“What’s this?” he asked. The fishbowl had twenty folded scraps of paper inside.
“It’s tradition,” the waitress, Crystal Rhodes, said. She wore a faded pink uniform, a white paper hat, and a tired expression. She and Matt had been in school together, but were not what you would call friends.
“I don’t remember a naming jar for your kids,” Matt swirled the bowl around, trying to peek at the names.
“Well, I didn’t have a shifter baby, did I?” Crystal said. The duh was implied. “Naming ceremonies are important. Your kid won’t just be yours, y’know? He’ll be a symbol for all of us. A reminder that the great bear spirit hasn’t forgotten our town and that prosperity will rain upon us.”
Matt looked around the diner. Besides him and Marcus, only two other customers were taking up seats, both of them old-timers. “Prosperity, huh?”
“Oh you be quiet, Matt Morrissey.”
“It’s a she, by the way.”
“What?”
“The baby. It’s going to be a girl?”
“How do you know that?” Crystal asked. “Did the ultrasound work this time?”
Matt shook his head. “No, but Mina feels it. A mother always knows.”
Crystal snorted. “I was so sure I was going to have girls both times that I didn’t even bother looking up boy names. Took us a month til after my little guy was born before we knew what to call him.”
“It’s a girl,” Matt said. Crystal hadn’t heard the certainty in Mina’s voice. He had. It was going to be a girl.
Matt grabbed a mug from off the diner counter and poured himself a cup of coffee while Crystal scowled at him. “Can I get a blueberry pie please?” he asked.
“One slice?”
“The whole pie, thank you.” His bear woke up at the sound of pie and yawned with excitement.
Matt took his coffee and squeezed into the corner booth opposite Marcus. His older brother was an enormous man, fierce and cranky. He held a newspaper out—the Bearfield Gazette—and in his massive hands it looked as small as a comic book.
Matt sipped his coffee.
Marcus read the paper.
Matt sipped louder.
Marcus read the paper.
Matt slurped his coffee in a long drawn out bubbling hiss until Marcus folded the paper and regarded him with suspicious eyes.
“You have a beard!” Matt yelled in shock.
“Woke up like this.” Marcus rubbed a hand against his jaw. A thick brown beard shot with red rustled under his fingers. “Mina okay?”
“Yeah, mostly. She’s not exactly ready to take it easy. And our little cub isn’t making it simple for her. She keeps getting these flashes of like super strength or enhanced senses. Like for a few seconds she’s becoming a shifter like us. The other night, while we were sleeping, her senses turned on and she made me go sleep outside. Said she could smell everything I’d eaten for the last week on my skin.”
Marcus nodded. He never used words when a grunt or a look would do.
“And this whole magic thing is knocking her for a loop.”
“Which part?” Marcus’s forehead furrowed in concern, and for a moment he was the spitting image of their father.
Crystal delivered the pie—still warm from the oven—and hovered nearby, wiping clean tables and rearranging place settings so she’d have a reason to stay within eavesdropping range.
“We went to the hospital, to see the baby doctor. There’s all these things you need to do with a pregnancy and so many books, dude. So many books. And half of the books are all treat yourself right and you’re a goddess while the other half basically tell you that if you miss one vitamin your baby will die.” Matt shook his head and took a moment to dig into the pie. He sighed as he ate. It was good. Dave, the cook, made fresh pies every morning. But it wasn’t as good as Mina’s. “So we go into the hospital and the doctor gets out the ultrasound imaging device, rubs goo all over Mina’s belly and tries to aim these two fat wands at our baby, but she gets no signal. Like the baby isn’t there. Like Mina isn’t there.”
“How’d Mina take that?” Marcus rumbled.
“She freaked out, man. And then the ultrasound machine sort of exploded. The doctor thought it might be a bad machine, so she brought us to another room and then Mina blew that one up, too.”
Marcus nodded.
“It didn’t happen with our first ultrasounds. Those looked normal. But now, it’s like if we go into a hospital Mina gets worried and everything goes weird around her.”
Crystal interrupted. “You should get a midwife,” she said, pulling a chair over and sitting down at the end of the booth.
“So we have a midwife now,” Matt said, glaring at Crystal. “Joannie Lee. She’s from out of town, but she works with shifters a lot. It’s expensive of course, and she’s not exactly covered by insurance. But she seems friendly and competent as all hell.”
Crystal grabbed a fork and snatched a bite of Matt’s pie. “What you need is a doula. I have a cousin who’s a doula down in Berkeley.”
“Doula?” Marcus asked.
Matt glared at Crystal again. “We have a doula coming today, for an interview. She’s experienced with natural births and home births. And her role, Marcus, is to help the mother during the birth process. Just like emotional support, and providing for any needs that show up, intervening on her behalf with medical professionals.”
The more Matt talked about birth, the more Marcus squirmed in his seat.
“You okay?” Matt asked.
Marcus nodded sharply. The big Alpha had been out on a construction job when his own son had been born. The labor had come on in a rush and was over before Marcus could get there. Matt wondered if that bothered him. If missing his son’s birth was some old regret that haunted his brother. If they were different men, and Crystal wasn’t there, he could have asked. But Marcus never liked talking about his feelings and Matt had enough on his emotional plate at the moment.
He took another bite of the pie and then immediately spit it out onto the plate. It tasted like cardboard. Like a mouthful of sawdust.
“What the hell?” The pie was normal. He’d had a big bite of blueberries. It shouldn’t have tasted so horrid. Matt sniffed the room experimentally. He smelled nothing at all. “Are you doing this, Marcus?”
“Doing what?”
“I can’t taste anything. I can’t scent anything.” Matt closed his eyes. “I can barely hear anything. Was I poisoned?”
Marcus sniffed the pie. “Nope.”
“Oh I’ve heard about this!” Crystal laughed, slapping the table with excitement. “But I’ve never seen it!”
“About what?” Matt said. He wiggled his fingers in his ears, as if that would help.
“The baby is drawing your power. It needs magic to grow, and since you’re the shifter parent, it’s taking it from you.” She shook her head. “When is the baby due?”
“In a few weeks? Maybe two? We aren’t really sure, because none of the tests are working.”
“Well, mister high-and-mighty shifter-pants, get ready to live your next month as a mortal,” Crystal cackled at him, then left the table to go pour coffee for the other regulars.
“I can’t hear your bear,” Marcus said.
Matt’s heart froze. He hadn’t even noticed, but Marcus was right. His bear was gone. It’d left him. He couldn’t feel its ever-hungry presence at all. A hollowness opened within him, and fear came pouring out.
“What is this? What if it never comes back? How can I raise a cub without my gifts? Without my bear?” Matt grabbed the booth in both hands. His vision began to fade to gray. His heart raced and he couldn’t seem to breathe.
Marcus reached across the table and took Matt’s head in his hands. He pulled Matt gently forward until their foreheads were touching, and their noses were tip to tip. “You will be whole again, brother. Slow your breathing. Your bear has gone to look after your cub. He has not left you, he is helping you. Let him. Your child is going to have incredible
power. You and Mina will be fantastic parents. Your daughter will feel loved in a way that so few children get to.”
Matt’s breathing slowed and steadied. He fell into a rhythm with his older brother.
“Thanks,” Matt said.
Marcus grunted in response. It was grunt number seventeen, which Matt knew was his you’re welcome grunt.
“Now don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”
Matt left the half-eaten pie for Marcus, who’d finish it in three bites, and went off to meet Mina at the midwife’s temporary office. They were going to meet the doula today and come up with a birth plan, discuss strategies in case of unforeseen difficulties, and generally find a way to deal with the rising panic.
But when he arrived, Joannie Lee was pacing outside her place. The woman was old and thin, but not in a frail way. She was graceful and shockingly lithe for someone in her eighties. Joannie liked to joke it was clean living and kimchee that kept her strong, but Matt suspected it had more to do with her being a witch.
“There you are!” Joannie said when Matt drove up. The office was a modified medical trailer, parked in a lot just outside of town.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked. “Where’s Mina?”
“She never made it here,” Joannie said. “I cast the bones, too, but they couldn’t find her.”
“Do it again,” Matt growled, but without his bear it lacked any power.
“She’s vanished, Matt. The bones say she’s been taken.”
Chapter 3
The floor under Mina shook and rumbled in a way that floors shouldn’t. Her head was heavy and thick, like she’d been medicated. She wanted to close her eyes, to sleep more, but something nagged at her. Something was wrong. No, it would pass. Matt would handle it. Sleep was more important, especially for someone as far along as she was. After all, she had to go into town to meet with Matt and the midwife and the doula today.
The doula.
Mina opened her eyes a crack but saw only darkness. Her heart hammered in her chest. A rumbling sound came from all around her, and from nowhere at all. She wanted to panic and to scream for help, but instead she centered herself and took an inventory of her surroundings.
I am in a car, she told herself.
I am in a car trunk.
The car was driving quickly, on a highway. She could tell because the road was smooth and straight and there weren’t any straight roads in Bearfield that extended for more than three blocks. She wasn’t in Bearfield anymore.
The panic came back, like a shark circling before it attacked, but Mina thumped it on the nose and it swam away. For now. She didn’t have time for panic.
Mina felt around in the trunk. It was not a big space, she was in a nearly fetal position and couldn’t stretch out her legs without hitting the fuzzy interior padding. She was barefoot, wearing her maternity pajamas that her sister-in-law Allison had given her, covered in little chubby cartoon bears. Her hands felt something dry and thorny around her. Some sort of weed or flower with sharp prickers on the stem and a large bulbous pod on the end.
What if it’s wolfsbane? Her panic was almost a second voice in the darkness.
What if you’ve been kidnapped by hunters and they don’t want any more bears born to this world?
What if this is one of those cars that has a carbon monoxide leak into the trunk area, and you’re slowly being poisoned and are hallucinating half of what you sense?
Panic was an asshole.
She was captured, not dead. So probably not hunters, she guessed.
Mina tried to remember all of the stories she’d heard about kidnapped people, about car trunks, about what you should and should not do in this sort of emergency. Wasn’t there a Lifetime movie that’d featured such a thing?
She felt around for an internal handle, some sort of latch or lever to pull, but all she found was a handful of wires and more of the prickly leaves. There wasn’t even a tire iron in the trunk. Taking a chance, Mina seized the wires in her hands and yanked them hard, tearing them out of whatever they were powering. She’d expected some spark, or some noise to reward the effort, but she may as well have snapped twigs for all the good it did her.
Mina focused on breathing steadily and on keeping the panic away. She tried to listen for anything useful, but her senses were normal and not being super helpful. It would have been the perfect time to borrow some enhanced shifter hearing, so of course her little cub wasn’t playing along.
The car drove and drove. Mina fought to stay awake, even though the darkness and warmth and steady vibrations from the wheels conspired to make her sleepy. The car was going slightly uphill, quickly, in gentle curves. That meant north. If they’d gone west from Bearfield it would’ve been all downhill to the ocean, with twisty turny mountain roads making her carsick. South towards San Francisco would have been mostly downhill, with a few dips and rises. And all the roads east into wine country and farmland were slow and potholed to hell and back. Smooth and uphill meant north.
Great. Now what to do with that knowledge?
After some time, the car pulled off the highway, then maneuvered down side streets until it came to a stop. Mina had nothing. No phone. No weapons. Just pajamas and a desperate need to pee. At least her little cub didn’t seem agitated. She was very calm indeed.
Muffled voices argued outside. If only Mina had control over her borrowed magic. If only she could summon up those shifter senses when she needed them, instead of at the worst possible times. If only Matt were there. He’d be able to handle whatever was waiting for her outside the car with ease. But Matt wasn’t there. It was just Mina and the cub and a pile of dead weeds.
The trunk popped open with a gentle tick. They were in deep shadows, parked under a grove of eucalyptus. The smell was oddly peaceful, considering the circumstances.
Standing a few feet away were two people. The first was a tall skinny man with scraggly white hair, big moony eyeglasses and a dopey smile on his face. He was a familiar stranger, a face she’d seen around town for the last year, but she couldn’t recall his name. Her memory felt fuzzy at the edges, like there were flower petals falling in her mind. He had a funny name, John Turnip? Billy Carrots? Something like that. No, wait.
“Peter,” Mina said. “Peter Parsnip.”
The man frowned. “Parstip. Parstip! Why is that so hard for everyone to say?” Then he turned to the other kidnapper. “You said she wouldn’t remember anything. What’s going on?”
Next to Peter stood a woman who looked like Rosie the Riveter’s older sister. “Don’t worry,” she said in a voice that couldn’t have sounded more worried. “She won’t remember this later.”
“Do I know you?” Mina asked, but the woman ignored her entirely. “What the hell do you want?”
Peter smiled at her gently. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said.
“Don’t talk to her, Pete,” the woman snapped. “Just get your taser out and cover her so I can see what’s wrong with the car.”
“You can’t taser me. I’m pregnant,” Mina said.
“I don’t want to,” the man said with an apologetic shrug. “So don’t make me, okay? We really only want what’s best for that little bundle of joy inside you.”
“Stop talking, Pete!”
“Calm down, Vera. She won’t remember this anyway. There’s no harm in reassuring her.”
Vera. So that was her name. Mina tried to recall any Veras she knew in Bearfield but none matched this woman. What did she know about Pete? He was bear-blooded, she knew that. So he knew her baby was more than human. She had an image in her mind of him in uniform, of Pete driving something big and fast.
“Get out of the trunk,” Vera snapped. She wouldn’t look Mina in the eyes. The woman wore blue jeans and one of those Carhart work jackets that always reminded Mina of mechanics. She had a red bandana tied over her hair and a smudge of grease on her cheek.
They were parked in a clearing, surrounded by the towering eucalyptus trees. The soun
d of the highway was tantalizingly close. Maybe she could run for it? Escape the kidnappers and find help from a kind stranger? Who wouldn’t stop to help a pregnant woman in pajamas on the side of the road? But the thought of running across an open field barefoot was not appealing.
“Take the flowers with you,” Vera said.
“What are they?” Mina asked.
“Just take them!” Vera had the kind of energy that made it seem like she was holding a gun, even though her fists were balled up at her sides. She was a rash person who would make mistakes when angered.
Mina clambered out of the trunk, which wasn’t easy at all. The car was a rental. Something white and utterly inconspicuous with a not quite big enough trunk. Her legs ached after being cooped up and walked stiffly away from the car.
“Get the weeds!” Vera barked.
“Can you just hand them to me? This precious bundle of joy has been pressing on my bladder like a watermelon and I need to go find a cozy bush to squat behind immediately.” Mina kept her tone light. She tried to look without looking, to see a path from the little parking lot they were in to the highway. A short chain fence separated the highway from them. Short enough to climb over? Maybe.
“You’ll have to hold it,” Peter said. He held the taser in his hands like it was a dead fish, keeping it as far from his body as possible. “We’re already late.”
“If you don’t pick those brambles up right now there’ll be trouble,” Vera snarled.
“I can’t pick them up and pee at the same time.” Mina smiled and shrugged, playing dumb.
“Just let her go,” Peter said, a whine in his voice. “Check the car out.”
Mina walked a few steps away behind a scrubby bush, pulled down her pajama pants and squatted.
Vera swore under her breath and turned to the car. She leaned into the trunk, surveying the damage Mina had done. “What the hell, bitch? What did you do to the car?”
Peter stepped closer to the trunk. “Can you fix it?” he asked, peering in over his partner’s shoulder.
Their eyes were off Mina. For a moment she wondered if she could shove the two of them into the trunk, slam the hood down and drive back home. Maybe if she hadn’t been pregnant it would’ve been possible, but she was not at her most graceful. Instead, Mina finished her business and pulled up her pants and slowly edged away.
The Bearfield Baby Heist Page 2