Golem in My Glovebox (21 page)

But something stank at headquarters where the problem originated, and I intended to find out what. We’d overlooked something there, and I was certain it was what we needed to finally give us a solid lead. We had to get ahead. I couldn’t get so close to finding my mother and be too late to save her. I wouldn’t even entertain the possibility.

I shut off the tap and tested the water with my toe. Hot. I hoped it would be hot enough to burn away the images in my head of dead Aegises in gruesome poses. I stepped in.

Before I could get the other foot in the water, Riley burst through the bathroom door. “Get your clothes on. We’ve got to go.”

“Oh, come on. I didn’t even get in yet.” I stuck the other foot into the tub, in case it was all I was going to get.

Riley handed me a towel, though I wasn’t wet above mid-shin. “Seriously. Get dressed. I’ll go pack. We have to leave
now
.”

I folded my arms over my bare breasts and scowled. “First tell me why.”

His face was pinched and pale. “We can talk in the car. Please, Zoey.”

I once went hiking with a friend, and she stopped on the trail, inches from a snake. While she talked, she kept shifting closer to it. I asked her quietly to come stand by me. The tone of my voice was meant to keep her from being alarmed, but it only served to freak her out worse, which made her flail around and stomp her feet. This, of course, upset the snake, which promptly bit her in the calf. What followed was a mad dash to the hospital for a dose of antivenom.

Riley was using that same tone of voice with me.

Once I realized that, I knew whatever was going on was bad. Very bad. I stepped out of my gloriously hot tub, pulled the stopper to let the water out, and did a quick once over on my damp legs with the towel.

Satisfied that I wouldn’t be a problem anymore, Riley hurried out to gather our stuff.

Within five minutes, we were back in the car, driving down the road.

The muscles on Riley’s forearms bunched and flexed while he drove, and his face continued to hold that pinched quality that bordered on panic. We got on the highway pointed back to headquarters before the muscles relaxed and his breathing appeared more natural.

He reached two fingers into his shirt pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper. I took it from him and opened it.

The paper was a page torn from a coloring book, bright crayon sun shining on two princesses in poofy pink ballgowns. Under the princess with the bright red hair, she’d scrawled my name in bright blue. The princess with yellow hair bore the name “Katy.” Purple letters scrawled in the margins made a personal note.

I
fucking love dinosaurs!
Do you?
See you soon
,
sister!

My hand shook. “Where did you find this?”

Riley swallowed hard, then glanced at the rearview mirror, as if afraid someone might be following us. “On your pillow.”

I let that sink in. “On my pillow. How the hell...”

“She was in our goddamn room.”

In my room. Touching my stuff. Sizing me up. I knew at some level that she was, ultimately, after me, and that the other Aegises—especially my mother—were the bait. I hadn’t really accepted it, yet. I was so worried about trying to find her before another person died that I hadn’t accepted my role in it all.
I
was the target. And she’d been playing with me from the beginning in a twisted game of hide-and-seek.

It was too much.

“Pull over, Riley.” My voice quivered.

“I’d rather get some distance—”

“Pull over.”

He parked on the shoulder. I bolted out the door and bent over the gravel, throwing up my long-ago breakfast. Before I straightened, Riley was already there, pulling my hair away from my face and rubbing his palm over my back.

“You okay now?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I kind of freaked myself out.”

“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you while we were still in the room.”

“Holy hell. What if she’d been in there, hiding somewhere?” I bent over and heaved again.

Riley stood with me, patient and steady, while I relearned how to breathe. He never let go of my hair until I stood up straight.

Now that’s a heroic boyfriend.

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin Riley had thought to grab. “It’s not a party until Zoey yacks,” I said.

For some odd reason, I felt better after that—more in control. I drank a few sips of water, and we resumed the long, overnight drive ahead.

No more wild goose chase. No more fumbling around in the dark. And no more pretending to be the hunter when I was really the prey. That bitch was going down. She’d pushed too far in her games, and I wasn’t playing anymore.

For the next several hours, I pored over the files I’d swiped from the Board’s half-ass prison guards. I didn’t learn much more that I didn’t already know, other than the fact that gremlins are especially fond of cornflakes for dinner. Kathleen’s file had pictures in it. I skimmed past the gory photos of her wrecked victims. I couldn’t learn anything from it, and I had nothing left in my stomach to hurl. But I stared at the black-and-white photo of her from the fifties. Her eyes held my attention, mostly. They didn’t strike me as belonging to a psychopath. I searched those eyes for a long time, looking for answers, a connection to the empathic gift we shared, a similarity to the young girl I’d seen. I found nothing but echoes and the certainty that anyone could become something ugly and lost, no matter what their origins. The me of today was no different than the woman in that photo.

I read until my eyes burned in the waning light, then rested my head against the window. Crink had the answers, I was sure of it. If I could get him to talk to me, he could tell me who let Kathleen out of her cage. I hoped with all my heart it wasn’t Bernice.

And then I would hunt down the psychotic empath bitch and drag her back to her cell by the hair.

“Nobody puts baby in the corner,” I said as I drifted off to sleep.

* * *

We drove through most of the night, switching back and forth when we stopped for gas and taking turns napping. My heart wasn’t much into collecting souvenirs, but while we were in Branson, I’d scored a chicken magnet and something called a “hillbilly toothpick holder” to go with our book of oddities. For this leg of the trip, gas was all I needed to buy.

When we pulled into the compound, it was about four in the morning. That didn’t matter to Art. He stood on the porch waiting for us in his old-man bathrobe and slippers.

The minute we were out of the car, he hurried down the steps. He grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me over. “Are you alright? Did you actually see her or was she gone already? Do you have the note?”

I tilted my head and looked at Riley. “What exactly did you tell him?”

Art dropped his hands and gave Riley a dirty look. “He didn’t tell me much at all. Sent me a text saying Kathleen had put a note in your room and you were coming back tonight. Then I couldn’t get either of you to answer your phones.”

I frowned and pulled my phone from my purse. “It’s off. I didn’t turn it off.”

“I did,” Riley said. “I was afraid that might be how she tracked our location. I shut off both our phones while I packed. Just to be safe.”

Art scowled at him. “You could have said so, you know. I’ve spent the last eight hours pacing the floor.”

“I’m sorry, Art. I just wanted to get Zoey to safety.”

Art exhaled and nodded. “Fair point. Next time tell me first.”

We grabbed our bags and hauled them inside, not even waiting for golem valets to show up. Life on the road was getting old. I was also tired of wearing the same outfits over and over.

Once inside the house, my shoulders relaxed. I hadn’t realized I was so tense. A lot can be said for feeling safe and comfortable after driving all night, even if you aren’t running away from danger.

Bernice was still in bed. Art hadn’t woken her to be part of the welcome party. He did that all on his own, which I found interesting.

“Does Bernice know we’re here?” I asked, setting down my bags in the empty hallway.

Art shook his head. “I didn’t tell her you were coming.” His face was serious, and he glanced left and right. It was a subtle movement, but I saw it. Art was worried about the golems.

“Come inside, Art,” I said, opening the door. I set my purse on the table and Gris climbed out.

“Home again, home again, jiggidy jig.” He didn’t look happy about it.

Art gave Gris the stink-eye. “I think I’d rather talk to you without him here.”

I reached out to Gris with my empath gift and scanned him. The emotional fire in him roared with life.

Gris bent to climb down the table leg, and I held my hand up to stop him. “No. Stay here. Art, Gris is safe. I promise.”

Art gave me a skeptical look. “If you’re sure. But things around here aren’t right.”

I nodded. “We know. Tell us what you think is going on.”

He slumped into a chair by the window. “I think Bernice is in on all of this.” He gave us a weary look. “Go ahead and argue. Tell me I’m crazy.”

Riley sat across from him and folded his hands. “We don’t think you’re crazy, Art.”

Art’s chin jerked. “You don’t?”

I shook my head. “All the problems seem to have originated from here. The prison is run by golems. And did you know there’s only one prisoner in there and it’s a gremlin who should have been released two and a half years ago?”

He frowned. “I thought the prison was empty.”

“Nearly empty,” Riley said. “Crink the gremlin seems to have fallen through the cracks.”

“That’s not possible.” Art rose from his chair and strode across the room. “There’s an automated system in place. The only people who get forgotten in there are people who are supposed to be forgotten, like Kathleen Valentine.”

“She’s calling herself Katy these days.” I stopped him in his pacing and handed over the coloring book page.

Art examined the paper, his lip curled in distaste. “She’s not well. We have to find her and lock her back up before she hurts anyone else.”

“We need to talk to Crink,” I said, taking over Art’s vacated seat. He’d gone back to pacing, so he wouldn’t need it anytime soon. “Whoever let Kathleen out of her cell would have had to walk past Crink to do it. Unless she broke out on her own. Either way, the only way in or out is past that gremlin.

“If anybody can tell us anything about that day, it’ll be him.”

Chapter Fifteen

Normally, gremlins are full of life, chatty as a small-town barber and in constant motion. Crink wanted nothing more than to hide in the corner of his cell and blend into the wall.

Art and Riley wanted to come into the cell with me, but I made them wait out in the office with the lifeless drones that were filling out pointless paperwork. If the golems hadn’t creeped me out before, these would have sealed the deal. They had one prisoner. One. No one new came in or out, since the place was generally on lockdown and the cops had all wandered off duty for the last several months. What the hell were they doing? It was as if they were all caught in a loop of some kind, performing the same task over and over in order to keep up appearances. Which made no damn sense, since there was no one around to witness it.

I unlocked the cell door and stepped inside. Everything was clean, at least. Golems probably came in every day. The noises from the kitchen down the hall implied far more activity than I would’ve thought necessary to feed one knee-high gremlin.

The whole thing was weird. And the weirder it got, the more it pointed at Bernice as the center of it all.

I closed the door and sat on the edge of the neatly made bed, silent and with my hands folded in my lap.

After a few minutes, the shimmer of the camouflaged gremlin shifted in the corner.

I sighed and cleared my throat, and the smudge in the corner froze.

Another few minutes went by, and he moved again, drawing a few inches closer to me.

I bent my head and spoke in a soft voice so as not to startle him. “I wish Crink were here to talk to me. I had good news for him. And a new shiny.” I sighed again.

The smudge of color on the wall moved toward me again, then stepped onto the floor in hesitant, slow motion.

His fear tasted old and stale, as if it had become habit, but his curiosity smelled like fresh lemons on a saltwater breeze. Incarceration hadn’t broken Crink—only bent him a bit.

I shifted on the bed and stretched my legs, crossing them at the ankles. Crink stopped moving for a moment, then came closer, reached out an appendage I assumed was his hand but could just as easily have been his foot, since I was making an effort not to look directly at him. He touched my bare leg, then jerked back.

Smiling, I looked directly at him. If I focused, I could see him, despite his color-matching and shimmery qualities. “Would you like to go home, Crink?”

He caught his breath and backed up. “Oh, no. Crink must stay here and be sorry for stealing the shiny.”

I shook my head. “No, honey. You’ve been sorry for a long time. You don’t have to stay here forever.”

His eyes brightened and turned green as they filled with tears. “Crink is bad.”

“No, Crink is not bad.” His sadness and needless guilt made my heart hurt. “Will you talk to me about something?”

He nodded. “Crink will talk to the nice lady.”

I wanted to hug him so much, but that would probably have alarmed him, so I kept my hands to myself. “Can you remember a long time ago, when you first got here? Did another lady come by here sometimes?”

His head bobbed with enthusiasm. “Yes! That lady came every day. She didn’t talk to Crink, but Crink watched her go by.” He paused and climbed onto the bed to sit next to me. “Then the lady stopped coming. Crink never sees anybody but the robot people now.”

“Do you remember the last day she came? Did she leave by herself?”

“Crink remembers. The lady left alone. But then the girl left, too. Crink didn’t know about the girl until she went away. That made Crink sad. Girls have shiny things and like to play fun games.” He gave a deep sigh. “No fun games for Crink. Crink is bad.”