Phoenix in My Fortune (A Monster Haven Story Book 6) (10 page)

Chapter Ten

Ashley and Miles had, apparently, been a decoy to get us all away from the house.

We followed the charred remains of what had once been our greatest protection around the house, through the woods, around Mom’s cottage, back through the woods and around the other side of the house. The circle was an unbroken line of charcoal. There were no fairies anywhere around who we could question, either. It was as if they’d deserted the premises.

It looked like Shadow Man had scared them off and destroyed their work.

At least, I hoped that was all that had happened. They were dear to me, even without being my tiny protectors.

There weren’t any bug-sized bodies in the grass, or even small traces, like torn wings, stray pieces of clothing or drops of blood. They’d vanished completely. I knew from previous experience when poachers had entered my woods and harmed some of the fairies that they could mobilize quickly and get themselves to safety.

Wherever they’d gone, I hoped they were safe and would come back soon when the danger had passed.

Even more chilling than the demolished fairy ring, we found footprints outside my bedroom window. And crickets.

I shivered. “He was watching me sleep.” It took everything in me not to have a full-blown panic attack. “He stood outside my window last night and watched me sleep.” My breath came in deep, hitching gulps. “We’re totally defenseless. He can just come in anytime.”

I was perfectly happy to issue a challenge to him. I was primed and ready to go after the bastard. I was not at all prepared for him to waltz up to my house and knock on the door. Or come in.

Riley looked stricken. “I shouldn’t have slept. I should’ve stayed watch.” He put his arms around me.

Anger rolled off Darius. “We sleep in shifts from now on.” He wrapped his massive hands around Mom’s shoulders from behind her. “We won’t give him another opportunity to come that close.” He kissed the top of her head, and the set of his jaw showed his determination to keep her—us—safe.

“I don’t understand.” I dragged my toe through the charred grass. “What is he doing, exactly? Is he after us? Or is he after children? What’s the point?”

Riley sat on the porch steps and pulled me down next to him. “Well, both times, he appeared to one of you, then went after the kids. It’s as if he’s taunting you.”

I frowned. “Or maybe warning us. Like maybe he’s telling us it’s our fault.”

Mom shook her head. “I refuse to believe his actions are our fault.”

“I have another theory.” Maurice stuck his hands in his pockets. “I think he’s confused.”

I snorted. “Confused. Sure.”

“No, really. Shadow Man is a recent creation of humans. It usually takes generations of storytelling for a Hidden to be birthed from the ether. And then the new creature evolves on its own from there. Shadow Man forced himself out. He’s got his own agenda—kill the Aegises to break the Covenant and rule the new world. But it’s all confused, you know? He’s his own guy, but he’s also un-evolved, so he keeps reverting back to the behavior dictated by the stories humans invented.”

Darius’s face lit up like he’d had an epiphany. “He’s kidnapping children because the human stories he adopted as his own were that way. Without having properly evolved from those stories over time, like other Hidden, he’s compelled to follow the prototype set out for him.” He grinned and gave Maurice a fist bump. “Well done.”

Maurice shrugged. “The theory isn’t perfect. It doesn’t explain the flute music or the gingerbread smell. That’s just weird.”

Kam brushed a stray hair away from her eyes. “He’s glitching.”

Darius blinked. “What?”

Her face was animated and she paced across the yard. “He’s glitching. His story is new. He doesn’t have the generations of rich history most Hidden are born with. So, he’s borrowing from other stories. The Pied Piper. Hansel and Gretel. He’s not stable because he’s not a fully realized creature. He’s filling in the holes himself by instinct.”

I sighed. “Excellent. Another unstable bad guy to defeat.”

Riley laced his fingers through mine. “Of course, this is all only a guess. He could just be evil.”

I squeezed his hand and gave him a tired smile. “I hope you’re right. Pure evil would be so refreshing compared to all the crazy we keep getting.”

Honestly, I didn’t think we were dealing with pure evil. For one thing, I didn’t truly believe in it. As an empath, I couldn’t. People always had reasons behind the things they did, and bad guys were no exception. No matter how distasteful I found someone’s actions, there was always an explanation. An uncontrollable hunger. A difficult past. A broken mind. A burning need to open a portal and create a brand new world to rule.

Greed was also a possibility with some folks I’d run into—the Leprechaun Mafia, for instance. While greed is certainly an ugly motivator, a top seven deadly sin and not at all nice, I wouldn’t call it pure evil.

If it were, none of us would make it off Santa’s naughty list, and he could retire permanently. We all had our moments.

No. I didn’t believe Shadow Man was evil. But I wasn’t buying the loony-bin explanation, either. Confused. Angry, maybe. Power hungry.

That didn’t make him any less terrifying, though.

“Maybe we should just hop in the car and take the two of you to Board headquarters in Kansas. They have better protection there.” Riley didn’t look directly at me as he spoke. The muscles in his jaw were tense, as if he was braced for me to explode.

I surprised both of us by remaining calm. Sometimes I could be reasonable. “Mom? What do you think? Stay here, or hole up where it’s safer?”

Though we looked alike, Mom and I were so different. Most of the time, anyway.

She scowled and her hand curled into a determined fist. “This is our last stand, Zoey. I’m not running away with my tail between my legs. We face this bastard head-on, and we do whatever we have to do to keep our family together.” She lifted her chin in defiance. “It took a long time for me to be able to come home. I’m not leaving now.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise and turned to Riley. “Well, then. There’s your answer. We’re staying put.”

He nodded in resignation. “I kind of figured. But I did expect it would be you to say it, not Clara.”

Darius cleared his throat. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Sometimes I forgot that, discounting the first eight years of my life, I’d only known my mom for the last year. Darius knew her so much better than I did. In fact, I sort of had two separate versions of her in my head—the kind, soft mommy who played with me and made me sandwiches when I was small, and the damsel in distress who let people tell her what to do.

Neither was an accurate portrayal of her. She was so much stronger and wiser than I gave her credit for.

And so we stayed and held our ground.

From then on, Mom and I were under twenty-four-hour protection. Sara kept watch while Riley and I slept, and Kam did the same for Mom and Darius. It was probably overkill, since none of us slept a whole lot anyway.

Every time I dozed off, I saw glowing eyes watching me, and I jerked awake. Not only did this keep me from sleeping, Riley didn’t get a lot of snooze time, either. Something similar was happening over at Mom’s cottage.

Even Maurice, who needed little sleep, sported dark circles under his eyes after a few days.

But as before, once the kids Shadow Man had kidnapped were found, nothing more happened. We kept watch for him to return. Sara and Darius made frequent searches of the property and checked in with the dragons, the brownies and the yeti. Nobody had seen anything. We scoured the news and Internet for anything new and suspicious.

No one was surprised by the big steaming mass of nothing we found in the way of news or clues. It seemed Shadow Man was taking another hiatus. Maybe he needed to regroup or recharge his magical, child-stealing powers, but I doubted it.

The footprints outside our windows every night—despite the constant watch our family kept over us—and the growing cricket population on my property told me Shadow Man wasn’t recharging at all. He’d turned his attention to Mom and me.

To what end, I wasn’t sure. He didn’t interact with any of us directly. But somehow he was watching us at night while we slept. Our efforts to catch him at it continued to fail.

It made for some long nights spent drinking copious amounts of coffee and staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

There’s a place between sleep and awake when we’re most vulnerable, and it seemed that was the place where Shadow Man lurked. If I fell fully asleep, I had nightmares—the totally normal kind due to stress and being stalked by a terrifying something—but I was fine. If I fought sleep too hard or stayed awake too long, that was when it happened. I’d be awake one moment, and the next I’d see his eyes staring at me through the window. If I was lucky, I’d startle and come fully awake.

On the nights I wasn’t lucky, I was locked into a staring contest with him I couldn’t break out of.

I’d been fighting sleep, knowing the nightmares waited to greet me once I dozed off. Sara and Maurice had taken a couple of blankets and camped out on the roof so they could see the house on all sides. We had the porch lights on, front and back, but my bedroom was on the side of the house, so the lights gave minimal illumination outside my window. Better than utter darkness, though. Riley lay curled around my back, so I felt secure that no boogeyman could sneak up behind me. Which left me facing the window, reluctant to close my eyes.

Under most circumstances, a person might keep a light on to ward off the scary things in the night. But when that scary thing might stand outside the window, the smart thing was to keep the lights off. Make it easier to see the thing outside. Don’t make it easier to be seen.

My lids burned from being awake so long. I blinked a few times to soothe them. My body was exhausted, but my mind wasn’t ready for sleep.

Sara had made an appointment for me to meet with the florist the next day for Fiona’s wedding flowers.

The weatherman projected rain, so I should probably wear boots. Did something move outside?
I snuggled closer to Riley.
I’ll stop at the grocery store and get that new conditioner I read about. Maybe it’ll keep my hair from getting frizzy. Definitely saw something out there.
My eyes watered from the strain of keeping them open. Nothing moved outside the window.
I’ll just close my eyes for a second. In the case of Garfield vs. Orwell, the square root of apple pie is the same as the prime meridian of German chocolate cake. Everybody knows that.

And just like that, there he was, standing at my window. I was paralyzed, unable to so much as nudge Riley to see if he was awake. To make him look
with
me.

Shadow Man’s face was so close to the glass it nearly touched, his orange eyes unblinking, staring directly at me. His nose was flat with wide, flaring nostrils, and his mouth was a slash ringed with puckered wrinkles. As I watched, unable to look away or scream for help, he opened his mouth, slow and ominous. It became impossibly wide when his jaw unhinged like a snake’s, and his chin moved so low it dropped below the windowsill and out of sight. Condensation formed in two small circles in front of his nose and in a long, wide line down the glass in the shape of his elongated mouth.

My body shook, and sweat trickled from my hairline. And still, I couldn’t make myself move, other than from the involuntary effects of fear.

Shadow Man raised his arm and held up a hand with spidery fingers that had far too many joints. He tapped the window with his fingertips, a soft sound I could barely hear over the thunderous sound of my own heart.

His jaw shifted, and his mouth shrank to the thin line it had been before. He gave me a slow wave, then stepped backward into the darkness and was gone.

I snapped out of the paralysis and screamed.

Riley was on his feet next to me so fast I had no idea how he got there. He stood with his back to me, the hand wearing his reaper ring sticking out as if he were the Green Lantern, scanning the room for danger. He looked pretty heroic, even in his boxer-briefs and faded
Ghostbusters
T-shirt. When he realized there was nothing in the room with us, he lowered his hand and sat on the bed next to me.

“Are you okay?” He switched on the bedside lamp and took my shaking hand in his. “What happened? Did you have a bad dream?” His face was scrunched in concern.

Under normal circumstances, we both might have chalked it up to a nightmare and gone back to sleep. But we were more than a year past the ability to dismiss anything as imagination, even when it seemed like the only logical answer.

I sat up and swallowed hard. “He was at the window.”

Riley glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. “I thought I was awake. How the hell did he come right up to the window again?” He leaned over me to grab his phone, then tapped the screen to call Sara and Maurice. “Hey. Do you guys see anything from up there? He was at our window a minute ago.” He listened for a moment. “Same here. Keep me posted.”

He hung up and set the phone on the nightstand next to me. “They’re going to go look around.”

“I doubt they’ll find anything.” I plucked at the blanket across my legs. “Bastard only lets himself be seen when he wants to be seen.” I paused. “And by who he wants to see him.” I frowned, thinking. There was something poking at the back of my mind, something important I could almost figure out but not quite grasp. The more I prodded at it, trying to work out what I was missing, the more elusive the thought became.

“What?” Riley’s gaze scrutinized my face. “You look like you’ve got something important to say.”

I scrubbed at my face, trying to ease the weariness. “Nothing. I’ve got nothing.”

His expression was doubtful, but he left me alone. “I think I should call Kam and let her know he’s out there, in case he’s planning to pay your mom a visit, too.”

I nodded and slipped out the other side of the bed. “I’m all sweaty. I’m going to take a quick shower.”

“You shouldn’t be by yourself.” Any other day, that would have been a playful offer to be my shower buddy. This time, the worry on his face negated the prospect of any happy-fun-time shenanigans.