Golem in My Glovebox (4 page)

Swimming wouldn’t be one of her magical qualities, but it didn’t mean she hadn’t learned somewhere along the way. We’d have to go slowly so she didn’t dive over the side and disappear into the crowd of barking sea lions below.

Meanwhile, the people in the surrounding horde had stopped screaming and formed a wall of cellphones held aloft to record the incident.

“Riley,” I said, pushing him away. “You’re making this worse. I need you out of her line of sight.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure? You could get hurt.”

“No. She won’t hurt me. She’s not as big as she seems. Just hide until I get her settled down.”

He hid around the corner of a pottery shop. I weaved through the crowd until I was within the ring of onlookers closest to the creature. I looked into her orange eyes and opened my filters. Her fear came through at once, tiny, shivery needles against my skin. I concentrated on a warm blanket of calm and projected it toward her. Her rubbery, dark lips parted, and a half smile tugged at her mouth. I nodded and she returned the gesture.

The crags in her face filled in, and she shrank to her original size.

I’d been right. Her clothing wasn’t trashed from her Hulking out, verifying my guess that she hadn’t actually been monstrously huge. The first time I’d seen Maurice transmonstrify, I hadn’t understood what was going on. I freaked out and couldn’t look at him for a while until I could get my head around the idea that his scary monster face had been an illusion. This time I was more prepared. I nodded in self-satisfaction. I was learning.

I turned my back on her and faced the crowd. Their expressions held wonder and awe at the magical transformation they’d witnessed. These people had been touched by magic, and they’d never be the same.

Unless I could convince them it wasn’t real.

I whipped off my purple fedora, letting my damp curls fall free. In my best carnival barker voice, I addressed the crowd while holding out my hat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Amazing Matilda! How does she do it? We’ll never tell! Come back at 3:30 for the next show!” I made my way around the crowd, shoving my hat at them. Change jingled and crisp bills folded. “Come on, everybody! Dig deep! You know this kind of illusion isn’t cheap, and the Amazing Matilda has to eat, too!”

Behind me, the Amazing Matilda snickered.

The crowd, tiring of my constant demands that they empty their wallets into my damp headwear, thinned and eventually disappeared, with the exception of a few stragglers. I grinned and shooed them on their way.

I turned to face the creature. “So. Closet monster?”

She folded her arms and leaned against the railing that overlooked the bay. The half empty bag of pink-and-blue cotton candy dangled from her fist, and her voice came out as sweet as the sugary fluff she was eating. “Under-the-bed monster.”

“Ah.” I stuck my hand out. “I’m Zoey. I assume your name isn’t really the Amazing Matilda.”

She smiled and shook my hand in a cotton-candy-coated grip. “Stacy. Though you can keep the Amazing part. People should call me the Amazing Stacy from now on.”

I wiped the sticky residue on my skirt and looked over my shoulder where Riley had disappeared. “Listen, Stacy. You can’t be here. And the reaper is with me. You’ll have to trust him, okay? He’s not here to hurt you. He’s here to help me get you to safety.”

Her skinny shoulders twitched. “I don’t need to get to safety. I’m perfectly fine.”

“You’re breaking the law, and you know it.” I didn’t want to go all hard-ass on her, but the buddy approach didn’t seem to be working.

She narrowed her eyes. “So what? Are you O.G.R.E.? You don’t look like it.”

I took a step closer and spoke to her in a low, steady voice. “I’m the Aegis. I far outrank the O.G.R.E. patrol. I suggest you get in the car without making a fuss. The reaper is here to keep me safe. And I’m here to keep you safe. Do you understand?”

I had no idea if I was higher on the food chain than the missing Hidden police of the O.G.R.E. squads, but I had a suspicion that I was higher up than just about anybody but Bernice. I’d never interacted with another Aegis, so I didn’t know if that was normal or if it was because I was the only one left—having skipped my training with Yoda on Dagobah, I had no clue. And I didn’t care.

Stacy swallowed and glanced around. “You’re sure the reaper won’t eat my soul?”

“As long as you do what I say, you’ll be fine.”

Reapers had a bad reputation among the Hidden. Mommy monsters threatened kiddy monsters with the Big Bad Reaper coming for their souls if they misbehaved. Usually, I did my best to dispel these ridiculous rumors. Today, I used them to my advantage.

And honestly, Riley wasn’t really doing the reaper thing anymore. He’d been reassigned to look after me for the time being. He retained all his reaper powers, but no longer received the emergency texts in the middle of the night.

Stacy followed around the corner and quivered next to me when we stopped in front of Riley. “This is Stacy,” I said. “She won’t be any more trouble. Will you, Stacy?”

She shook her head, never taking her eyes off Riley. “No, sir.”

Riley kept his face neutral, but I could tell he was amused with Stacy’s meek demeanor. Or maybe he thought it was hilarious that I was using him to keep her in line. Either way, he could laugh all he wanted. It worked. “Come with me,” he said, and turned toward the parking garage.

Stacy hesitated and gave me a nervous glance.

“Go on,” I said. “I’m here with you.”

She followed Riley, and I brought up the rear. I didn’t trust her not to try slipping away the minute she had a chance.

Once we were buckled into our seats and the car was moving toward home, I relaxed. I found it highly unlikely that she would bail out of a speeding SUV. I pulled out my phone and tapped Bernice’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“Hey,” I said. “Stacy, the lovely under-the-bed monster, is on her way back with us.”

Bernice expelled a lungful of air. “Thank you. I’ll try to find a damage control team to get out there.”

“Already took care of it.” I hugged my money-loaded hat in my lap. “I think I cast enough doubt to keep people guessing.”

“Am I on speaker?”

“No.”

“Good. We’re in real trouble. I may need your help again soon. With all the O.G.R.E. squads dissolved and Art and I unable to leave, I’m depending on my freelancers to do all the legwork, and they’re notorious for going off on their own.”

She wasn’t kidding. Darius was good at being a soul catcher, but he was freelance for a reason. He preferred to keep his own hours and choose what jobs he took. And I’d bet my ass, if he found any sign of where my mother had been taken, he’d drop whatever he was doing for the Board and go after Mom.

“You’re using nothing but soul catchers?” I couldn’t imagine what sort of rebellious chaos that would cause. No wonder she was a wreck.

“I’ve had to resort to pulling a few reapers from their jobs to run interference and step in, but I can’t afford to take too many away from their jobs. As it is, Riley’s strictly for emergency reaping so he can keep you safe. I can’t have souls stacking up. That’s inhumane.”

“You can’t keep up like this, Bernice. Why haven’t you replaced the managers you’ve lost?” She and Art were doing the jobs of thirteen people between them. Something had to change.

“We’ll be interviewing for new board members soon, but it’s a slow process. There are only so many trustworthy folks out there. I’m running out of options until we can rebuild the squads.”

“What do you need them to do, exactly?”

“The O.G.R.E. squads require management. When the head of The Covenant Enforcement Department died, nobody was sending out orders to the overseers of the squads anymore. Without orders, they—I don’t know—got bored or something. The overseers drifted off, and the squads unraveled.”

How many other departments had fallen apart and stopped doing their jobs? How many of the Hidden weren’t getting the help they needed from the Board, now that nobody was left to give them that help? We had to fix this.

“Now that word is out that nobody is policing anything,” Bernice said, “the Hidden are taking advantage of it. I need my freelance teams to go out and find the overseers and give them their orders so the police squads can be reassembled.”

“Do you need us to go out and do that?” I glanced over my shoulder at Stacy. Bernice wanted to keep this quiet, so I couldn’t come right out and ask if we should track down the scattered remains of our local O.G.R.E. squad. It kind of sounded like fun. Getting out of my own backyard today had been a nice change of pace.

“Of course not. I need you safe.” She paused, and reluctance leaked through the phone. She didn’t want to ask us for help, but she was running low on options. “But if anything further happens in your immediate area, I might need you again, at least until I can get a team out there to reassemble your local patrol. They’re working their way up to you from Monterey, so it probably won’t be too long.”

“No problem. We can do that.” I stifled my disappointment. “Anything else?”

“Just stay out of harm’s way as much as you can. We don’t know who started this in the first place. By killing the department heads, they caused a huge disruption. My guess is having Hidden running around unpoliced was at least part of the goal. Sit tight. I don’t want to lose my Aegis, too.”

“I understand. I’ll call you back once we get Stacy settled.” I hung up and dropped the phone into my purse.

Riley glanced at me. “What did she say?”

“She said we’re awesome and she can’t live without us.”

Stacy shifted in the back seat. The tulle of her tutu rustled against the leather seats. She cleared her throat. “Was that...When you said ‘Bernice,’ you didn’t mean Mrs. Abernathy, the Head of the Board of Hidden Affairs, right?”

I craned my neck around to look at her. “Yes. Do you know her?”

“Whoa.” Stacy sat back against the seat, deflated. “Of course not. Nobody knows Mrs. Abernathy.”

“I do,” I said. “And now she knows you.”

Stacy’s green face lost some of its color. Her voice was hoarse and whispery. “How much trouble am I in?”

Riley and I exchanged a silent look.

“Probably quite a bit,” I said. “How about you tell me what you were doing out there in broad daylight, jeopardizing the entire Hidden community.”

She shrugged and looked down at her hands. “I got tired of never seeing anything during the day. I wanted to see all the people.” Her gaze met mine, her big eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Have you ever just watched people when they’re having a good time? They sparkle with it. Like the shops with all their shiny goods in display cases. Kids shouting and laughing. Street performers making magic, and crowds pressing together to see. I wanted to be a part of that, even if it was only for today. Just once, you know, before the O.G.R.E.s came back.” She bowed her head and picked at her fingernails. Her shame pattered at me in speckled drops of heat.

“How did you know they were gone?” Part of me wanted to strangle her for putting everyone in this position. Part of me wanted to dive over the back of the seat and give her a reassuring hug.

She picked at her neon-green nail polish. “Everybody says so. They say that’s why the Collector went on tour and stole so many people. Nobody’s in charge anymore. But I have a cousin in Anaheim. He said the O.G.R.E.s there were gone for a while, but now they’re back. I figured this would be my only chance.” She peeled a strip of polish and looked around. After examining the clean floor of my brand-new car, she cracked the window, then tossed the green strip out the window and rolled it up again. Her face was solemn. “So, what will they do to me?”

“We’ll see. Maybe you can work it off.”

She nodded, eyes huge and serious. “Okay.”

Up until that moment, being the Aegis had felt more like I was a customer service representative or a court advocate. I helped people. I fought for them when something wasn’t right. I took care of their needs.

I never thought of my position as one of authority.

Well, except under the right circumstances, like when I banished an incubus to his home dimension. Or told the Leprechaun Mafia to get the hell out of my town. Or when I threatened the head of the city council of Sausalito.

And then there was that first time I met Bernice. Completely unimpressed with her job title, I came damn close to bitch slapping her for taking me prisoner.

Okay, fine. I guess I did—under the right circumstances—take the bossy-pants stance.

And I was about to do it again.

* * *

I’m not sure why I thought Maurice would be pleased to have an under-the-bed monster staying with us. At the risk of sounding racist or speciesist or whatever, I’d kind of wondered if they would already know each other, since they were almost the same kind of creature.

In fact, he did recognize her immediately. But he wasn’t at all pleased.

He looked her up and down and scowled. “It was
you
parading around in front of humans and endangering all of us?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “Hello, Maurice. Looks like you landed on your feet here.”

He shook his head in disgust. “I swear to the gods, Stacy, you don’t have the brains of a mollusk. You were raised better than that.”

She folded her arms and lifted her chin. “You don’t get to tell me how to live. And you hardly have judging room, my friend.”

I didn’t have to be an empath to feel the tension spark off the two of them. Whatever their history was, it wasn’t good. Which made me feel a bit squidgy about what I was about to do.

“Actually, Stacy, he does get to tell you how to live. At least for now. You are now officially under his care.”

Stacy froze, the green draining from her face. Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, as if fighting to keep her objections from bubbling up her throat and out her mouth.

If I didn’t know and love Maurice as much as I did, my blood would have turned to ice water from the look he gave me. Or maybe battery acid.

He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes. “Zoey, can I speak to you alone, please?”