Cold Feet (Empathy in the PPNW Book 3)

by Olivia R. Burton

  Mel had made a giant meal and then bounced around the dining room, cutting all the kids’ meat, offering everyone refills on drinks, and generally acting domestic. I was just thankful he hadn’t been overly touchy-feely or called me any cute nicknames as he’d set my plate down. Most of the way through the meal, Julian caught my eye, grinned.

  “So. What’d you two get up to, today?”

  “Before or after Gwen got us all sticky?” Mel joked. Julian stuffed a forkful of rice into his mouth, watching me intently as I nearly choked on my food. Sarah sighed from her place at the other end of the table and I got the feeling she’d have kicked her husband if he’d been closer.

  “Before,” she clarified for him. I coughed into my arm, felt my cheeks go hot. Clara shifted in her seat next to me, grabbed my glass of water, and held it out. I did my best to smile at her in thanks without coughing all over her face. She let me drink the water, but grabbed it from me before I could set it down and put it back exactly where she’d found it.

  “Say thank you,” she demanded, her annoyance at my rudeness snapping against my skin. I coughed, nodded.

  “Thanks—” Hack, cough. “Thank you.”

  “You okay?” Julian asked. “You need Mel to give you mouth-to-mouth?”

  Sarah cleared her throat aggressively but, despite the teasing, I wheezed out a laugh; it, too, dissolved into a coughing fit. Jeremy frowned at us, turned to his mother.

  “What’s mouth-to-mouth?”

  “It helps people if they’re choking, when they can’t breath,” Sarah explained. Jeremy nodded, considered her response, and then stuffed a hunk of meat into his mouth, chewed cheerfully. As I stopped coughing, I looked daggers at Julian but he only threw back his head and laughed. Turning back to Mel, I sighed, found him rolling his eyes at his brother and me.

  “You’re officially family if he’s giving you crap,” Mel clarified. My face fell and I immediately went back into panic mode over the concept of Mel considering us closer than we were.

  “So what happened after I left the room?” I asked, setting my fork down to keep from stabbing myself in the hand as an excuse to jump up and run away. “What’d Coontz say?”

  “He seemed to consider chasing after you at first but I convinced him not to.” Mel took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “I told him you’re prone to tantrums, that I was used to it and to chase after you would just encourage you.” He winked at me and I turned to look at my meal, deciding I needed the fork if I expected to shovel food into my face just to avoid looking at him.

  “He tried to ask about how long you’d been throwing the tantrums, tried to figure out if it was a new thing. I played along, but after you’d been gone for about a half-hour, we both started to get worried. I sent him out to the garden, said you’d probably gone for a walk, and I followed your scent trail. I hadn't realized when I heard you babbling down the hall that you were intent on getting yourself killed.”

  “Where was she?” Sarah asked. Next to me, Oliver was getting restless. He’d finished his meal and was starting to kick his legs, making it clear he thought he had better places to be than sitting at the table listening to boring adults.

  “She’d managed to find a secret, unlit tunnel with a dead guy in it and decided the best course of action was to wander in alone.”

  “I didn’t wander,” I argued. “I investigated.”

  “Why would you do that without a catsuit?”

  “I didn’t have one handy at the time and I knew going back to get you wouldn’t work. There was no way they’d let us just snoop around if anyone working there knew about that tunnel. Besides, I would have come right back out and told you what I’d found.”

  “But you didn’t,” Mel pointed out, his expression a reprimand as he took another giant bite.

  “Only because I got lost. The gopher screwed me up.”

  “Gopher?” Julian asked.

  “Ah.” I paused, realized how ridiculous I sounded to anyone outside my own head. “I’d found the emotional signature of a gopher in the walls of the tunnel; when I got turned around, I tried to use it to guide me back to the entrance, but it had moved, so I ended up going the wrong way. Thus, spider poop.”

  “It’s probably best she had the guts to check that place out, anyway. She found your bad guy, didn’t she?” Sarah asked. Noticing that Jeremy, Walter, and Lorelai had joined Oliver in his impatient wiggling, she stood up, moved to collect their plates. They took this as a sign that they could leave and bolted toward the living room. Sarah let out a loud whistle and they all changed direction as a group, giving me flashbacks to Jurassic Park. They flocked straight for the back hallway, leaving me glad for the respite from their burbling impatience.

  “We think she found the bad guy. We haven’t confirmed it yet. Even if the trickster is the bad guy, we’re still behind. We don’t know where the other missing couples are, where Mrs. Heath is. We still don’t know if anyone else is working with the unktomi or if it’s doing this on its own.”

  “From what you guys have said, I think Coontz is in on it. He sounds like an asshole,” Sarah growled. Clara clapped her hand over her mouth and pointed at her mother, who winced. “Sorry, sweetie.”

  “What do you say?” Julian asked. Sarah threw him a look and then rolled her gaze back to her daughter.

  “I’m sorry for the swear,” she said. Clara let out a giggle and then leaned to the side.

  “Can I go?”

  “Wash your hands.”

  Clara bolted after her siblings, leaving only the grown-ups and Christian. He was watching us intently, as if he understood every word.

  “Did you want to go, darling?” Sarah asked. He just shook his head, stabbed his fork into an asparagus stalk and held it up to his mouth to gnaw on it.

  “What are your theories, what do you think’s going on?” Sarah asked Mel. He nodded in acknowledgement, but didn’t answer at first. He finished off his food, pushed to his feet, and went to take his plate to the kitchen. Julian set his plate on Mel’s as he passed and then looked to me with a wide grin.

  “I think I know what’s going on,” he murmured at me with a wink. I rolled my eyes, fighting the urge to grouse over how hilarious he seemed to find it that Mel and I had slept together.

  “If he’s the one who’s in on it,” Mel called from the sink. “The unktomi is working with Coontz to select viable couples. I’d guess Coontz is drugging them, making them susceptible to whatever suggestions he and the unktomi are putting into their heads, and then having them cut all ties to their families. Betty got back to me, and the Heaths pulled the same vanishing act as the others after they finished their time at Tough Love. With any luck we can still find Liesel alive if we can get back into the tunnels.”

  “You think she’s down there?”

  “I don’t know where else she’d be. It’s the only area I haven’t been able to fully explore.”

  Julian glanced over, made a clucking sound with his cheek.

  “Looks like you’ve been exploring lots of new areas today, Mel,” he said. Sarah snorted at his bad joke but had the decency to give him a chastising look. He winked at her, turned back to me. Mel was still unbothered by all the teasing and innuendo.

  “I’m thinking of that door I couldn’t get through; what if it leads to the tunnels, too? There could be dozens of catacombs under there. All the missing people could be down there. I think I’ll go back tonight and check it out.”

  “Alone?” I asked. Mel shrugged.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you won’t know anything’s coming if you get attacked. You said so yourself, you’re useless.”

  “Oh, I’d say he’s got a use. Wouldn’t you, Gwen?” Julian teased. This time, Sarah stalked over, grabbed his chin and forced him to look up at her.

  “Enough,” she ordered. They watched each other for a second before she softened, smiled, and leaned in for a kiss. I looked to Christian to see what he thought about this PDA and found that he’d
fallen asleep. Asparagus hanging out of his mouth, hand in his lap, he was out like a light.

  “Aww,” I cooed and Sarah turned to face her son. Julian wrapped an arm around her waist, hugged her against him, before pushing to his feet.

  “I’ve got him,” he mumbled, reaching to set the fork and food on the table. Cradling Christian to his chest, he headed down the hall. I found myself smiling as he went, reminded of my brother-in-law and my sister and their adorable children. I’d screwed up my only marriage but I hoped to god to get another shot at this sort of life. The thought of my sweet ex-husband and what he'd be like as a father made my insides melt slightly.

  To combat the distracting feeling, I took my plate to the sink. Mel gave me an affectionate grin as I stepped up next to him and noted he was washing the dishes by hand. When I turned back to Sarah, I found she was watching us with a similarly saccharin look on her face. I rolled my eyes, shook my head.

  “Would everyone please stop looking at me like I'm with child? It was just sex, we're not getting married and starting a family.”

  “Just sex?” Mel demanded and I rounded on him. He'd frozen, elbow deep in dishwater, his expression full of insult. That can of worms, it turned out, had found its way into my gut and it chose that moment to start wriggling madly.

  “I mean—” I began, not sure what my explanation would be. Mel saved me from myself.

  “Sex with me is never just sex. It's an experience, an adventure. It's a ride! Nobody just has sex with Mel Somerset, Gwen! You strap yourself in and feel the G's!”

  To make his point he turned, dripping soapy water all over the floor as he thrust his pelvis wildly forward. I stared at him, at a loss for the correct response. I couldn't decide if I was more irritated at myself for assuming Mel had any capacity for marital-type feelings, or at him for being so very Mel about the situation. Even recognizing he was making a Simpsons reference didn’t surprise me.

  “Fine, fine,” I said, waving a hand. “You're the best. My mind was blown. I'm surprised I'm standing here, right now. I should be falling at your feet and demanding more.”

  “Keep your clothes on, you two,” Sarah said wryly. “There are children present.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  With the kids playing, the adults were free to form a plan.

  “We’ll head into the cave tonight, right through where we left before,” Mel said.

  “We as in you and me?”

  “Yeah, hero. You’re the one who pointed out I can’t hack it on my own.”

  “I mean, just the two of us? Shouldn’t you two get in on this?” I asked, looking between Julian and Sarah.

  “Unktomi aren’t that hard to kill once you’ve got one in your sights,” Sarah explained. “Once you find it, just point the way and Mel can tear it apart. He may be a city wolf, but he’s still a wolf.”

  “You’re sure? You couldn’t come with us? Even just one of you?”

  “Gwen, I know what I’m doing, don’t worry.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I thought about the first time I’d spent any real length of time with Mel. We’d been at his place and he’d casually joked about killing a deer. The unktomi couldn’t be that big, he’d probably be able to take it down.

  The more I thought about what he was proposed, though, the more I realized that I’d rather have awkward, unsatisfying sex with Mel again than head into that dark cave.

  “We’ll need flashlights or something.”

  “Have you never seen a movie?” Julian asked, sarcasm dripping. “Flashlights don’t last long in dark caves full of monsters. Monster love knocking flashlights over and flashlights love breaking at all the wrong moments. You need flares or—”

  Sarah yelped, jumped to her feet and held up a finger.

  “I have just the thing!” she announced, tearing toward the kitchen and down the basement steps. Julian shrugged when we looked to him for answers. After a few minutes, Sarah came back, boxes of glow sticks and bracelets in hand. She tossed three of them at Mel, handed me two.

  “You can wrap these around your wrists, ankles, whatever, and they won’t fall off or go dead. I got the bracelets for the kids for Halloween, but I can buy more before then.”

  “They’re not super bright,” I pointed out.

  “They’ll be enough, and we won’t lose track of each other.”

  “Enough for you isn’t really enough. I’m just a human, remember?”

  “Use the whole case, as many as you need,” Sarah said. “I can get more.”

  “I don’t know if they’ll stay on if I have to wolf out.”

  “Oh, that won’t be a problem.” Sarah leaned in, pulled some of the bracelets out of the box and wrapped them around the cord of Mel’s necklace. “See? The sticks are for emergency situations, like little glow-stick flares, so if you’d rather thread your necklace through those, they’ll work too.”

  “That’s a good idea, actually,” Mel agreed. I nodded, pulled two of the sticks out and snapped them, making them glow dimly in the late afternoon light. The kid in me squealed, demanded I scamper down to the dark basement and run around in circles to make myself dizzy on light patterns.

  I restrained my inner child and nodded to Mel.

  “So, when are we looking at going?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Eight-thirty? It’ll be getting dark out by then and we can drive out, park out in the woods where they won’t see us, and head in.”

  “Your car isn’t going to make it through those woods for long.”

  Mel bared his teeth in a wicked grin. I felt Julian’s amusement from the other side of the room and wondered what I’d gotten myself into and whether or not I’d regret it.

  ##

  Mel drove the rumbling, cacophonous dirt bike much like he’d driven the car: way too fast and with abandon. It managed to be both twice as terrifying and three times as fun. A few times, when I’d laughed explosively out of nervousness, I’d felt Mel’s chest vibrate as he chuckled.

  Somehow, he weaved through the forest easily, anticipating the trees or demonstrating an incredible memory for their locations, I wasn’t sure. As he slowed, I tightened my thighs against his hips, my eyes squeezed shut behind his back. Even through the massive helmet, the sound of the machine was intense and I hadn’t dared try to peer over his shoulder to see where we were headed. Finally we stopped and I felt Mel shift his weight to keep us from toppling.

  The motorcycle shut off and Mel patted my hand through the gloves Sarah had lent me.

  “Come on, we should walk the rest of the way.”

  I considered the machine’s vibration that had been rumbling through my body—starting at my groin—for the last twenty minutes and cleared my throat.

  “Would be it too much to ask for you drive us around for just a little while longer? For um,” I said, still hugging around his waist. “You know, cautionary purposes.” Mel let out a long laugh, peeled my hands away from his body and climbed off the bike, letting it go to lean on the kickstand. I sighed, hummed the opening guitar riff to The Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction, and climbed off the bike as best I could without toppling onto the forest floor. Mel pulled my helmet off, wagged his brows at me.

  “I promise, though, if you need a little more stimulation, I can provide that just as soon as we take this baby-eating asshole out.”

  “Ah,” I said, feeling even my slight arousal ebb away at the idea. “Yeah, maybe.”

  Mel leaned forward, ruffling my undoubtedly messy hair, and then set the helmet on the bike. I did my best to smooth my brunette bird’s nest down, frowning when I felt the thin patch at the back.

  “All right, let’s go get this done.”

  Mel nodded and pointed deeper into the woods.

  “This way. We’ll pop the glow sticks just inside the cave. I doubt anyone’s monitoring this area, but we don’t need them seeing the floating lights and thinking there are some forest nymphs running around the place.”

  “You mean dryads?” I asked.
Mel threw me a glance that made me feel pompous.

  “I didn’t use the proper word only because I figured you wouldn’t know.”

  “How do you know?” I asked, before gasping as if in disbelief. “Are you telling me you’re literate? Mel, have you learned to read books?”

  “I have, but don’t tell the ladies. I have a reputation to maintain.” He was angled just so I didn’t catch his expression in the low light. “Besides, when you’ve nailed the real thing, you don’t need to read about it in books.”

  “Whoa,” I droned, weaving to the side as his words sunk in. “I was fucking around. You’ve actually slept with a—Dryads exist?”

  “There’s very little that humans have written tale of that doesn’t exist. You guys aren’t always correct in what you write, but you generally get the gist.”

  “Wow,” I mumbled, looking around the darkened woods, wondering what might be out there watching us at the moment. Mel let me peer around in silence for a while before realizing what I was doing.

  “If it’s an unktomi—and I’m pretty sure it is—I doubt there’s anything else hanging out here. It’s probably run other creatures out of its territory.”

  “Well, here’s hoping. The last thing I need is to piss off a spider monster and a wood nymph.”

  Mel chuckled and I looked him over. He’d gone with baggy clothes and bare feet, just in case he needed to wolf out at any moment. His cotton pants were loose, but the cloth was thin enough that I’d noticed he was wearing nothing underneath. The shirt looked old and worn, and I wondered how long he’d had it and how many times he’d use it as a just-in-case-I-need-to-go-furry shirt.

  Finally, we came to the entrance of the tunnels, which dipped steeply into the ground and, to the casual observer, just looked like any other hole in the earth. Mel dropped down, sat on the edge and then dropped in, turning to hold his hands out toward me.

  “Come on,” he said. I looked around one last time for any pretty tree fairies to help us and copied his action. As I slid into the hole, I felt Mel’s hands on my waist as he lowered me gently to the ground. He didn’t let go immediately and I reached up to look for the many lines of plastic against his chest. It was already pitch dark in the cave, even directly under the entrance and I had to feel around to find them. Hooking my fingers around two, I squeezed them, heard them snap, squinted as they lit to life. As soon as they did, Mel let go of me, stepped back and reached up to grab at the rest.