by Alyssa Day
He roared, clearly enraged. Definitely beyond listening to me.
And then he hurtled his giant body straight through the giant bay window in my living room in an explosion of shattered glass and spattered blood.
I watched in complete disbelief as Jack ran down the road at top speed. I’d never seen him move that fast. He was beautiful, and he was terrifying; a primal force of nature.
If I didn’t get my butt into gear I’d lose him.
I grabbed a long jacket from the bench near the door, stuffed my feet into a pair of sneakers so I didn’t shred them in all that glass, snatched up my keys and phone, and ran out the door. I took a second to worry about Lou, but she was way too smart to walk in glass.
By the time I got the car started and turned around, Jack was gone.
Luckily, it wasn’t very hard to follow the sound of an enraged tiger in the stillness of…what time was it? Oh, wow. Three in the morning.
I rolled down all my widows and followed the roaring sound of an apex predator on a rampage, and I prayed that none of my gun-happy, fellow Dead Enders would shoot him. I was so busy listening and following and praying that it took me longer than it should have to realize that Jack was headed to the RV Park.
Oh, no.
Leona.
She and Ned had gone to Orlando for the night, though. They had reservations at the Hilton, were going out to dinner and a show—anything to get a respite from the horror of the banshee deaths. Leona was safe.
So why was Jack going to the RV park?
Then the screaming started, and I realized that why didn’t matter, and I floored it.
When I careened around the corner into the park entrance, the first thing I saw was the tiger crouched over a dead body on the road, and the next was a screaming woman, huddled by a tree.
I slammed my foot on the brakes and yanked the wheel to the left, barely missing them. Then I shoved the car into park and jumped out of the truck, wearing Donald Duck pajamas in the face of danger.
They could put that on my tombstone: Here lies Tess. She wore her duck jammies to confront a tiger.
“Calm down, Tess, you’re losing it. This is Jack, he won’t hurt you, he won’t hurt you,” I told myself in a litany of attempted reassurance.
It wasn’t working, so I called out to the stupid screaming woman, instead. “Call 9-1-1.”
Jack snarled at me and then the familiar magical tingling sensation started up again, but it was somehow wrong. Twisted. Instead of instantly becoming his human self, Jack rolled over and over in the road, fighting the change, hurting and wanting to hurt. I wasn’t even sure how I knew that, but I did. Since he’d abandoned the body (his prey? Oh, please, no), I ran over to it, and discovered it was Lucky.
And he was alive.
Unconscious, but alive. On second glance, though, I didn’t know why he was unconscious. He didn’t have a mark on him. Certainly not any claw marks, for which I was so freaking thankful.
Drugged? A blow to the head that I just couldn’t see since it was so dark outside?
“It’s magic, Tess,” Jack said hoarsely. “He’s been taken down by magic, probably the same spell they hit me with.”
I slowly turned to face him. He was dressed in only a pair of jeans, bent double, gasping for breath. I wanted to hurl myself into his arms, but I cautiously stayed where I was. I wasn’t sure which Jack I was talking to.
Jack turned hot amber eyes to me. “The assassin. It must be him. He’s killing from a distance with magic. That’s how he does it. Only my own magical protections kept him from killing me.”
“Jack, I’m so glad you’re okay, or at least mostly okay. But why is Lucky here at the park, when Leona and Ned are in Orlando?”
The realization hit both of us at the same instant, and we started running.
I pounded on the side of RVs and trailers while we ran, screaming at the occupants to wake up, call 9-1-1, and go help Lucky. I was so afraid for Leona that I was all but incoherent, but at least people started stumbling out of vehicles.
Some of them were carrying weapons, but that might be a good idea tonight.
Jack made it to Ned’s RV way before I did, and I saw him plow right in through the hanging-open door.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I put on a burst of speed, for all the good it did. Jack was coming out of the RV, carrying Ned’s limp form, by the time I got there. I skidded to a stop, and then dropped to my knees—out of breath, out of energy, out of hope—because I knew in my deepest heart that if Leona had been in there, Jack would have carried her out first.
Jack gently put Ned down on top of the picnic table, but shook his head at me when I managed to stand up and started for the trailer. “She’s gone, Tess, and you don’t want to see that. There’s blood everywhere.”
I froze. “Gone, gone, or—”
“Damn, I’m sorry. Missing gone, not dead gone,” he said, still panting in reaction to the magical attack.
When I could breathe again. I nodded.
“Is it her blood?” I was whispering, and I didn’t know why. “Is Ned—”
“He’s not dead, but he’s badly hurt. Somebody hit him in the head pretty hard,” Jack said grimly. “I probably shouldn’t have moved him, but I didn’t want to leave him in there for one more second.”
“How much blood?” I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run home to Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike and let them make it better.
I wanted to be strong more than I wanted those other things, though, so I ordered myself to stop crying and asked again. “How much blood?”
Jack shook his head again and then pulled me into a very tight hug. “Too much, Tess. Too much.”
Chapter 15
I scrubbed viciously at my face, refusing to cry. She wasn’t dead. I wouldn’t let her be dead before I’d gotten a chance to know her.
“Did you…could you scent anything?”
Jack’s lip curled up. “I don’t know. Maybe the magic is still affecting me. I could only really smell Leona and Ned, and…”
“And?” I prompted.
“It’s stupid, and it probably doesn’t mean anything.” He raised his face to the night sky, though, and closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
I clenched my hands into fists. “What doesn’t mean anything?”
Ned moaned, and I picked up his hand and held it, still watching Jack.
“Where is the damn ambulance?” Jack snarled, and then he looked at me and shrugged. “Okay, it’s stupid, but here’s the thing. There were cartons of Chinese food sitting on the table, but I got an overpowering scent of sweet potatoes. Is that even an ingredient in Chinese food?”
I stumbled back and almost tripped over one of the lawn chairs. “Sweet potatoes? Oh, no. It can’t be.”
“What? What about sweet potatoes?”
I couldn’t believe it, but there was no way this was just a coincidence. It was too weird; too unlikely.
“Oskar Wildenhammer,” I told Jack. “I just ran into him at the Super Target buying a cart full of sweet potatoes.”
Jack’s entire body tensed, and I almost expected him to shift again. “Oskar, the son of the woman whose death was foretold by a banshee? That Oskar?”
“Yes. I can’t believe it, but yes,” I whispered. “That Oskar.”
Finally, finally, we heard the first sirens screaming their way toward us, but now neither of us wanted to wait.
“We have to go. Now. Before we get caught up in the investigation here,” Jack said.
My phone rang. I’d forgotten that I’d tucked it into the pocket of my pajama pants before getting in the car. I yanked it out, but it was an unknown number. I showed it to Jack, who nodded.
“It’s Dallas.”
I put it on speaker. “Dallas? We have a problem—”
Dallas and Austin both were on the line. “Tess, Jack isn’t answering his phone, and we’ve gotta talk to him,” they said, words tumbling over each other.
“Jack’s here. Go ahead,” I
said.
“Talk,” Jack said.
“The assassin? The one here in Dead End? We found his coordinates. He routed them through some fancy steps. Prague, Nigeria—”
“Focus,” Jack barked. “Tess’s grandmother had been abducted, and we’re pretty sure it was Oskar Wildenhammer.”
One of the Fox twins whistled, long and low. The other one said several very choice swear words.
“It’s him, Jack. The coordinates we found? It’s the Wildenhammer toy barn.”
“Meet us there,” Jack said, before disconnecting the call.
“Tess, they’re too far out. I can get there first.”
The sirens were getting closer, and now I was shaking again, trying to decide what to do.
“Should I go with you? Or wait and tell Susan what’s going on? Make sure that Ned gets taken care of?”
Jack grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. “Yes. Do that. You stay here, safe, do you hear me? I’ll get your grandma for you.”
Then he kissed me—hot, hard, and fast—and seconds later, he was gone.
People started to wander down to our side of the RV park, and I yelled for help. When the first capable-looking person showed up, I told her to get Ned in the ambulance and tell the sheriff to call me, or—better yet—come back me up at the Wildenhammer estate.
“What’s your name?” she yelled after me. “What are you doing?”
“Tess Callahan,” I shouted, already running for the car. “I’m going to save my grandmother.”
Chapter 16
I hadn’t been to Felix’s toy barn since I was a kid, but I didn’t have any trouble finding it. The Wildenhammer place was a couple of miles and two closed gates down a dirt road, and both times I had to stop and open gates, I was praying that they wouldn’t be locked.
I got lucky on the first one, and Jack had taken care of the second. He’d left the steel padlock intact, but the entire wooden fencepost was ripped out of the ground, and giant claw marks streaked the aged wood as I drove through the space where the gate had been.
If this really was the home of an assassin, then death smelled like Kudzu and looked like a country fairytale. The two-story house shone bright white in the moonlight, and a lush garden surrounded the porch. The toy barn, set off about a hundred feet from the house, still had the carved wooden sign I remembered, proclaiming Wildenhammer’s Magical Toys.
I didn’t see Jack anywhere, so I drove right through the flower garden to the front porch of the house, not making any attempt to be stealthy. It was far too late for that. I ran up to the door and banged on it, feeling a little guilty at the idea that I might be waking up a sick old man, even though the man’s son had kidnapped my grandmother.
I blame Aunt Ruby and her southern manners for that.
“Oskar! I know you’re in there. Get out here and give me my grandmother.”
When the door slammed open, the business end of a pistol was pointing at my face. Perhaps I hadn’t thought through this “pound on the assassin’s door” idea well enough.
“Oskar?”
He didn’t look as tired and pitiful as he had at the store, so that had been an act, but he did look mad. Furious, really. Then he got a good look at me and started to laugh.
“Donald Duck pajamas? Really? Have you ever gotten laid?”
“Right. Well, those of us who aren’t out beating up and kidnapping defenseless old ladies in the middle of the night tend to wear pajamas,” I shot back at him. “Where is Leona?”
“Damn you, Tess, you always were a pain in the ass,” he said, almost calmly. “I wasn’t ready for this yet. Now I’ll have to kill you.”
My heart tried to leap out of my chest like Jack going through my front window. “Hey, whoa. You’re a business owner, I’m a business owner. There are always options. Let’s think this through.”
He stepped out on the porch and pointed to the steps with the gun. “Are you really trying to negotiate with me? What could you possibly have that I want? You’re not even a real banshee, like your grandmother. You’re some kind of useless half-breed.”
“Hey!” I stumbled on the step, as he shoved me with the gun in the middle of my back.
My brain was skidding around in my skull too fast and furious to care about a little nudge, though. “What do you mean? Why do you want banshees? Just to kill them? Torture them and bury them in shallow graves?”
“Why do people always say shallow grave? Deep graves would be better, wouldn’t they? Safer from discovery. Head for the barn, please.”
I stopped walking. “Are we really going to have a rhetorical discussion about shallow versus deep graves, Oskar? Right here? Right now?”
He shoved me again; harder this time. “The barn. Now. And we don’t have to have any discussion. I can just kill you now, if you prefer. But I thought you’d want to see your grandmother one last time. Was I wrong?”
I took a shaky breath. “Rhetoric is always good. Deep graves. I definitely prefer deep graves.”
Unless— “Did you kill her already?”
And where the hell was Jack?
“Why would I do that?” Oskar sounded honestly surprised, but then again, he’d made me believe he was just a poor, sad man caring for his sick father. He was a champion liar. Speaking of which, where was Felix?
“Your dad. Is he really sick?”
Oskar laughed, and now that I knew what he was, I could hear the madness in his laughter. Or maybe it was just hindsight, like how the neighbors of serial killers always said, “Oh, we knew something was wrong,” after the fact.
“He was sick,” Oskar said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
“So now he’s better?”
“No. I killed him ten days ago. Now open the damn barn door, or I’ll shoot you right here.”
I absolutely, positively did not want to open that door.
He cocked the hammer on the gun.
I opened the door.
Chapter 17
It was like walking into a twisted, toy shop version of hell. Bodies were everywhere. Oskar was even sicker than I knew. He kept his kills. I made a low, pained noise that had never come out of my throat before and concentrated on not throwing up.
Bodies. Curled up in corners. Stretched out on cots. Chained to walls.
Wait.
Chained? And why did it smell like unwashed, but not rotting, bodies?
“Why do you chain their bodies?” I asked, barely able to whisper over the anguish flooding me. “And where is Leona?”
Oskar looked at like I was stupid. “What bodies? I don’t bring the targets here to my home, you moron.”
“But…but…” I could only whimper and point. I still didn’t see Leona and was trying to retain just a little bit of hope.
Understanding finally dawned in his eyes. “Oh. I get it. No, they’re not dead yet. But thanks to you, I’m going to have to kill some of them.”
“What do you mean?”
He thought about it for a beat, and then he shrugged. “What the hell. I’ve never had the chance to explain my genius plan to somebody who could appreciate it. Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s you.”
I tried to look like I was fascinated by what he was saying, and not looking around for a weapon.
“I blame those stupid toys,” he said vehemently.
“What?” I was dazed, and terrified for Leona and for myself, but I still think I would have understood him if he’d said anything that made sense. “The toys?”
Oskar pointed the gun at my mouth. “Shut up and quit interrupting, or I’ll kill you now.”
I shut up and quit interrupting.
“From the very beginning, it was brilliant. I’m so rich now, it’s not even funny. And not from the stupid toys. Real money.”
He walked over to one of the bodies and kicked it viciously, and the body jumped and yelped. I gasped.
They weren’t dead. They were drugged, maybe? Magicked?
I didn’t dare ask. Oskar was still m
onologuing, and he still had the gun.
Where was Jack, though? I was starting to worry that he’d fallen into a trap of some kind on the grounds. I shoved that fear aside, though—I had enough to be afraid of right here and right now.
“I never had magic, and my oh-so-wonderful father thought less of me for it. Just because stupid toys didn’t play tricks for people when I built them. My talent was better, though. I was good at the business side of things.”
Whine, whine, whine. Boo-freaking-hoo. Get to the point, psychopath.
I kept looking for a weapon, but saw him watching me with those cold eyes. I needed to sound interested. He wanted an audience. Suddenly, it came to me.
“The fleur-de-lis. That was you, wasn’t it?”
He laughed delightedly, like a parent pleased with a child’s cleverness, which was hideously ironic under the circumstances. “Yes! That was recent, though. And the collectors were too stupid to catch on very quickly. The one-of-a-kind guarantee shot our prices up into the stratosphere. Even though they weren’t. Way before that, though, I worked on packaging and branding. Collectors want to feel like they’re special. Idiots.”
Oskar pushed me down into a chair and waited for me to get it. It didn’t take long.
“You branded them as one of a kind, but they weren’t?”
“Right,” he crowed. “How could people stupid enough to collect toys ever find out? And with father too sick to build more toys, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
His smile melted into a frown just then, and I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming.
“We never got along, though. Long before that, I knew he didn’t appreciate me. But then Mom planned a vacation that was supposed to be a big reconciliation, and, well…” His face twisted up in a parody of grief and anger, as if he didn’t really know how to fit authentic emotion on his features.
“She died,” I whispered, when he seemed to be waiting for an answer.
“Good,” a shaky voice called out from the back of the barn behind some boxes. “Then she never had to see what a monster her son became. Consider it your final gift to her.”