Cold Feet (Empathy in the PPNW Book 3)

by Olivia R. Burton

  “Wow,” Julian said, staring at me askance. “You’ve really got a hard-on for my brother.”

  “Just for making him as miserable as he’s made me.”

  “It’s not looking so bad, actually,” Sarah said. I took one look at my arm and then jerked my gaze to the ceiling.

  “I’m going to have to strongly disagree with you,” I said. Sarah let my hand go and moved to the dining table. I kept my gaze high, trying not to think about my wounds. The air seemed to agitate them, though, and I found myself shaking slightly. Sarah came back with a giant tube of antibacterial gel and gauze for days. She managed to wrap my arm again and looked up to meet my face.

  “You know anyone at home who can help you take care of this?”

  “I might,” I said, thinking of Chloe. One of her most frequently used skills recently, had been nursing a sick empath back to health.

  “Good.” As she finished wrapping me, she sighed, dropped her hands into her lap. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get you to a hospital. They would have known right away this was a canine bite and it raises a lot of questions.”

  “Ah,” I said, pulling my arm back against my chest. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that.”

  “Thank you for understanding, though,” Julian said. I nodded, glanced back at him as something else occurred to me.

  “Where did you come from, last night?” I asked Sarah. She gave a small smile, shrugged a shoulder.

  “You guys had been gone awhile so I figured I’d go check on you. Julian stayed with the kids because,” she pointed to her button nose. “I’ve got the sniffer. It didn’t actually take long to find you, but I would have been there sooner if I hadn’t paused to mark our way back, just in case.”

  “And you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re a pretty tough species. I’m just glad you’re safe. I don’t know how Mel would have taken it if you died. He may have ended up here for another six weeks.”

  I rolled my eyes, caught her not-so-subtle insinuation. Julian snorted behind me but when I turned to glare his way, I found he’d decided to play the sugar card. I snatched the cupcake from his hand, gave him a cursory glare as I peeled the wrapper down the side, and took a giant bite.

  ##

  We arrived at Tough Love half an hour later, after I’d gotten dressed and finished off two more cupcakes. Sarah had bypassed the deputy parked at the end of the line easily and his roaring emotions had explained why before she’d even mentioned it.

  “That’s my cousin.”

  “I figured you knew him,” I grumbled, realizing a week with mated wolves and a magical necklace had somehow become enough time for my mind to damper how bad it was being around an unattached werewolf.

  Sarah patted my leg, found a space at the edge of the lot, behind the many ambulances and sheriff’s vehicles. We got out just as Mel had stepped out onto the porch. He waved loosely in greeting and then turned as Officer Amazon stepped out, tapping him on the shoulder.

  I watched her intently as Sarah and I approached, wondering if she felt any differently about Mel since their chaste night together. She was less flirty than she’d been the last time I’d seen them together, but she wasn’t unhappy or bitter.

  “And, this is my fake wife,” Mel said, resting his hand gently on my shoulder. “She discovered the tunnel in the first place.”

  “Ah, Ms. Arthur, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Tina,” Officer Amazon stepped up, held out a hand. I considered her hand for a moment and then gestured to my bandage.

  “Rain check?” I asked. She smiled.

  “Right, no problem. Mel here’s given us all the important information, but I have to say that, if you hadn’t discovered that tunnel, we wouldn’t have had grounds for a warrant, wouldn’t have found everything we did.”

  “Are they okay?” I asked, remembering that, yes, we had been there to save actual people, not jut imaginary babies and a fake marriage.

  “They’re going to be, eventually. I’m actually headed to the hospital after this, to see if any of the women are well enough to give statements about what happened here.”

  “Well,” I said lamely. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. Mel? Good to see you again.” She patted his hand and swept past us toward the group below. I turned back to Mel, raised my eyebrows.

  “Recap, please?”

  “The official explanation they’re going with is that Coontz was drugging couples, imprisoning them in the caves, and breeding babies to sell on the black market.”

  “Oh, Black Market,” I mused. “What can’t you explain?” Sarah snorted; Mel continued as if I hadn’t said anything.

  “That door I couldn’t get through did lead down into more tunnels and they found all the missing women—and some of their husbands, including the two couples I’d been hired to find in the first place. There was a surprisingly involved birthing set up.”

  “So what’s the actual story?” Sarah asked.

  “Last I heard, they still haven’t gotten it out of Coontz.”

  “So it really was him? He’s not just—”

  Sarah cut me off with a growl, a fierce rumble that vibrated not just her body but her emotions. I hadn’t felt that level of hatred…well, maybe ever. I groaned as the rancid, steely pain of it thrummed my body and made my wounds ache more.

  “What is it?” I breathed, shuffling to the side as if I could hide behind Sarah from whatever it was she was suddenly so angry at.

  “Wendigo,” she snarled, her teeth bared in threat as she advanced toward the front door. It was hard to tell because of the color of it, but the hair on her arms looked longer and thicker. Mel went stiff, darting between her and the entrance.

  “You’re sure? Where?”

  “You can’t smell it?” she asked, growling again when Coontz came into view, his hands cuffed behind his back. Her hands curled into claws and I swear the only thing that stopped her from charging the doctor and tearing him apart was Mel’s hand and maybe the fact that we were surrounded by armed cops.

  “Coontz?” Mel asked, turning to look the man over in confusion. “He smells bad but—”

  “He smells corrupt,” Sarah said, her nostrils flared. Coontz was escorted by us, glaring my way as if I’d personally been responsible for his arrest. I mean, I guess I kind of was, since the cops wouldn’t have been sniffing around and shut down his whole operation if I hadn’t found that tunnel. Sarah was positively vibrating as he passed and I wanted desperately to understand her ire.

  “What’s that mean?” I asked. Sarah watched him get loaded into the back of one of the cars, staying silent and focused until the car started heading down the drive.

  “Mel,” she said after a moment. “I can’t believe you didn’t know what Coontz is the second you met him. It’s glaringly obvious.”

  “I—I mean, he just—”

  “What’s a wendigo?” I interrupted, letting Mel off the hook.

  “Not all—” Sarah tugged my arm, pulling me around the side of the house so we were tucked into an area of the porch not crawling with cops and center staff. “Not all fae spawn get powers. Some are just…more than human.”

  “But not as much more as, say, feeling the emotions of others?” I asked, hoping I was understanding her use of the term, “fae spawn.” Sarah nodded, but it was a distracted action and I figured she wasn’t focusing on what I’d said.

  “They’re susceptible to certain fae magic that humans aren’t, but can’t do anything special. Sometimes that sort of susceptibility will manifest in something like attraction to or devotion to a fae creature if they catch its eye. It doesn’t stop with a crush, either, it becomes an obsession. It’s uncontrollable and anything the creature asks it to do, even if it asks him to kill himself or someone else, he gleefully does it. Eventually the man—it’s always a man—loses himself to the thing and it consumes him. Only, because he’s not entirely human he doesn’t die, he just…changes.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Mel said quietl
y, shaking his head. “I’ve only come across them in their…what would you call it, final form?”

  “It’s as good a phrase as any,” Sarah said, before elaborating when she caught my confused look. “They deteriorate, they wither away. It’s like the only thing that could sustain them is the creature they fall in love with but fae are fickle where humans are concerned and lose interest quickly. If I had to guess, Coontz is only still human because the unktomi’s been using him to fetch it food. Otherwise it probably would have eaten him—”

  “Eaten him? He’s not a baby.”

  “They’ll drink any blood, they just prefer babies,” Mel said, giving me a look that said I’d have known that if I’d actually done the research like he had.

  “Most likely the damn thing would have guzzled and ghosted the asshole a long time ago, or simply moved on and Coontz would have already gone full wendigo. I don’t know how long it’s been around—”

  “Couples have been going missing for years, almost since the center opened.”

  “Has Coontz been here the whole time?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah he’s the only founder who still works here,” Mel said, his jaw tight, his face filled with anger.

  “Then, I’d guess the thing was feeding off whatever it could get its pincers on until it found Coontz and got him to cooperate.”

  “You think Gordo fell in love with that creepy-ass spider you killed in the—actually, do we have to worry? With the cops tromping around, don’t you think they’ll find the thing?”

  “Unlikely.” Mel said. When he didn’t elaborate, I turned to Sarah.

  “They won’t find it. And no, I don’t think Coontz saw the bulbous, hairy body of that thing and decided it was his one true love. More than likely it fooled him into thinking he was that same hot doctor you thought it was—”

  “Or some other hot doctor,” Mel said thoughtfully.

  “Hmm?”

  “Well, if Taylor was the spider and she—it only started working here a few months ago, it can’t have been pretending to be the same doctor forever. The Heaths, they were working with a Doctor Driscoll, who left right before Taylor started. Probably not the first time it changed identities.”

  “Why would it do that?” I asked, at a loss. What the hell did a spider care about what human face it pretended to have? I mean, sure, it could’ve had to look hot to keep Coontz on a leash, but past that, what was the point?

  “To keep suspicions off the center, maybe,” Mel suggested. “Coontz stayed because it was his investment, but everyone else who’s worked there stayed awhile, moved on. Maybe he suggested it to make sure it didn’t look like something was up. Coontz didn’t treat any of the missing couples.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know right off what he was,” Sarah said. “You could have saved that poor man’s life if you’d just followed your nose.”

  I snorted before I could help myself, picturing Toucan Sam coming across a cartoon corpse and looking horrified. It wasn’t funny, the idea that Mel could have missed a chance to save Bart Heath’s life, but we still weren’t entirely sure why he was killed so who knew if Sarah was even right.

  “He smells human!” Mel argued. “Bad, but human!”

  “He does smell pretty bad,” I agreed, shaking my head. “Like…old cheese. And dirty socks. And…garbage, maybe.”

  “How can you smell him?” Sarah asked, surprised.

  “What do you mean? He smells terrible.”

  “Yes, but not on a level that a person should—maybe it’s your empathy!”

  “You think my empathy could smell him?”

  “Well, you experience emotions in a physical way, right? You’re one of those?”

  “As opposed to…?”

  “I mean, you’re the type that actually feels the emotions?”

  “Yeah. Take Mel here, he’s like feeling being stabbed while on fire while occasionally being punched in the stomach.”

  “Really?” Mel asked, but Sarah pressed on.

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. What if you were sensing his changing emotions as a scent?”

  “It’s possible. I’ve never smelled emotions before, but I’ve never met a wendigo before, either.” I considered the possibility and shook my head. “That’s wild. I wonder what else exists with smelly emotions.”

  “You said that, without the unktomi, Coontz will deteriorate?” Mel said, his entire demeanor changing. “We have to get him out of that jail. He—”

  “It’ll be taken care of. Several of the local cops are family. They’ll know instantly what he is and what to do.”

  “What is there to do?” I asked, fearing the worst. Not that Coontz deserved a trial and I was sure we didn’t want to go finding a jury of wendigos to decide whether or not he should go to jail, but it was coming up way too often that the only way to solve a problem was to kill it.

  “He’s already started to turn, so he can’t he saved. It would be cruel to make him fall apart and die on his own,” Sarah said. Mel sighed.

  “She’s right. Wendigos are like zombies, they crave life and usually try to get it the same way zombies would. If he’s allowed to live others will die.”

  I sighed but didn’t argue. I didn’t have to be there for the actual death, however it would go down. I could probably use my great powers of delusion to just pretend this all hadn’t happened and everything was fine. I didn’t have to think about what Sarah had told me about how Mel had said the women were being held or how many shallow graves they’d already sniffed out. I could just pretend Mel and I had spent a nice week getting to know each other as people. I wouldn’t have any nightmares about those tunnels or that spider once my supply of cockroach pills ran out.

  Sure.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The drive back so Seattle was relatively painless. Sarah had me take a few pills home with me, made me promise to not take more than half of one at a time. Mel and I had slipped back into a rhythm of talking about nothing, making fun of each other here and there, and generally acting as if nothing had changed on the trip. When we got out of the car at my place and moved around to the back to pull out my bag, I leaned a hip against the taillight, looked up at him.

  “How’d you know it was me?” I asked, finally. I’d been wondering since we’d left, but I was afraid I knew the answer.

  “You—ah.” Mel paused, my duffle in hand, and closed the trunk, his lip quirking. After a second, he turned to face me, smiling. “You tasted familiar.”

  “You’ve never bitten me before,” I said, reaching out with my good arm to grab the bag. Mel’s smile crumbled as he noticed my bandages and he slammed the trunk, taking a step back as if afraid he might do more damage to me just by being close.

  “Not your blood, your skin. The trickster got everything else right—the way you looked as an arachnid, the hairy spider legs, the gross smell—but the taste was familiar. I don’t know why that was its weak point. Maybe it was just working too hard and missed a step.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, though we’d never actually know.

  “It confused the hell out of me and I jumped back. Then, as I was noticing that the you I’d attacked was just lying there, while the other you was being so aggressive, I realized what had happened.”

  “Well,” I said, feeling my cheeks go pink. I had figured it had to be something related to the fact that he’d had his mouth all over me just hours before. “I guess it’s a good thing we’d…you know.”

  Mel stared at me for a second, before his smile slowly took over his face again. I sighed, rolled my eyes.

  “Go on,” I sighed, knowing what was coming.

  “Do you know what this means?”

  “I know what you think it means, but—”

  “It means that, if we hadn’t had sex, you’d be dead. Having sex with me saved your life.” Mel shifted his stance, crossed his arms over his chest, his eyes glittering. We were home and he was definitely still the same Mel he’d been before the trip.
“My dick saved your life.”

  “Goodbye, Mel,” I said, turning to head back to my front door. Behind me, Mel let out a giddy laugh. I glanced back enough to frown at the sound and he caught my look. His body shifted immediately as he lowered his arms, shot me from the hip with twin finger-guns, and then brought them to his lips to blow away imaginary smoke.

  “It’ll never happen again!” I yelled over my shoulder as I pressed the key into the lock.

  He laughed and I heard his car door shut. I was chuckling too as I stepped into my living room but the second the door shut I stopped, confused at the sight before me.

  The skinny, dark-haired girl from The Internets was rushing in from the kitchen, had been moving even as I entered. She looked a little better than she had when Mel had been proposing, cleaned up and wearing nicer clothes. Her delicate features were filled with glee as she wrapped herself around me, hugging like we were old friends. I froze, bag in hand, wondering why she smelled like Twinkies and Chloe.

  “Chloe,” I called warily, scanning what I could see of my house, hoping this poor homeless youth—I mean, she looked about twenty—hadn’t broken into my house to steal my snacks. I had enough of that from the candy thief, I didn’t need another wayward creature prowling my home and pilfering my sugar.

  The hug ended and the girl pulled back, shaking her head to flip her hair out of her face. I realized her features were a little stronger than I’d been able to make out before, her form a little more muscular than I would have assumed. She was more androgynous than feminine, actually, and I wondered if she’d always been that way or if whatever type of fae she was had a tendency to change genders.

  Mel was a werewolf, maybe there were were-girls out there. I was busy wondering if this creature started menstruating under the light of the full moon when her—its? His? I couldn’t tell—gaze plummeted to the bag in my hand and she gasped.