Golem in My Glovebox (24 page)

“She wasn’t asleep, was she,” Riley said.

Gris shook his head. “No. Yes. She was on the phone. I hid from her and listened. She told the person on the other end that your car was parked out front and that you’d arrived sometime in the night. Then she laughed. It didn’t sound like her laugh at all. If I had skin, it would have chilled me. After she hung up the phone, she climbed back into bed and started snoring. A few minutes later, the alarm went off and she stretched, as if she hadn’t been up five minutes earlier.”

“Did she see you?” I asked.

“No. I hid behind the door and watched. She looked out the window and saw your car. I’d swear she was surprised to see it, even though she’d obviously called someone to tell them it was there.”

“That’s messed up,” Riley said.

Gris nodded.

Of all the options I’d thought of for how Bernice and Katy were communicating, I hadn’t thought of the phone. I mentally slapped my forward. “So, now we know. Good work.”

“Good work? I was dishonest. I was ashamed to tell you about it. And now, I don’t know if I can be trusted, since I’m connected to Bernice, and she’s connected to Kathleen Valentine.”

I frowned. “Gris, no. You did exactly right. And I’m pretty sure you’ve severed your connections to Bernice.”

“We can’t know that. I should have stayed there. I’m endangering the entire mission by being here.” He folded his arms and gazed out the window.

To be fair, I was concerned myself. As far as we knew, he could turn into a zombie and start making phone calls to Katy, too. But I doubted it.

“How about I check, Gris? I’m sorry I pried before—I didn’t really think of it as prying, since you were new at having emotions. But now, I want you to know I won’t press anything on you or dig around in there without your permission. If you’re concerned about connections to Bernice or Katy, I think I’ll be able to see it if I’m looking, since Katy would be using similar mojo to mine.”

Gris’s face brightened. “Would you? That would be such a relief.”

I nodded. “My pleasure.” I probed his emotional campfire, but this time I spread out and really felt my way around his psyche. Most people are a jumble of emotions outside the core, immediate feelings—petty resentments left over from earlier in the day, ancient baggage from when they were children, nagging problems accumulating depth, and learned, automated emotional responses to their immediate surroundings. Not so with Gris. His outer layer was clean and orderly. He’d come so recently to the emotional arena, he had no learned responses or accumulated baggage.

The exception to this orderly, pristine outer circle was a thin thread, pulled taut and leading behind us in the direction of headquarters. I touched it with a tendril of my own emotions, and it vibrated like a guitar string. I smelled Bernice’s hairspray and tasted oatmeal cookies.

“Well,” I said. “I have good news and bad news.”

Gris blinked at me, silent.

Riley drew his eyebrows together and glanced at me. “Good news first, please.”

“The good news is there are no raisins in the oatmeal cookies Bernice is currently eating.”

“I like raisins,” Riley said.

I made a face.

“You felt her,” Gris said, sounding as if he would cry if he had tear ducts. “I
am
connected.”

“Yes.” I hesitated. There was an enormous risk involved in what I was about to offer him, and I wasn’t crazy about the options. “You have a choice now. And you need to know, this is
your
choice. I will stand by your decision, no matter which way you go.”

“You can sever the connection?”

I nodded. “I think so. There’s no evidence, though, that Katy can control you through that connection.”

“Even if she can’t control me, Bernice can probably see and hear through me if she thinks of it. Then she can tell her mistress.”

“Maybe.” I said. “If that’s the case, we can just be more careful until this is over.”

“Or you can just cut her off,” Riley said.

“Yes.” I gave Gris the most serious face I could. “But we don’t know what that will do to you. It could be what keeps you alive. If I cut that cord, it might be that I unplug you from your power source.”

“That would be problematic,” Gris said, his expression unchanged. “May I think about it?”

Relief washed over me. “I would rather you did. It’s a big decision.”

Without a word, he climbed down the dash, over the heater vent, across the radio dials, and hopped into the glove compartment. He gave me a brave smile, nodded and closed the door.

* * *

We drove past a hundred tiny towns, farms, and fields. I tried to make a game of counting how many times I spotted the Golden Arches, but I grew bored with it. We stopped to fill the tank, and I drove for a while until we needed gas again. Then Riley took another turn at the wheel.

Did I really say I wanted to get away? Had I really wanted a break from my house?

“Worst vacation ever,” I said, somewhere in Indiana. The sun had gone down a while ago, and the lights of an anonymous small town twinkled in the distance. “I haven’t had a single churro or funnel cake.”

“I’m waiting for my first mai tai with an umbrella in it.”

Gris tried to be helpful. “You had a few beers back in Idaho.”

I blinked. “We were in Idaho? That seems so long ago.”

Riley scratched his chin, as if thinking back over the distant past. “Yes. We had onion rings. But the beer didn’t have tiny umbrellas. I definitely remember that.”

“Good times,” I said, gazing out the window. “Good times.”

My phone rang, interrupting my daydreams of my own bed, favorite coffee mug, and lack of imminent danger. Mina had already arrived in Michigan.

“How much longer till you get here?”

I looked at the clock on the dashboard. “We’re almost to the border, so we’re another hour, hour and a half out.”

“No you’re not. You’re almost here.”

“Did she move Rob to another location?”

“No. As far as I can tell, Rob’s okay for the moment. We have another problem to deal with first.” Mina’s voice was sharp, and filled with urgency.

I groaned. “Of course we do.”

“You’ll see a sign in a few minutes for Coldwater Lake State Park. That’s where I need you to go.”

“It’s the middle of the night. Will we be able to get in?”

“Just turn off when you see the signs. You’ll know exactly where to go. Just follow the news vans and RVs.”

“News vans? Shit. What happened?”

“The last thing the Hidden community needs. They’ve trapped a lake monster in a fishing net. Humans finally have concrete proof.”

Chapter Seventeen

Mina hadn’t exaggerated. We turned into the park entrance and followed a line of cars past a golf course to an area along the side of the lake. Huge spotlights shone on the water from truck beds and the roofs of Jeeps and SUVs on the shore, and from helicopters circling above the water. This sort of attention had to be the worst possible scenario when it came to keeping the Covenant intact. The situation had to be fixed fast or we’d have to start hoarding bottled water and cans of chili for our future apocalyptic survival.

A raspy, echoing howl reverberated against the surrounding trees. Something enormous slapped the surface and churned the water. The low murmur of the crowd grew louder, and the bodies lining the shore moved closer to the edge. People shoved each other and craned their necks to see.

Despite the time being a few minutes after midnight, the place was bright as daylight, and far busier than I imagined the area would be even on the fourth of July. The space wasn’t exactly meant for cars, but we’d all driven in anyway. My old VW would never have made it, but Mabel didn’t complain too much.

We hopped out and started toward the commotion. Mina separated from the rear of the crowd and met us halfway.

“This is horrible.” I said.

The lake monster splashed again and let loose a heartbreaking, mournful cry.

Mina’s face was grim. “I’ve never had to deal with damage control this severe. I have no idea how we’re going to cover it up.”

“How are they keeping it there?” Riley squinted, trying to look over the heads of the onlookers. “I can’t make out any barriers.”

Mina scowled. “They’ve surrounded her with fishing nets. And she’s still caught in the net that caused this in the first place, so she can’t jump over and escape.”

Riley frowned. “I’m going down there to get a closer look. Are you coming?”

I shook my head. “In a minute. I want to talk to Mina first.”

He hurried into the mass of bodies, eager to get a look.

The excitement from the crowd dripped through my filters like hot wax. Sweat beaded along my hairline, and my palms itched. “So, we have two problems. This is a rescue mission, as well as a cover-up.”

She nodded. “And this isn’t my territory, so I don’t have all the connections I’d normally have with local law enforcement and the media.”

I had no idea the Board had its claws so deep in human affairs. “So, what do we do?”

“First, we talk to the person who
does
have those connections.” She pointed at a tall, slim man, leaning against a nearby tree with his arms folded.

The man paid no attention to us as we came toward him. His dark eyes watched the lake with an intense stare, as if calculating a million different ways to remedy the situation if only someone would ask. He wore his soft, blue shirt unbuttoned about two buttons more than what was socially comfortable. His stance made him seem like a cowboy out of the old west and the lack of hat and spurs was a mere oversight.

Something about him gave me a mad case of the shivers. I wasn’t sure if it was the I’ll-die-if-he-doesn’t-ask-me-to-the-dance or the holy-shit-we’re-all-going-to-die kind. That ambiguous shiver increased when he moved his gaze from the water to me.

If this guy turns out to be an incubus like Sebastian
,
I
will totally stab him in the eye with the nearest stick.

He straightened and stuck out his hand. “You must be Zoey. I’m James.”

His hand was cold to the touch. Not icy, exactly, but not warm. It felt less substantial than I would expect flesh to be, too. The darkness in his eyes drew me, and I didn’t want to look away. I realized after a minute that I was still shaking his hand.

I let go. “You’re the head of the local O.G.R.E. squad?”

“I was.” His voice was thick and sweet like honey. “I’ve talked to Mina. I guess I just need to sign something and we’re back in business?”

I nodded. “You’ll need to speak with Gris. He’s got all the paperwork.”

He followed me back to the SUV, and I could feel those dark eyes on me every step of the way. I’d dealt with the fear induced by a mothman. I’d weathered the forced lust caused by an incubus. This was different from either of those things. Less intense. But very real.

I swung around to face him once we reached the car. “What flavor?” I asked.

He blinked at me, and I realized how long his lashes were. “What?”

“What flavor of Hidden are you?”

He smiled. “Oh. Shadowman. See?” He took a step toward the back of the car and melted away into the dark, as if he hadn’t been there. A second later, he stepped out of a shadow on the front end of the car and tapped me on the shoulder.

I jumped, and he chuckled.

“So, you travel in the shadows. Anything else?”

He shrugged. “I’m pretty good at math, and when I whistle the theme song to Gilligan’s Island my neighbor’s cat shows up.”

“No super powers?” I hoped my face didn’t look disappointed, but I’d have expected more out of a guy who made my insides all wobbly. It had to be something he was doing.

He wrinkled his forehead. “Traveling in the shadows isn’t good enough?”

I opened my mouth, but couldn’t find anything to say in response, worried that I’d offended him.

James laughed. “I’m messing with you. Yes, I’ve got some other tricks. Fear-based stuff, like your reaper friend over there.” He nodded at Riley, who was weaving his way toward the lake. “I don’t use it much. Mostly, I just like to hang back and watch until I make my move.” He winked at me.

He
actually
winked at me.

Not sure how to take that last line, I ignored it and opened the car door. Gris sat on the center console between the seats, waiting. He hopped to his feet and bowed.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Griswold Octavius Barnabus Ozymandeus Fauntleroy Cornelius Abernathy.”

James quirked an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged. He slid into the passenger seat and shut the door for his contract negotiations.

Mina and I moved away to give them privacy. I directed my gaze to the brightly lit lake. “How do you normally cover up a sighting?”

She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “Normally, we don’t have a mass sighting with film coverage to deal with.”

“Sure,” I said. “But if it’s a small sighting, say a party on a pontoon boat. Then what would you do?”

“Well, we’d debunk it. Send in a team of gnomes with some really large carp, for instance. Make sure whoever’s investigating the sighting sees the carp lined up so they look like a lake monster, then let them see it was an optical illusion.”

“Okay. And what about the footage the pontoon people got on their phones and cameras?”

“Don’t you know about the distortion field?” She tilted her head at me, puzzled. “Didn’t you get
any
training in all this?”

“I don’t stay put long enough for official training. What about the distortion field?”

“When a Hidden creature is photographed or filmed, the image is always changed in some way—blurred, grainy, too far away to make out details.”

“That explains a lot.”

She nodded. “You’ll never see a clear shot of a Bigfoot. Not unless the world changes and Bigfoots are no longer considered Hidden.”

I jerked my head toward her in surprise. “Can that happen?”

“The narwhal was Hidden, once. Now it’s mainstream.”

I wondered if that was part of the natural evolution of the Hidden—creative spark into live creature into evolved creature separate from human thoughts to part of the human world. No, that couldn’t be right. Some of the creatures I’d come in contact with, like the sphinx and the harpies, were ancient.