by Lena North
Well, duh.
“Why?” Rafael asked, which I thought was a pretty danged relevant question.
“Why not?”
I couldn’t come up with one single good reason, and we were busy staring at Grandpa when Grandma Hazel sat down at our table.
“What are we talking about?” she said happily and dipped her tongue in the froth at the top of her Margarita.
“My club,” Grandpa said.
Things went downhill from there, and I can’t explain exactly how the discussion moved on from a club with an offensive name to the topic of erections. But it did.
“Well, if you’re going to procreate, you need one,” Grandpa Hunter explained, and I whimpered.
I felt Rafael slowly move his hand under the table, and grab hold of mine. His thumb caressed the palm gently, and a shiver went down my spine.
“I know that,” Grandma said patiently. “No one likes a man with a limp –”
“Yieee!” I squealed.
“What?” Gramps asked. “You were conceived. How do you think your father –”
“Yieee!” I squealed again, a lot louder this time.
The owner of the bar was apparently curious because he approached with three fresh beers.
“What are you talking about?” Bubba asked and put the glasses on the table.
“Erect penises,” Grandma replied happily.
I let go of Rafael, grabbed hold of a beer and downed it in one go. All of it.
Bubba turned and walked away without another word, but I saw his shoulders shake so either he was crying or laughing. I assumed, not crying.
Rafael was suddenly also laughing, so hard he had to tilt his head back and hold on to the table. Loosey Moosey stared at us. Everyone else stared at us too. Jackson’s second cousin was laughing into his phone, which meant Jack was laughing too.
And that was the good part of the evening. After that, it seemed as if everyone in the bar was talking about erections, clubs, or clubs where one had erections. Several men of various ages queried Gramps how one applied for membership in White Supremacy, and there was a disturbing number of women surrounding our table. I spent most of the evening with my eyes closed.
Rafael was still chuckling when he dropped my two overexcited grandparents and me off, and he was about to kiss me when they had disappeared but ended up laughing into my mouth in a way that wasn’t sexy at all.
I huffed and walked inside.
***
“I’m joining you on your next date,” Elsa said. “Maybe Biff will let me be the chaperone.”
“Don’t. Won’t be nearly as much fun without the old geezers,” Joel said, sighed, and added, “We’ve been to Bubba’s almost every night since we moved up to Nowhere, and this goes down when we spend one night at the house watching a goddamned boring movie. Can’t believe we missed the whole thing.” He grinned and added, “The gossip mill claims it was the best night since someone let a rabbit loose in there.”
Oh, goody. I was apparently more entertaining than watching a pack of wolves rip a small fluffy bunny to pieces in a small bar.
I had to walk away from my friends for a while because we were at Tiaso’s and I was working. The place was packed, and the tips were absolutely fantastic, but it also meant that I was über-busy. This was unfortunate since Elsa had found a hand-drawn picture of the amulet among a pile of old papers. She’d been asked to return the documents to the wizards but tried to explain to me what it looked like.
“Pentagon,” she shouted while I poured shots for three men who claimed to be wise but mostly looked unusual.
A huge man immediately leaned in closer to Elsa. He had lots of long, unruly, black hair, an equally black beard, more muscles than anyone I’d ever seen – and I had seen plenty – and a tee announcing to the world that he was a happy camper.
“What?” he asked.
“What?” Elsa echoed.
“What what?” the man asked.
“Wh –”
I quickly handed out the shots to the men in front of me, sidestepped back to Elsa, leaned over the counter and growled.
“She started it,” the man said with a sweet smile.
I glared at him, which led to nothing at all. Then Elsa poked him in the ribs and murmured, “We don’t understand. Please explain.”
“You called out my name,” he said softly.
The happy camper was apparently called Pentagon, and there were plenty of jokes I could have made, but I didn’t. He looked at Elsa as if he wanted to gobble her up in one bite, and I was pretty sure he might be good-looking somewhere under all that hair, so I figured she’d want to gobble a little right back.
She smiled blandly and nodded, but turned back to me, effectively dismissing the man. He shrugged and walked away. A sigh of relief from the bikers pushed my hair back, and I stared at Elsa.
“What the why?” I asked.
We’d known each other a long time, so she deciphered that easily.
“Not interested,” she murmured.
“Why not?”
“First of all, he looked like the yeti, which really doesn’t do it for me. Secondly, I found out the other day that I can only have kids with another unicorn, and since I’m pretty much the only one… what’s the point?”
“Kids?”
I wasn’t going to have kids in decades. I’d practice making them, but I had no immediate plans on actually having them.
“I know, I’m just being silly,” Elsa said with a grin. “Anyway. The amulet is small, pentagon-shaped, and has a small blue stone in the middle.”
“Silver or gold?”
“Probably silver. Looked like it.”
“How big?”
“A bit more than an inch across perhaps. Slightly less in height.”
Okay. So, we were looking for a silvery blob with a blue stone.
“Hey, babe. Heard you and the douche had fun.”
My eyes met Jackson’s, and I tried really, really hard to not laugh. I did, though, and told myself it was because I could see the hilarity of our disastrous evening. It had nothing to do with how Jack’s blue eyes glittered when he held back his own laughter.
“Hey,” Joel said and sat down. “Not going to another bordello in my life.”
They had apparently finished getting statements from red-light-ladies working in places paying the disgusting wizard protection fees.
“Hello there, sweetie,” Rafael murmured and sat down next to Joel. “Can’t wait to go on another date with you. I had such a great time.”
Jackson’s smile faded away, but Silenus chuckled instead.
Then a short but broad biker leaned forward and hissed in my face, “Why do you get all the hot ones?”
It took me a few seconds to realize that it was a biker of the female variety and wondered if I should share with her that showing cleavage, washing one’s hair and applying makeup helped. Or that shaving, anywhere, really, but in particular on one’s face, was not a bad thing when one was in the market for a hunk.
She looked brutal, so I settled for, “Beats me.”
“Yeah,” she sighed, and grunted, “Jaeger.”
I could have told her that grunting and drinking Jaeger was not the way to get a hot man. Then I noticed that the brass knuckles with small spikes on both her hands and decided to pour the requested shot instead.
“Did you find anything out?” I asked Joel when the bar had calmed down a little.
“All the girls say the same thing,” he said. “The wizard protects them. They don’t know why or from what, but they all pay him. Jack has statements from them, and I have given him all the information I could find. Bank statements, information about property the wizard owns, and so on.”
“Huh,” I said and frowned. “Does Malachï have any family?”
Joel squirmed and made a face.
“You’re not gonna like this.”
“What?”
“He bought a new house just a few weeks ago. Huge place,
close to Forest Park, right across from St. Johns Bridge.”
That was a bit strange. The wizards usually lived in a condo in a skyscraper as close to downtown as they could afford. The only wizard I knew of who lived in a mansion was the Az, and that was because he was married to my mother, and Nim witches always lived close to natu –
“Which one?” I squealed.
“What?” Jackson asked, and both Elsa and Rafael straightened and was watching me apprehensively.
Since I was about to jump over the bar and maul something, I probably had a look on my face that was unflattering.
I did not care.
“Which. One,” I hissed, glaring at Joel.
“I don’t know. Probably Poppy. Could be Iris.”
I raised my hands toward the ceiling and growled so loudly four customers got up and left.
“Kitty, calm down,” Jackson said, so I growled at him.
“Kitty,” Rafael murmured and tried to take hold of my hand.
“I’m gonna kill her,” I growled.
“Who?” Silenus asked, but backed off a few steps when I rounded on him.
“The only reason a wizard would buy a huge place up by the park, that close to St. Johns Bridge, is if he plans to marry someone who will need to live there.”
I trailed off, and for the first time in my half-werewolf life, I felt the tingles of fur sprouting underneath my skin.
“Which would be a Nim witch,” Joel clarified. “And the only available Nim witches of marriageable age are…”
“My goddamned sisters,” I yelled.
The bar was suddenly completely silent, but then Elsa leaned forward.
“Kitty,” she said calmly. “Calm down.”
“No,” I snapped.
“Don’t make me fart,” she snapped right back.
The bikers standing closest to her took a few steps back, and Silenus’ eyes popped wide open.
“You’re a unicorn,” the huge man called Pentagon suddenly said.
“Yes,” Elsa hissed without letting her eyes leave me for a second.
“Huh,” the man mumbled.
“What,” I snarled and glared at him.
He suddenly grinned crookedly, and his soft brown eyes twinkled.
“I guess I’m gonna impregnate your friend in a not so distant future.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Kitty-cat
When Elsa had stopped hyperventilating, Pentagon informed her that he could wait until she was ready.
“No need to start a family immediately,” he said jovially. “We’ll wait a few days, and then we decide.”
“You should go away,” Elsa said hoarsely.
“No,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t think I should.”
During the hyperventilation, it had become clear to us all that he was a super affable guy. Between pressing a big, brown paper bag into the hands of a distraught Elsa and throwing equally distraught bikers across the bar, Pentagon had informed us that he preferred to be called Pen. Or whatever we felt like calling him as long as it wasn’t his actual name.
I promptly informed him that my name was Hibiscus but that I preferred to be called Kitty, which made him lean over the bar and kiss my cheek. Jackson disapproved and slapped Pen in the head, but his hand got stuck in the masses of black hair, so he only got a sweet, happy chuckle in return and then they spent five minutes untangling the mess.
Once Elsa was breathing normally, things calmed down. A couple of the biker brethren disliked how Pen was hovering over Elsa, but he just smiled at them, and their angry words somehow morphed into them buying him beers. Jackson also got Pen a beer, and they sat down to talk for a while, which made Elsa’s nostrils flare. I gave her a Jaeger which calmed her down again.
Rafael informed me that he had to leave because his cousin, Jesus, was in jail and needed someone to post bail but that he’d enlisted Joel and Elsa to ensure my safety.
“Jesus… as in…?” I prompted.
“Jesús Hernandez, babe.”
Okay, goody. Hernandez was pretty much not Christ, which would have been very very unsettling.
“What did he do to end up in prison?”
“Jaywalked.”
His eyes were warm with happiness, and I could tell he wanted to share how in the hell someone could jaywalk badly enough to get himself into a situation where bail needed to be posted, but his phone beeped.
“Gotta go, sweetie,” he murmured, moved my hand to his mouth and kissed it gently, and left.
The biker babe who had questioned the fairness of me getting all the hot guys started sobbing.
“That was so romantic,” she sniffled.
A tear leaked out of her eye, and she wiped it off with the back of her hand, which was stupid, mostly because of the brass knuckles she wore. One of the spikes tore a long, angry cut across her cheek. I ignored a scowling Jackson and got busy handing out antiseptic wipes, band-aids, and Jaegers.
When Silenus and I had closed the bar, Joel and Elsa waited for me outside. Elsa still seemed stunned, so I pulled the paper bag out of her hands and put it over my head, thinking that a bit of silly goofiness would snap her out of her stupor.
“Wheeeere is Elsa,” I drawled, and heard her giggle.
I moved around with my arms stretched out and tried to catch Elsa, or Joel if I was lucky, and we were laughing.
Then they both suddenly went silent.
“Hey,” I snapped. “Where are you?”
“Here,” a deep voice said ominously.
Without warning, I was unceremoniously pushed into a car, the door slammed shut, and I heard the lock snap. Then we were moving. I was about to remove the stupid bag from my head when I felt the cold metal of something I suspected might be a pistol on my arm and froze.
“That’s right. If you move, I’ll shoot you.”
Oh, God. Oh, my friggin’ GOD. He would shoot me.
I really didn’t want to be shot.
He’d said not to move but he couldn’t see my eyes under the bag so I glanced down to ascertain if he perhaps was trying to be humorous. It would be mildly amusing if he were poking me with, say, a small twirling baton or possibly a big fountain pen. Or whatever that wasn’t a gun. He wasn’t bluffing, so I closed my eyes while I tried to figure out what to do and decided pretty much immediately that not moving would probably be in my best interest.
I was about to find the courage to talk to the man when the car stopped, and I heard a familiar crackling sound.
“Don-uhh,” I managed to get out, and then everything went black.
***
I woke up in a small box. My legs were bent, and my cheek was pressed against my knees. My arms had been pulled forward and tied together in front of my shins. When I tried to straighten, the top of whatever I was tucked into blocked any kind of movement.
If it hadn’t been for the small gap by my right foot where a small glimmer of light seeped in, I would have shat myself.
“Help?” I whispered.
“Shush,” a soft voice murmured.
I opened my eyes widely and tried to move because the voice had come from inside the closed box. Someone else was in there with me.
“Who –”
“Shush,” the voice repeated. “Listen.”
At first, I heard absolutely nothing, but then steps approached.
“I can’t protect you much longer,” someone said, and my eyes flew wide open because that was a voice I recognized well.
The Az.
“But –”
Another voice and one I hadn’t heard before.
“You have to find the amulet. Why the hell were you stupid enough to steal it?” the Az asked sourly.
“I just borrowed it. Poppy wanted to see it so –”
The Az huffed, and I closed my eyes again. Something that was a little more than a sneaky suspicion had entered my mind. I knew who the other man was.
“Fool,” the Az hissed. “I can’t believe you dropped it, but you ha
ve to find it.”
“I’m getting close,” the other man murmured.
“Well, get closer.” There was a short silence, and then the Az snarled, “Not to me, idiot.”
There were a couple of quick steps, and I heard water running from a tap. The sound came from… underneath me?
“Where did you lose it?” the Az asked.
“Not saying,” the other man murmured.
“Why?”
I didn’t hear the answer because they were walking away, so I counted seconds until I thought five minutes had passed since the sounds disappeared. Then I took a deep breath.
“Hello?” I whispered.
“Hello,” someone answered.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“They locked us into a kitchen cabinet.”
What? Who the hell did that?
“Who are you?”
“Lucas.”
Say again?
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” Lucas hissed angrily.
I took a deep breath, and when I did, I realized that;
a) Lucas wasn’t a he, and
b) Lucas was not human as much as
c) Lucas was feline.
I twisted my legs apart a little and managed to turn my head by tucking my jaw between my knees. In the gray shades in front of me, there was indeed a small, sleek and completely black creature.
“You’re a cat,” I said stupidly.
“I know.”
“I’m not,” I informed Lucas.
“I know this too,” Lucas said calmly. “Wolf and witch.”
I stared at the yellow eyes who looked back at me with a calm unblinking stare.
“Lucas?” I asked.
“My protector calls me that. He’s a fool.”
“You look like a miniature panther,” I said, and added, “I could call you Lulu instead?”
The cat made a small movement with her head as if she was preening.
“Lulu. I like,” she crooned.
“I don’t want to be in this cabinet anymore,” I said and pressed my elbow to the side as hard as I could.
The doors rattled a little, but they didn’t open.
“Push harder,” Lulu said calmly.
Well, duh.
I slammed my elbow into the doors repeatedly, but something was blocking them from opening. The only remaining option seemed to be to push with my whole body, which meant I’d fall out when they opened.