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CHAPTER FIVE
“I’m going to go check out the crime scene,” Jae said.
Angela looked up from her notebook; a worn thing with a cover adorned with multi-colored Russian nesting dolls. She’d found it on the side of the road and it looked very harmless. She figured it’d work well as a monster hunt log. Who would ever look inside a notebook that looked like that? She blinked, snapping herself out of it, and took note of Jae. He was standing at the door, wearing a tan corduroy jacket with a popped collar and a pair of those infernal skinny jeans. She wondered how he managed to maintain his odd look in warmer climes. She’d wonder if he was some sort of undead thing, but she didn’t really want to know.
She’d have to stake him, after all.
She let her eyes veer to the beat-up, badly stained door behind him. Dents and scratch marks marked the wood under the veneer She wished she could say that wasn’t normal.
“Okay,” she said. “Who you gonna be?”
“George Washington,” Jae said, no humor on his face. He slid back the deadbolt and was out in seconds.
Going by his outfit she’d guess he was going to play-pretend as a newspaper reporter, or maybe some sort of New Age church’s grief-counsel-salesman. Or maybe he’d pretend to be one of the kid’s friends. Jae had to be on the right side of twenty, just like her, but he’d pretended to be some slouching fourteen-year-old with authority issues and a graying thirty-year-old businessman before. When it came to the latter he was sure he could have even convinced her father he was a man after his own heart--a man’s man and ruthless as frick.
She looked over the motel’s furnishings--nicotine-stained 70s wallpaper (smoking rooms were cheaper), the tiny kitchenette with its half-full pot of coffee, the two single beds, and their bags. Her gaze wandered to the black phone with its curled wire leading to the wall. It reminded her she needed to call her mother--tell her she’d arrived, that she was safe, and, yes, she’d be on time. Maybe this time more so with the pronoun they.
She sighed and let her head hit the lumpy pillow, bed like cardboard under her.
She hated--she wasn’t sure what she hated about this. She had responsibilities. She had to care for herself and she saved lives. She had to appease people, appease her customers. She was a steely businesswoman, a carbon copy of her father but with very, very different motivation. She didn’t understand what it was about this half of her family that ticked her off. She could handle her father; she’d done so for years. Him and his wife didn’t care much for others’ emotion and his wife was senselessly emotional, she could get away with not visiting and her father would only give her a wink. Like--Yeah, I know. Women and kids, right? Enjoy your New Years.
The other half of the family expected to find a church-going, meek girl in an appropriate dress with ambitions of finding a rich husband in the rich north and giving him an heir. She didn’t hold it against them but it made her uncomfortable; rather like how Jae made her uncomfortable but ten times worse and in a different way.
It gave the same skin-crawl-y feel, just with a trapped sensation to go with it.
She didn’t think Analise or Jeffrey had gotten the better end of the stick. Jeffrey had gotten lucky--he seemed adjusted enough, if scared of being smote if he uttered the f-bomb, but Analise was too scared to walk the streets on her own.
As she wiped some of her sweaty hair from her face she was saved from making the call herself by an annoying, chirpy ring.
Mother calls.
She dug through her messenger bag and found her dark electric blue flip-phone, it lovingly decorated with duct tape and glitter it had picked up when she’d dropped it in the bedroom of a girl who’d been possessed.
She opened the still-ringing thing and stared at the name. All bold letters and a familiar number. She let out a breath and pushed a bit of hair behind her ear before answering.
“Hello?” she asked, even as she shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot on the crinkling motel sheets. One of the light bulbs burned out--sending the room into half light.
If only the rest of her life seemed so theatrical. It might be fun.
“Hi, honey!” her mom--the grand Emily Browne--said, voice static-y. “Have you rolled into town yet, sweetheart?”
She wasn’t sure what her mother had with endearments. She blamed it on her knitting circle. Old women always talking about young people--grandchildren, mostly--and Emily Browne was part of a knitting circle.
“Yeah. Jae and I are here,” she responded. No code names this time. Code names were accidents waiting to happen. Every lie has to have some truth.
“Lovely,”her mother said. “So, when will I get to meet him?”
“At the reception dinner, I guess,” Angela said. That made sense, didn’t it? It wasn’t like she wanted to just drop in and say--Hey, this is Jae. I’d tell you about his backstory but we didn’t work that out too well. We focused on me like morons. Also, he’s a historian. You want to hear about Nazis gas chambers?
That wouldn’t fly well.
“What?” Her mother sounded--scandalized. It made her nervous.
“What?” Angela asked back, unsure of how else to respond.
“You mean you won’t be staying at the house? We have a room for you! Analise is in the sun room, even, and Jeffrey and Tanya are staying over to help set up.”
No. This seriously wasn’t happening. Right?
“Uh, what?”
“Remember? Where you used to stay as a little girl? I promise it’ll be better than wherever you’re staying and you can get home-cooked meals. I’m sure Jae will appreciate it especially if you haven’t gotten any better at cooking.”
“I don’t know. We already have a motel room rented for the night--”
“A motel room? You definitely have to come over. I won’t allow my baby to stay in a place like that. Anyway, it’s repainted. It’s light gray-blue, now, not pink like we had it before. It also has a nice queen-sized bed--but please wait for a ring on your finger, hon.”
A resounding click followed that last statement and Angela was left staring blankly at the fugly vomit-green flower print wallpaper.
She’d forgotten all about southern passive-aggressiveness.
Of course you’d had to call me baby, Mom. Why do you seem to forget I don’t even know you?
***
“So, I didn’t get much out of the mom. She’s sort of traumatized--one of the boys was her son and the other was his close friend whom she sort of mothered. She didn’t exactly like my nosing around. But I did get some names. Jenna, Francis, Yvon Courtney, and Emma. I hope Jenna is a Jenna Fox. That’d be cool. Otherwise, why do people have such yuppie names around here? I mean, Yvon? Who does that?” Angela listened to the sound of a door closing, a low sound. He must have shut it with his foot. “Of course, I’ll have to find last names for some of them--maybe all of them if Yvon Courtney is a first and middle name combo. Again, who does that? Of course, my ‘rents named me Jae so I probably shouldn’t judge. Also, there’s this place that serves milkshakes down the road, like coffee flavored with chocolate bars and stuff in them. You should try--hey, what’s wrong with you?”
Angela let out a “Nothing” but her mouth was muffled by her pillow so it sort of came out sounding like a sound similar to a cow being strangled, which was unfortunate. A giraffe sort of noise, maybe.
Jae tapped her foot and she automatically jerked it away. She turned to glare at him. “No touching the goods.”
“Feet are ‘goods’?”
“You can get artificial boobs but you can’t really get artificial feet that don’t make you look like a cyborg so yes.”
“That makes no sense.”
“At least I’m not high on caffeine.” She rolled over off her stomach and propped herself up on the pillows. “So, did you get anything else?”
“No scratch marks in the walls or the floor.”
“Sheet rock and hardwood?”
“Yep and rugs in some places. Everything looks perfect. The only problem is that there’s a hole from the roof down. A limb fell during a tornado and they were going to get around to fixing it, but they didn’t. It doesn’t look big enough for a were, but those things are sneaky devils.”
True enough. It didn’t sit right with her, though. “Any signs of forced entry?”
“No. Oh, and get this--they have an alarm system,” Jae said, shaking his head. “The police are flipping out, of course, and the neighborhood’s parents are flipping. I walked by a kid on the bike and the kid got hustled into the house.” Jae gestured down at himself. “Do I look like crazy-organ-thief to you?”
“Not particularly. More like creepy-stoner.”
Jae narrowed his eyes, making her think of an old neighbor’s fat cat after she’d accidentally stepped on its tail. “That’s beside the point. What is on topic is the fact we’ll have to tread carefully. Somebody already kicked the hornet’s nest and the coppers won’t mind picking up a few honey bees if they think they look the part.”
“I’m assuming we’re the honey bees?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that even a real type of bee? Also, I think yellow jackets is more appropriate.”
He gave her a disbelieving look then. “I don’t get how your brain works.”
“It doesn’t. I’m an amazing jellyfish. Welcome your brainless overlord.”
Jae’s mouth twitched at the corner. “So, what is the problem? You clearly had a problem. I mean, I stopped for a drink, but--”
Angela rolled her eyes. “My mother called. She suggested--well, ordered something I don’t particularly like.”
“Tell me more,” Jae said, slinging off his jacket onto one of the chairs. A cloud of dust leaped into the air. Jae didn’t even seem to notice--his eyes were fixed on the television where some mustache-wielding newscaster reported on something she could care less about.
“She said we should stay in the house with the rest of the family. In my old bedroom. Together. I realized she’d find it suspicious if I didn’t cow as per usual--she’d wonder if you were some crazy hippie--so I checked us out. I packed your things for you.” Jae didn’t respond to her either. She shifted then had to wonder why she really wanted his attention. Maybe because she wanted him to share the horror at the thought of them either sharing a bed or one of them sleeping on the floor. She felt rather horrified. They already had to share the same living space and the same bathroom.
Jae left eyeliner smudges on the towel, by the way.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” she said, in reference to packing for him. He just stared intently at the television. “Sorry for the whole thing, though.” No response. “Dude, have you had a seizure? Should I call 911 or mention mandatory sex parties?”
He snapped out of his stupor and glanced over at her, eyes a stark jade green now. “I was trying to watch television.”
“This is important,” Angela reminded him. She didn’t like how high-pitched her voice was.
Okay, going back to the family home with its family problems and neighbors who had never really liked her and all of Jeffrey’s rich friends and--it was stressful.
Jae snorted. “Yeah, sure. I don’t care. It’s not life-or-death. This is.”
“Watching television is--?”
“What do you think would break through windows and also steal organs on the side?”
Angela froze, mind automatically snapping out of panicked-black-sheep mode to hunter-mode. Her mind went through the possibilities. “Witches, werewolves, maybe wendigos but they rarely visit these parts and I don’t think they can keep their victims alive, and miracle-working cannibals.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Why are you asking?”
Jae pointed at the television screen and her eyes latched onto the visuals. A jerking camera roved over the image of a house with shattered windows, bloody smears on the glass.
“What happened there?” she asked, voice hush. If it had gotten to another person or people while she was--
“A few Persian cats were stolen,” Jae said, sounding almost sad. “Cat blood’s on the windows--along with cow blood. Odd combo, but maybe this beast didn’t start on people?”
“Possible,” Angela said. Probably a werewolf. She bit her lip. But why haven’t they left? Most werewolves turned hermits fast--got away from bigger cities like here. Alabama was all a few large cities and rural land. Couldn’t it move somewhere it couldn’t hurt people?
That would solve a lot of your problems but remember, monsters are excellent at denial.
Sometimes she hated her brain’s reminders.
“So, we should probably go to that house as FBI and question the people, eh?”
“Why FBI?”
“Don’t they usually deal with ritual murder?”
“Oh, Angelica, you have the most inventive mind.” Jae smiled for a second, but then his face went awkward. “Shouldn't we check in with your family first? They might ask questions--”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “They wouldn’t really let us leave. We’ll go now. Get on your best disguise. I’ll be in the bathroom making myself look more stone-cold and shark-eyed than normal. Call me when you’re decent.”
