Dead Letter Day (31 page)

Her face looked a little pinched. “Mom. It’s okay.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” It was no good. She still looked pinched.

I took a deep breath. “And I will call you. And I will ask questions. I promise.”

She looked a little less pinched. “Good. The first trimester is so important. You’re not drinking, are you? Not that you were a big boozer, but you know it’s better to stay away from it entirely.”

“I’m not drinking.” Then I thought of a question I did have. “But can I really not have sushi?”

Fifteen minutes later, after getting a very long list of what I should and should not eat, I finally got my mother back in her Volvo and headed for home. She and Sophie crossed paths in the parking lot. Sophie got out of her Camry and walked over to where I was still standing in front of the dojo.

“Was that your mom?”

I nodded.

“But she never comes here.”

“I know.” I sighed. “I think those days are over.”

13

THROUGH THE COURSE OF THE AFTERNOON, MY MOTHER left me two voice mails. One to tell me not to clean cat boxes because there was some kind of special bacteria in cat poo that could hurt the baby and one to tell me that she was buying me a box of raspberry leaf tea that one of her friends swore by when she was pregnant.

I was really beginning to regret telling her. Maybe she would calm down a little bit over the next few weeks although calming down was not exactly my mother’s specialty.

I headed home after the evening classes were finished, ready to put the day behind me. Ted was planning on meeting me at my place.

When I walked in, he was in the kitchen and the apartment smelled really good.

“Sit down,” he said, gesturing at the breakfast bar.

I sat.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked, setting a plate down in front of me.

I sniffed at it. It smelled good. I looked up at him. “Have you known how to do this all along?”

“You mean cook?”

“Yes, I mean cook.”

He shrugged. “Simple stuff, but yeah. I had to be able to feed myself. No one else was going to do it.”

“So how come I didn’t know this? Why have we been living on take-out food and grilled cheese sandwiches?” I demanded.

“I thought you liked it that way.” He sat down next to me with his own plate and dug in.

I took a bite. It tasted as good as it smelled. He was right, though. I sort of liked the take-out-food thing. It was one of the many things that separated me and my way of life from my parents and their way of life. No dinner every night at 6:30
P.M.
No dishes to squabble over. “So what’s different now?”

He stopped chewing for a second and glanced pointedly down at my stomach. Then he went back to eating.

It would normally thrill me to not have to talk everything to death. I wasn’t great at expressing my feelings or sharing. I blame it on years of keeping a lot of my life secret. It was easier to keep everything to myself, rather than picking and choosing what I could say and what I couldn’t. I wanted a little more right now, though. I set my fork down. Reluctantly, mind you. Still, I set it down. “That’s it. I am the vessel carrying your seed and suddenly I deserve fresh asparagus?”

“No. But you wanted a salad the other night and I thought maybe you wanted to start eating healthy because of, you know, the baby.” He set his fork down now, too. “Are you trying to start a fight?”

Was I? I looked down at my plate. It still smelled really good and it wouldn’t taste anywhere near as good cold. I picked my fork back up. “No,” I said and took another bite. “If I was starting a fight, we would already be yelling.”

“True that,” he said and snorted.

I glared, but I didn’t stop eating.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” He started eating again, too.

“I’m going to talk to someone who might have some information about anything happening in the woods up there. Then I’m going to check out Inge’s sons. Meredith thinks they might be the creatures that bit Michael Hollinger. And then I have to work a shift at the hospital.” I took another bite. “Do you know how to make other things or is this your only dish?”

“You’re going to what?” Oh, boy. The fork was back down at the side of the plate.

“Which part was confusing?”

“None of it. I’m hoping that I misheard. You’re planning to go check out the creatures that possibly bit an armed police officer and caused him to go off his rocker by yourself? Did I hear that part correctly?” Wow. He looked really steamed.

“Yes. That is my plan. I’m not intending on riling them up and engaging them in a fight. I just want to get close enough to give them more of a sniff, you know? And maybe see what they’re up to.”

“If you’re within sniffing distance, you’re in biting distance.”

“I’m pretty fast,” I reminded him. “Even now.”

“They’re fast, too. Remember? Fast and unpredictable and violent and poisonous,” he reminded me.

“So what do you want me to do, Ted? Nothing? Someone
up there has Paul. I think these boys might be involved somehow.”

He rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m worried about Paul, too, but I’m more worried about you and about…” His words drifted off.

“About the baby?”

He nodded.

“Say it. Baby. Baby, baby, baby.
B
.
A
.
B
.
Y
.”

“Melina, cut it out.”

“If you want me to stop, say it. You’ve gone all weird with this. I don’t get what you want or what you’re thinking or what you want to do.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Yeah. I’m working, too, and tomorrow my work is taking me to try to find Paul.”

MY MOTHER CALLED ME THREE TIMES AND TEXTED ME four before I went to bed that night. I was to make sure to get a lot of rest. I should consider drinking more milk. Did I want to move home? Had I given any thought to what kind of stroller I might like? Was Ted there? Would I like my father to talk to Ted?

I turned off the phone. I had two more texts waiting from her when I turned it back on the next morning. I didn’t read them. I couldn’t. If the idea of being pregnant was overwhelming to me, it was because I’d forgotten how overwhelming my mother could be, given half a chance.

What had I been thinking telling her about this? I sighed. I knew the answer to that one. I was feeling alone. Who do we all turn to when we feel alone and like nobody has our
back? Mom. That’s who. Even me. Even if I’d spent a lot of my life turning to my surrogate mom, Mae. I wondered if Mom had already been over to Grandma Rosie’s. Probably.

Ted hadn’t even tried to get me out of bed to go running with him at oh dark thirty. I supposed I should be grateful for that, but instead it felt like one more wall between us. I got into the shower by myself.

I didn’t like it. He was still acting weird. That was totally my wheelhouse and I wanted him out of it. He gave me a kiss on the cheek good-bye and headed off to work and I got in the Buick to see if I could find some more information about Paul. I realized Ted was right. Maybe I shouldn’t throw myself in the path of Inge’s sons until I knew more about what I was dealing with.

I pulled up at the address that had been written on the back of the bark that Jenny had given Willow. It wasn’t nearly as remote as Paul’s cabin, but it wasn’t exactly urban either. There were neighbors, but they were only visible from certain places and they definitely couldn’t hear you scream, if you were so inclined.

I parked the Buick to one side of the driveway and walked up to the door and knocked. I could hear the sound of music inside. That was a good sign. I was hopeful that someone would be home. I was doubly hopeful that it would be either Jenny or Willow. Explaining myself to a strange dryad was pretty unappealing.

I held my breath as the doorknob turned and let it out in a rush when Jenny answered. She cocked her head to one side and gave me a funny look. “Do you have something for me?”

I shook my head. “I have a favor to ask.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Hold on a sec. Let me get my smokes. We can talk out here.”

She came back out a second later, a cigarette dangling between her lips and a lighter in her hand.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Why not? I’m not going to get lung cancer from them and they’re handy if I decide to start forest fires.”

Now my eyebrows climbed.

Jenny punched me in the shoulder and laughed. “You are so gullible! How long have you been doing this?”

I sighed and sat down downwind of her as she lit up. “Maybe too long at this point.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re just a baby. So what’s the favor?”

“I’m looking for information. A friend of mine is missing. I think someone’s holding him somewhere. I’m trying to figure out where. It’s got to be some place fairly remote.”

“What kind of friend?” Jenny arched one eyebrow at me.

“The kind that howls at the full moon.”

Now both brows went up. “Someone’s holding a werewolf hostage?”

“I think so.”

“They’re not so easy to contain,” she observed, taking a long, deep drag of her cigarette and, thankfully, blowing the smoke in the opposite direction.

I refrained from pulling my shirt up over my mouth. It was tempting, though. My senses are always extraordinarily sharp and pregnancy was making them even more so. The smell of the cigarette smoke was literally nauseating. “I’m aware. That’s why I thought even if the place was really remote, it might have made enough impact that you or your, uh, sisters might have noticed it.”

She thought for a minute or two and blew a few smoke
rings. “Have you talked to the Pack? They’d be the ones who’d know how to subdue one of their own.”

I nodded.

“Why aren’t they looking for him?”

I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. “They don’t seem to have the same sense of urgency about it as I do.”

She gave me a curious glance, but then shrugged as if she wasn’t interested enough to delve into it more. Or maybe she was just respecting my privacy. Either way, I was happy not to explain it again. “Do you have any idea who is keeping him? It might help.”

“I do. Her name is Inge. She’s got a yarn shop.”

Jenny’s head shot up. “Norwegian? Frigga-worshipper?”

“That’s her.” I sat up, too. “You know her?”

“I more know of her. I try to stay away. Talk about a little black cloud in a dress.”

“Tell me about it. She about knocked me over with a grief bomb the first time I saw her, and she didn’t even know who I was.”

Jenny nodded her head a few times. “She wouldn’t either. She doesn’t have enough of the blood to make her sensitive to someone like you. Or me, for that matter.”

“Enough of what blood?” I asked. I was getting somewhere. I could tell.

“Frigga’s blood. Duh.” Jenny took one last drag of her cigarette and then ground it out in the dirt. I was relieved that she picked the butt up. A smoking dryad was hard enough to take, but a smoking littering dryad would be too much even for me, and my expectations of the supernatural realm were very low.

“You’re telling me that Inge is a descendant of Frigga?” Great. Just freaking fantastic. Not only were there gods involved, I was messing around with their progeny.

“And Odin’s. She’s like a twenty-times great-granddaughter. That’s why the blood is so weak in her. It’s weaker than the dryad blood in Willow.”

“How’s Willow doing, by the way?” I should have asked sooner. I felt a little bad about that.

“Great. She should be back in a little bit. Maybe you’ll see her before you leave.”

“I’d like that. Now about Inge. If the blood is that weak in her, how do you know that she’s got any at all?” I’d encountered a few people who had traces of all kinds of stuff in them. It was hard to detect even two or three generations down. Granted, blood of a god was stronger than say, blood of a pixie, but dilute it enough and there was no way for me to tell. Inge’s intense melancholy kept me from checking her out thoroughly the few times I’d been around her, so I hadn’t sensed it at all.

Jenny twisted her long blonde hair up behind her in a messy bun that looked like something from a fashion magazine. Some women had a knack. “You know about her kid, right? The one that died.”