Dead Letter Day (15 page)

“It means everyone knows there’s something bothering you. Until you start talking about it, we’re going to pester you. I don’t get why you don’t understand that by now.” She yawned.

Great. My best friend found my life dilemmas boring. Then I yawned, too. I guess I was finding my dilemmas boring, too. “Nothing’s bothering me that everyone doesn’t know about. I’m worried about Paul. I’m working too many jobs. That’s it.”

“If you say so,” Norah said, leaning back in her seat. Several pounds of brisket can do that to a girl. I knew that from a lifetime of experience.

We pulled onto my block and Ted parallel parked the Buick about two houses down from my apartment. I didn’t even look at him, much less say anything. I was too tired for our regular argument over whether or not there was something weird about his ability to find good parking places. Besides, I could already see that Meredith was sitting on my porch, clearly waiting not so patiently for an update.

I looked over at Norah. “Is Alex on his way?”

She nodded. “I texted him when we left your mom’s. He might be inside already.”

Norah, before she realized what kind of fire she was playing with, had invited Alex into our apartment. That pretty much gave him carte blanche to waltz in and out whenever he pleased. It was a problem for a little while when he was getting all weird and stalkerrific with Norah. Once we got that worked out, however, he’d taken to actually knocking like a regular person. Still now that he and Norah were in what passed for a relationship between a vampire and a human, he occasionally still let himself in. I suppose Ted did, too. It was only fair, although sometimes I thought there should be some kind of vampire penalty.

“So what happened? What did you find out?” Meredith asked as we got to the steps.

“Let’s talk inside,” I suggested. It really wasn’t the kind of conversation you wanted to have on a public street. If anyone overheard us, maybe they’d think we were talking about a movie or a TV show, but why take the chance?

“Right,” she said. “Right. Inside. Where it’s quiet.”

She was so not doing all right. First of all, she looked like hell. I’d never seen her with her hair that twisted and uncombed and she didn’t look like she’d slept much either. Her clothes were all wrinkled and she wasn’t wearing any makeup either, which was really, really unlike her. Meredith
was a relatively girly witch. I’ve never been entirely sure either that part of her magic wasn’t sexual in nature. She was a powerful presence. Usually.

Not tonight, though. Tonight she seemed…diminished.

We trooped upstairs and, sure enough, Alex was waiting in the living room. He didn’t miss the squinty glare I threw in his direction.

“I was invited,” he said. “Specifically.”

“I know. I’m still not used to it.” I’d been incredibly careful not to invite Alex into this apartment for years—years!—just so he wouldn’t be able to come and go as he pleased. Norah undid all that hard work one evening without ever consulting with me. Have I mentioned that I don’t really like change?

We walked in and Alex and Norah went to change into comfier clothes. Ted headed to the bathroom. Meredith and I sat down in the living room.

“So have you had any more…episodes?” Meredith asked, making a zapping motion with her fingertips.

“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to explain about being attacked by supernatural cattle, even to Meredith.

“That’s evasive.” She draped herself across the futon couch. “You know, this thing is spectacularly uncomfortable. Have you thought about purchasing real furniture?”

Real furniture. It was such a grown-up thing to think about. The futon couch had served Norah and me for years. Meredith had a point, though. It was hard as a rock.

“Sure. I’ve been thinking about redecorating the whole place. Maybe sewing some curtains and hooking some rugs.”

“Very funny. You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“No. I haven’t thought about buying real furniture. I will consider it.”

“About the episodes, Melina. Have you had more?”

It would probably do me good to have someone to talk to about it. It was all pretty confusing. I nodded.

“When?”

I explained about taking the box we’d found on my doorstep out to the country and all that had happened after that.

“Demonic cows?”

“‘Demonic’ may not be the right word. Definitely Arcane cows.”

“And you zapped them?”

“I knew I could, too. I felt it.”

Meredith stared into space for a few minutes, clearly thinking over the situation. “You know, it could be why you’re so tired lately.”

I was pretty sure my new zapping powers weren’t what was sapping my strength, but Meredith was not the person I wanted to tell first. I just didn’t want to tell the person I wanted to tell first. Totally logical if you follow it through. Trust me. “Why?”

“A new power like that can be very energy draining. Everyone’s noticed that you haven’t been yourself lately. Maybe you should let them in on what’s going on. People are worried about you.”

It wasn’t like I didn’t know my friends were talking about me behind my back. It’s kind of hard not to notice when all conversation stops every time you walk into a room. It also wasn’t like I knew no one wanted to talk to me directly. “I know. I’d tell them if I understood it all completely.” And if I knew what I wanted to do.

Everyone came back and we all settled down in the living room to pool our information. I filled the rest of the group in on what Ted and I had seen. I left out our little tiff after seeing Michael Hollinger in the mental ward. That was our business and nobody else’s.

“Half werewolves?” Meredith asked when I was done. “Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

I shook my head and looked over at Alex, where he was lounging with one arm draped over Norah’s shoulder. “No,” he said. “Lyncanthropy is like a virus. It’s not something that’s genetically bred. It’s not like if a werewolf and a human had a baby, you’d get a half-breed.”

“Could you catch a mild case of werewolf?” Ted asked. He leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “You know, like you catch a mild cold instead of a really bad one?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing. You survive the bite and become a werewolf or you die of the virus before the next full moon. Has there been a full moon since this cop of yours was bitten?”

Ted and I looked at each other. “I didn’t check,” I admitted. “When was he bitten? Let’s get a calendar out.”

Ted pulled out his notes. “He was bitten on October fourth.”

Norah consulted the calendar on her phone, which of course had moon phases on it. “No. No full moon yet. But there’s only a few more days until the next one.”

No wonder Hollinger was slavering and flinging himself against locked doors. The full moon can make werewolves pretty volatile. “What about when McMannis’s garage was broken into? How close was that to a full moon?” I asked.

Ted looked up the date. Norah looked up the moon phase. “Two days before.”

I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were going. “Viruses evolve, right? That’s why they’re so hard to fight.”

“In a nutshell,” Alex said.

How successful could a virus that killed off a high percentage of its hosts be? “So maybe the werewolf virus has evolved. Maybe it’s learned not to kill all of its hosts that aren’t quite strong enough to withstand it.”

Alex frowned. “That’s a pretty disturbing idea, Melina.”

“You didn’t see Michael Hollinger. It would take something pretty disturbing to make that happen to a regular guy.” I felt Ted stiffen beside me.

“How bad was it?” Norah asked.

“Bad,” Ted said and got up from the couch.

Alex gave me a quizzical look, but I ignored it. If Ted wanted to explain why he was so upset, he could do it himself. Talking about his father was always a bit of a tightrope walk. He still loved the guy. I mean, it was his dad. But he had pretty much ruined Ted’s childhood to a pretty spectacular degree.

“So what’s next?” Meredith asked.

“I think I should go talk to Chuck. If he doesn’t know what’s going on with these half-werewolf thingies, he should. Maybe I’ll learn something that will help us figure out what direction to take,” I said. “Okay. We have a plan then. I’ve got Little Dragons first thing in the morning, but I’ve got a hospital shift tonight. I want to take a quick nap before I go.”

Meredith shook her head. “No wonder you’re exhausted all the time.”

I shrugged. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Even I have my limits.”

That was for sure.

I WOKE UP FROM MY NAP FEELING SURPRISINGLY refreshed. I don’t know if it was the sleep or the good effects of my mother’s cooking. I wasn’t sure I cared either. I was just glad to be rid of the logy, queasy feeling that had been dogging me for days.

I took a quick shower and changed into a work outfit. For
tonight, a pair of black pants and light cotton sweater with some flats. I wouldn’t make anybody’s top-ten fashion list, but I wouldn’t stand out either, which was just as important to me.

There was no one in the living room. I heard a few bumps and sighs from Norah’s room, but decided to ignore that, too. I really didn’t want to know.

I slipped out of the apartment and went down the stairs as quietly as possible. It never did to annoy the neighbors. Then I was out the front door of the apartment building and on the street. The night was gorgeous. Perfect, even. The temperature had dropped into the sixties, and even though the air had that faint tinge of automobile exhaust that was inevitable in any city the size of Sacramento, it felt crisp.

I took a second to appreciate it, which is of course when I felt the tingle. Someone—something—was out there. It was faint, but it was there, much like it had been at my mother’s earlier that evening.

That thought made me even more uneasy. Was something watching me? Stalking me? Waiting for a moment when I would be alone and vulnerable? Like now?

I hustled to the Buick and got inside. As always, I felt more secure once I swung the heavy door shut and locked it. I waited a second for my heart to slow back down. I looked around. It took a few seconds before I spotted them. Two huge crows in the ornamental plum that made a huge mess every fall in the yard across the street. Through the windshield, I waved my hands at them and yelled, “Shoo!”

They stared at me and didn’t move.

I thought about honking the horn, but I figured that wouldn’t be popular with the neighbors either. Instead I started the Buick and pulled out of my parking place. In my
rearview, I saw the crows rise up out of the tree. Great. They were following me.

I tried to keep an eye on them as I drove, but I was often surprised at how much traffic there could still be on the streets of Sacramento this late at night. Where were all these people going anyway? Surely they had homes they could go to, didn’t they? Regardless, the other cars made it tricky to keep an eye on the crows.

The silence in the car began to bug me so I snapped on the radio. The Buick was way too old to have an iPod dock or anything fancy like that. It did have a CD player that I rarely used. Generally, a good old AM/FM radio was enough for me. We’d had it tuned to NPR tonight for Grandma Rosie. She liked the news in the early evening and the classical music on the way home.

Something twinkly and sweet came out of the radio, but with a lot of static on its edges. I hit the button to advance it to the next station. Oldies. I sighed. Then that station started to go to static as well. I looked down at the radio as if that would actually give me any information, then I had to slam on my brakes to keep from rear-ending a Jeep in front of me.

I hit the button again as I merged onto the Interstate and a blast of sound came out of the radio that flung me back in my seat. I jammed my thumb on the off button, but nothing happened. The noise continued. I dialed the volume all the way down. The noise got louder. It sounded like some sort of PA system turned up to the max. I kept thinking I could hear words, make out fragments of sentences, but the volume distorted it too much to make it out clearly. I tried turning it up since turning it down hadn’t worked. It got louder.

A car horn blared to my left. I’d drifted into the other lane while I was fooling around with the radio. I had to pay attention. I was hurtling along a road at sixty-five miles per hour
in several thousand pounds of metal. I couldn’t, though. The noise was deafening. It filled my ears and wormed into my brain. I kept poking at buttons and it made no difference.

Another car horn blared. This time to my right. At this rate, the cops would pull me over for drunk driving if I didn’t crash first. I needed to get off the road. There wasn’t much of a shoulder, though. The next exit was close to a mile away. That would only take a minute or so, right? I could do that. I tried putting my hands over my ears and steering with my knees. It didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing.

Then my ears started to get really hot. I pulled my hands away. They were glowing. I swallowed hard, reached over and poked the off button of the radio with my index finger. The zap sent me flinging back against the seat again and earned me a third finger salute from the guy I almost sideswiped, but the noise stopped.