Mel was quiet for a moment, thinking it through, before he nodded. “Makes sense.” And just like that, we were once again on our way.
***
We parked down the street so Chloe could hang in the car without being seen and Mel and I headed up the sidewalk toward the house. The neighborhood was a bit rundown, aged fences and long grass dominating most yards. It was still mid-morning, though, and people were milling about.
“This is it,” Mel said, pausing in front of a small house with steps leading up to a covered porch. He pushed open the gate, let me go through first, and we headed for the door.
“You gonna blurt out that you have magical powers again this time?” Mel asked.
I shrugged. “Probably.”
Heaving a sigh, he knocked. A woman answered immediately, which surprised me, since I hadn’t felt anyone on the other side of the door. She was watching us with a blank sort of sadness on her face, but according to my empathy, no one was home.
Something was definitely wrong. Mel didn’t seem to notice, holding out his hand and introducing himself.
“Mrs. Kraus, hello. I’m Mel and this is Gwen. We spoke on the phone?”
“Come in,” Mrs. Kraus said absently, walking off into the house.
“Okay,” Mel said, throwing me a confused look.
“Something’s not right here,” I whispered. Alarm bells were clanging through my head, making me want to turn and run back to the car. Mel ignored me, following Mrs. Kraus inside. I swore under my breath and went after him. Mel wasn’t worried and, while I was sure this was a very bad idea, I figured I needed to trust the man. He was a werewolf and a private eye; he’d probably walked into stranger situations and come out unscathed.
“Would you like tea?” Mrs. Kraus asked in her hollow voice. I looked around, finding nothing suspicious in the tidy living room or the kitchen beyond. Mel followed her, completely at ease, but I hung back for a few seconds, pushing my empathy outward in an attempt to figure out what was going on.
My range isn’t huge but I can shift it, pushing the radius outward with myself at the center or at the edge. I pushed it to the far end of the house and found that I could feel exactly one set of emotions within my range. They weren’t human and, while they felt strangely familiar, I couldn’t have put a label on them if my life depended on it.
My heart pounded as I started to wonder if maybe it would.
“Mel?” I called, backing towards the door. He twisted slightly to look my way just as a man stepped around the corner ahead of him, a baseball bat in his hand. “Mel!”
He flinched at my tone, turning back toward the kitchen just in time to get a face full of lumber.
I yelped, darting forward on instinct, even though there was no earthly thing I could do to help. The man moved with the swing, shifting his position as if he’d hit Mel again. To my surprise, Mel didn’t go down. He stumbled a bit, brought a hand to his face as if he’d been hit with a spitball to the cheek, and swore, but he didn’t fall. When the man went to swing again, Mel straightened, towering over him, and growled.
I stopped moving immediately, lurching as the sound seeped under my skin like smoke, settled in my belly like lead. Mel’s attacker didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were unfocused, staring into the distance as he kept swinging. This time, Mel caught the bat. As Mel yanked the weapon out of the smaller man’s grip, a girl spoke from behind me.
“I had not anticipated a werewolf,” she said. Her voice was light, a bit bored. I didn’t get the chance to turn and see what she looked like; her arms came around me quickly, one wrapping around my waist, one pressing over my eyes. I shrieked, tried to struggle, but her grip was iron. Her fingers parted slightly over my left eye, letting me see Mel as he turned to me, shock naked on his face. He growled again but my captor wasn’t intimidated.
“Hand the bat back or I break her neck.”
I whimpered. Mel watched me, tension singing through him. He fought with the decision while I struggled, my normal irritation with him amplified tenfold by the situation.
“Just give it back!” I urged, at a loss as to why he would even consider keeping the damn thing. The attack had seemed to irritate him at best, but I was in mortal peril. Mel flicked his gaze to my face briefly before holding the bat out to the side. His attacker took it, lifting it across his shoulder, though he didn’t swing.
The girl waved her hand forward, leaving my face uncovered for a moment.
“Vis,” she hissed, flicking her fingers like she was flinging water. The man shifted his grip on the bat and swung again in one smooth move. This time, Mel went down hard.
“No, no, no,” I wailed, struggling in the girl’s grip as if she might let me run to Mel and see if he was okay. Without him, I was toast.
“Better,” she said. “Now we’re all alone.” We both winced at the sound of a window breaking and watched in stillness as the man with the bat crumpled in a heap on the floor. A colorful, feather-tipped dart stuck out of his cheek. “Or not.”
The room was silent for a few seconds before a familiar voice called, “Gwen, you okay?”
I had to take a second to process before I called, “Chloe?”
“Stop speaking,” my captor snapped. Her hand shifted from my belly upward and she gripped the sides of my face hard enough that I was afraid my skull would pop. I let out a whine and reached up in an attempt to pry her off, but her grip was no less sure than before. She mumbled one more word I didn’t understand and it speared a shard of pain through my head. My vision short-circuited and everything went black.
Chapter Fourteen
This time, I woke up in my own bed. I was alone, it was dark, but I could hear the TV in the living room. My head was killing me and my stomach felt cavernous. I wanted ice cream, candy, sugar. As I rolled onto my side to clutch at my head and whimper, I felt Chloe close in from the hall.
“Gwen?”
In response, I let out a wordless groan.
“Good, you are awake,” she said quietly. I felt the bed sag before her hand brushed over my cheek. “I’m not wearing the necklace this time. Mel’s here, so I figured it’s best he keep it.”
“What happened?”
“You were attacked. Both of you. You’re safe now.”
“… did you shoot someone?”
“Tranquilized them. There’s a difference.”
I paused to process this information, opening my eyes to find that I was looking at her denim-clad hip. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Not surprising. Come on, Mel should be back any minute with food and you’ll need to eat.”
That got me moving, though I didn’t like it much. Chloe bundled me into slippers and my robe and helped me out into the living room, where I sank onto the couch. I was exhausted again—still? Who could even tell after the week I’d had.
“Mel called Amy and she came by, did what she could. Merrin wasn’t answering, but we did our best. Whatever got you last time, it got you worse this time.”
“I remember…” I trailed off, licked my lips, and swallowed; I could drool like a hungry baby while asleep, but without threat to my pillow, my mouth was dry as a bone. “I remember Mel getting hit with a bat. Then you shot—”
“Tranq’d.”
“Whatever. You were there. And then I passed out. What happened?”
“That’s most of it. The… girl... that had you was scared of guns. I threatened her and she scurried off.”
“That’s it?”
“Not really, but you’re in no shape right now.” The door opened and Mel came in carrying a large paper sack, his face lighting up when he saw me.
“Figured you for dead, Arthur.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m the one with the food,” he said, passing us to head into the kitchen. “I’d be nicer to me if I were you.”
“That doesn’t look like a pizza,” I pointed out.
“No,” Chloe agreed. “So?”
“So unless t
hat’s something equally as delicious, I’m under no obligation to be nicer,” I explained. Chloe rolled her eyes but didn’t bother arguing with my logic. I turned to find Mel looking through my cabinets. “What’s he doing?”
“Well, he’s a mature, responsible adult, so he’s probably assuming we’re going to want to eat our food on plates with utensils.” Catching my look, Chloe laughed. “Mel, just grab some forks.”
Mel turned to her. “But—” Pausing as he noticed my expression, he nodded. “Right.” Within seconds, he was seated on the floor across the coffee table from me, opening the paper bag and bringing out little cardboard boxes of food that I recognized from one of Chloe’s favorite pan-Asian vegan places. I was too hungry to bother inspecting the containers; I just went with the one closest to me and flipped it open. Stabbing into the mystery meal, I began shoveling it vaguely toward my mouth, relieved when my aim was true and I didn’t mash sauce and vegetables against my eye. After three mouthfuls, I was humming with pleasure when I figured out it was noodles and orangey meat-replacement. I’d managed to pick a container without vegetables; maybe my luck was turning.
I managed to finish off a box and a half of food along with three wontons before Chloe patted my thigh.
“Better?”
“Eh,” I groaned, unwilling to say yes lest she make me trade in my sweet and sour for cabbage and carrots. We ate in silence for a few more minutes before the fog in my brain finally cleared enough that I felt human again. “Explain exactly what happened today. Yesterday? How long was I out this time?”
“Several hours.”
Something occurred to me and I went stiff, looking at the clock. “Did we get the kid? The one Merrin—”
“They didn’t show,” Mel assured me. “I called in another favor and had a friend patrol the area and hang around the house in plainclothes. Francie said a woman did indeed bring her son out to her red sedan around three-fifteen, but that she buckled him in and left without incident.”
“What if—”
“She followed them to the mall and made sure they were fine, and promised to check up on them for a few days. We didn’t exactly do it the way we meant to, but we did manage to stop another kidnapping.”
I settled back against the couch, trying to heave out the worry still twisting my guts into knots. After a few seconds I caught Mel’s eye again. “Do you just sleep with so many women in hopes some of them will turn out to be cops who will do your detective work for you?”
“Not just, no.” He winked. “But that is a side benefit.”
I shook my head as if the situation was grave. “All those poor women suffering just so you don’t have to work hard.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Gwen. Working long and hard is what I do best,” Mel said, catching my eye. Chloe laughed at the tension that ran through me, my gaze glued to his. My brain seemed to shut down for a moment, sprinting away from the opportunity to make another cutting remark and toward the memory of standing next to Mel in the dark the night before.
“So,” I said, stammering for a moment as I tried to regain my dignity. “What went down?” Realizing the double entendre in what I’d just said, I squeezed my eyes shut. “At the—earlier!”
Rather than look at either one of them, I slid my empty carton onto the table and grabbed another. Chloe let me stew for a few seconds, her emotions practically vibrating with delight at my embarrassment. I put all my attention into picking around the vegetables in the chow mein, refusing to admit anything pleasant about Mel had even crossed my mind.
“I was in the car,” she said finally, a trace of laughter still threading through her voice. “And, of course, I didn’t know how long you guys were going to take, so I told myself, ‘Chloe, you’re gonna go for a walk.’” She took a second to grab a quick bite of her food and I tried to analyze the barest hint of anomaly I was feeling within her. She had no reason to lie and it didn’t exactly feel like deception, but it was odd nonetheless. I decided my brain had just been whacked around my skull too much and brushed it off as Chloe continued.
“I was in front of the house when you yelled at Mel. I went up, looked through the window to see what was going on, and saw him get hit. I went around the back to see if I could sneak in that way, but their door was locked. I broke the window, tranquilized the man and his wife, and then unlocked the door and came in.”
“Hold up,” I said, swallowing hastily. “Question. Why the hell do you have a tranq gun? Why the hell did you bring it with you?”
“You were attacked. Twice now. I figured having some sort of protection was smart.”
“But a gun?” I demanded. “You’re a vegan!”
“I don’t shoot animals,” Chloe said, taking a small bite of broccoli.
“What the hell do you shoot?”
“Targets?” I could tell from her tone she thought the question was a stupid one. “I’ve been shooting since I was little.”
“Tranquilizers?”
“That was… I happened to be carrying both.”
“Both?” I balked at her, my brain running in circles. In less than a week, I’d run into my childhood nightmares, been mistaken for someone with a mistress, nearly had my brain sucked out my eyeballs—twice!—and considered having sex with Mel. Now I was sitting across from the most liberal, compassionate person I’d ever met, talking with her about how she owns and shoots guns.
We see each other nearly every day, spend countless lunches and movie dates together, and she’s never mentioned this hobby. It made me wonder if I should start randomly asking her if she did anything else supremely out of character.
Chloe, you don’t happen to collect human heads, do you? Oh, no reason, I’m just asking.
Dropping my gaze down to look at my food, I let out a breath. Did it really matter that Chloe probably had a subscription to Guns and Gams magazine and spent her weekends away from me shooting things and ogling ladies? I’d known about the latter, but did I really need to focus so hard on the former? It had saved my life, after all.
“You okay?” Chloe asked, patting my knee. “You look a little green. Did you accidentally eat a chunk of broccoli?”
Mel chuckled around a bite of his own food and I met Chloe’s gaze with a frown. “Just finish explaining what happened.”
Chloe let it go a beat, still masking her mockery as concern before laughing and continuing her story.
“I came inside, hid around the corner in case I wasn’t the only one with a gun, and told her to let you go or I’d shoot her. I guess she took me pretty seriously.”
“She just dropped me and bolted?” I wondered if hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes accounted for feeling bruised and achy.
“Well, not at first. Even after she knocked you out, she didn’t want to let you go. You were—ah—a bit too heavy for her to hold up, I guess, because when I looked again, you two were on the floor. She had you propped up like a human shield and I told her again that if she didn’t back off, I’d shoot her.”
“We should have called the police,” I mumbled, irritated that Chloe had been forced to deal with my being held hostage. I twitched as twin bolts of electric displeasure arced out of Mel and Chloe to light up my insides.
“They wouldn’t have reacted well to finding pod-people tranquilized into oblivion, an injured werewolf on the floor, and some crazy woman with the power to enchant a baseball bat trying to suck your brains out through your ears.”
She had a point about the cops, but the rest still made no sense.
“I still don’t understand why the parents called us over and asked for our help if they were just going—”
“Those people weren’t the Krauses,” Chloe explained. “The mail on the counter and the pictures on the walls say they’re the Windhams—I made sure they were okay before we left, by the way—and I’m pretty sure they were just used to get to you.”
“Well, that’s just great.” Sighing, I plopped my chow mein on the coffee table. “I don’t th
ink I can do this anymore.”
“You can’t eat?” Chloe asked, feigning horror. “You’re worse off than we thought!”
For once I decided to be an adult and ignore her teasing. “It was just us before, trying to find out why some kids went missing so they wouldn’t end up in the hands of Laurel and Hardy and whatever creepy, many-eyeballed slime monster they may work for. Now complete strangers are getting caught up in this just because we pissed off the wrong… whatever that chick was.”
“Demon,” Chloe clarified, her tone much too calm for the word.
“Merrin was serious?”
“You think she’d joke?”
“I—no, I mean…” I trailed off, lacking an argument. Merrin wouldn’t lie and I could count the number of times I’d heard her make a joke on Sonny’s left foot, but still. A demon?
“I think that’s why we need to keep going,” Mel said when my silence stretched. “So we can figure out how to get the kids home safe in case this girl’s planning on handing them off to some other slime monster.”
“It’s easy for you to be brave, you’re nearly indestructible.”
“Do you not remember the enchanted bat and the man who hit me in the face with it?”
I let out a low chuckle. “No, I remember that quite clearly. Almost makes the rest of this worth the trouble.”
Mel rolled his eyes but didn’t waste time on my attitude. “Look. I’ve got a meeting with the Carlyles tomorrow, the parents of the little boy who was taken.”
“How you do know it’s—”
“This time I checked. It’s them. I’m not walking in blind again. We will solve this problem and get these kids back before anyone else is hurt.” Mel watched me for a few moments as I considered his proclamation. I wasn’t sure his confidence in us as a group was warranted. From where I stood, it felt like we’d just spent the last few days running repeatedly into walls.
Then again, we had already foiled two kidnappings, even if doing so had briefly come at the expensive of my sanity. Mel must have seen something in my face because he shifted gears from serious to silly.
Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) Page 15