Club Monstrosity (4 page)

“But if the press picks up the story and runs with the Invisible Man angle, whether or not someone actually knows about us and killed Ellis to match a story about him isn’t really the problem, though, is it?” Alec had finished his plate in record time and shoved it aside while he wiped his mouth, again with Natalie’s napkin. “Are you going to eat that other piece of toast?”

Natalie glared at him as she dragged her plate closer and started eating. “I can’t believe they took that angle. Every time a monster story goes into the press, people start thinking about all of us again. Hell, our movie rankings even go up on IMDb.”

Kai blinked. “You watch our movie rankings on IMDb?”

“Um, yeah,” Natalie said with a shrug. “I like knowing where we all sit in the mass culture. I would hate to be caught in the middle of a torch-bearing mob without being prepared.”

“Wow, you really
do
need therapy.” Alec laughed. “When was the last time that happened to you?”

Natalie sighed as she thought back to all the times she’d been chased by torch-wielding mobs. “Um, maybe 1940. Right before I moved to the United States, I guess.”

“So, like, seven decades ago,” Alec said with a shake of his head. “Seriously, you’ve got to live in the now.”

“I’m
trying
to make sure the then and the now don’t suddenly overlap in really horrible ways,” Natalie snapped, defensive.

“Okay, okay,” Kai said with a raise of her hands that signaled surrender. “We get it.”

“Doesn’t seem like either one of you gets it,” Natalie muttered.

“Well,
I
do,” Kai insisted. “It’s not like I want to collapse into a heap of bones, or get stabbed and sent back to the Land of the Dead, or any of the twenty other ways I’ve died in people’s stupid movies and books and television shows.”

“Getting shot by silver bullets isn’t really fun, either, I would imagine,” Alec conceded with a little shiver. “I’ve seen it happen to other Weres over the centuries and it seems like it’s really,
really
painful.”

Kai sighed. “And you’re right, any time the press starts spouting off these stories, or a new monster movie comes out, or, God forbid, Halloween comes, everyone gets all up in the business of monsters, even if they don’t know we exist in real life, which of course we do not want.”

“No, we do not,” Natalie agreed.

Kai looked at her evenly. “So, anything you can do from your position to reduce that possibility?”

Natalie shrugged. “Grimes already filed the autopsy report, I’m really just an assistant. I can try to intercept the blood work and make it look drug-related. That might confuse the issue and maybe even bore the press, but I can’t make any promises.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Kai said. “Do your best.”

“That leaves us with one more issue,” Alec said with a frown. “What about the others?”

Kai covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. “Oh God,
them,
don’t even make me think about it. You know what will happen. Linda will freak out, Drake will decide it’s the new Dark Age and start thinking he can stop raiding blood banks for his fix . . .”

“Yeah, mass hysteria,” Alec agreed.

“But we
should
tell them, if only because they’re going to notice when Ellis doesn’t come back to group.” Natalie sighed.

Kai shrugged. “True. We’ll just have to hope that Blob manages to make his way back to us tomorrow night so that
he
can deal with their fallout.”

“Yeah, Blob,” Natalie mused. “I wonder if he’s okay.”

Alec nodded and Natalie was surprised to see that he actually seemed to be concerned.

“Don’t get yourselves all worked up,” Kai said with another eye roll. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“But both of them missing at the same time—” Natalie began.

“Is probably just some wacky coincidence,” Kai said with a dismissive shrug that made Natalie wonder why she wanted to make this go away so much. “Who knows why Blob bailed on us, but he’ll come back. Once he’s there, we’ll review the how-not-to-get-discovered tips and things will go back to normal again.”

“Ha,” Natalie snorted. “Normal.”

“Well, as normal as they ever get for us.” Kai pushed out of the booth. “Gotta run, can’t be late. See you two tomorrow night, okay?”

“Sure,” Natalie said to Kai’s retreating back before she turned her attention to Alec. He hadn’t moved from his place right beside her, even though Kai’s spot in the booth across from her was now wide open.

“Um, you can go,” she said before she took a bite of eggs. “Kai’s wrong, I don’t need a babysitter.”

“I don’t think you do,” he said with a shrug. “I already said that, remember?”

She shifted, uncomfortable that he
still
hadn’t moved from the seat right up against her.

“So Kai is blowing this off,” Alec said as he sipped his soda down to the ice until it made that awful sucking-air noise through the straw.

Immediately their waitress swept by and took the glass for a refill. She also winked at him over her shoulder, and Natalie scowled. He got free refills, too? Asshole!

“Yeah, well, Kai is probably right,” Natalie muttered. “It’s a coincidence.”

He leaned back a little and caught her eye. “But you don’t really think so, do you, Natalie?”

She hesitated for a moment. She hardly knew Alec, didn’t really
want
to know him and his wolfishness. But she couldn’t exactly ignore a direct question, especially since she was trapped in the booth.

“No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” she admitted after a long pause. “But I’m a pessimist.”

He smiled. “I’m an optimist. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence, either.”

“No?” Natalie said, once again surprised that she and Alec would see eye-to-eye on anything. Or that he was capable of taking an issue seriously one way or another.

He shook his head. “But until we go to the meeting tomorrow, until we know what the deal is with Blob and the others . . . there’s no use worrying, right?”

She bit her lip. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

He grinned. “So what do you want to do today? Statue of Liberty? Wax Museum?”

Natalie stared at him. “Um,
no
. I’m just going to finish up and go home. Take a shower. Go to bed. I have to work tonight.”

He nodded, but his smile faltered a little. “Gotcha. Well, thanks for breakfast. See you tomorrow. But if you change your mind . . .”

He tossed a card on the table as he stood, and then he was gone with just one more grin before exiting the door.

Natalie picked up the card. His name, his cell phone. How many girls had he given this to over the years? Still, she shoved it in her bag and ate the rest of her eggs.

4

As Natalie hurried down the stairs toward the meeting room underneath Holy Heart Church the next night, she was certain of only one thing: she wasn’t late. Perhaps for the first time in her life.

She would have been proud of that fact if not for the reason she had managed to haul herself out of bed on time and get down to the church.

The Invisible Man-slaughter.

She had dreamed of Ellis and his death during her restless hours of sleep both the previous day and that afternoon. When she woke, the nightmare continued. The story had been top news on every local channel while she was getting ready. Sure, the newscasters told the story with a wry tilt of their heads and the occasional wisecrack transition, but they were still
telling
it. Over and over.

Her stomach turned at the thought.

She reached the door of the meeting room and stopped. Through the glass, she saw everyone already seated in the circle.

Jekyll and Hyde were separated, literally sitting halfway across the room from each other, which normally meant they were arguing over something. Anything. Over the years Natalie had heard fights on everything from who had taken the remote the night before to why Hyde insisted on rough sex with college coeds.

Linda was seated next to Jekyll with her head in her hands. She’d been scratching, and little lines of green had already made themselves known through the makeup she wore.

Even Alec looked scruffier than ever, and he had shadows under his golden eyes that told Natalie he hadn’t been sleeping any better than she had.

Drake was still wearing that ridiculous cape, despite the fact that he’d been told a dozen times that it foolishly drew attention to him. Normally that didn’t bug Natalie, but tonight she wanted to slap him for it.

Kai was the only one not seated. She stood against the wall across the room, somber in another of her high-end suits. She was shaking her head over and over, like she was upset or dealing with everyone else’s upset.

Were they doing this
without
her?

“No!” Natalie cried as she burst through the door. “I’m early! You started without me even when I’m early?”

The heads of everyone in the circle swiveled to look at her and she stopped again, this time inside the room. From the terrified and upset faces, she could see they weren’t discussing their usual bullshit monster woes. Slowly, she reached back and closed the door.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“Why?” Linda sobbed. When she lifted her head, Natalie could see closer up that the makeup smeared her face and made her scales visible around her eyes. “
Why
is this happening?”

Natalie swallowed hard and stared first at Alec and then at Kai. Now that she was inside the room, she could see the Mummy Girl was pale and drawn.

“You told them about Ellis?” she said softly.

It wasn’t like she was looking forward to telling the group about Ellis, but she couldn’t believe Kai and Alec had done something so important without her. Especially since
she
was the one who had found out about his death.
She
was the one who had told them. And
she
was the one who would be falsifying reports and risking her job (and perhaps some jail time; she wasn’t totally clear on that even after several Internet searches).

Linda lifted her face from her hands and stared at Natalie in confusion. “Ellis?”

“I didn’t say anything to them about that,” Kai whispered, and she actually looked a little hurt, which made Natalie feel like shit.

“Then what—?” Natalie began to ask, and turned toward Alec.

He got up and ran a hand through his scruffy hair. As he moved toward her, there was a gentleness to him that scared her. Like he wanted to break really bad news carefully.

“Natalie, Blob . . .” He caught himself and sighed. “
Bob
is still missing. Drake couldn’t find him when he did the welfare check.”

“He didn’t answer his door,” Drake explained. “Or call me back when I tried his landline or his cell.”

Natalie blinked. She’d been so focused on The Invisible Man-slaughter situation, she hadn’t really thought that Blob wouldn’t be found. She’d sort of depended on the very opposite.

“Wh-what?” she whispered.

“What about Ellis?” Linda asked as she got to her feet.

Natalie ignored her question, now entirely focused on Blob. “Where could he be? He wouldn’t just blow us off.”

“
What happened to Ellis?
” Linda screeched again, and this time she actually took a rather menacing step toward Natalie.

Natalie took an instinctual step back. If she wasn’t so confused and worried, she might have been impressed. Little Linda could be monstrous when she wanted to be, after all.

“You should tell them what happened,” Kai said with a shake of her head. “With Blob . . .
Bob
still missing, they need to know everything.”

Natalie sighed. Here she had been pissed not to be involved in telling the group about Ellis, but now that it was her responsibility, she didn’t really want it. She shifted from foot to foot and only when she caught Alec’s eye did she stop. He smiled at her and the expression was actually encouraging. Like he believed in her or something.

“I—I’m surprised none of you saw it in the paper or on the news the last couple days,” she began with a nervous laugh, though she found the situation anything but funny. “But I guess we’re more the Jerry Springer crowd than the CNN crew.”

No one else laughed at the joke; in fact, both Kai and Jekyll looked offended by it. Natalie took a deep breath. No more stalling. She had to just do this.

Slowly, she told the group about Ellis’s death, including the part about how it matched the way he died in The Story. When she was finished, she was surprised that it wasn’t Linda who started sobbing again, but Dr. Jekyll. He all but crumpled in his seat, covering his face with a hand-stitched handkerchief and wailing into its silky folds like his grandmother had died or something.

“I—I had no idea you and Ellis were so close,” Natalie said softly as she stared at the man in his expensive suit all but rocking back and forth in his chair like a child.

“They weren’t, my dear,” Hyde said with a sniff of disgust for his brother or alter ego or whatever. Still, he crossed the room to him and placed a hand on Jekyll’s trembling shoulder. “But—”

Natalie stared. Hyde was never nervous; Hyde was never anything but bold. Now . . . he looked
scared
.

“But?” Alec encouraged.

“Jekyll has an aversion to poison, you see . . . and that’s how he . . .
we
die in our dreadful little book by that hack Robert Louis Stevenson.” Hyde sniffed again.

“Well, shit,” Alec said as he pushed to his feet and started pacing, more wolfish than ever. Normally it was all a joke to him, but this time his tone was sharp. “None of us die in particularly pleasant ways in our stories. Kind of comes with the monster territory. Shot in a field like a dog, stabbed in the heart with a stake, burned alive . . . It’s pretty fucked up all the way around, so stop crying, rich boy, and let’s figure out what we need to do.”

Natalie stared at the Wolf Man in surprise. She didn’t know Alec had that kind of forceful leadership in him. He was normally such a flirt, never serious. He looked pretty damn serious now.

“What do you suggest, Wolfie?” Drake asked with displeasure. “I went to his apartment, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, that was some welfare check.” Alec snorted. “You knocked on the door and then called? Please. I could do better in my sleep. I say that some of us go over there right now and check it out a little . . . closer.”

“What do you mean, ‘closer’?” Natalie asked.

He shrugged, but there was a glint in his eye that somehow said
breaking and entering
. Natalie bit her lip. She was already right on the borderline of big trouble in her own job if anyone found out about what she’d done to Ellis’s test results.

“I mean
closer,
sweetheart. And while Natalie, Linda, and I do that, the rest of
you
split up and check out some of Blob’s usual haunts around the city,” he continued. “Ask questions, see if anyone has seen him.”

“In New York, you expect people to know who he is?” Drake asked. Sarcasm dripped from his every word.

Alec arched a brow. “He’s four hundred pounds and goes to the same places every week. Yeah. I think they know him.”

“Wait, why are Natalie and I coming with you?” Linda gasped, her fake made-up skin actually paling at the thought. “I don’t want to go to Blob’s apartment!”

“Well, want to or not, you’re coming,” Alec said as he turned on her with a rather monstrous glint in his eye. “I need Natalie just in case Blob is hurt. She works with bodies and probably knows something about medicine.”

“I don’t, actually,” Natalie interjected, but Alec didn’t seem to care. He just continued talking like she hadn’t said a word.

“And I need
you,
Linda, for two reasons. First, you’ll be our lookout. You’re so nervous, you’ll make a great one. Plus, you probably know Blob the best since you constantly harass him. We might need your insight once we get there.”

Linda blinked like she wasn’t sure whether to argue with that or thank him, but he didn’t let her answer because he continued.

“The rest of you . . . pizza joints, buffets, every place Blob likes to go. Now let’s do this. Text to keep in touch, and whoever finds him wins.”

Kai blinked. “Wins what?”

“I don’t know, something fantastic,” Alec grumbled. “Now let’s go, okay?”

The monsters all stared, but to Natalie’s surprise, they actually started moving toward the church doors, phones out to exchange numbers and find directions to the restaurants Blob liked best. There were a lot. He often waxed poetic about food before, during, and after meetings. If you needed to know a restaurant in the city . . . ask Blob.

“Wow,” Natalie said as she moved to stand by Alec. “Where did that come from?”

He stared at her in confusion. “What?”

“Who knew you were a take-charge kind of guy?”

“Alpha wolf, leader of the pack, all that shit. Eh, I can be lots of things when I want to be.” Alec waved off the comment. “But why bother? It’s a lot of work and wrangling. So, are we ready to go, ladies?”

Linda glared at the two of them, her green eyes sparkling with lizardy anger. But she followed them when they started for the door and the three subway transfers that would eventually take them to Blob’s shitty apartment across town.

The hallway would have been a strong contender for Dingiest Throughway in New York. The mess didn’t really bother Alec, although his sensitive nose wrinkled at the smell. At his side, Natalie had her eyes focused straight ahead and she wasn’t blinking. Every once in a while she would make a little noise in her throat when she saw a roach carcass or nearly touched the smudges of dirt and God knew what else on the walls.

Still, her measured reaction was way better than Linda’s, who whimpered and gagged as she walked behind Alec and Natalie toward Blob’s door.

“Why are you freaking out?” Alec asked. “You’ve been here before, right?”

Linda shook her head. “No. Bob always met me other places.” She hesitated. “I just want to wait outside,” she whined for the third time since they’d entered the apartment building.

Natalie made a new sound in her throat, a growl that would have impressed the worst of the horror writers. Without warning, she spun around to pin Linda with a very monstrous look.

“Hey, Fish Sticks, we’re here and we owe it to Blo—
Bob
to at least check it out. You claim to be a friend of his and you bug the guy enough that you owe him more than most of us. So shut the hell up and get with the damn program.”

Linda folded her arms and stared in stunned silence for a moment. Then she shook her head viciously. “Fish Sticks?
Fish Sticks?
No way, I won’t go. Not with you.”

Natalie took a menacing step forward and Alec caught her arm. The last thing he needed was a girl fight in the hallway. A girl monster fight, anyway. That would certainly attract the attention of the neighbors.

“Here, let me handle this,” he said to Natalie, and stepped in front of her.

“Linda, you don’t want to help your good friend Bob, then don’t. Be a little bitch and step back outside onto the street and wait for us.”

Linda’s eyes lit up with relief and Alec raised his hand so that she would let him finish before bolting.

“
But
 . . . just know that there’s a fishmonger who lives right down the street. And I would guess he’s always got an eye out for a fresh fillet.”

“Alec . . .” Natalie shut her eyes and shook her head in exasperation, but she was covering a smile.

Linda’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah, make fun of the Swamp Dweller, totally cool.”

Alec shrugged. “No less cool than bailing on a friend who’s done nothing but help you, but whatever.”

He turned his back on her, put his hand on Natalie’s arm, and the two of them moved toward the end of the hall again. After a couple of steps, Linda rushed to join them.