Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (11 page)

“Right, well, Zane called a few minutes ago. I guess he and the rest of the Trio were down at Brennan’s having some of those wings you mentioned before going out to do some ghost hunting. Anyway, they called because, the Hammer situation…hmm?” Sven’s voice faded out then returned. “Mia and Vance are back.”

“What?” I got a beep from Vance on the other line. “Sven, Vance is calling, could you hold a second?”

“Sure.” Sven seemed to perk up, instantly.

“Janie?” Vance’s voice, like liquid chocolate, rippled over the line.

Instantly warmer, I quickened my step. “Hi.” I smiled even though he couldn’t see me.

“Sven called and asked us to come back and watch Vickie. We just pulled up. Any idea what popped up in the middle of the night that he had to take care of? He was very mysterious and that is not like Sven.”

I furrowed my brows. Now that was odd, especially as Sven had sounded like he had no idea why Vance and Mia had come back.

“Nope.” I took a moment to fill Vance in on what had gone on in our conversation before biting my lip. “I’ll try to squeeze it out of him. Can you stall going in?”

“Mia is sick and crabby. I doubt I can keep her outside the shop for long.”

“I will squeeze fast.” I nibbled nervously on my lip. “Hold the line a minute.”

I flipped lines and went back to Sven.

“Sven, what’s up? Something about the Hammer and Vance and Mia are back?”

“Yeah, they popped back up. Oh, well, I am probably going to go out. I mean, if the guys are out, maybe I will go out for a while, too. You guys are always out and about. Maybe I want to go out for once, too.”

That didn’t sound like Sven either. Especially when he yawned again. He did not seem like someone who wanted to go out. He sounded like someone who should go to bed.

“So you are going out? Did you call Vance?” Okay, I admit it. I was not good at being vague. I ask what I want to know. Sue me.

“Yeah, okay, I called them. I want to go out. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. So, you’re going out for a while and Mia will stay with Vickie, who is already in bed. Um, and you said Zane called and said something about going to Brennan’s and that he had a lead on the Hammer situation?”

Then Sven did something I had never heard him do. He giggled.

It was not particularly a good sound. Coming from a man that large, it sounded downright creepy. I shivered and not from the cold.

I suddenly realized that although Mia had known him for years, I did not really know all that much about Sven. I did not feel terribly comfortable with that giggle.

“Yeah.” His voice came over the line in his normal tone. “Zane said you should head to Brennan’s. He and the guys are there. I gotta go. Vance and Mia just came in.”

With that, the line went dead in my hand. I flicked to the other line, but apparently I had taken too long and Vance had given up and taken Mia into Odd Stuff.

Something was off. I couldn’t decide what. I burrowed further into my coat and hurried down the street toward Brennan’s. I wanted to find out what I could before the Hammer issue came knocking.

Two large oak doors and a green and white neon sign decorated by a leprechaun marked Brennan’s as the only Irish style pub in the Harbor. Pushing past two people coming out of the bar, I scanned the bar.

Music thumped around me beating a rhythm that raised my pulse and made me smile. Music has always been desperately important to me. I was not sure if this is true to everyone or especially true to me because of what I was. The bar speakers blasted heavy rock music. Other than me, it didn’t seem like anybody was. My head and fingers automatically moved a bit with the rhythm of the music.

The song playing always seemed like it belonged in a Jackie Chan movie to me. I searched the bar for the Terrible Trio and half hoped that our night turned out to be a less exciting than anything Jackie was used to.

I couldn’t see much from the front end of the bar because of the way the place was set up. Brennan’s started with a long narrow entryway, which held the bar and a row of booths. Once I had walked down that tunnel, I came to a set of steps and a bit of a foyer, which had a cash register where people ordered the wings. I really did love their wings, but I bit back temptation and continued onward for the cause. Beyond the till, the sea of bodies and sound that I wove my way through, three more steps led down to a small area occupied by three pool tables. Near the pool table room, the bar finally widened. And then it also abruptly ended. Luckily, I found Zane there with little trouble.

As the youngest of the Terrible Trio and the most outgoing of the three, he dressed and acted like an emo boy. His entire wardrobe appeared to have been purchased from Mia. His hair was a mass of black spikes tipped in blood red. Super skinny jeans that looked like he had to jump off a building to get into them encased his gangly legs. A button down shirt, tight enough to reveal his ribs, hung crooked on his narrow body, the buttons done unevenly as if a blind drunk had fastened them. It wasn’t my idea of dressing up, but judging by the dark makeup around his eyes, it worked for him.

I smiled and waved to catch his attention through the mob and made my way down the steps to his side. Someone touched my back and I turned to see Chance.

“What are you doing here?” I did not even try to keep the annoyance out of my tone.

“One could ask you the same question. However, since you seem to be a magnet for disaster, it would be easier to assume that if I simply went everywhere things were about to go sour, I could stay one step ahead of you for the rest of our lives.” He smiled his happy smile at me, the one that had initially reminded me of a golden retriever.

I glowered back as darkly as I could. I had to come up with an expression darker than a glower just for Chance. I wrote it down on my mental to-do list. “I am not a magnet for disaster. I am here for a reason. And what could go wrong in a bar?” Even as I said that, I thought of all the things that had gone wrong in bars for me in the past. I bit my lip and elbowed him when he snickered. “So, are you following me or something now?”

“No.” He used the hand at my back to guide me more smoothly to Zane. Instead of taking a direct line, he slid us somehow around the crowd. It worked faster than my usual nudge and pause method, so I cooperated. Next thing I knew, I stood in front of Zane, and his heavy cologne hit me like a wall. I had forgotten that all of the ghost hunters seemed to smell like French whores.

“Hey.” My voice sounded breathless, and I chalked it up to rushing, rather than any reaction to Chance.

“Hi.” Zane stood with his mouth hanging open a moment before he spoke again, and I restrained myself from laughing at his blank expression. “There is some weird stuff going down in Bula tonight.”

“Weird how?” I tried out my interrogation method.

“So, me, Gary and Bob got to the bar and heard this story about the Hammer.”

I nodded and waited for him to continue.

“We figured it was, like, an urban myth or something. Some dude who hits sailors over the head with a hammer…anyway.” He waved a general hand in the direction of the pool tables.

I spared a glance toward Chance only to find that he had melted back into the crowd and was talking to someone.

Zane needed no prompting to continue and was still speaking when my gaze returned to his. “According to the story circulating through the bars, the Hammer went out at the witching hour.”

At my blank look, he rolled his eyes. I know. My best friend is a witch. Mia however, does not need a specific hour to be witchy, so I had to get the hour that was considered witchy so that I could follow his timeline. Turned out the witching hour was three thirty in the morning. How would anyone know that?

I dug my fingers into my scalp at the temples. Never noon. Nothing scary or monstrous or remotely related to the boogieman ever happened at noon. It happened at always some god-awful time at night. I fought off the urge to stomp my foot in frustration and glanced at my phone to see the time. Someone hit my elbow and sent my cell skittering across the bar floor.

“I’ll get it.” Zane shuffled off helpfully.

I turned to see who had knocked it out of my hand. They hit me again. This time full bodied and sent me sprawling over the pool table. I tried to catch myself, but my body shot pool balls flying. I landed with a
thuw-ump
.

My hand landed on the eight ball, and I watched it soar into the air and come down. Pool balls are heavy. It came down in almost slow motion. With nearly beautiful accuracy, it dropped Zane who cheerfully held up my cell phone. He crumpled almost comically to the ground. My cell again skittered across the floor of the bar.

This event would have drawn the attention of everyone in the bar had it not been for the fact that the person who had hit me was in a fight. I glanced over and realized the fight that had started my phone’s journey centered on one person…
Chance?
 

Some drunken guy kept swinging a pool cue at him. Chance grinned like a loon. He stood very still and waved his arms in a gesture that said to one and all,
What, me? I am just standing here
. Then, as the stick swung to crack that smiling, genial face, Chance vanished. He reappeared, unharmed. Stuck his hand out and said, quite cheerfully, “Twenty bucks.”

The drunken man staggered back confused. “Double or nothing.”

Chance ignored the chaos that his game caused elsewhere. People dodged the drunken man’s missed shots. Most didn’t duck fast enough. I had been hit by one of those people. I got off the pool table and apologized to the players whose game I had destroyed.

Ironically, Chance, who was by far more annoying than I could ever be, did not bother anyone. Whereas I, who had my butt knocked on a pool table, which by the way was entirely
not my fault,
caused the real bar fight.

A bimbo in a tight red halter-top came over, shoved me back on the pool table, and yelled in my face with breath that smelled like an ashtray, “Seventy-five cents!”

“What?” I slipped on another ball and tried to get up. I tried hard to keep my feet off the table. Shoes are hell on pool tables. Butts aren’t great either, I don’t care how many pornos say otherwise.

“You owe us seventy-five cents! You messed up our game!”

“By what? Getting thrown on it?” Normally, I would have probably just given her a dollar and told her where to shove the last quarter, but really, poor Zane had taken one of those balls to the head. Yell at Chance not me. Possible soul mate or not, I was so not taking the heat for falling.

“You trashed it, you need to pay for it, or I am going to kick your skinny, trashy butt from here to the lake!”

I got off the pool table again and she shoved me back. Okay, that was twice. I gritted my teeth. I tried to glare at Chance, but he kept playing with his drunken man. An emo girl cooed over Zane, and the other members of the Terrible-Trio had disappeared. I had no one else to back me up. I was at a loss. I got off the pool table and I shoved my attacker.

Unfortunately, she was drunk and unstable on her heels. When I pushed her, even though I hadn’t done it hard, she hit someone else. That someone else then, in turn, spilled his drink on someone else.

The entire bar went nuts.

Drinks spilled. Pool cues busted over heads. People yelled and I scrabbled on the floor with a drunken woman until Chance scooped me up and carried me out.

I chewed him out as he carried me over his shoulder. I ranted and thrashed until he dropped me to my feet outside the bar. I was still yelling when he tilted my face back and kissed me.

I slapped him.

He laughed at me. “Do you really think you’re as nice as you think you are?”

“Yes!” I spit the words at him.

“And you fought why?”

“It was your fault!”

“Really? I was playing around while you played detective. You were rolling around on the floor of a bar with a human for what?”

“She wanted seventy-five cents!” I bit my lip. “Well, there was more to it than that!”

His rich laughter rolled over me. He bent at the waist, he was laughing so hard, and I could see down the hill past him. I smacked his back and shook my head.
Jerk.
 

But then down the hill over his shoulder, I saw something that made me clutch at him. I know, me, clutch at Chance? Who’d have guessed? I held onto his side, and his laughter faded as he searched the night to see what had stilled me.

Dazzling lights lit the Harbor, like, well, the Harbor at Christmastime. Besides the usual streetlamps, fairy lights hung in rainbow hues from nearly every shop window. Bulbs twinkled in wreaths, from strings on eaves, and about every other creative place. The snow made them brighter somehow.

Illuminated at the bottom of the hill, stood my boyfriend and my friend.

“It’s Vance.” With hair flowing like liquid night against a backdrop of creamy snow, I recognized him easily, even at a distance. His movements held the smooth grace of a panther or some other big cat on the prowl. The holiday lights illuminated and framed his strength and beauty. The scene looked like some play that we had snuck in on during the third act.

Julia came from the other direction, her red hair glowing like a beacon. She had first caught my eye. Since Chance and I had come out the back of Brennan’s and stood at the top of the hill, darkness shrouded us. I pulled him farther into shadows, just in case.

Chance took my arm and slid me against his side. The move seemed smooth and natural. I tucked the thought aside, and I kept my eyes on the street below. I couldn’t decide what bothered me about the scene unfolding, they hadn’t even noticed each other yet, but I was fascinated. I held onto Chance’s arm and my breath quickened, some weird sense of impending doom making my heart race and my hands shake. “Nothing’s wrong.” Although I had whispered the words, my heart raced faster, making me a liar, and I didn’t shift from his side. We stayed in the shadows watching.

He tucked me tighter against him and still said nothing.

I wasn’t sure why I had whispered or why I hid. It’s not like we were going to see anything, I knew that...