“I have no idea what there is to smile about.”
“Oh, sorry, my ride is here.” I did my best to turn the grin off and say good night quickly. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough. Artman beat me to Jakob by ten paces.
“Come to check up on a friend’s work, or are you looking for a snack?” he started.
“A vampire would not do this.” Jakob’s voice was cold, controlled fury.
“No, I guess your kind don’t waste that much food.”
“Are you attempting to provoke me?” I could see Jakob’s muscles tense, I wondered if Artman was too stupid to see it or didn’t care.
“I wouldn’t stand a chance, would I? You sick bastards can rip people open and all the rest of us can do is pray. Godless freaks.” Artman walked away muttering under his breath.
Jakob could hear him, but I didn’t ask him what Artman was saying. I grabbed him and kissed him, trying to chase the afternoon away. He watched Artman over my shoulder.
“I do not like that man.”
“Neither do I,” I agreed. “Can we drive very, very fast with the top down, then eat something incredibly bad for us?”
“Of course,” he smiled and opened the car door.
Chapter Eleven
Twenty minutes later, we were on a back highway somewhere with the wind whipping my hair. It pulled the thoughts of the crime scene out of me as I had hoped. I had no idea where we were going. Jakob took a rural highway that didn’t have street lights. Somehow he found a part in the trees and turned on to a dirt driveway. We pulled up to a shack made of rough timber with a tarpaper roof. I could smell hot oil and smoky barbeque; inside the smell was stronger.
“Lord, Mister Jakob, I haven’t seen you in an age! How’s my baby, Ronald?” The woman behind the counter was large, at least three hundred pounds, but all in proportion—a giant bronze mother goddess statue brought to life. She smiled at him like a long lost friend.
“Delighted over his son’s first birthday,” he answered with a smile almost as wide.
“Ohhh, hush your mouth, now you’re making me feel old. Who’s this?” She turned the smile on me without taking the wattage down a notch. It warmed me like a sun.
“This is Mallory,” he said, proudly. I got the feeling I had been introduced to someone important.
“I’m Momma.” Her grin didn’t ever seem to stop. “And what will you have, Mallory?”
I looked around but didn’t see a menu, she laughed at my confusion. Jakob didn’t laugh, but I could see it dancing in his eyes. It seemed the lack of a menu was an old joke.
“You have three options. A number one is chicken, number two is pork, and number three is ribs. What’ll you have?”
“A number one.”
“Number one!” she echoed me in a shout back to the kitchen. “Now you go sit outside. Jakob’ll show you the way.” She made a shooing motion with her hands.
A half dozen wooden picnic tables and benches were arranged underneath a wooden roof supported by wide round poles, each one with its own graffiti. Every table had a small container of condiments, including homemade barbeque sauce. It came in two flavors, sweet or spicy. I wondered aloud what the people who liked sweet and spicy did.
“I put a little bit of both together and mix it with a French fry,” a clear young voice answered, I looked behind me to find Emma, Danny’s youngest looking as serious as only a five year old can. “And what are you doing at my restaurant?”
“I’m about to have dinner,” I gulped. I looked around her and saw her mother, Katie waving in the doorway.
“What makes you think this is your restaurant, little one? I think it was mine first,” Jakob answered. I worried about being caught between a kid and a vampire. The possibility for temper tantrums was too high.
“It has my name on it!” Emma replied pointing to one of the wide round beams. “And I come here every time I have a dance competition.” Her evidence was compelling, but Jakob had her beat.
“Look above that, at the top.” He pointed high enough on the beam that Emma had to stand on the bench to see it. There was a very large carving of the name ‘Ronald’, underneath it a smaller ‘JM’. I suppressed a laugh. “I’m JM,” Jakob said.
“Who’s Ronald?” Emma demanded.
“My son. When he wrote that he was a little boy, and I had only been his father for a year.”
His explanation was sweet, but Emma rejected it. “How did that happen?”
“His father died in the war, and his mother had left him. His grandmother was a friend of mine. When she died, I adopted him.”
“When was that?”
“1978.”
Emma pondered the legitimacy of his claim for a moment, then looked slyly at him. “I think we should share Momma’s.”
“Fair enough,” Jakob agreed with a laugh.
Katie came over and wanted to know what was fair. Emma had to tell her the whole story. By the time Danny came out she was almost done, and the story had to be told a third time. Someone at the back door bellowed “Mallory” and “Miss Emma” at the same time, and we all got up to grab red plastic trays. Emma was distracted enough by the mixing of the sauce that I got a chance to introduce Jakob.
“We’ve talked on the phone, remember, Mors?” Danny said. I turned bright pink remembering how Danny had called Jakob when I was hurt on the job. Katie chided him for teasing me then calmly changed the subject. The way she handled him amazed me.
“How’d you discover Momma’s, Jakob?” she asked.
“When my son was younger, he was obsessed with all things historical. Momma’s was one of a thousand historic places I was dragged to.” He smiled at the memory. “It was the only one good enough to come back to.”
“How old is your son now?” Emma put in.
“Thirty-six.”
“Wow.” Her eyes got big. “Then you must be really old.”
“Ancient,” he answered. His serious tone didn’t save the rest of the adults at the table from cracking up.
Emma provided the comedy for most of dinner. I was happy to let Jakob be her straight man while I devoured the juicy chicken, coating it with the dark brown sweet sauce. The French fries were hand cut. I shocked Emma by eating them with ketchup instead of barbecue sauce. Emma began a long story about her dance competition. Katie smiled while her daughter talked. She was small and round with wonderful coppery red hair. It was a shame all their daughters had Danny dark locks.
“Where are the other two hellions tonight?” I asked Katie.
“Nora is at a friend’s and Maeve is with my folks. We didn’t know how Emma would do, and we didn’t want to miss anything.”
Emma sighed and rolled her eyes. “She means we didn’t want to have to miss the awards ceremony. We had to last time, because Nora had a party to go to.” The much-wronged sister waited for expression of sympathy. Getting none, she went on. “This time I got my award. I had to leave it in the car though, because it was too big to carry inside.” The last came with an evil glance at Danny.
“And because we practice humility and grace when we win, right?” Katie instructed. Emma developed a rapid interest in her dwindling dinner. Danny ruffled her hair and pulled her on to his lap.
“What’d you do with your day, Mal? Any trophies?” he asked.
“I,” I hesitated. He looked like such a Dad holding her with her step dancing curls half covering his face. I hated to spoil it. “I got called in.”
Danny looked at me, asking the question I hadn’t wanted to answer. I glanced at Emma. “Like the case from Friday morning.”
Katie turned to Emma. “Come on, Em, let’s go see what Momma has for dessert today.” Emma climbed off Danny’s lap. The two of them walked off, hand in hand, Emma completely oblivious to what we were about to discuss. I was slightly jealous.
“Five students are missing. Two were slaughtered leaving body parts, and one was simply killed. The last one…” I tried to think of a way to say that wouldn’t ruin e
veryone’s night. I couldn’t come up with anything. “One werewolf turned her into a bloody pulp then his friends ate her legs. She was projecting the whole time. It was horrible.”
“Her fear would have aroused them more.” Jakob’s voice was flat.
I was stunned, but Danny took it in stride.
“You’ve dealt with this before?” he said. Danny started cleaning up the debris from dinner, a nervous habit.
“I hunted werewolves.” Jakob made it sound like a hobby.
“How long?”
“Two hundred years, give or take,” he said in the same ‘I-played-the-violin’ voice.
“I’ll assume this was before they were considered people?”
“Well before. Centuries ago.”
“Damn, that’s too bad,” my partner bemoaned my boyfriend’s lack of recent homicides. I wasn’t sure I could handle much more of this insane conversation. I was saved by my cell phone. I started to excuse myself when Danny’s pager went off. Emma and Katie returned triumphant with popsicles but Danny’s face fell when he checked the number. I turned back to my phone call.
“Mors.”
“Auster.” I acknowledged him, and he paused before plunging ahead. “Shit, I know you earned a night off, but we need you to come in.”
“Why? Please not another crime scene,” I begged.
“No, thank the Gods. No, the missing nurse from the case on Friday called. She wants to come into protective custody. She’s been in hiding, and she’ll only come out for you and Danny. We’re looking for him now.”
“He’s sitting next to me.” I turned back to the table and nodded at Danny.
“Handy. She says she’ll be at a park downtown around at ten o’clock. Can you be there?”
“I think so, let me talk to Danny.” I covered the phone and relayed the information to Danny as quickly as possible. He shrugged and agreed to head in. I got the details from Ben as we all walked out to the driveway. Emma danced ahead of us, the only one whose good mood hadn’t been ruined. I was shocked to see that Danny and Katie had taken separate cars and said so.
“I’ve been a cop’s wife for 13 years. You learn to be prepared. Come on, munchkin, in the car,” she called to Emma. I gave the family a second to say good-bye and turned to Jakob.
“I’m sorry. This is just…” I tried to think of what it was. Wrong? Stupid? Unfair? I couldn’t walk away from the chance to save someone or interview an eyewitness but I was still bummed about losing my Saturday night. I wasn’t five. I knew no one was going to be able to get me another first time at Momma’s with Jakob. It was going to go down in history as something cut short because of my work. “…I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He kissed me softly, holding me close to him. “There will be other nights, I have a very a long time.”
I laughed at his joke even though it was dumb. “I’m glad, because I suspect this is going to take all night. Why don’t you head home, and I’ll come find you tomorrow?”
My opportunity to do anything exciting with him, to have any adult fun was gone. He might as well enjoy his own home instead of waiting around my apartment bored, hoping I’d be decent company when I did show up.
“If you’re sure?” I saw the hesitation in his eyes.
“I’m sure. I expect an uninterrupted magical evening tomorrow, though. Be prepared.”
“I’ll do my best.” He kissed me again, and then said in a stern tone, “be careful.” I agreed.
Danny and I waved goodbye to our families before climbing into his car. I was quiet for most of the drive into the city. I felt anger rise up in me. Somewhere there was a werewolf who had killed without remorse or doubt. He had taken lives, ruined futures, and destroyed hopes. He savored fear and pain. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about how horribly he should be punished.
“He’s still a person,” Danny said quietly.
I looked at him sideways. “I know you can’t read my thoughts…” I let my voice trail off.
“I don’t have to. I’ve been taken out of enough happy family moments to know what you’re thinking. You’ve got vivid scenarios going on about what you’re going to do to this guy, when what you’re really angry about is him ruining your Saturday night.”
I tried to make my face blank but he could tell he was right. “You have to let it go Mal, you knew what the job was when you signed up, and besides he’s still a person.”
“He wouldn’t have been a couple of hundred years ago though, why give him the benefit of the doubt now? Maybe some people are soulless animals who deserve to be put down.”
“A hundred years ago in this country the Irish weren’t people. A hundred and fifty years ago Africans weren’t people. We have to do better than what was. We have to move toward understanding.”
“I’m never going to understand a bunch of werewolves eating some poor college girl.”
“But you can understand how being treated like a freak hurts. How that hurt becomes the desire to lash out.”
He was right, I could. I just didn’t want to admit it. I had been the only kid in school without a father, the only poor kid, and eventually the only kid whose mother was dying. Being the only one had hurt. But there was no hurt big enough to turn me into something as terrible as the men we were cleaning up after.
“Oh come one Mal, don’t you ever get lonely?” Danny looked at me.
“Lonely? How? I’m with you all day, when I go home Jakob is there. I have friends, why would I be lonely?” I asked confused by his sudden change of subject.
“Because none of us are death witches. You’re alone, none of us will ever know what you go through, none of us can ever commiserate with you or celebrate with you, not really anyway. Come on, you’ve never felt that?”
“I guess not, I don’t think of myself as a witch first and a person second, or for that matter a witch first, a cop second, and a person third. I think of myself as Mallory. Besides, the wolves have each other.”
“But the other wolves aren’t their family, their coworkers, their friends.”
“Look, I’m not saying it would be easy for them to do all the normal parts of life, but they could. They can hold a job, have a family, get a degree, do whatever they want. They choose to keep themselves separate and not play by the rules. As long as they make that choice I’m not going to feel sorry for them and you’re not going to convince me otherwise.”
“Okay so wolves are your thing, but remember that. It’s your thing, something you can’t understand, not something they did.”
I nodded at his sage advice. “What’s your thing then?”
“Sex creatures, sex monsters, sex things.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I can handle the spirit witches, who always ask if you’re okay when they know you’re not. I can even handle the earth witch who works in records…you know the one who turns his house plant into a 20 foot vine? He doesn’t bug me. Most witches don’t bug me, I don’t even mind vampires. But,” he paused, his hands clenched around the wheel. “I cannot handle the things that turn the most sacred act between a man and his wife into a way to kill. I can’t do it.”
“Did something happen?” I didn’t want to pry, but if something had, I wanted to know about it, in case it effected our work, but more because Danny was my friend.
“My old partner, Doug. We caught a case with a succubus, and Doug fell in love. Except a thing like that, they don’t love, they feed. Being with a sucker takes a little bit of who you are each time. One day Doug stopped noticing if what he was wearing matched, a week later he didn’t notice things at a crime scene. The things that made him him, fighting over politics, eating jelly donuts, slipped away as she took more and more of him.”
“But it’s not illegal if it’s consensual,” I said.
“No. It’s not. So there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do. When enough of him was gone that he couldn’t do his job, he got counseling. When that didn’t work, he got fired. Nothing the union could do about
it either; he was happy to go. She came to help him clean out his desk. She didn’t even apologize for what she’d done.”
I wanted to comfort him, but didn’t have words for what had happened. “I never noticed you treating them any different, but from now on I’ll handle any succubus or anything like that we get.”
“Thanks, I’ll take you up on that.” He pulled the car into a parking space and we looked at the park in silence. It was poorly lit, dingy in that city park way, with the debris of city life on the ground and a number of older trees, their trunks scarred with graffiti. There were two or three park lights done up to look like old gaslights. The humidity turned their bright orange light into halos.
The place looked empty, but we got out of the car anyway. Walking around the park took ten minutes, I was a little surprised not to find anyone hanging out. Of course, even the homeless aren’t stupid. A park a few blocks away from zombie attacks when the newspapers were screaming about bizarre murders wouldn’t be that attractive a place to sleep.
We stayed until eleven but no one came. Our phantom caller decided she didn’t want to talk to us after all. Either that or someone decided it for her, I thought crossly. I was tired, tired of looking at bodies, tired of wondering what the hell was going on, tired of the unending heat and humidity of summer, and most of all I was tired of the full moon. Another few days and it would end, I couldn’t wait.
Danny and I talked about meaningless things: Emma’s dancing, if Maeve should get horse riding lessons, if I could really afford all the shopping I had done. We gave up waiting and he drove me to the train station. I waved good night to him, hopeful that his night would get back to normal.
I was halfway up the platform when my cell phone rang. I recognized the number as headquarters and cursed quietly as I picked up the phone.
“Mors,” I stated.
“It’s Auster. Look, your caller called back. She says something held her up but she’ll be there soon. Do you and Danny want to go back or should I send someone else?”
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