Secret Worlds (234 page)

“’Eh, yeah,
we
used our brains. You? Not so much,” Jane says. “Guy’s a friggin’, murderin’, badass windy-go. Alarm? Cops? Ya think?” She grins at Vuur. “I assisted my ass off. You’re inside the building, right?”

An hour later, while I’m going through mail, the dragon says, “I want to know what you are. I need to know. Tell me?”

I hold a letter I’d just opened over a stack of mail I’d gathered off the floor. “No, I don’t think so.” The stack of envelopes looks like several days’ worth, probably still being pushed through the mail slot in the door on a daily basis. I move register receipts, sticky notes, and three magazines off to the side, set the envelope down, and lean both elbows on the counter.

Smiling up at the dragon, I say, “And I’d appreciate you not asking this question again.”

“Why are you so difficult? I can force you, you know.”

“Honey, I been forced since I turned double digits. Forced is my middle name, submissive I’m not.” Although Jane’s working it her way, I feel the need to add some finality beside her lack of fear. “Yeah, okay, so we both know, no matter what I told my mother, you forced us to be here. And we are. That’s all you get for now. Deal with it.” And when I pick up the envelope, it’s as though Jane rips it open and digs in. I continue to respond to his threat my way, seasoning it with the education I’ve gleaned from Jane. “Thing is, you need me and you’re gonna have to kill me to try to get me to give up everything, which will lead to nothing for you but a big surprise. It’s clear I don’t want a knock-down drag-out just yet, or I’d jump at it. That’s what’s making me so … obliging. You trust no one. I get it, don’t give a shit. You want my help, back off.”

Vuur stares at me through eyes filled with years of knowledge, then tries, “I simply thought it might be lucrative for both of us if we know the level of assistance we provide, and our individual motives.”

“Yeah, and chickens have lips and bears don’t shit in the woods,” Jane says as we open the folded power bill we’d just removed from its Consumers Electric envelope.

“I do not see what your ludicrous answer has to do with my assumption.”

“It means you’re full of crap,” I say, feeling Jane’s pride swell. “You just want to know if I can kill you.”

“Actually, I am warring with myself to throw caution to the wind and find out. If you do not give me a legitimate answer occasionally, I will be happy to entertain my inquisitive urges!” A puff of smoke wafts from Vuur’s nostrils.

I feel Jane’s face constrict in frustration; her eyes get smaller, and her mouth wrinkles her upper lip. Then she cocks her head and pops open her mouth, tongue-in-cheek before saying, “Why ya lookin’ for Gaire?”

“To bring his head back to his father and claim my reward.”

“Yeah, I got that. Her? Not so much,” Jane says. “She wants him alive. She—”

“Your incessant need to speak in third person is driving me—”

“Hey, get off my shit and bring it back to where it is! Explain again, what part of this relationship is about her needs?” Jane uses her hands and face like humans use garlic and Italian seasoning.

Vuur’s jaw tightens. “Fine, I will allow … Jane, to see the light of day! Which, may I say, is getting darker by the minute!”

I feel, up until now, Jane has done a really good job of skirting the main issue—the fact that I simply do not want to lose Jane until after I find Gaire—and then she lies and says, “Not a damn thing you can do gets us anything we want. But guess what? We get it. Got it? So, get your passive-aggressive fire-breathing dragon ass out of my face, or go right ahead and try to kill us.”

Jane shakes her head at the dragon when he makes no aggressive moves. We both ignore the smoke wafting from his ears.

He stares at her, arms wrapped around his chest, hands held hostage by his armpits.

“Uh-huh, we didn’t think so.” I team up with Jane, and find some of her in my next sentence. “We
done
what you asked so far, and since we’re the only ones
that might could
figure out where Gaire went, it’s you that needs to jump on the
Team Jane
bus.” Jane really takes over. “So, here’s the way it’s gonna work. Back the hell off! Give us breathin’ room. Treat us like a partner. Then we look for Gaire, we find him, and that’s when we see who gets to keep him.” I meekly ask, “Does that work for you?”

I’m fifteen hundred miles north of Purgatory, driving around Michigan State campus and carrying a whole new identity. I purchased it from the aboveground operation ROAR, Rogues Operating Above the Radar. I’m six two, one-hundred-ninety-five pounds with shoulder-length sandy-blond hair, a tan face and nickel-grey eyes. Only three things circle my mind: securing a residence, poking around Michigan’s Down Under to establish boundaries within this otherworld community, and finding CeCe—all three, without being recognized.

I spot a sign for the administration office, but have to park my rental car seven rows away in the crowded parking area across the street from the building.

The halls are busy with the bluster of college kids. Odors piqué my senses: Laundry detergent and the scent of just-bought clothes spar through the friction of movement and push need into frustration. Male and female pheromones seasoned with store bought perfumes, masculine sweat, and feminine musk, mingle and dance erotically. My mouth salivates for a taste of blood.

Students stir excitement into havoc with catch-up chatter and questions about classroom locations and curriculum. The scene drums up dark memories of my long forgotten youth, and they move me more than the scents that overwhelm.

I finally elbow my way into the registration office. The hall noise winks out as quickly as the office door closes behind me, replaced by smells and sounds of a functioning workplace. Phones chime, keyboards click, and the pages of old books and fresh milled paper fuse with scents of cleaning fluids. Human imprints waft from the walls around me.

Staff chatter with students vying for immediate attention, and endless movement in a room that is too warm further threaten the beast in me. I feel the wendigo attempt to surface, take a deep breath, and pull the animal deep inside me. If I give in to my hunger, the room will reek of blood, death, and destruction in a matter of minutes. And when I finish in here, I would not be able to contain my desire for more blood; the need to be shrouded in death would spread into the halls and upon those walking there.

As I move toward a stout woman who has a head covered with riotous yellow hair, I catch her attention and she stares at me through muddy brown eyes, forces a smile, but continues a conversation on the cell phone pushed against her ear.

I tune out all other noise and listen to the woman’s voice as my eyes wander the two-tone gray walls.

“I left the envelope with the check on the table in the hall—just like I said I would—not my fault you left without it. Summer’s over, buddy. I got work to do, too. You want it, go home and get it. I’m not bringing it to you.” She pauses.

In a statement painted on the wall behind the counter, two words catch my attention and pulse red on the gray wall: Spartans Will.

I
will
myself to stay calm.

“Uh-huh, you too. See you at dinner.” The lady with yellow curls thumbs the cell off and stuffs it into a pocket on her airy rayon trousers. “Can I help you?”

“I certainly hope so, Ms. Moe Holt,” I say, reading her name tag.

Moe gives me a weary smile.

“I’m here for my sister, CeCe. She forgot her driver’s license when she came in to pick up her schedule Friday. It’s supposed to be here in the office.”

“Not that I know of, but if it’s here, there’ll be a note on her registration information,” Ms. Holt says, fingers poised on a computer keyboard. “Full name?”

“CeCe, that’s spelled C E C E. The Cs are caps. Last name Graham, like the cracker.”

Moe’s fingers move effortlessly over the keys, pause, click, pause. Then she looks up at me. “That was capitol C, E, capitol C, E, and G R A H A M, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

She gives me a quick smile at the respectful tag I use to address her, and then back to business. “You wouldn’t happen to have her social security number, would you?”

I shake my head and hope she doesn’t ask for a birthday. I would hate to show just how
un
respectful a wendigo can be. I can feel the curvature of my spine shifting.

“Address?”

That I had, thanks to my sleuthing. “8060 Joy Haven Road in Leesburg, Florida.”

More clicking, another frown. Both hands relax on the keyboard. “Sweetie, your sister is not registered at Michigan State. I even tried nixing the second capital C, and then tossing in two Es. You sure it wasn’t U of M in Ann Arbor? Hope you didn’t come too far. Maybe you should call your parents before you drive the sixty-five plus miles to Ann Arbor.”

Well, that went well. At least I know CeCe is not here. “Can you call the University of Michigan’s registration office?”

She returns my audacity with amused impatience. “Honey, its eight forty-five on the first day of the fall semester. I can’t even take a bathroom break right now, never mind call U of M for you.”

I want to remind her she took a personal call less than five minutes ago and angrily educate her in the art of multitasking. Instead, I drum up a little brotherly frustration—face contorted in embarrassed anger—and I say, “I’m gonna kill the idiot.”

I hope I’m not prophesizing.

Moe shakes out a laugh, turns on her Birkenstocks, and says, “If it was me, I’d tell her to pick up her driver’s license herself.”

No shit, I think, if only she really was my sister.

I’m grateful the woman didn’t kick me out the door. With all the security nowadays I was lucky to get the information I did. I scoot into the hall and pull out my cell phone. I’m off to U of M, but not without a call to Mrs. Graham.

We’ve found nothing at the diner above Gaire’s apartment to give us a clue as to where he had disappeared. Vuur sits in one of Gaire’s blood-red chairs at the dining room table adjacent to a clinical pristine kitchen, and interrogates me about my relationship with the wendigo. How can I tell Vuur that Gaire is my first chance at something really special?

A real relationship, because I know Gaire’s a wendigo, a savage murderer with a lust for blood. How easy would it be for him to hook up in our world where he’s hunted, or the world he hides in where he knows sex would end in the death of every human he tries to be with? His chances are about as easy as mine. Who’s going to hook up with the
real
me—a mass of smoky soot—Down Under? And in the human world every host I wear would have to be replaced in a matter of weeks—heck, days? How do I explain that?

While the dragon shifter stares at me, my eyes run the apartment’s wide open space and stop on the bedroom. The red comforter is strewn haphazardly on the bed atop the wrought iron platform, just the way we’d left it. I cringe at the reminder of my first sexual encounter with Gaire.

I love the t-shaped living area; everything is black with red accoutrements. I feel like I’m in a cave spattered with blood. My body trembles delightfully.

Vuur becomes impatient. “So, several days ago, you walked into the diner below and merely put on an apron and began to assist the beast with his breakfast crowd?”

“Yeah,” I answer, feeling Jane’s sarcastic side.

“And he simply let you?”

“You had to be there.”

“Well, I was not. So kindly answer the question,” Vuur says.

“He was as enthralled with me as I with him,” I say, and sound myself. “Gaire is definitely eye candy,” I add and think of how much that sounds like CeCe. “I think he liked what he saw, too. The customers were angry because his waitress didn’t show. I started dishing out food orders, and he waited until the place cleared and he’d locked the doors to question me more effectively, instead of so, um … playfully.”

“I have no desire to hear about your carnal intermezzo. What effective questions did he ask?” Vuur’s nostrils flare and tiny tendrils of smoke waft to the ceiling. “And be precise with your answers.”

My eyes move to the rumpled, red quilt on the bed. Too bad the dragon is an idiot. The “carnal intermezzo” would be a better line of interrogation, but screw him.

Time to stop playing around, anyway.
Jane’s
about to turn this into a really close call again.

“He wanted to know what I was. I told him I was of age for consensual sex, and hinted that our time together was going to be cut short.”

“Again, be specific.” The pupils of the dragon’s eyes spark with excitement. “How did you make him understand the time between you was short?”

“There you go, acting all boss of us again,” Jane pops, and I quickly say, “I flat told him I had to go back to school shortly, instead of telling him I’d be shedding my host.”

Vuur stiffens in his chair. “Shedding? Like a ghost, angel, demon, fae, or a doppelganger?”

Crap. While I take a second to come up with a witty remark, Jane seizes the opportunity.

“’Ey, scumbag, ova ’ere. Read my lips. What part of ’I’m not discussin’ that’ do you not understand? Because I can get right in your friggin’ face and make it real clear if you don’t give the fuck up on that shit.”

The dragon doesn’t even blink an acknowledgment. He relaxes and smiles. “Did you mention the university your … host would be attending?”

I suppose it’s safer for him to not recognize that I have shortened his list of possibilities, or if he suspects doppelganger, that he can’t fire up his anger and put my lights out, since I’m naturally a somewhat formless dark cloud of mottled smoke and gray shadow, anyway.

Man, I don’t want to give up Jane just yet, and no matter the creature, he can definitely put Jane’s lights out. There is no way I want him to know that bothers me. And killing Jane wouldn’t be smart on his part, since, like him, I can’t play in the human world during the day without a human disguise. Still...

I err on the side of caution. “I told him Michigan State.”

“And is that the college your host is actually attending? Or was it a fabrication? Did you destroy her during your sloughing off stage?”