“Oo, me, me!” Beth said. “We got in some tempting at the museum,” she explained, answering my befuddled expression. “I’m already over quota for the month.”
“Yay bonuses,” Amanda said, booping away.
“You have an app for the Remote Field Reporting System on your phone?” Pog said incredulously.
“I suppose I could count the social studies teacher,” Jee said. “I gave him major wood.”
I sat quietly sipping champagne while they took turns booping into Amanda’s phone and pawed through the fridge looking for more chocolate. I had way too much to think about.
But there wasn’t time for thinking. Not yet.
The limo was crawling up a narrow street with a train embankment on one side and a series of factory buildings on the other. Then it stopped. Pog clapped her hands, and everybody piled out and went into a building.
My legs didn’t work so well.
“Need a hand?” Amanda said. I stood on the sidewalk, swaying, looking at the neighborhood while she hauled my backpack off the limo floor and draped it over my shoulder.
“I don’t drink,” I explained.
The others had already gone into this really drab factory, its walls part brick, part sheet-metal, part chicken-wire windows and corrugated plastic, I mean, U.G.L.Y. This is it. I’m going to be murdered. They’ll never find my body.
On the other hand, they might never identify it, even if they found my skull. One of the things I had noticed that morning was that, in addition to no zits, I now had perfectly straight, super-white teeth. No fillings, no gold crown in back. And the tiny chip out of my lower front tooth was gone.
Surely they won’t murder me when they’ve taken the trouble to fix my teeth.
On this comforting thought, I let Amanda herd me inside.
Someone was beating on a board in the giant room we entered. The ceilings were like thirty feet high and had grotty skylights, and the floor was concrete, except for a wooden part where the floor was raised a few inches.
The wood was a basketball court. Bap! bap! bap! bap! bap! Amanda let go of my elbow, dashed out on the wood, ran up, and bodychecked Beth, who was throwing lay-ups at a basketball basket. Beth was pretty good, but Amanda could throw perfect baskets every time. They chased each other around the floor, dribbling, playing take-away. In four-inch heels.
I was impressed.
Pog had crossed the wooden floor and was doing something at a fancy barbecue grill.
Jee was brushing her hair. She had great hair. I guess Indonesians have hair like Chinese, all black and straight. Anyway, hers was. She gave it a couple of turns with a round brush and it did this quick, adorable, flippy thing, and now it was styled a whole new way. She tucked the brush into her purse. Then she winked at me.
The basketball sailed out of nowhere and bopped her on the head.
Jee swore, grabbed it, and threw it back. Her hair flew out all over, as if she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. And then...it settled back down exactly the way it was when she finished brushing. Like TV hair, or anime hair.
I raised my eyebrows. “Cool.”
Pog hollered from over by the grill, “What do you eat, Melitta?”
Jee jerked her head. We went over to the grill, which was heating up.
Suddenly I was starving. I began, “I eat anything. I’m supposed to be on a low-carb, low-fat diet, but—” and got a good look at the food.
“Kiss that shit goodbye, honey,” Pog assured me. “Now. Do you see anything you like here? We’re always struggling to get in our forty-five-hundred calories a day, and ordinarily we fall back on sugar to make up any deficit. But I personally like meat, and I do most of the cooking. Beth cooks sometimes, real homestyle stuff only moms can cook. Jee finds the good upscale restaurants—the ones that serve food you can taste, not just Instagram. Amanda’s a goat.” To my puzzled face, Pog added, with a sniff, “She’d eat tin cans. Athlete.”
I was looking over the big foil trays she’d taken out of a little old round-shouldered refrigerator sitting against the factory wall. Filet mignon. Jumbo shrimp. Whole trout. Chicken wings. Something gross involving chicken livers and raw bacon strips on a skewer. Even uncooked, it all smelled insanely good. My stomach set up a nonstop growl, like a leaf blower. Pog basted the chicken liver-bacon things with brown glop and then opened the grill. “Stand back if you don’t want your clothes all smoky.” She put a little of everything on the grill and shut it. “’Kay, people, let’s talk.”
I heard a rattle and drag of plastic lawn furniture on the hollow wooden floor. The others were pulling up pink adirondack chairs for everyone. We sat down. Jee, who was closest to the fridge, opened it without leaving her chair and handed beer bottles around.
“I don’t drink,” I repeated.
Jee smiled and dug me out a can of Classic Coke. I flinched. Then I thought about the calories I was supposed to eat every day, and took it.
It was delicious.
Pog ran the meeting.
“Okay, people, we did this emergency extraction today because Melitta’s got something too hot for her. The big guy at the museum is, uh—” Pog glanced at me.
“Mr. Dorrington. Social Studies teacher.”
“Dorrington, and we have reason to believe he’s blackmailing Melitta’s parents. Obviously Melitta has to be careful. But we can do some recon for her, come up with suggestions. When the time comes, of course, we can neutralize Dorrington. But we have to find out what insurance he’s bought and where it’s hiding, or else it’ll blow up in Melitta’s parents’ faces.”
“These are the parents who are sexually abusing her and condoning it?” Jee said, squinting.
I looked her in the eye. I’d been thinking a lot about this. “I don’t know for sure if Mom is condoning,” I said hastily. “And as much as I hate the guy, Howard,” I said, my mouth sour as I said his name, which is why I seldom say it or even think it, “he takes pretty good care of her. Although he controls her too much. Me too, when he can.” I thought of my stepfather cringing, gray with fear as I clutched his beating heart, and smiled. “I think those days are numbered.”
Pog smiled, too. “Noted. So. Suggestions?”
“What’s he got on your stepfather?” Amanda said. Suddenly she looked tougher and not terribly pretty.
I shrugged. “Maybe Dorrington figured out what he’s been doing to me. Or maybe he does it to other girls besides me—my stepfather’s job covers the whole school district. If he’s seeing girls who are in real trouble, the kind nobody listens to, and everybody thinks the worst about them already” I said, thinking aloud, “he could get away with a lot.” I shivered. Put like that, it didn’t seem so smart to let him continue taking care of my mom. “I guess if I don’t find a way to stop him, somebody else will. And then Mom will have another ex-husband in the penitentiary.”
“She been married to him long?” Jee said.
“A bit over two years. Before that it was Lester. Lawyer. He was okay,” I admitted. Lester had pretty much ignored me, but he was, as Mom put it, a good provider. Mom had divorced Lester after four years, predictably, but he’d left her nicely fixed for cash. She said she’d kept her job at the school because she was saving that money for my college fund and to supplement her retirement, but really it was to find another husband. Mom had been a lot more social when Lester was around. Dinners with the other partners, kind of thing. I hadn’t taken to Lester. He wasn’t the type to pay attention to a spare step-kid. In retrospect, he’d been practically a saint.
“Find out who else he’s blackmailing and talk to them,” Beth said, bringing my thoughts back to my Social Studies teacher.
“Risky,” Pog said. “The insurance thing. Blackmail victims don’t talk.”
I cringed every time they said blackmail. It was like they just assumed the worst about someone. On the other hand, it was hard to over-assume about Mr. Borington.
“Complaining isn’t talking,” Beth said. “Everybody com
plains.” She turned to me. “Get me some names. I’ll chum up with them at the spa.”
I squinted. I couldn’t see my mother chumming up to somebody as young and frivolous-looking as Beth. I ventured a remark more tactful than that.
“Silly,” she said. “I’ll be disguised. And they’ll complain plenty, if I complain about Dorrington first.”
“Okay,” Pog said, “Beth, you get to the school parents. Amanda, you hack the stepfather’s computer.”
“I can do that,” I said. “I have all Mom’s passwords.”
Everybody looked at me.
“Well, she kills computers. She buys a new one about every year and I have to reinstall everything for her. She just hands me the password book and goes and has a glass of wine in the living room.”
“Okay then,” Pog said, sounding impressed. She tilted her head. “Think you can find your stepfather’s passwords? Because that way we can get at his bank and find out if he’s making payments to Dorrington.”
“You think he makes autopayments labeled ‘December phone bill’ and ‘blackmail, March installment?’” I blurted.
Pog said, “I was thinking checks or cash withdrawals, but that’s a good suggestion, Melitta. Any regular periodic payment is going to show up, and we can follow up on them to see if they’re all legit. Say we find a car payment for a car he doesn’t own? Bingo.”
“So we need a pretty good description of your parents’ lifestyle and habits,” Amanda said. “Photos. Car license plate numbers, cell numbers.”
I felt myself creeping out. I put my Coke can down and wrapped my hand around my backpack strap. “I don’t feel good about this.”
“Back off, will you?” Beth scolded her friends. “The child is still in shock.” Beth must have kids somewhere, I thought. She’s a total mom. She looked at Pog. “How’s lunch coming?”
We had lunch. It was magnificent. I even tried one of the liver and bacon things and liked it. Mostly I had grilled shrimp dunked in butter and then slathered with guacamole. It sounds gross, but I died and went to heaven.
I felt like a pig for woofing up all that stuff. But the others ate like they’d been locked in a closet for a year.
I began to see what my life would soon be like.
“Do you think I’ve eaten my forty-five-hundred calories yet?” I groaned and leaned back in my pink plastic adirondack chair.
Beth glanced over at me. She got a faraway look for a moment and then said, “What did you have for breakfast?” I told her. She nodded. “I think with a moderate dinner, you should be good to go.”
I laughed and shook my head.
Pog cleared her throat, and Beth raised her palms. Pog said, “It’s your turn, Melitta. What do you want to know?”
“Gosh, a bunch of stuff,” I said slowly. My skirt was feeling loose again already. Crazy. Weird. Cool. I sat up in my chair.
“Shoot,” Amanda said, taking the last shrimp.
My eyes roved over the big room. It had obviously been the factory floor, once upon a time. “Like where I’m going to sleep. Wait, are those—is that marijuana growing up there?” I blurted. A platform or something was suspended high up near the ceiling, under a skylight in a far corner. It was foaming over with bushy green plants.
“Very good,” said Beth, like a teacher.
Jee cracked the last chicken wing bone in her back teeth and sucked it. Her lipstick was a mess. “We sleep upstairs. The offices have been converted to living quarters. You get the empty bedroom.”
“Spa and steam room upstairs. There’s a hot tub on the roof. Pretty primitive,” Amanda added. “But it’s okay in summer. Machine shop over in the back for auto repairs.” She pointed with her beer bottle.
“Wow. This is really cool,” I said.
“We didn’t do it. The demons who had the joint before us did the conversion. Although we redid the bathroom. And we’re still remodeling the downstairs spa,” Pog added. Everybody groaned.
“And we threw out those disgusting La-Z-Boys,” Jee said.
“Dear God,” Beth nodded.
“Don’t swear,” Amanda said.
“Demons?” I said.
“They retired and left us this place,” Pog said.
“Wait, retired?” I repeated, feeling like a particularly dumb parrot.
“The recruiter didn’t tell you? Nobody’s permanent these days,” Amanda sniffed. “No company loyalty at all.”
“The company,” Jee sneered, “won’t hire anybody full time anymore.”
“The employee benefits are too expensive,” I said, nodding wisely. “The recruiter did tell me,” I added when Beth looked at me funny.
“Ish is getting chatty,” Pog remarked.
“Ish?” I said.
“Our supervisor, Ish Qbybbl. Your recruiter,” Pog said.
I didn’t say anything. Delilah had asked me not to mention her name.
I caught sight of Jee’s kajillion-dollar diamond watch. I gasped. “Is it four o’clock already?” My heart clutched up. “Uh-oh!”
Beth looked at her watch. “Are we taking you back to the museum?”
I opened my mouth to say yes. Then I thought about Mom’s glare when the succubi had hustled me out of the Egyptian exhibit hall. “I think I’d better go straight home.”
“Call a limo,” Jee said. “She’ll need to look good.”
I actually beat my mom home. That seemed good for a moment.
Then I tried to get inside.
My key wouldn’t work in the lock.
I looked back at the limo. Worried faces stuck out of the windows. That made me felt better. It wasn’t all just a weird, delicious, off-color dream.
I waved them on.
Slowly, the limo rolled away down the street.
I tried my key again. Not even the tip would go in. I looked under the rock in the front garden. No spare key.
Then I noticed a shiny tag hanging on the doorknob. Ace McGrace’s Security Service. My heart fell into my shoes.
They’d had the locks changed.
Inside the house, on the other side of the door, Sigmund bayed once. Then he probably went back to sleep, the lazy schlub.
I pulled out my cell phone. It was still on vibrate, where I’d set it when I walked into school, the way we’re supposed to. I’d totally forgotten to even look at it.
Four messages. I listened to the messages.
“Young lady, what do you think you’re doing? You are grounded. I let you do the field trip so I could keep an eye on you, and you—who are those women? What’s this job you’ve found?” My mother’s voice sputtered like a chicken.
Next message. Short. Clipped. “I’m calling your stepfather.” She loves calling my stepfathers. It’s like she thinks I don’t listen to her, but boy, I’ll sure listen to a man.
Next message. “Howard and I will talk this over when I get these students back to school. This isn’t over.” Her favorite threat.
Last message. Mom sounded a lot tireder, more strained. “Howard and I have discussed the situation. Whatever terrible people you are working for, you will not learn what kind of mistake you’ve made until you understand the consequences. He’s explained. I see that completely.” She didn’t sound convinced. Apparently Howard had done one of his numbers on her. “You’re an adult now. You can find somewhere else to live until you are ready to give up this job and come home.” She sounded like she was crying now. “If you—” and the call cut off.
I could see it in my head as if I’d been there. Mom crying, my stepfather talking, talking, talking, then making her call me. Mom starting to weaken as she left her message. Him taking the phone away and shutting it off.
Didn’t help to see all that in my head. The locks were still changed.
I let the phone fall onto the doorstep and stood there, my arms hanging, feeling completely boneless, looking at the shut door.
After a long time I thought to pull out Delilah’s business card. The flames didn’t flicker and smoke a
round her name any more. The number was hard to read. I rubbed tears out of my eyes and squinted, but nope.
The card crumbled to dust in my fingers.
Okay, that’s odd, I thought distantly, while another part of my mind screamed and screamed and screamed.
My throat was locked up tight with hot pincers. Panic drummed in my ears.
They really meant it.
Well, Howard really meant it. My mom would go along with it, because she had no spine.
Boy, he must be really afraid of Mr. Dorrington.
And of me, I realized.
I noticed that I was still thinking, in spite of the terror that blammed around in my chest like a bat in the bedroom. That helped ease the hot pain in my throat. Tears ran down my face, but my brain still worked.
I sniffled hard to try to stop the tears. Didn’t work.
Right now, I had two things to worry about. One, how to get my stuff, and two, where to go next.
I realized then that I didn’t have a phone number for Pog or Amanda or Beth or Jee. I didn’t know the address of their Lair on Ravenswood. I’d been so drunk on champagne and grilled shrimp and the comfort of their grown-up-girls’ friendliness, I had just...let go. Like a little kid letting Mommy handle everything.
Guess that’d teach me.
A plan formed in the cool, nonscreaming part of my brain.
I pocketed my phone again and then went around back to the deck, took a paving stone out of the garden, and deliberately smashed the back door window. An alarm went off, not loud, but piercing, up close. Holy holy holy poop, I thought.
The lock on the back door was new, too, but it had that safety feature where you can open it from the inside without a key. That worked nicely. I let myself in.
Same kitchen. Same house. Sigmund looked up at me with surprise from his spot by the front door. I felt super weird, like a ghost in my own life. I was already hungry again, but the alarm reminded me to keep moving.
I went upstairs and started throwing clothes on the bed. Then I realized my backpack wouldn’t hold much. Then I realized I was packing for my school’s dress code. The cold part of my brain said, If you can’t find the Lair, you’ll be sleeping on the street. You want to do that in skirts and sneakers?
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 43