Authors: Amber Hughey
The mood was somber and had a slightly funereal air as they left the stable. After a few miles of silence, Amalia broke it.
“So we’re tracking down Jeremy and ransacking Patricia’s apartment?” She asked as they drove towards the small town of Bright Oak. Gabriel nodded. “Is this legal?”
“Don’t want to get arrested?”
“Not particularly,” she replied with a smirk. “I do like my record clean, you know.”
He smiled at her, “Not a problem. With my credentials, I can get us almost anywhere. Perks of being an Enforcer.”
“Apartment first?” she questioned.
He nodded again before pulling off the road, into the parking lot of a small convenience store. He pulled out his wallet and handed her a twenty. She looked at it, confused, not taking it. He sighed and placed it in her hand.
“You stand out a lot less than me. I need something to drink. Coffee, pop, something with a kick. Get one for yourself if you want,” he said to her.
She took the money with a grin. “Afraid of us nasty little humans?” she asked as she opened the door.
He scowled at her before shooing her towards the door. “No, I just don’t like the attention.”
“Funny, you don’t seem like the shy type to me,” she teased as she finished exiting the car.
“Only for you,” he replied with a smile of his own, “for everyone else, I’m Eleanor Roosevelt.” He paused, growing thoughtful. “Except, you know, an umbren. And male. And not married to a president. At least, I don’t think I’m married to a president. Well, not anymore at least.”
Entering the store with a laugh, she saw a bulletin board to her right, near the few magazines that the store carried. It held local business cards, lost pets, odds and ends for sale, apartments for rent and the usual host of other things happening in a small town. Including a poster with Patricia’s picture and information. Probably put up by her parents, Amalia thought to herself as she stared at it. She looked normal. Brown hair, brown eyes, happy. But where are you? Amalia asked herself.
She glanced at the clerk, who was busily restocking the cigarettes, and finding his back to her, she snatched the Missing Persons poster and shoved
it in her back pocket. If she were interested in a goat, a tractor, or cordwood, she was in luck. She was not interested, however, so she grabbed coffee for both of them and a two-liter of Mountain Dew, complete with a Snickers bar for her. She wasn’t hungry now, but she knew she would be later.
She handed the hot drinks through the window before climbing back in. Handing the change back to him, she pulled the poster out of her pocket and showed it to him, stuffing the Snickers bar into the tiny glove compartment. He stared at the poster for a second as if memorizing the face of the missing woman before leaving the parking lot.
She pushed herself against the passenger door, trying not to touch the wing that was invading her space. He gave her a half smile and a shrug.
“Sorry, I was never planning on have a passenger in this car, so the dynamics of how to actually seat a passenger comfortably are probably off,” he gave as an explanation.
She twisted a bit, “so I’m guessing that your seat didn’t come with the car?”
He smirked and shifted in his seat. “I couldn’t sit in a factory reg seat if I tried. Most angelus can’t. Wings are only so flexible, and so the only way to drive a car is to have a low-back seat put in and lots of room in the back seat. Well, maybe not lots of room,
but no passengers back there, or, I guess, in my case in the passenger seat.”
She “hmphed” at him and then gave his shoulder a shove, pushing him towards the driver’s door by a few inches, and giving herself a few more inches of breathing space. Not that it was a bad smell, she thought, but the spicy scent of the wings made it hard to breathe when they were almost shoved up her nose. Not that she didn’t enjoy being in such a tight space with him, but she would have liked a bit more space than the few scant inches he allowed her outside of her seat, which, thankfully, was still the bucket seat that came with the car.
“It wasn’t this crowded in Matt’s car,” she muttered to herself, wedging herself into her seat, against the door, trying to escape the wings that brushed her cheek. Unfortunately, that just mean the arm rest on the door was jammed into her ribs. She sighed, defeated. She resigned herself to being uncomfortable for however long their journey was.
He glanced at her with an apologetic look, “Matt doesn’t drive a two-door coupe, now, does he? Last I knew, he had that damn ugly SUV…plenty of room for the wings and passengers in one of those, but the tradeoff is looks. Not something I’m willing to give up.” He knew that Matt often carried other passengers gladly, but he didn’t himself. He usually preferred to be alone in his Aston Martin Vanquish, although the present company was definitely
excluded from that particular desire. He’d made sure not to change the bucket seat out for an angelus friendly one after Sylvie had tried to pester him into letting her drive his car, so his excuse had always been that he never let anyone else drive his car without him in it.
Unsuccessfully, he tried pulling the offending wing back into ‘his’ space, but he knew he could only pull it so tight before the joint got too sore and started to ache.
“And I suppose you wouldn’t give this car up? Not even for a pretty SUV?”
“Not for anything, especially not for a ‘pretty SUV’, considering I’m pretty sure they don’t exist” he teased.
“Besides,” he continued, “Betty wouldn’t want me to get rid of her. Betty’s upset that we’re even talking about replacing her with an UGLY SUV. Poor Betty,” he crooned.
She sputtered, spraying her palm with cold Mountain Dew. “Betty? You named your car Betty?”
“No, I really didn’t. But the look on your face sure was funny,” he grinned at her as he revved the motor.
He pulled into the parking lot and stared up at the row of apartment windows that loomed overhead, blocking the afternoon sun. He pointed towards the second window from the left, “That’s hers.”
“And you could tell that how?” She asked, a bit incredulously.
He looked at her, “Because I can see a poster of a horse in the bedroom.”
She stared up. All she could make out was the glare reflecting down at them. She looked at him. “You can see that from here? I know Matt said you had better eyesight, that but is wicked ridiculous. Besides, how do you know that there isn’t some horse-crazy kid living there? That could have been my room when I was growing up.”
“Not my fault you didn’t ask for clarification,” he said with a grin, “besides, it makes life more exciting that way. Think of it as an adventure. You get to find out all the neat tricks I’ve got up my sleeve. And I get to confuse the hell out of you when I pull one out. Fun for everyone involved! Besides, no bikes outside. No toys on the two balconies to the left. No sign of kids. So, chances are, no kids in this apartment. Probably some partier paradise. More
like a dive, actually,” he commented, lips twisting in confusion.
Looking at the surrounding area, she could see what he meant. This wasn’t exactly a kid-friendly neighborhood. He might think it odd that Patricia could own a ridiculously expensive horse, and take part in an expensive sport, but Amalia understood that the reason she could afford to live like that was
because
she lived in a place like this.
After another long glare up at the window, and seeing nothing more than the reflected sky, Amalia frowned at him, fighting the smirk dancing on her lips and twitching the corners up. “So you have really good vision?”
“Compared to you? Yes, but compared to another angelus, my vision is strictly average,” he grinned, glad to be able to tease her about something. He liked the way she smiled at him, her eyes bright against her hair.
She couldn’t help but smile back at him, her green eyes shining as she stared into his gray eyes. She shook her head, laughing to herself as she climbed out of his car. Great, she thought, just great. Happy being single, remember? She reminded herself as they climbed the stairs to Patricia’s apartment.
She waited outside the apartment door for him to catch up. The wings had serious novelty points, but apparently also came complete with at least one
major drawback – being slow in tight spaces would really suck, she thought as she waited for him. She finally saw him, tried the door, and expecting it to be locked, almost fell through it when it opened. He caught her by the arm and righted her. With a small mutter of “thanks”, she entered the apartment.
The air was stale, no breeze moving the dull air. There wasn’t a window open in the place, Amalia thought to herself as she wrinkled her nose. Despite it being nearly winter, the way the apartment smelled, it sure could have used one. Or two, she amended, smelling the faint stench of dirty fish water. She slowly made her way through the small apartment. No fans, either, she noted. The mixed odor of dirty horse equipment and unwashed laundry was rank, but she forced herself to explore the apartment.
She stopped by the bed and glanced at the pictures on the vanity that was across the room. Seeing a picture of the boyfriend, Jeremy, she crossed the room for a better look. She grabbed the picture, took it out of the cheap frame and flipped it over, disappointed that there wasn’t any writing on the reverse. The angelus in the picture was young – probably about Matt’s age, she guessed. His wings were a pale crimson, almost cotton candy pink, no hair, shaved, she guessed, but almost electric blue eyes, as best as she could tell from the small picture.
Gabriel entered the room, his nostrils flared in disgust, and she handed the picture to him. “Is this what you meant when you said some angelus dye their wings?”
He looked at it and nodded. “Definitely. The even color is a dead giveaway that he wasn’t born with wings that shade. All of us have feathers that have at least two colors, most with more. Red isn’t unheard of for the elder angelus, but red that shade, on an angelus that young, and that much of it, is. Looks like it started out much brighter and he tried to wash it out. Or he was just brainless and used a dye that won’t hold with the feathers.”
“There’s dye that can’t dye?”
“Uh-huh, most of them, actually. The oils on the feathers prevent it from taking like it would on hair,” he replied, spreading his wings slightly as he flicked a fly off the left wing with a look of revulsion.
“Good to know. So, was he trying to pass himself off as a bad-boy umbren? Because red, especially that shade, doesn’t strike me as a solan color.”
“Well,” he considered with a chuckle. “Probably not. If anything, it would mark him as a bad-boy solan, as it’s much more common for a solan to dye their wings. The lighter colors take the dyes easier. Most umbren would have to bleach the feathers first, then dye, and let me tell you,” he continued. “If you think bleach and dye ruin hair
quick, it ruins feathers even quicker. And yes, I speak from experience. And no, I’m not going to share. Don’t ask.”
She giggled and nodded, remembering when she and Morgan had tried to bleach and then dye their own hair. It had fried hers in less than ten minutes. Amalia’s had turned cookie monster blue, and broken off, while Morgan’s had faired only slightly better, still leaving both of them to get haircuts to rid themselves of the self-inflicted damage. “Fair enough,” she replied, taking in the information as she peeked into the fish tank that held a couple of Dalmatian mollies and an algae eater. Unfortunately, the mollies were a convenient meal for the algae eater. “Wonder if the fish are the reason the door’s unlocked? Maybe a neighbor feeding them?”
He gave her a doubtful glance as he examined the pictures on the vanity himself, “Probably not, but possible. And if that is the reason, then I’m pretty sure we can label that a ‘FAIL’. Complete with bright red font. Because there hasn’t been anyone in here for a very long time.” He looked at the dead fish. “At least a week based on that algae eater’s last meal.”
She paused and stood straight up, staring at him, the corners of her mouth rising in an acknowledgment of his awareness of current popular culture. “So you’re absolutely certain there’s no one else in here?”
He laughed softly, “Darlin’, there’s no one else in here. I’d hear them breathe.”
“You can hear that well?” she questioned as she found a pile of mail and started to leaf through them.
“Sure can. Remember heightened senses? That’s part of the package for being an angelus,” he said as he held out his hand for the mail. She snarled softly at him, but handed over half the stack. He sardonically cocked an eyebrow at her.
She shrugged and kept hold of the other stack. “I found it first. I don’t see why I have to hand it over to you.”
“Aside from the fact that you already did, it’s because I’m in charge here,” he said, putting a twenties-detective accent on.
Rewarded with a smile, he leafed through the section of mail that she had deigned to give up. Mostly bills, it seemed, but one letter from Altrua Lab Corp. He flipped it over. Unopened. Not for long, he thought to himself, as he tore the envelope open.
She stared at him, “Hello, Federal offense? Ready for a boyfriend named ‘Bubba’?”