Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (29 page)

I darted down the alley. At the end of it, I came to a parking lot that opened to a series of docks. At the end of one dock, something moved. I shot down that direction without thought. Aside from an innate ability to see the obscure, I was also great at not thinking before acting. Two of my character traits, or flaws, as the case may be.

I had forgotten how much faster than normal I could move. I had not really adjusted to the fact I could run at a pace that would make the regular Janie look like a snail. I arrived at the end of the dock at the same time as a stranger did. Then I saw Sven. I opened my mouth to ask him what he was doing because it had to be Sven—no one else that big hung out in the harbor or had a leopard print blazer that they would pair with a pink scarf—when I saw the hammer.

Like a child’s toy, it dangled from Sven’s huge hand. Sven, our gentle giant. I closed my mouth and screeched to a halt, my arms seesawed for a moment. I slid to my butt on the ice, sat there, and stared before my mind caught up with my vision. Then I scrambled to my feet. “Sven!”

Sven did not turn around, but I guess that made sense. As he was about to bash a man’s head in, this was obviously not our Sven. This was Harold, a ghost who had taken over poor Sven, and I had been too dumb to read the signs and see it and help.

“Harold!” I shouted the ghost’s name and hoped for a better response.

Sven turned around and his face held none of Sven’s genial or gentle expression. Harold, if I were to judge him by the look on his face, was a much harder man than Sven had ever been, and hopefully would ever be.

I moved toward Harold-Sven and held out a hand. Here was my moment. Here was my chance to save the day.

I sang.

Old Mother said I would save the day so the key had to be me. I sang at full blast. I sang of the sea, the Van Morrison that my dad had sung, and Sven stared at me and his mouth came open and after only a moment he went slack jawed and blurry eyed and fell under my spell.

Singing the ghost out seemed easy. I began to draw him down. I pulled on the very electricity that made his mind function, the synapses that wired his brain. I sang and used my gift, if you want to call it that, to call the ghost out of him. I wondered how much I had to take to get the ghost out and wished that kind of thing came with a manual.

“Janie, No!” Chance yelled in stereo, in my head and out loud.

I stopped singing abruptly and both the dockworker and Sven fell to their knees. Had it worked?

“What are you doing?” Chance touched my arm as he spoke and everyone else landed with a thud on the dock, making me turn in surprise away from him.

“Did you pop everyone here?” My voice echoed my awe.

He seemed winded.

“Yeah, I did.” He placed his hands on his knees and fought to catch his breath.

“Have you ever carried that many people before?”

“No, and please don’t do something that requires me to do it again. Why are you trying to kill Sven?”

“I’m saving him. Found the Hammer.” I waved my hand to signify the dockworker, Sven, and the hammer, all neatly laid out on the dock, if anyone would pay attention to the hefty evidence.

“Harold.” Harold dressed in a big Sven suit interjected, and I smiled at the ghost for being helpful.

“Yeah.” I turned back to Chance. “Harold was cursed with bad luck when Leticia asked him to get married and he said ‘no’ on leap year a really long time ago. He tried to earn money to marry her but then there was an accident with a hammer. Since then he has hit people on the head every leap year and taken their money for a wedding he can’t have to get his luck back. Does that sum it up, Harold?”

Sven-Harold still didn’t look so good since I had drained him. But he nodded.

“And you found all this out how?” Mia took a step toward us, then paused, thinking better of it.

My eyes sought Vance. “The book you gave me.”

He smiled at me and we shared a moment.

“And you sang at him why?” Chance was not deterred from his line of questioning.

I sighed dramatically. Did I have to explain everything? “Because Old Mother said I was the key and I would fix it. She was right, it’s a ghost. So if I am the key and a siren, well, this is pretty much all I do.” I looked at him and around at the group as if this were obvious.

“Not exactly.” Frank clapped his hands, drawing my attention. “You also brought together a wonderful cast of supernatural creatures that otherwise would never hang out together, especially not in a spirit of friendship. I think perhaps what she may have meant by ‘key’ could be that you brought together the needed pieces of the puzzle. Chancellor, if you would be so kind as to bring the last pieces of the puzzle here, we can perhaps solve this mystery?”

“Which pieces?” I was the hero, darn it. Not some supernatural bridge. I did not want the role of worldwide weirdo who brought freaks together at the speed of light.

“Your mother, for one.”

I glared at Frank. “What could my mom possibly do to help us?”

But with a pop and shift of the air, my mother, Queen Mab of the Fairies, stood there with an unhappy expression.

“And why am I at the lake?” Her tone held regal command.

“We seem to have an issue, and this muse thinks you can help us.” My tone held irony but no regal command.

“Almost done.” Frank rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Chance, could you call one last person?”

Chance didn’t appear fond of the muse now either. I moved to wrap my arms around him from behind.

Chance placed a hand over my arms, nonverbal thanks for my support. “What do you mean ‘call’?”

“I believe you know a friend of mine. Fate?”

“You want me to call Fate?” Chance laughed abruptly. “You think she will come?”

Frank nodded.

Chance shrugged, and then threw back his head. A spear of light came out of his mouth and shot to the sky.

I tilted my head back to stare at the beam of light then backed away from Chance.

When he closed his mouth, the light disappeared and silence fell over the dock.

Everyone stared at Chance, who seemed as calm as he had a moment ago.

“What?” He quirked a brow as if nothing unusual had happened.

I shivered. Okay, maybe he was my soul mate, but the guy was one odd potato.

A sound like a bell chimed across the water to echo on the dock in a dull, low fashion. I recognized it, and Chance did too because I heard him mutter, “I’ll be damned.”

A figure began to materialize in a foggy way. Nothing like how Chance appeared in one fantastic blast, it was more a slow building of light and then she was there. Tiny, short like an elf, she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Black with shoulder length hair, she had laughter on her face and a friendly expression. Her smile seemed to be for me and me alone. She was beautiful.

I smiled back before I really thought it through.

Then the fact that I smiled back at Fate herself occurred to me and I reconsidered. Was it wise to smile in the face of Fate? Hmm. Probably so long as I did not laugh, it would be okay.

As if she knew the train of my thoughts, she laughed a merry sounding titter. Again, it put one in the mind of the peal of bells.

I wanted to join her because it seemed that kind of sound, but as mentioned, to laugh in the face of Fate seemed like an awful idea. I bit my lip instead.

And besides, merry looking or not, Chance had claimed Fate to be a bitch. There had to be a reason for him to think that.

Chance reached out, took my hand, and gave it a tug. I moved closer to him as he looked at the woman. Her smile widened.

“I can’t believe she came. She only comes when she wants to.” Chance spoke the words into my hair.

Frank’s voice was loud enough to carry out over the water. “Now that we are all here, Fate do you want to take it from here?”

The woman gave a slight nod.

“Why am
I
here?” My mother did not seem pleased at all.

Sven and the dockworker were still weakly kneeling, and the rest of the Odd Stuff crew ganged around Frank like a crowd of spectators at a show. Chance and I somehow ended up off by ourselves. Fate glittered between Sven and the dockworker, my mom, Chance and I, and the group who watched. She appeared the center of a hub.

I bit my tongue and kept my own snarky remarks to myself. Since I thought I had the hero bit in the bag on this one and now it seemed my job got demoted to watching, well, I probably should not irritate Fate, so maintaining silence seemed the brightest thing for me to do.

“Harold, you came again to this place to break the curse that has bound you to this earthly plane. Have you found your luck yet?”

Sven stood, a bit shakily, but he stood. “No. As a matter of fact it got worse. Now I am attacked by sirens. I can’t even do what I have done for years anymore. Can you believe I got attacked in ghostly form?”

He turned using Sven’s face, and it seemed odd because somehow when he spoke with Sven’s voice it did not even sound quite like our Sven. He also looked genuinely puzzled. Like, can you believe the rotten luck to get attacked while I minded my own business killing people?

The temptation hit me to try singing again. It might work…

“To release you we need a little luck. Fairies can grant luck.” Fate looked thoughtfully at my mother. “Queen Mab, would you help your daughter this night and grant fairy luck on this man? He’s a friend of hers taken over by a spirit. If you chose, you could help her. To do so, you must in a way bless the future and agree with a choice your daughter made…something you have not done before. Would you be willing to do this, Mab?”

Before my mother could answer, she went on, and paced as she spoke. “And you, Chance. There is a triad that must be fulfilled before you can ask for my intervention on this man’s behalf. You must all come together and work as a unit for his redemption. Will you also join in the resolution of family conflicts this night? I
knew
you would call me.”

She paused to smile at us all. Again, though, before anyone could answer she went on. “What must come together is forgiveness of past, focus on the future, and luck. Chance gets the easiest as you have the most to lose now. You called me and you will open the doorway if you choose to do so. I think we know already what you will do, so we will go on to Janie, as she is going by now.”

Her eyes focused on me and I narrowed my eyes. I had caught the ‘going by now’ after my name and knew it to be intentional. Fate knew my real name.

“Janie, you must forgive the past and focus on the future. You have been warned, actually more than I usually warn anyone. I worry that you will not heed the warnings, and I have tried so hard with you. You do realize what a gift the soul threads are, don’t you?”

I sputtered, “Gift? How is it a gift to have no choice? I don’t call that a
gift
.”

“You must not take for granted that which is given. Know that if you do, it can be lost. But also you must focus on the future and forgive the past.
All
the past and that means in your own life, as well as the actual mistakes that Chance has made. Your divorce left scars that have had little time to heal, and you act as if they are not there. They wound you, sometimes, more than what Chance has done. But for tonight your task is much simpler. You must forgive the mistakes of the past and allow Chance and your mother to help Sven. As they are here, you have been the key to Harold and Sven’s salvation. You have fulfilled what Old Mother prophesied.”

Well, that ended easily
.

“Know that your dream will come true if you continue to judge on the mistakes of the past and you’ll have regrets.”

Usually when someone tells you your dreams are coming true, well, it is a good thing. I thought of the dream of Chance. That dream I really wanted not to come true. I thought of the terror and emptiness and sadness that I had woken with. The sheer grief.

“So, yeah.” My voice was gruff and seemed to draw everyone’s attention back to me. “Mom grants fairy luck and Chance opens a portal and you will change their fate?”

“To sum it up neatly, yes.” Fate knew, I think, that I was going for a topic change.

Chance pulled me closer.
What is wrong?
 

I did not answer him. I slid a hand into his coat seeking his warmth. I did not care that everyone watched, Vance included. I wanted to hold him, to feel him alive and not cold and pale on that stone table.

I turned to my mom. “Will you help my friend?”

She nodded.

She walked to Sven. Her bearing regal. “Harold?”

Sven held his hands together.

My mother stood terribly tiny next to Sven. She lifted one hand to pull him to her level, and he bowed toward her. She smacked him hard on the forehead. She then turned to Chance.

He snorted in laughter. “Was that fairy luck?”

She grinned a terribly evil grin.

He shook his head.

She moved to stand next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I slid a hand out and touched her arm. The gesture represented a great deal for us.

Our gazes met. It may not exactly have been a mother-daughter heart to heart. It wasn’t really a promise that tomorrow she would not come up with a half-baked scheme to ruin my life or that I would not come up with a completely new way to mess up her half-baked scheme. But as Chance had said…progress.

Chance turned to Fate who smiled on us. I wondered if Fate smiling on us signified what it sounded like.

“So how do I do what I do?” Chance ran a hand down my back as he spoke. “We all have other plans for the evening, and the poor dock guy needs some TLC from the vampire for his memory and—”

Fate cut him off, and he shut up with a quirk of one of her jet brows. “You are still one arrogant son of a bitch. I had hoped she would mellow that.” Fate gestured one hand my way.

He made a noise, and I glanced up to catch his expression but missed it.

“Regardless, I will help you. You will have to come to me and let go of her for a moment. Her link to you will hinder opening the doorway.”

“Not the strands.”