket on top of the ice machine and reached into my back pocket for the bills I’d stashed there.
A fly or some other bug tickled the back of my neck, and I slapped at it absently while I stared at my choices in the machine. Ginger ale was one of the choices, but the red light indicated it was out of stock. The two slots of bottled water were also out. What was left was a cola I’d never heard of, root beer and orange soda.
I frowned and slapped my neck again. Stupid fly. I stuck a dollar bill into the machine. To my surprise, it took it the first time without spitting it out and arguing with me. I pressed the button next to the root beer and waited for the loud thunk telling me to lift the flap and take my can.
As the thunk came, the fly that had bothered me became a whole hand. And it wrapped itself around my neck.
Stunned, I twisted sideways and jammed my elbow into the ribs of whoever was behind me. He let out a breath and bent over, releasing his grip, which gave me a precious second to turn to face him.
The man’s hair was a shaggy, sandy brown. At first, I couldn’t see his face, since he was bent over. His hands rested on his thighs. My breath caught in my throat. An owl was tattooed on his forearm.
“Curtis?”
At the sound of his name, he straightened and looked at me. His eyes were empty. Dead. The pupils bled into the irises in a sea of inky black. Before I could react, he grabbed me by my upper arms and slammed me into the wall. My head shot backward and bounced off the concrete slab.
Little pinpricks of light clouded my vision, and my stomach threatened to give back dinner. Curtis’s fingers dug into my arms. I stomped on one of his feet, then kneed him in the balls. He moaned, and I slipped out of his grip.
Normally, I’d have pounded the crap out of the guy already. I was djinn, which made me a little stronger than regular folks. Plus, my brothers hadn’t gone easy on me growing up. They wanted their sister to be able to protect herself.
I had two problems with beating the shit out of Curtis. First, I could tell by his eyes that he wasn’t home in there. And second, unlike my food truck friends, my homeless buddies were all human.
Curtis lunged for me, and I dodged. When he lunged a second time, I stepped to the side, then swept my foot under the leg he had most of his weight on. He went down face-first, arms pinwheeling. I jumped on him and went down with him, grabbing his arms and pulling them behind him. I straddled his back and sat on him, trying to hold both his hands at once so I could dig my phone out of my pocket and call Truman.
I pulled out the phone, but his right arm came loose before I could dial. He flung it wild and knocked my hand. The phone skidded away. After a few seconds of unfocused flailing, Curtis pulled his arm down to his hip. When it came back up, he gripped a chunk of mirror, similar to what I’d found in the alley. He swung before I realized what he was doing, and the glass sliced through my jeans and into my leg, leaving a gash in the outside of my thigh. Burning pain shot down my leg like a current of electricity a heartbeat behind the glass.
I jerked backward into the ice machine, and the ice bucket tumbled down on top of us. I grabbed it and smashed his hand until he let go of the glass. His hand and my leg made the alcove look like a slaughterhouse. My leg throbbed in time with my racing heart.
Curtis squirmed and managed to flip over while I was distracted with getting the mirror shard out of his reach. Those eyes gave me chills. If he were conscious enough to see my eyes, he’d have seen flames. His eyes, somehow, showed the opposite, cold and dark to my hot and bright.
He grabbed my neck with both hands and squeezed, grunting like an animal as he did it. I couldn’t get more than the tiniest sips of air.
Screw it. I couldn’t do this without hurting him. I grabbed his hair and banged his head on the concrete, knocking him unconscious. I prayed I’d held back enough to keep from doing more than superficial damage. His grip released my neck, and his arms went limp to the ground.
I drew in a long, ragged breath. “What. The. Hell.” I panted for a moment, drinking in the sweet air. Curtis lay beneath me, out cold. I pulled out my soul stone from under my shirt and held it over him while I studied the sparks on its surface. “Holy shit.” I looked from the stone to Curtis and back again. My voice was soft with amazement. “My friend, what the hell is going on here?” I lunged sideways far enough to grab my phone and came back to pinning him, then dialed Truman.
“What’s up?”
“I need you guys at my motel, like, ten minutes ago.”
He didn’t hesitate. “On our way.” His voice came from a short distance from the phone. “Saddle up. We’ve got a call.” He came back to the phone. “So, what have you got?”
“Dude, one of the local homeless guys—a very nice one I met earlier today—just tried to kill me. He’s unconscious right now, but I need you to get here before he wakes up. I don’t have anything on me to tie him up, and I’m not putting Ash in danger by asking her for backup.”
“Okay. Hang tight. We’re already in the van pulling onto the street.”
* * *
I didn’t know how fast Truman drove, but they couldn’t have taken more than four minutes to get to me. They pulled the van up to the curb, then all three piled out and ran down the hall toward me.
Truman practically knocked me out of the way to relieve me of guard duty over Curtis’s lifeless body. The human disguise on Truman slipped while he secured Curtis’s hands in those plastic cuffs that looked kind of like bread ties. I had no worries that Curtis would wake up and overpower the Bigfoot sitting on his chest.
“What the hell happened?” Bubba shoved me to a sitting position against the wall and examined my leg. “You’re bleeding like crazy.” He yanked at the slit in my jeans and made it wider so he could look at the cut. He whistled. “That’s gonna leave a scar.”
I sucked in air between my teeth as he examined me. Every tug on my jeans and every prod of his fingers sent a fresh wave of pain that wound deep into my leg and into my core. Now that I wasn’t fighting anymore, my body was letting me know how badly it had been abused. The edges of my vision were smudgy and gray, and little sparkles danced around Bubba’s head.
Joan gasped. “He’s not doing so hot, either. What happened to his hand?” S
he sat between me and Curtis, sharing the first aid kit with Bubba. She cleaned Curtis’s hand and put an antibiotic cream on it before wrapping it in gauze. The cream must have had some numbing properties, because the pain in my leg drew back a few degrees and let me catch my breath.
I rubbed the back of my head while Bubba used the same cream on my leg, then wrapped it up.
“I’ve got a huge goose egg.” I winced as I touched it. “Bastard slammed me into the wall.”
“He’s got one, too.” Joan shoved a jacket under my attacker’s head.
Truman climbed over Curtis and sat next to me. “So...what? He followed you here?”
“He must’ve. I didn’t mention where we were staying.”
“And he just came up behind you and attacked. No reason at all?”
“None that I could see. He didn’t exactly explain himself. He sounded more like an animal than a human.”
“What did he cut you with?”
“Ah. That. Well, it’s over there under the ice machine. I kicked it away. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and crawled to look under the ice machine. He reached under with the hanky and came out holding the mirror shard. “You’re shitting me. Another one?”
“Thought you might like that.”
He sat back on his heels and frowned. “What the hell is going on in this town?”
“I don’t know. But there’s more. I saved the best part for last.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
I pulled my scarab from under my shirt. “According to my stone, Curtis is currently missing his soul.”
* * *
When Curtis regained consciousness, things became both better and worse.
On the one hand, his eyes were normal, and a quick scan with my stone reported his soul to be intact and normal. On the other hand, we had a banged-up human in my motel room, handcuffed, bandaged and with absolutely no clue as to what was going on.
This, however, was not my problem, as it turned out. OGRE squads everywhere had dealt with humans landing themselves in the middle of Hidden crossfire, and they had ways of dealing with it.
Joan pulled a small aerosol bottle out of her pocket. “Sea serpent venom,” she said, shaking the can. “Vile stuff, but it does the trick. Best way I know to reset a human’s memory bank.”
“Venom?” Ash took a step toward Joan, as if to stop her. “Won’t that kill him?”
Joan shook her head. “Not poison. Venom. If it was poison, sure. But to do real damage, venom has to be injected into the system. Since we’re only spraying him with this, the effects are much more benign.”
“What are you going to do with that?” Curtis’s eyes were large enough to pop out. “You don’t have to use that. I won’t tell anyway. I promise.” Poor guy didn’t even know what he wasn’t supposed to tell. The entire situation was a car wreck.
“Do you have to keep him in those awful handcuffs?” I hated what was going on as much as Ash did. Curtis was clearly terrified.
“We’ll free him.” Bubba squeezed my arm. “Give them another minute. It’ll all be fine. I promise. This is what we do.”
Before I could object further, Truman grabbed Curtis by the jaw, pulled down and yanked his tongue out. “Go. Do it. Quick.”
Curtis wailed as if they were about to cut out his tongue—something he may well have thought was happening. I was too horrified to move.
Ash stood a few feet away, equally frozen, watching everything.
Joan moved forward and sprayed her bottle of serpent stuff straight onto Curtis’s tongue. Truman let go, cut off the cuffs, and he and Joan stepped back.
The wailing stopped, and Curtis relaxed. He blinked a few times, rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. “I’m so tired. Is this my room?”
Truman took him by the elbow and helped him stand. “No, buddy. But your spot at Homer’s is probably ready for you if you want to go there now.”
“That would be fantastic. Thanks. Just point me in the right direction.”
“No, no. We’ll take you.” Joan stepped forward and took his arm. “It’s on the way.”
“Thank you.” He lifted his arm. “What happened to my hand?” He winced and felt the back of his skull. “And my head. Was I in an accident?”
“Yes, you were. Must’ve been a hit-and-run. We found you and patched you up.”
The two of them kept talking as they left. I could hear him asking questions outside almost to the van.
Bubba gave me a quick hug. “You okay now? Take care of that cut, now. Don’t let it get infected.”
I shook my head. “I won’t. Thanks for fixing me up.”
He gave me a small salute and took off after the other two.
Truman stopped and let out a long breath. “I’m not happy with this.”
“Which part? My being attacked by a soulless human? Bodies showing up? Clues that lead nowhere?”
He nodded. “Yeah. That about covers it.” He walked toward the door and stopped. “Look. I know you can handle yourself, but be extracautious, okay? You’re not just a detective on this case. It looks like you’re also a target. So, just take precautions, okay?”
“I promise. And thanks for getting here so quickly.” I thought about hugging them all but decided I was too tired and too sore. I was also trying my hardest to look professional, which wasn’t easy with the ripped leg of my jeans flapping around my leg and blood drying on my skin. Part of me wanted them to stay and watch over us while I got some rest. The other part of me wanted them to leave so I could lie down to mentally replay what had happened and try to make sense out of it.
He tipped his head at Ash. “Make her listen, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
He shut the door, and the two of us collapsed on the bed, exactly as we had before I’d been attacked.
“Shit.” I stared at the ceiling, pissed.
“What?”
“I’m still thirsty.”
Chapter Fifteen
The first thing I had to do, under the circumstances, was call my boss. Not only did I need to report the incident, I needed to find out what he’d learned about soul stones since I’d last spoken to him.
“Art, we have a problem.” I figured I’d lead with the bad news before he had a chance to derail me with a greeting. Messing with Art was a good way to lighten the mood. My mood, anyway. “Things down here aren’t good.”
“Gosh, Kam. Don’t sugarcoat it. Why don’t you give it to me straight?”
I was stunned. “Art? Are you all right? It sounded like you made a joke.”
“Just trying to keep you on your toes.” A pen clicked a few times in the background. “How bad is it? Did someone else die?”
“No. Because this time it was me who was attacked.”
“Well, you’re obviously not dead. So something’s going our way.” Click, click.
I gave him the rundown on the attack, emphasizing the lack of soul in the human who jumped me. “Similar weapon to what killed Sandra. But here’s the crazy thing, Art.”
“Yeah?” Click.
“I talked to Curtis earlier today. He’s only been in town a few days. So, sure, he might’ve been the one to kill Sandra, but he couldn’t have killed Anna or Pete.”
Art was silent except for his breathing. Then the clicking began anew. “Okay. Well, I have information for you that might shed a little light on this, but also make it worse.”
“Wonderful. I think.” I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed my face with my free hand. “Give me something I can use to find that ring and stop this.”
“Well, I did some digging on soul stones. Very interesting history. I’ll spare you all that right now, but I th
ink my reapers and chasers will be coming in for further training at some point.”
“Anything I can use now?”
“You asked what would happen if an untrained person got ahold of a soul stone. I can’t answer that. But I learned what happens when a stone calibrated for Hidden souls is used on a human. And that’s what’s obviously going on here.”
I pictured Curtis’s eyes with their empty, inky depths, and shuddered. “What happens?”
“The human soul can be taken, but not permanently. The holder of the stone and the human’s soul can control the empty vessel for a short time, then the soul snaps back into its body, no harm done. Without the proper calibration, a human’s soul can’t be held for long.”
“So, you’re saying that’s what happened tonight. Whoever has the stone sent Curtis’s body to attack me, but after the time expired, his soul automatically returned.”
“That’s most likely the scenario, yes.”
“Why would someone want to kill me? Is it because I’m trying to find him and get the stone back or because I’m part of the Food Truck Posse?”
“Well, who out there knows what you’re really doing?”
“Just the OGREs. And Ash.”
“Do I need to ask who Ash is?”
“Nope. That’s for another day.”
“Okay. Well, assuming there aren’t any moles involved in that short list—and I’m confident in that particular OGRE squad, as it’s one of my best—it has to be related to the rest of the murders, not because you’re investigating.”
I yawned. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
“Not that I can think of. You?”
“Nope. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Same here. Stay safe, Kam.”
I hung up and stared at the wall for a few minutes. The back of my head was sore, and my leg felt like...well, like it had been sliced open with a chunk of mirror. I popped open a bottle of ibuprofen and shook a couple into my hand.