Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) (6 page)

“I doubt Victor and Miranda will consider me much of a loss,” said Thea.

“But that’s it,” Alecto added. “I’m not sparing any more employees on this. And keep your expenses to a minimum. I agree the circumstances are odd, but I think what you’re most likely to find at the bottom of it is a lot of personal nonsense that’s irrelevant to our problems.”

“We’ll see, I guess,” said Thea.

She repeated the same thing six hours later, when she was once again in the dining hall, this time for dinner with Cora, Elon, and Nero. “So I guess we’ll see. I’m going to start with Seth Bates.”

“He’s the car killer?” Cora asked.

“Yeah.”

“What about the kid?” Nero dragged the same tater tot through his ketchup for the third time. He was distracted by something. “Talbott, right?”

“Right,” said Thea. “I need to find out where he is now. I doubt anyone will let me near him no matter what kind of story I come up with, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“You could always try the truth,” said Cora. “Tell them you’re the one who saved him. Maybe he’ll want to see you.”

“Doesn’t mean they’d let him,” Thea said. “But I guess I could try that.”

“You know, I saw the picture of your grand rescue on the internet today,” said Elon. “A much less blurry version, but I still don’t think you can tell for sure it’s you. It’s gone pretty viral, though.”

Thea groaned. “How viral?”

“You probably weren’t even trending this hard when you were with Baird Frost.”

“Shit,” Thea muttered.

“What are they saying?” Cora asked. “Alien?”

Elon nodded. “Mostly alien. A few are going with demon.”

“What, not an angel?” Cora looked offended on her friend’s behalf. “She saved the kid’s life. What demon does that?”

Elon shrugged. “I think it’s the wings. We definitely have demon wings. Angel wings are supposed to be feathery bird wings, you know?”

“How would you know what kind of wings angels have?” Cora asked.

“I’m just saying, that’s usually how the pictures are. I—”

“I’m going to propose to Flannery.”

They all stopped and stared at Nero. Cora started choking on her beer. Elon slapped her back a few times.

Finally Thea said, “Really? How… nice.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cora wheezed.

Nero crossed his arms and glared at his sister. Thea had always found his coloring rather unfortunate, the lavender skin clashing with the bright red hair. But the deep purple blush spreading over his face and neck now were doing him even less favors than usual.

“I would have done it anyway,” he said.

“Well, that’s an odd way for you to declare your love for my cousin,” Thea said. “What do you mean
anyway
?” She stopped and almost choked, herself. “She’s not pregnant is she? Please tell me she’s not pregnant.”

At least her discomfort broke up the tension a bit. Nero grinned at her. “You don’t know much about fury reproduction, do you?”

“Huh?”

“She’s not pregnant.”

“Let’s get back to what you meant by
anyway
,” Cora said. Her voice was controlled—but barely.

Lord knew Thea had had her share of problems with her cousin, but she was starting to feel offended by Cora’s horror at the idea of having Flannery for a sister-in-law. And she was surprised at her friend. Cora had never treated Thea like she was inferior while Thea was still a human.

But not in
your
family, huh Cora? Boy, did you turn out to be racist. Creaturist? Whatever. Prejudiced.

“I meant, this would have happened eventually,” Nero said. “And you, dear sister, would have had to find a way to be happy for me instead of acting like a bitch.” He raised his voice over both Cora and Elon’s protests. “
But now
… I’m not convinced she’s safe out there.”

“So you want her to come live in the colony so you can protect her? Just because of this Hemlock Heights thing?” Elon asked.

“Basically,” said Nero.

Elon shook his head. “I want to be on your side, buddy, but that doesn’t seem like a good reason to get married.”

“Nothing seems like a good reason to get married to you,” Cora snapped.

Ah, now we see the real reason. It’s not that you’re creaturist, or at least not entirely. You’re jealous.

“Like I said, I’d have done it either way,” Nero was saying. “But the timing has to do with that, yes.”

“But we have no reason to think they’re just targeting anyone involved with the superhex!” Cora said.

“We can’t be sure they’re not, either,” said Nero.

“You’ve only been together what?” Cora asked. “Three months?”

A lot less time than Cora’s been with Elon. And Nero is her younger brother.
Thea glanced at Elon.
Something tells me you’re in for it, buddy.
Judging by the flat line of his mouth, Elon was inclined to agree.

“Long enough to know her, and my own mind.” Nero gave Thea a stern look. “And before you say anything, she’s grown a lot in that time.”

Thea threw up her hands. “Hey, I didn’t say a word.”

And she kept on not saying a word, while Cora continued to try to talk her brother out of it, and Elon tried to soothe his girlfriend and keep the peace. Thea was in no mood to pick a side. Mainly because she didn’t know whose side she was on. Nero was right: Flannery had grown. For the better. Thea wanted to be happy for her.

But the idea of her marrying Nero, moving into Hexing House. It wasn’t done often, but it wasn’t entirely without precedent, either. They’d give her a job. Would it be better than Thea’s?

Would they start a family?

Good lord, would Flannery want to become a fury, too?

But it does mean Pete is free. For good.

Thea pushed the thought away. That kind of complication was the last thing she had time for.

She was relieved when dinner finally ended and they all said their tense goodbyes. Thea wanted nothing more than a warm blanket and a soft pillow.

Unfortunately, she was to have neither. Especially not the latter.

The first clue that something was wrong was the light coming from her bedroom. Thea had come a long way since her days of putting bells on her doors and checking the locks three times (no more, no less) whenever she left. But she hadn’t gotten so nonchalant as to carelessly leave lights on.

The second clue was the smell. It was faint, but definite: blood.

Her bedroom door was closed, and for a second Thea was back in her vision, seeing that crack of light underneath.

The monsters are back.

She recoiled, afraid.

What the hell, Thea?
You
are the monster. Nothing in that room can hurt you.

Not entirely convinced this was true, she reached out and opened the door nonetheless.

But she was right about that much: it certainly couldn’t hurt her. It was beyond either hurt or pain.

The bedside lamp was on, the better to illuminate Thea’s pillow, which was slick with shiny blood. More blood than she would have expected to come from the tiny thing lying in the center.

At first she thought it was a mouse, but then she saw the wings. Detached, spread out a few inches to either side of it.

There was a dead bat on her pillow.

A dead,
headless
bat.

Traditional means of investigation, like searching for fingerprints, turned up nothing, but Gordon from Security assured Thea that he would have his best people looking into the bat incident. She considered calling Holgersen as well—Mr. Fanatic, at least, had trespassed on the campus before—but knew Alecto would never allow the intrusion of human authorities in the colony.

Personal Services had a new pillow and fresh linens in her residence within the hour, but Thea went to spend the night at Cora’s anyway. Elon was already there, and Nero came as soon as he heard.

Of course Nero was beside himself, taking this as further proof that those associated with the superhex lab were being targeted. But a call to Flannery assured him that nothing unusual had happened on her end.

“Nero, come on,” Thea said. “This was clearly the
Concerned Citizens For A Fury-Free County
.” She used finger quotes around the name, pitching her voice to sound like Caulfield’s, making Cora laugh. “They blame us for what happened at Hemlock Heights.” She remembered what Holgersen had said to her. “And thanks to that picture, I’m the face of Hexing House now.”

“Maybe,” said Nero. “But that means one of them not only got onto the campus—”

“—which we already know Mr. Fanatic can do,” Cora reminded him.

“—but got into your residence,” Nero finished.

“Knew which one was your residence in the first place,” Elon added. “Does Mr. Fanatic even know your name?”

Thea frowned. “You know, I have no idea. But it’s not unlikely that someone said it in front of him at the protest.”

“Even so,” said Elon. “Going from a face and maybe a name to an address in an enchanted location is a pretty big leap. Even if we do want to blame the Concerned Fury-Free Whatever Society, Gordon needs to be looking for someone on the inside who helped them.”

The incident was certainly disconcerting, but assuming it was part of the aftermath of the Hemlock Heights situation, solving the larger problem would solve the smaller one. So while Thea left Gordon to investigate the break-in, the first thing she did the next day was try to set up a visit with Seth Bates.

Not only could she not get access to him, she couldn’t even get a straight answer as to where he was. She did call Holgersen then, although she didn’t hold out much hope he’d return her message.

One person she did manage to get on the phone was Boyd Lexington’s brother-in-law. Thea told him she was a journalist. Much to her surprise, he didn’t even hesitate to give her permission to call on him and his wife.

“She’s been talking to everyone who’ll listen,” he said. “Won’t do you any good if you think you’re going to get to Talbott, though. He’s not staying with us, and I’m not at liberty to tell you where he is. He’s off limits to the media.”

Thea had figured as much. But there might be some way to get information out of them while she was there—one way or another. If they had a personal item of Talbott’s she could touch, maybe she would get a lucky glimpse of him, and be able to work out where he was from that. Or better yet, if they had such an item on hand, maybe she’d even be able to pilfer it. It wasn’t a very nice thing to consider, but if she could use it to encourage visions, to see what Talbott himself saw, she might be able to get what she needed from the boy without having to get to
him
at all.

She picked up a human illusion at RDM. Fifteen minutes later, she sat in a company SUV and stared at herself in the rear view mirror.

Thea hadn’t seen herself with a human face in quite some time. She expected to have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the face
Celebrity!
magazine had once named one of the hundred most beautiful had brought her a fair amount of pain. On the other hand, it was the face she was born with, the one she’d always associated with herself. She was bound to feel wistful.

But she didn’t feel wistful. Her feelings weren’t mixed at all. She was only repulsed by it.

Thea repositioned the mirror and started to drive.

She marveled at how little the nearly two hour trip bothered what had once been her bum leg. Langdon’s tea had been nothing short of a miracle. Thea arrived in a neighborhood not unlike Hemlock Heights in the early afternoon, when the sunshine showed the well-groomed gardens to their best effect.

The Bowman house was big and neatly maintained, like the Lexington house had been. After she showed the Bowmans passable credentials (these had been provided by the Field Office), Marshal Bowman showed her to the living room while his wife Laurel made coffee. Neither of them seemed to recognize her as Teddie Gideon, celebrity girlfriend, or as the alien-demon from Hemlock Heights.

“I’ve been working from home since it happened,” Marshal said, as though assuming her first question would be why he was home in the middle of the day. “Laurel’s been quite fraught, of course, and we’re getting so many questions. At least you had the manners to call instead of just showing up at our door.”

He glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “Like I told you on the phone, she wants to talk to everybody. Absolutely everybody. Doesn’t matter who they work for. Trying to get the word out. Boyd was her favorite brother. They were very close. She wants justice for him.”

“That’s understandable,” said Thea. “Everyone deserves justice.”

“She doesn’t think the police are doing enough. Or looking in the right places.”

“What do you mean?” Thea asked. “Which places are the right ones?”

His jaw tightened. “I’ll let her go into her theories. But I’m warning you right now. Sometimes she gets a little overwrought. If that happens, the interview is over. Understood?”

“Understood,” said Thea.

Laurel came in a few minutes later, carrying a tray of coffee and cookies. “Please, help yourself. And whatever my husband’s been telling you, feel free to ignore it.”

“Laurel,” Marshal said, but she waved him off.

“You think I’m more delicate than I am, Marshal. I want to talk about this.”

“You’ve made that pretty obvious.”

Laurel took her own advice and ignored her husband as she sat down on the couch beside Thea. “Now, where would you like to start?”

Thea opened her mouth, then remembered she was supposed to be a reporter, and paused to take out a tablet she’d borrowed from Cora. “Do you mind if I record? I can just type notes instead, whatever you’re more comfortable with.”

“Record away,” said Laurel.

“Thank you. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask about Talbott.” Thea held up a hand to ward off Marshal’s disapproving look. “Not about where he is or anything. Although I’d love to hear how he’s doing. I’m very sorry for what he’s gone through.”

“He’s being well cared for,” Marshal said tightly. Laurel only stared at her hands.

Thea nodded. “That’s good to hear. What I wanted to ask is, someone at Hemlock Heights told me that Talbott had been talking about monsters. Do you think that has anything to do with this picture that’s been going around? Of whoever rescued him from the house?”

“I don’t know what to say about that picture,” Laurel said with a shake of her head. “It’s the first thing everyone asks about, of course, but I don’t know any more than you do.”

Actually, you know a great deal less than I do.

“We’ve heard the same rumors you have,” Marshal added. “It’s an alien. It’s a demon. The president of the Hemlock Heights HOA called to tell us that these creatures live in some sort of commune and sell curses. And that one of those curses is what happened to their neighborhood.”

Did he, now? Who else has he been calling, I wonder?

Not that Thea was surprised Caulfield was pushing his agenda wherever he could. He and his Concerned Citizens wouldn’t be happy until Hexing House was out of business.

Or until they’ve left a dead bat on every pillow, at least.

“But you don’t believe any of that?” she asked.

“Oh, I might believe in a curse,” Laurel said. “The rest is just hysteria, I would think.”

“What makes you say that?” asked Thea. “About the curse, I mean?”

“Because I know my brother. And that wasn’t him.”

Marshal shot an uneasy glance at his wife, then said to Thea, “Don’t worry, she doesn’t mean she thinks he was replaced by an alien or something.”

“No, I’m not blaming pod people,” Laurel agreed. “But
something
happened to him. When Talbott talked about monsters, he was talking about
Boyd
. He kept saying
Boyd
turned into a monster.”

Daddy’s monster.

Not a visiting monster, then, but a monster
inside
Daddy? And Mommy and Miss Wanda, too?

Thea took a sip of coffee and considered this. A little kid seeing an adult manifesting hex-level sins might certainly think that person had turned into a monster.

“What do you think Talbott meant by that?” she asked.

“I can tell you exactly what he meant,” Laurel said. “Talbott was scared, and not just of his father.” She raised her chin, and quite obviously avoided Marshal’s eye as he let out an exasperated sigh and muttered something under his breath.

“Hemlock Heights was… something was going on there,” Laurel said.

“What do you mean?” asked Thea.

“We were at a party of Boyd and Cindy’s, a couple of months or so ago,” Laurel said. “A little after the new year. Almost all of their neighbors were there. They were pretty close on that street, you know. They were really lucky because so many of the kids were the same age. And almost all of the adults got along.”

Thea nodded. That matched what she’d seen on Megaira’s television just before the test. It was clear that the mothers were good friends. “Sounds like an ideal situation.”

“It was,” Laurel agreed. “And they hung out together all the time.”

“So what happened at this party?” Thea prompted.

“Nothing
happened
, exactly, at least not that I saw, but Marshal and I both agreed that some of them were acting awfully strange.” She finally looked at her husband, and it was a sharp look. “And don’t you dare try to deny it now, because you said so at the time.”

Marshal just shrugged and kept drinking his coffee.

Laurel turned back to Thea. “Boyd was an easy-going guy. But he’d started to get this temper lately. He kept yelling at the kids. I mean
really
yelling.
Scary
yelling. Not even his own kids! And his next-door neighbor, Wanda, she was really close friends with Cindy. But I swear to you she was
hitting on
Boyd. Like,
obviously
hitting on him. To the point it was embarrassing. And Cindy…” Laurel shrugged. “She just couldn’t be bothered with any of it, to tell you the truth. I wondered if she was on something.”

“And none of this was normal behavior for any of them?” asked Thea.

Wrath. Lust. Apathy.

“No,” said Laurel. “They were all acting completely out of character.”

They were all manifesting sins.

“What about the kids?” Thea asked. “Were any of them acting strangely?”

“I didn’t know most of them well enough to say, but Talbott and Charlotte, his sister, you know, our niece—” Laurel stopped, took a sip of coffee, cleared her throat. “Charlotte was just six years old.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Thea said, then waited what she hoped was a respectful amount of time before repeating the question. “Was Charlotte acting strangely, too?”

“Charlotte was—” Before she could get any further, Laurel covered her face with her hands, and abruptly left the room.

“She loved Charlotte,” Marshal said quietly. “She loved them all, of course, but Charlotte was like the daughter we couldn’t have. She insists on talking to you people, but it’s a mistake. Every time. I have to stop letting her.”

“What does she think happened?” Thea asked.

“You want to know what she really thinks?” Marshal shook his head and sighed. “She thinks it’s some kind of government or corporate conspiracy. Like someone accidentally let loose some toxic waste or something, something that messed with all of their brains. And now whoever’s responsible is trying to cover it up.”