“I suppose that settles it,” Owen finally said, reaching up to scratch at his square jaw. “Sad end to a sad story.”
Understatement of the year.
I couldn’t stay in the house anymore. I suddenly understood Raff’s urge to run.
I put on my coat and took a walk down to Belltown, where my friend Michael lived with his vampire boyfriend, Damien Voigt, in a hideous orange and green condo highrise.
I stood outside the condo highrise, preparing myself to argue my way inside, either with Michael or—if he refused—one of his neighbors, so I could go bang on his door until he let me in. But Michael came out of the lobby door, as if he’d known I was there waiting.
“Hey,” I said.
Michael’s head snapped toward me. “What are you doing here?”
He sounded more curious than pissed, which I counted as a point in my favor.
“Needed to get out to the house.”
I gave him the shortest version possible of the events of the past twenty-four hours. Michael’s face softened as he listened, occasionally flicking his lip ring with his tongue.
When I finished, I said, “It’s not like I knew either of them, but it still feels crappy.”
Michael nodded sagely. “That’s rough, Charlotte. I’m really sorry.”
I smiled. It was a tight, small smile, but I was relieved that even when he was mad at me, Michael could still be there when I needed a friend.
“I’m sorry, too. About the book. I don’t think Damien uses you for food. I just worry about you.”
Michael ran his fingers through his hair. He was wearing silver eyeliner, which caught the light from the streetlamp nearby as he turned his head.
“I know. I worry, too. Speaking of, I should get going. I have an errand to run.”
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
Now that Michael and I were back on good terms, I could use a mundane errand to help clear my head. If I went back home, the dead werewolves would be all we talked about, and I needed a break.
Michael hesitated, and I realized he wasn’t talking about a trip to the grocery store.
“What errand is it, exactly?” I asked.
“Just something for Damien. It’s no big deal,” he said, averting his gaze.
Mingled with his usual scent of hair dye and makeup was a tinge of something sour: fear. I frowned. What kind of errands was his vampire boyfriend sending him on?
“Okay,” I said as casually as I could manage. “Then I’ll tag along.”
“It’s pretty boring,” he said, still not meeting my eyes. “Why don’t I meet you tomorrow morning and we can get brunch?”
“I don’t mind boring. Honestly, right now, boring sounds pretty great.”
Anything that didn’t involve bodies and poison was fine by me. Not that I believed this errand of his was boring. No way. Vampires did not have boring errands.
Michael let out a breath.
After a silent debate with himself, he said, “Okay. Come on.”
I smiled, because I’d won. Whether I’d regret that remained to be seen.
We walked through downtown, which was lit up with holiday lights in the trees and strung around window displays, heading to Pioneer Square. It was a long walk, and Michael finally stopped in front of an old building with tile around the entrance that might have been there since the neighborhood was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1889.
Michael licked his lips and shot me an apprehensive glance. His whole body hummed with nerves and he flicked his lip ring with his tongue.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
Whatever it was, Michael was either afraid of it or afraid of my seeing it. Either possibility made my nerves jangle in time with his.
“Just come on.”
Michael opened the door, which was surprisingly unlocked. The old warehouse looked ready to crumble down on itself, but still, even the most dilapidated building’s door was usually bolted shut to keep out vagrants.
The interior was exactly what I expected: a dusty, empty space that reeked of mildew and mold. The wooden floor creaked, swollen from years of weathering, and the air was colder inside. Michael wasn’t at all disturbed by the sheer vacancy of the space and marched straight to the back to a small office. There was no door left on the hinges and nothing inside. Michael stood in the center and pulled up a trap door. I stepped closer and glanced down into the musty darkness. There was a metal ladder leading down.
“What’s down there?” I asked.
I could only see a couple of feet into the hole without pulling out my phone for light.
“The Underground Market,” Michael said.
I stared at him. I’d never heard of it, and I was supposed to be the expert on all things supernatural.
“What’s that?”
“It’s like a supernatural exchange. I go there sometimes on errands for Damien. It’s usually pretty safe.”
“Pretty safe, huh?”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but if Michael had already been there—more than once—I sure as heck wanted to see this place for myself. I dropped down onto the ladder and climbed. At the bottom, I took out my cell phone to illuminate the space. It was a narrow, round room big enough that I could spread out my arms without my fingers grazing the walls, but only just.
Michael jumped down beside me and then pressed his palm to the brick wall in front of us, sliding it over the rough surface until something clicked. The wall slid open with a whoosh like the door of a television space ship. Light and noise flooded the space.
I stepped out onto a street. Lights suspended from wires shone overhead, some covered with decorative paper lanterns. Stalls and vendors lined the sidewalks and customers milled around tables, haggling for goods. Other people moved through the market with purpose, pushing past anyone who got in their way. The ceiling was high and painted bright blue, and if you looked straight ahead, it created the illusion that we were still above ground on a clear day. Magic hummed in the air, making the hair on my arms stand on end.
Michael pushed past me and strode confidently down the alley. I fell into step beside him, and we moved quickly past tables and stalls. Some had intricate set-ups with fabric “walls” and employees-only sections with curtains drawn over them to keep them hidden from shoppers. Other vendors simply had tables covered in jars, vials, and various goods. The sellers watched us pass with varying levels of interest. One man with golden snake eyes paid particularly close attention to me, sending a shiver down my spine. I quickened my pace until we were past his booth.
A little further down, a young woman with red hair who appeared to be human and my age (I was 21) sat behind a table covered in jars, playing with her phone. A black cat stretched out on her table between colorful jars and vials. She glanced up and gave me an odd look before her gaze shot to an empty table across the street and then back to me.
“He’s gone until next month,” she called to me, with a slight furrow of her brow.
“Who’s gone?” I asked.
Before she could speak, Michael grabbed my arm and tugged me forward.
“Don’t speak to anyone,” he hissed as he dragged me away.
I glared at him, but he was probably right. The woman had clearly mistaken me for someone else, and while that wasn’t dangerous in and of itself, a lot of the vendors were watching us with hungry eyes. I shivered and kept close to Michael as he moved down the street with purpose.
Finally, he turned a corner past a booth made of purple velvet. The alley dead-ended about thirty feet in. It was darker in here, with no lights overhead, only the ambient light from the main drag. A single, solitary vendor had set up shop near the back of the alley, past a few trash cans, in relative darkness.
My pulse raced, but Michael didn’t even slow his pace. I wondered just how many times he’d run this particular errand.
The table was covered by a dirty cloth, and there was nothing on it, though I saw coolers sticking out from under th
e table and a silver box freezer behind the vendor, who stood looking bored.
Michael held up three fingers.
I scrunched up my forehead as the man said, “Five.”
I felt like Alice, thrown into Wonderland, where three was now five in this Underground Market, but then Michael pulled out his wallet and counted out five crisp hundred dollar bills. The man took the money and set a small cooler on the table, the kind that were often used as lunch boxes. He opened it. It was empty. Michael licked his lips, tapping his foot anxiously. The man turned his back and opened the larger freezer that sat behind him, producing three frozen bags made of thick plastic. As he set them in the small cooler, my breath caught. There was red mush inside: frozen blood.
My heart pounded. Michael took the cooler with a nod and turned to leave. He didn’t stop moving until we were back at the market’s entrance. I was torn between wanting to look around and wanting to get the hell out of there. Curiosity might have won, but Michael seemed damned and determined to get back up to the street as fast as possible. Still shaken from seeing the bodies earlier, I didn’t bother to dawdle.
“Damien makes you fetch his blood?” I asked as we climbed the ladder, the small cooler dangling from one of Michael’s hands.
“He doesn’t make me do anything,” Michael said, annoyed. “I’m happy to run errands for him.”
“You’re happy to go into that hotbed of supernatural activity while strangers gawk at you so you can buy human blood?” I asked, climbing out of the hole and onto the dusty floor of the old warehouse building.
Honestly, it sounded like Michael’s worst nightmare.
“Yes, I am,” he said assertively. He set the cooler on the ground and hefted himself up. “Just like you’re happy going to boring wolf pack meetings for your sexy wolf boy.”
“You think Raff is sexy?” I asked, surprised because they always seemed to glare at each other like they wanted to rip the other into pieces.
I thought Raff was pretty hot, but I hadn’t realized my friend might agree.
Michael shrugged. “He’s okay. Not really my type, but you could do worse.”
“Thanks,” I said, infusing the word with sarcasm. “He’s not my type, either.”
Michael’s lips quirked into a wry smile. “Sure he’s not.”
He bent down to the close the trap door, and we strode out of the old building into the cold Seattle night.
“How long have you been running this particular errand?” I asked, partially to change the subject from my love life, or lack thereof.
Michael shifted uncomfortably, moving the cooler to his other hand. “About a year.”
My jaw fell open. “Why haven’t you told me about this place? I bet there’s all kinds of information on vampires and…”
Michael cut me off. “That’s exactly why. Because I knew you’d manage to get yourself in trouble. That place is full of all kinds of creatures, some benign and some nefarious, selling all kinds of wares, most of them dangerous.”
“I know how to take care of myself,” I said, heat creeping into my cheeks.
“I know you, Charlotte. You’re impulsive and reckless and liable to get yourself into some kind of supernatural bargain or worse. Promise me you won’t go back there alone.”
Michael’s eyes turned big and pleading, like a puppy. I crossed my arms over my chest. Who knew what secrets and magic the Underground Market held? Michael had been holding out on me for months.
“Charlotte.”
“Okay, okay. I won’t go back there alone.”
Michael nodded, satisfied, and we walked back toward downtown.
Chapter 7
By the time I got back home, I’d worn myself out enough that I was confident I could finally sleep without seeing Rob and Tracy’s bodies every time I started to drift off. I yawned as I dug my keys out of my pocket, thinking about how great sinking into my warm, comfortable bed sounded.
So I was super unprepared to open the front door to a shouting match in progress.
“—if you kept track of your pack mates!” Owen finished yelling.
“If we didn’t keep track, we wouldn’t have found her!” Raff shouted back.
He was still in his gym clothes, his workout pants doing nice things for his butt. Not that it was the right time to notice. Rayna was standing off to the side, arms folded over her chest. She was dressed in jeans and her leather jacket and looked supremely bored. She shot me a Can you believe this crap? look and shook her head.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Owen whirled, turning a withering look on me. Raff straightened and swallowed, his jaw still set tight. Neither of them spoke.
“There’s another dead wolf,” Rayna said, giving Owen a hard look. “And these two would rather fight than go see what killed her.”
Raff and Owen erupted into another shouting match. I could only make out snatches of conversation, phrases like “keep watch” and “don’t know how to protect your pack.”
My heart pounded in my chest. Another werewolf was dead? I swallowed, all visions of sleep evaporating as my mind flipped through a mental Rolodex of all of the werewolves I’d met.
“Who’s dead?” I screeched over the yelling.
Both Raff and Owen got quiet.
“A woman named Linda Marks,” Rayna said. “You know her?”
My mind conjured up an image of a middle-aged looking woman with graying brown hair and laugh lines. She’d been at the pack meetings. We’d never really spoken, but we’d been briefly introduced. She’d worn handmade knits and struck me as sort of a hippy.
“Just in passing,” I said.
Better than I’d known Rob, not that that was saying much. Despite moving into Raff’s spare room and going to literally all of the pack meetings and gatherings this past month, I hadn’t actively made friends with any of the other werewolves yet. I mostly kept to myself and spent meetings texting Michael or playing Candy Crush.
Rayna nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”
“How did she die?” I asked.
Owen scoffed. “Who knows? Your pack is weak.”
“We’re not weak.” I clenched my fists, irritated that he was being so blasé about some poor woman’s death, and even more annoyed he was putting me in a position to defend my wolf pack.
No wonder Raff had been shouting. Raff got angry, but his temper was usually more slow burn than raging inferno. Raff went upstairs to change and came down a moment later. He wore dark denim jeans that did even nicer things for his butt than his gym pants, which I tried not to notice as I followed him to his car. Rayna and Owen opted to drive themselves again and some of the tension melted from Raff’s shoulders as he shut his car door and closed them out.
“Owen's kind of a jerk,” I said.
Raff laughed, a bark of surprise, and then he smiled at me.
“Yeah, he kind of is.”
Outside Linda’s small house south of Seattle, I trailed behind Raff, Rayna, and Owen, hesitant to go in. The smell was overwhelming from the porch. I could only imagine how much worse it would be inside. Linda had apparently been dead longer than Rob and Tracy when we’d found them, and they hadn’t been in stellar shape. She hadn’t been seen since before the full moon, either, and a fellow pack member had come by her house to check on her. The smell alone had been enough to let her know something was amiss, and she’d called Sasha rather than going inside.
Sasha had called Raff.
Now we were the lucky ones who got to go in and see what was what.
I swallowed my fear and tried to breathe through my nose as I followed the warrior wolves into the house.
Linda’s body was on the couch in her cozy living room. Maybe it was her granny nightgown or the faint smell of bleach coming from her kitchen, but the whole place reminded me of a hospital, and I recoiled.
Linda had cleaned before she’d died. Scrubbed her little house and then lay down on the sofa, never to get up again.
The odor of decay was overpowering, sour and rotten with a hint of sweetness. Her face looked soggy and bloated. One of her arms draped over the sofa, fingers near a jar like the ones found in front of Tracy and Rob, only her jar still contained an inch of thick, green liquid that smelled like paint thinner.
While the three warriors checked the rest of the house, I snatched up the jar of liquid, my mind racing. It was plain glass, enough to hold about a can of soda. The lid was beside it with the same handwritten label that said “WB” on the top in fancy black script. A ribbon had been tied beneath the lip of the jar with a paper tag on it. The number “500” was written in the same hand as the label, and presumably that was price. Five hundred what, it didn’t say. Dollars, goblin gold, favors… it could be anything.
My stomach roiled. I’d just seen dozens if not hundreds of jars like this. Not exactly, not as far as I remembered, but similar enough: jars of full magical potions, peddled by supernaturals of all types. I remembered the red-headed vendor who’d taken one look at me and assumed I’d wanted something specific. I didn’t know what she was, but if she was supernatural at all—and given that she was selling the Underground Market, that was a fair assumption—she’d known I was werewolf. Had she assumed I wanted this?
I sniffed the jar’s contents and coughed, moving it away from my face. It wasn’t exactly paint thinner. It smelled like cheap liquor sold in gallon plastic jugs and like something else, too. Something slightly minty mingled with the earthy, rich smell of the forest on a rainy day.
It was tempting to take a sip to get a better feel for the contents, but the dead woman’s face, contorted in pain, was enough to stay my hand. Smell would have to be enough.
Raff returned from his search down the hall, and he swiped the glass jar out of my hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, so loudly that both Rayna and Owen appeared from upstairs, ready to fight.
Wicked Moon (The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles Book 2) Page 5