Which, Thea supposed, almost certainly meant a trap awaited them there.
It was back on the other coast. Only maybe an hour by car away from Hexing House, in fact. Another reason to choose it? Did Megaira want to blame this on her rival colony?
Thea didn’t have much chance to ponder the questions, nor even what, exactly, they would do when they got there. The flight was a fast and taxing one, and there was no time to talk or make plans.
But Thea had some experience with hex removal, and with the superhex itself. Alecto had called Langdon as they rushed out of Fury Unlimited and instructed him to meet them there. At least between them, Thea and the colony physician might be able to do more for the victims than the human paramedics could.
Nobody noticed them as they landed in the shadows of an abandoned yard. The street that had looked so serene when it first appeared on Megaira’s monitor was mayhem, a confusion of sirens, running people, screams, emergency vehicles, cries, and acrid smells.
The neat red brick house where the mothers had been gathered was partly collapsed. Someone had apparently rammed an oversized SUV straight into it. At high speed, judging by the condition of the SUV. Two houses at the other end of the street were on fire.
In the grass near Thea’s feet, one of the terriers lay dead. The little pink bandana it wore around its neck was slick with blood.
But the chaos was the kind you’d expect after a disaster, no more. Thea didn’t see anyone who was obviously manifesting an artificial excess of sin.
In other words, they were too late. The latest iteration of the superhex was still short-lived, it seemed, and it had passed.
Alecto gestured at Thea and flew between two houses, where Langdon was crouching, half-concealed by a hedge.
“I came right away, but there wasn’t much to be done,” he said.
“You came alone?” Thea asked.
“Margot and Darnell were with me, but I sent them back. I only stayed to wait for you,” Langdon said. “There was nothing for them to do, not by the time we got here. I was able to remove the hex from two young children. At least, I think I removed it, or helped it along. But it was fading by then anyway.” He glanced at Alecto. “I don’t know how well they’ll remember me, but there were no adults with them.”
“Meaning nobody will believe a purple dragon came to help them,” Thea said. “Are we starting the cover-up already?”
“There’s nothing to cover up,” Alecto said. “This wasn’t us.” She looked back at the street, where a mother was holding her limp daughter—whether the girl was dead or merely unconscious, Thea couldn’t tell—and wailing. “We should go.”
“Are you kidding me?” Thea asked. “We’re just going to turn our backs on this? Why did we come if it wasn’t to help?”
“What do you want us to do?” Alecto asked. “The hex has obviously dissipated. And the last thing we need is for anyone to see furies here right now.”
“So you are covering it up. I—”
Thea stopped speaking and frowned up at the ruined brick house. Something had caught her eye. Movement, high up.
“Shit,” she muttered, and flew away from Alecto and Langdon without explaining herself further.
Through the collapsed and crumbled wall, Thea saw a boy of maybe seven or eight. The roof had caved in over most of his bedroom and the hallway beyond, and the stairs were gone. The corner he was trapped in was still intact, but only barely, and who knew for how long. Thea didn’t have a good grasp of physics, but she was guessing the floor he stood on wasn’t all that stable.
The boy, it seemed, had reached the same conclusion. He was staring through an opening in the rubble at the ground below, clearly considering jumping.
Nobody had noticed his cries. It was too noisy, and most of the emergency crews, and the crowd, were focused on the fires.
Thea rushed forward and picked him up just as he stretched one leg out into the open air.
“I’ve got you,” she said as she flew back to the ground. He clung to her neck, his cheek hot and sticky against hers. He didn’t seem afraid of her.
“Are you hurt?” Thea asked.
The boy shook his head, although he was bleeding from one ear.
“They came back,” he said.
“Who did?” Thea set him down on the lawn behind his house and crouched down to put her hands on his shoulders. “Who came back? Furies like me?”
He shook his head again. “The monsters.”
“Which monsters? Are you sure they weren’t like me? Purple, and with wings?”
“No. They were Daddy’s monsters. And Mommy’s, too, and Miss Wanda’s.”
Thea had no idea what he was talking about, but there was a good chance he didn’t, either. His pupils were two different sizes.
“Thea.” It was Alecto.
Langdon bent in front of the boy. “He has a head injury. You need to let him go.”
“What’s your name?” Thea asked the boy. “Do you know it?”
He had enough of his wits about him to look offended, which she took to be a good sign. “Course I know my own name. It’s Talbott.”
“Come on then, Talbott,” Thea said. “We’ll get you some help. Do you know where your parents are?”
She started to reach for his hand, but Alecto took her arm.
Langdon put a hand on Talbott’s shoulder and turned him to face the bit of the street that was visible between the houses. “Do you see the ambulance over there?” he asked.
Talbott nodded.
“Good. I want you to walk over to that, okay?”
He nodded again and stumbled forward.
Thea reached out to help him, but Alecto stayed her again. Thea’s claws came out.
“You’re going to send this little kid off on his own?” Thea asked, and not very quietly. “Seriously?”
Alecto actually rolled her eyes. It made Thea want to cut her.
“It’s right over there,” Alecto said. “We’ll watch and make sure he gets to it.”
So the three of them watched, while Talbott approached the ambulance, and a paramedic came to help him. As he was walking, two vans marked Coroner’s Office came up the road.
Talbott disappeared into the back of the ambulance. Another kid, this one in his teens, came running up beside it, bleeding so badly that Thea couldn’t even tell where the blood was coming from. He was holding the hand of a chubby little girl, half-dragging her as she screamed. Her other arm was hanging at a very bad angle.
Thea felt sick. “He was talking about monsters,” she said.
A shout came from somewhere nearby, and Alecto pulled Thea farther into the shadow of the ruined house, Langdon quickly following.
“You mean the boy?” Langdon asked Thea.
“Yeah,” Thea said. “He said the monsters were back.”
“So what?” said Alecto. “I’m sure Megaira had some furies out here setting up her little demo.”
“No.” Thea shook her head. “He specifically said they weren’t like me. I asked him. Twice.”
“He probably had no idea what he was saying,” Langdon said. “He might even have been hallucinating.”
“He said his parents had monsters, and that someone named Miss Wanda did too,” said Thea. “And that the monsters had come back.”
“That is odd,” agreed Alecto. “I don’t know if it means anything for us or not, but this is not the time to discuss it. We can’t be seen here.”
“But we should be discussing it with them,” said Thea, gesturing at the street in general. “We could wait until the police and paramedics leave, then interview whoever is willing to talk to us. We need to—”
More shouts, these ones closer. And more clear.
“I swear I saw somebody flying over here,” a woman was saying. “I did not imagine it. It was after… things got normal again. It wasn’t part of whatever hallucinations we were having.”
The voices came closer still. The three furies shrank into the rubble, t
hen froze as the humans went past, toward the yard next door.
“What we need to do is go,” Alecto whispered.
“Agreed,” said Langdon.
“But—” Thea began.
Alecto held up her hand for silence and snapped open her wings. “Enough. We’re going home. Now. That’s an order.”
Thea considered defying that order, although she couldn’t have said why. Maybe it was just frustration at arriving too late. She wanted to stay and help. She wanted to stay and fight. She needed some outlet for her rage at Megaira.
But there was none.
So Thea followed the others, putting Hemlock Heights behind her, leaving it to its fate.
Or so she thought.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t think his failure to get his mother a birthday present is cause enough to hex him with diligence.” Thea set her mug down on the conference table and crossed her arms. “I’ve seen that hex in action—as I’m sure most of you have—and it’s horrible.”
“All hexes are horrible,” Miranda said. “That’s the idea.”
“Thea, surely you realize you’re oversimplifying,” said Victor. “It’s hardly just a case of missing a couple of birthdays. He’s been neglecting his mother for years. While she’s been getting sicker and sicker.”
“And the inciting incident was her eightieth birthday,” Miranda added. “It’s not like it was just a minor random number. Even her damn postman remembered.”
“So now we’re hexing her son because she’s got an extra considerate postman?” Thea asked. “I’m sure we can all agree that it’s not normal for postmen to remember citizens’ birthdays.”
“You’re missing the point,” said Victor.
“No, I think I get the point very well.” Thea kept her voice under control, but she quickly hid her hands under the table, just in case she couldn’t do the same with her claws. There was that flare of temper. Again. If only she could apply it to potential hex targets instead of her coworkers, they’d never have anything to argue about. “The point is, this woman is vindictive and super rich, and that’s our favorite combination around here. So who cares if justice is being served, if screwing over her son pushes us over our monthly targets and earns us a bonus, right?”
Victor’s own claws came out, and he didn’t bother to hide it. He was a hard-hearted one, even for a fury, and he and Thea had often been at odds since Thea had joined the Investigators. In this case, he was probably right to be offended. Furies—good ones, at least—took accusations of miscarrying justice for profit very seriously.
But before things could get ugly, their administrative assistant poked her head through the door.
“You guys, there’s the craziest thing going on outside.”
Victor retracted his claws, but the look he gave Lola was less than patient. “It better be the very craziest thing, for you to be interrupting a case meeting.”
“It’s a crowd of humans outside the gates,” Lola said. “With picket signs and stuff. They’re shouting.”
Evidently this qualified as the very craziest thing, because Victor, with a quizzical laugh, immediately left the room. Thea followed, Miranda beside her.
They flew across the campus, to the original gates of what had once been the Spencer School and was now Hexing House. Several other furies were doing the same, all gossiping, eager to go check out the spectacle. Nobody looked worried. A few looked amused.
“What did you guys do?”
Thea glanced over to see Damon, who worked at Security, grinning as he flew up beside her and Miranda.
“You let a bad one through?” he asked. “Approve a case that didn’t deserve it, and now all their friends are doing the public outcry thing?”
Miranda laughed at his joke. But then, neither of them—none of them—knew that what had happened at Hemlock Heights the day before was hex-related. Maybe some of them didn’t even know about Hemlock Heights at all. It was all over the news, but the details were still fuzzy, and a lot of furies didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in the human world.
Thea had found out before breakfast that the death toll was up to nine already, with several more in critical condition. Normally there wouldn’t have been so many home during the day on a Tuesday, but it was the second week in March—spring break for the local school district. Many of the parents had taken the week off work, as well. Whoever had set up the demonstration had done their homework.
Apart from the deaths and injuries, as Thea had seen for herself, the property damage was extensive. There didn’t seem to be any theories on the cause of this inexplicable outbreak of violence and destruction. At least, not officially.
But apparently somebody had a theory, and it pointed directly at Hexing House. From above, the signs became clear to Thea before any of the faces did. The first one she saw read:
JUSTICE FOR HEMLOCK HEIGHTS!
How? How did they know? Thea thought, then immediately scolded herself for it.
They don’t know, because they’re wrong. This is not our fault. We have nothing to do with Fury Unlimited.
Except we’re the ones who let Megaira get away with all the superhex research. Research she started as part of this colony.
Thea took in other signs as she flew closer:
DEMONS BELONG IN HELL – NOT FOREST COUNTY
CLOSE THIS PLACE OR WE’LL CLOSE IT FOR YOU!
WE WILL NOT SUFFER YOU AMONG US
And her personal favorite:
BURN, WITCHES
After that last one, she wasn’t surprised to see the twisted, angry face of Mr. Fanatic in the crowd of a dozen or so humans. He saw Thea almost as soon as she noticed him, and let out a roar of outrage.
Damon and a couple other guys from Security landed in front of the fence and began calling for the crowd to step back. Not that the humans would have been able to get past the gate anyway. It might look old and rusted, hanging crookedly and growing over with kudzu, but it was enchanted with supernatural strength as well as the illusion of weakness. A bulldozer wouldn’t have been able to tear it down.
Mr. Fanatic moved sideways a few paces, breaking away from his companions, without taking his eyes off Thea. “You get down here and face me, harlot!” he shouted.
But he took an almost frantic step back when Thea landed directly in front of him.
“What’s the matter?” Thea asked. “Didn’t think I’d actually do it?”
There were murmurs among the crowd that she couldn’t catch, some of the voices excited. Several people gathered in closer. For a second Thea felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. Had someone recognized her?
But no. Her transformation had been too complete for that. There was nothing left of the red carpet darling she’d once been. And of course they were coming closer; she was the only fury on the ground.
Mr. Fanatic had changed, Thea saw, and mostly for the better. He’d gained weight, and his eyes had lost some of that sunken look. His clothes were clean, and for the first time in her brief experience with him, he didn’t smell of beer.
He looks almost sane.
“Witch!” he hissed, spit collecting on his lips. “Harlot!”
Almost.
“You did this,” Mr. Fanatic went on.
Thea shook her head. “We didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me, demon! I know your witchcraft!”
Well, which is it? Am I a demon, or a witch? I’m not sure you can be both. But I bet either could also be a harlot.
Thea mentally slapped herself. This was no laughing matter.
“I can understand why you would think that—” she began.
Mr. Fanatic cut her off. “Lex knew your witchcraft, too! He finally saw you for the devil spawn you are. That’s why he let me go.”
Thea started to ask what he was talking about, and who Lex was, but stopped in surprise when she saw that Mr. Fanatic’s eyes had actually filled with tears.
His voice cracked as he said, “And you murdered him for it! A
nd you will pay!”
“I don’t know who Lex is,” Thea said. “Is he someone who lived in that neighborhood?” She tried to remember any of the names attached to the pictures on the news, the victims of Hemlock Heights, but she couldn’t.
It didn’t matter. None of them could have been murdered, not in the way Mr. Fanatic was using the word. What happened at Hemlock Heights was a test of the superhex, a demonstration for a client. Surely none of the victims had been targeted specifically. Megaira and her team would have no way of knowing how particular individuals would respond to the hex, who would die, who would turn on a neighbor.
Or on a little boy.
Daddy’s monsters came back.
It didn’t make any sense. And the chances of Mr. Fanatic clearing things up for her seemed slim. He was quoting scripture now, hurling the words like stones.
“Who is Lex?” Thea asked, and when he ignored her, reached out to touch his elbow.
“That’s enough!” A beefy, brute of a man with a shaved head was beside Mr. Fanatic in an instant. “Don’t touch him. We won’t be assaulted by you!”
As if they were a single creature, a growl rose up from the onlookers at the word assaulted. A few stepped closer.
Thea looked around uneasily. She was mostly surrounded now and, on the ground at least, badly outnumbered. But she resisted the urge to either open her wings or back up to the fence. It wouldn’t do to show fear.
“Do you need help here, Thea?” Her friend Cora landed beside her, jaw set and claws out, ready to fight. The beefy man looked a little startled, although to his credit, he stood his ground.
Thea smiled her gratitude at Cora, but shook her head. “No. We were just talking, right?” She turned back to the man. “I was just trying to ask a question. Do you know someone named—”
She was interrupted by a whistle, so unnaturally loud that it captured most of the crowd’s attention immediately. Thea had heard it before, and wasn’t surprised when Alecto alighted on top of the gate, where she was clearly visible to all.
Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) Page 2