Fang Ten

by Emery Belle

  “I don’t think so,” Fletcher said to the centaur as he positioned the arrow in his bow and aimed it at Fletcher, then at me, as if deciding who to strike first. “If there’s one thing I can’t control, it’s their temperament.” I looked up, surprised that Fletcher was speaking to me. “This one’s clearly not ready to be sold yet.”

  He immobilized the centaur with a wave of his wand and snatched him off the counter. Once the figurine was tucked away in the safe with the others, Fletcher turned his full attention to me, and I saw that the sour expression had dropped from his face. I leaned forward eagerly, expecting him to bare his soul about Hattie—after all, I’d barely had to push Pearl and Arthur to do the same.

  Then, without warning, Fletcher aimed his wand squarely at my heart. “What’s your angle?” he snarled. “What business is my personal life of yours?” The vampire in the display case was watching the scene with wide eyes, swinging his head back and forth between Fletcher and me. A trickle of blood dribbled down his chin, but he didn’t make a move to wipe it off.

  “N-nothing,” I stammered, holding up my hands. “I’m just here to offer my support, that’s all. I figured, being Hattie’s husband and all, that you were having a hard time and might need someone to talk to.”

  “Well I don’t.” Fletcher lowered his wand a fraction of an inch but kept his eyes locked on mine. “And even if I did,” he added, sounding slightly wistful at first, then immediately correcting his tone, “I have plenty of people to talk to.”

  He swung his wand in a wide arc, indicating the porcelain figurines surrounding us, and although several of them waved back, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the old man. It must take a lot of energy to keep a wall of this magnitude around himself at all times. And for just a split second, as I turned to leave, I thought I saw the wall crack and a flash of longing pass through his eyes.

  But it was gone just as quickly as it arrived—although it probably didn’t help that Kellen chose that precise moment to stride through the front door, his muscular arms swinging at his sides. And… was he actually whistling? He was. Until his eyes landed on me, that is, and his face took on a comical expression of rage.

  “What are you doing here?” he thundered. He took in the scene with a quick sweep of his red eyes—thankfully, Fletcher had lowered his wand, at the very least.

  “Is she bothering you?” Kellen barked at Fletcher before turning back to me. “Unless you want me to arrest you again, you’ll keep your nose out of my investigation.”

  But he’d played that card one too many times—I wasn’t scared of him. Not really.

  “I’m just shopping,” I said coolly, waving my hand toward the porcelain vampire. “That’s not a crime now too, is it?”

  Two spots of color appeared high on Kellen’s cheeks, and he snorted with anger, sending steam spiraling toward a small witch figurine perched on a table beside him. She coughed and waved her hand in the air to clear the steam, then shook her fist angrily at the minotaur. Ignoring her, he addressed Fletcher once more. “Is that true?”

  I felt Fletcher’s cold eyes appraising me, and I held my breath. He had no reason to cover for me.

  Finally, he inclined his head, and I choked back a noise of surprise. “Do you have any news?” he asked Kellen, who nodded.

  “We’re narrowing in on our suspect, no question about it. We just have to tie up a few loose ends, make sure everything’s nice and tidy before we make our move.”

  Kellen glanced behind him and spotted me, and though I hastily pretended to be engrossed with the price tag of a particularly hideous dwarf figurine the size of Pierre, the police chief wasn’t so easily fooled. Crossing the shop toward me in two enormous steps, he had me by the elbow before I could blink. Without a word, he steered me toward the shop door, and though I attempted a feeble—and probably incredibly stupid—kick to his shin on the way out, he shoved me out the door, then slammed it and slapped the closed sign over the window.

  I aimed a frustrated kick at the building, then crept over to the side window and watched as Kellen and Fletcher stood at the counter, their heads bent together. What I wouldn’t give to hear what they were saying… and who they were saying it about.

  Eventually I gave up, sneaking away around the back of the shop so Kellen wouldn’t spot me. He could threaten me all he wanted, though—facts were facts. I was two for two. No, make that three for three. Because I would find Hattie and bring her back to Glenn, even if I had to move heaven and earth to do it.

  Chapter 12

  The daycare was in a state of total chaos when I stepped inside the morning before the coven’s dance. As I ducked a flying hare carcass, courtesy of the baby yeti who was having a temper tantrum in one corner of the room, Astrid ran past me toward the opposite side, where a leprechaun toddler was trying to tear the gold plating off a centaur foal’s hoof. I could see the tears of frustration swimming in her eyes as I hurried over to help her, crying out in pain as I ripped the leprechaun away from the centaur and he sank his teeth into me.

  “I’m so mad at Hattie,” Astrid said, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “I know that sounds ridiculous, Wren—obviously it’s not her fault she’s gone missing, but she’s left me here with a nightmare situation. No! Stop. STOP!” She dashed across the room toward a young vampire who’d just grabbed a girl dwarf by her chubby neck and was licking his fangs excitedly.

  “Aren’t they supposed to be in separate rooms?” I whispered to an ashen-faced volunteer who was sporting a badly bleeding arm.

  “We had a mass breakout this morning,” she said, wrapping a makeshift tourniquet around her arm. I led her to a chair and fetched her a glass of water. “Thanks.” She lifted the cup with her good arm and took a grateful swallow. “Something’s gone wrong with the spell sealing the doors shut—Hattie’s the one who performed it, and none of us can figure out the problem. Astrid’s tried everything she can think of to seal the babies back in their rooms, but they keep finding a way out.” She shuddered and examined her arm. “I had no idea goblins had such sharp claws.”

  We heard a sudden commotion around the corner, and the volunteer leapt to her feet. I followed her as she ran into an adjacent playroom, where a troll was attempting to play jump rope with a centaur—the only problem was he had the centaur by the legs and was trying to use him as the actual jump rope.

  We hurried forward to help him, approaching the troll with caution. The volunteer removed a giant slug from her pocket and dangled it in the air where the troll could see it. “Terrence, how about a little snicky-snack?” she cooed, though I could see her knees were quaking.

  Instead of dropping the centaur to the ground, Terrence, in his excitement, hurled the centaur through the air like a baseball bat and launched himself toward the slug, snatching it from the volunteer’s hand with his teeth and slurping it down greedily. At least, that’s what I imagined happened, anyway, because I was too busy getting hit in the face by the flying centaur to pay much attention.

  As we fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs, I took a flailing hoof to the eye and scrambled back, clutching my face. “Did I lose my eye?” I shouted, panic-stricken, feeling around for it frantically. The pain was so bad, my entire face felt like it was on fire. The troll, misunderstanding what I’d said, turned his warty face to me, his mossy eyes widening with hunger.

  “Loose eye?” he said, pushing the volunteer to the ground and lumbering toward me, great gobs of saliva dripping from his fat tongue. He pressed his face up against mine, and I could smell the slug on his breath.

  I screamed and jumped back, still clutching my face, and ran straight into Astrid, who aimed her wand at the troll not a second too soon. Just as he made a swipe for my eye, his claws scraping against my cheek, a cage appeared around him, boxing him in on all sides. He let out a heartbroken roar and made another swipe for me, but I danced out of the way just in time, leaving him clutching at nothing but air.

  I took a few deep, shaky breat
hs to calm myself, then bent over the centaur foal, who was still crumpled on the ground, his limbs bent all around him. As I got to work creating a temporary cast for his broken front hoof with a roll of gauze and some bandages, Astrid conjured up dozens more cages and the volunteers herded the babies inside. Before long they were all contained—and that was when the wailing, snorting, hissing, and barking began.

  “Hattie’s going to kill me if she ever finds out I did this,” Astrid whimpered, sticking her hand in one of the cages to pry a toy club out of an ogre’s hand. “Not to mention what the parents are going to say—they don’t pay two gold coins a day to send their kids here to have them locked up.”

  “You did what you had to do,” I said with a shrug, still poking tentatively at my eye, which, thankfully, still seemed to be attached to my head. By this point, I wasn’t exactly feeling sympathetic toward our charges. Neither, it seemed, was Astrid, because she left the babies inside their cages for the rest of the day, though she did make a point of reading a second book at storytime and was extra generous with their snacks. And, other than a small scuffle between a group of brownies over a toy mop, the rest of the day was relatively peaceful.

  After I clocked out, I headed toward the boardwalk, my eye still smarting and aching like mad against the blinding sunlight. Granted, this may not have been the best time to continue my investigative work, but now that I knew Kellen was days away from arresting a suspect, I didn’t have a moment to spare. So I’d decided to follow up on my coworker Saul’s tip about Radu Maldova, the vampire who seemed to be embroiled in some kind of disagreement with Hattie.

  It wasn’t hard to find Radu’s surf shop, which was located right across the boardwalk from the Magic Island information booth. The dwarf inside narrowed her eyes at me as I walked past; she obviously still remembered our unpleasant encounter over my request for directions to the gargoyle community. I quickly averted my gaze, not needing another reminder of how embarrassed I still felt over Cole’s unwillingness to attend the dance with me.

  The surf shop sold run-of-the-mill beachwear and gear, including bathing suits, sunhats, and tanning lotion, and, of course, there was a wide selection of surfboards in a variety of colors and patterns. I poked around inside for a bit, looking for anyone who might be Radu, but other than a dwarf modeling a bikini for her bug-eyed boyfriend and a centaur inquiring about extra-wide surfboards to the zombie behind the front desk, the shop was empty.

  Remembering what Saul had said about Radu teaching surf lessons, I wandered out of the shop and down the boardwalk toward the beach below, stopping to buy cotton candy along the way. I sighed happily when my feet sank into the golden sand, then wandered down to the edge of the water, picking up a long length of seaweed and dragging it behind me as I searched the water for Radu.

  The ocean was calm today, the waves docile, so not the ideal conditions for a surfing class, but eventually I spotted a group of about ten men and women bobbing up and down on their boards, waiting for a larger wave to roll in. Shielding my eyes against the sun, I squinted toward the group, studying each face as best as I could from a distance until my gaze landed on a man floating farther out than the rest of the class. His mouth was open and he seemed to be calling instructions to them, but from the shore, I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  If this was Radu, then I needed to rethink my image of vampires. He had a wide smile and golden hair that was swept across his angular face, his skin was deeply tanned, and he bobbed on his surfboard with an easy confidence. The others in the class weren’t so lucky—after a while, a large wave finally swept in, rolling over most of them and sending them tumbling around in the water. Only Radu managed to make it to shore, and when he turned around and saw the chaos behind him, he bent over at the waist and began laughing.

  “Good class,” he called as the other surfers began struggling toward the sand, dragging their boards behind them. He high-fived each of them as they passed, then waited until the last of the class had left the water before peeling off his wetsuit to reveal a pair of turquoise swim trunks that clung appealingly to his muscular thighs. He toweled himself off, his hair catching the sunlight, his eyes cast out over the water.

  “Radu?” I said, approaching him. My hands were sticky from the cotton candy, so I quickly wet them in the water before holding one out for him to shake. “I’m Wren Winters.” I motioned to his board. “I’ve always wanted to learn.”

  “Right on!” He beamed at me. “You should check out my class for beginners—we meet at eight in the morning on Wednesdays.” He stretched out his arms, which were long and lean, but up close, I realized how short and slight he was—I had a few inches on him at least, and probably a couple dozen pounds, and Hattie was my height, if not taller. How on earth would he have succeeded in dragging her off?

  “I might have to check that out,” I said, nodding. Then I hesitated. I still hadn’t figured out how to bridge the gap between normal conversation and launching into questions that would help my investigation—which, I supposed, was natural, given that I wasn’t actually an investigator. Maybe I needed to learn a thing or two from Kellen after all.

  He studied me with striking almond-shaped green eyes. “You okay? You look a little ill.” He held up a finger, then rummaged around in a canvas bag at his feet before producing a small vial. “I had this motion sickness solution made up at the apothecary for some of my students with weaker stomachs. Sometimes all it takes is just looking at the waves.” He pushed it toward me, but I shook my head.

  “I’m fine, actually. I’m here to speak with you about Hattie Bumble.” Radu raised his eyebrows in surprise, but he didn’t say anything, so I pressed on. “I’m sure you’ve heard by now that she’s gone missing, and it’s come to my attention that the two of you were having some kind of argument? I’m helping out with the investigation into her disappearance, so if you have a minute or two, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  He looked taken aback for a moment, then shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair until it was casually tousled. After tucking the motion sickness solution back into his bag, he sat cross-legged on the wet sand and motioned for me to join him. “I wouldn’t say we were having an argument, because that implies a personal relationship, which we didn’t have.”

  Radu watched a seagull dip down into the waves, emerging moments later with a wriggling fish in its beak, before continuing. “Hattie and I are on opposite sides of a rather charged issue… I guess you might call it a political issue, though for the vampires, it goes far beyond that.”

  He sighed. “There’s a rare tree that grows in abundance on the island—the rainbow eucalyptus—that the vampires have been campaigning for years to have destroyed. Its bark is particularly deadly to our community—for reasons the vampire researchers have never been able to figure out, if the bark so much as scratches our skin, it causes instant death. They believe it may have something to do with our lack of pigmentation”—he held up his tan arm and laughed—“though some of us are more lacking in that department than others.”

  I frowned. “So what does this have to do with Hattie?”

  Radu shuffled his feet in the sand, and a handful of tiny translucent crabs scurried out. He plucked one up and placed it on the tip of his tongue, then crunched down on it with his fangs in one smooth motion. “We brought our objections to the trees’ presence on the island before the High Court,” he said, oblivious to my look of revulsion, “and petitioned to have them removed. All petitions are published in the paper, so when Hattie read about it, she wrote up a counter-petition of her own and began campaigning heavily to save the trees.”

  “But why?” I averted my eyes as he picked up another wriggling crab, choosing instead to watch a dragon soaring far out in the distance, its magnificent wings gleaming in the sunlight. “I mean, it seems reasonable to me to want the trees destroyed if they endanger an entire community. I can’t imagine why anyone would object to that.”

  “Because t
he leaves of the rainbow eucalyptus are also the main ingredient in a calming solution used to pacify zombies before they’ve reached full maturity and learned to master their impulses,” Radu said, tracing circles in the sand with his index finger. “Apparently Hattie uses the solution every day at her daycare—and if the rainbow eucalyptus disappears, so does her ability to control the young zombies without magic.”

  I nodded, thinking back to my first day at the daycare, when Astrid and I were almost under attack by a roomful of baby zombies and she’d refused to use magic on them—Hattie’s philosophy when dealing with the children. Only when Hattie had entered with their snack, which had been tinged an unusual shade of green, did they seem to calm down enough to take their naps. That must have been the rainbow eucalyptus at work.

  “Frankly, I think she’s being unreasonable,” Radu said, his voice rising slightly with anger. “I’m sure she can find another way to deal with the zombies that doesn’t threaten every last vampire on this island. And if she can’t, well, maybe she shouldn’t have that daycare in the first place.”

  It was a fair point, I had to admit. “So what’s the current status of the petition?” I asked.

  Radu shrugged. “It’s out of my hands at this point. The High Court is debating its merit, and we’re waiting to hear their decision. Hopefully Lord Macon won’t be as unreasonable as Hattie—even her husband confided in me that he thinks she’s out of line.”

  My ears perked up. “You know Fletcher?”

  “For years,” Radu said, shifting back slightly as the incoming waves lapped at his ankles. “He rents out a spot on the boardwalk just a few shops down from mine—it’s a smaller version of his souvenir shop. It’s actually good for my own business to have him there since his figurines are so popular; a lot of the times tourists will browse the nearby shops after they’re finished at his. Nice guy, Fletcher.”