Dead on Delivery (11 page)

I COULDN’T GO BACK TO SLEEP. THE ADRENALINE SURGE I’D woken up with wouldn’t leave my body. Even after my heart stopped pounding, I was beyond hyper. I was still tired though. The few hours sleep I’d gotten were not enough. It was the worst combination of hyped up and exhausted that I could come up with. I took a shower and got dressed while Sophie and Ben picked up the things my imaginary devil dog and I had knocked around. Then I made a pot of coffee and loaded it up with sugar and milk. Protein, sugar and caffeine. If I’d had a piece of chocolate to eat with it, I would have hit every food group I really found necessary.

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” Sophie asked as she sat next to me, sipping a cup of Norah’s herbal tea.

“If it was a dream, it was the most realistic dream I’ve ever had.” I took another gulp of coffee, hoping that the caffeine would start coursing through my system soon.

“Did you eat something spicy?” Ben asked. “I always have weird dreams after we eat Thai food.”

I didn’t even bother answering that one. I wished it would be something that simple. It had seemed so real. I had heard the cadejo, smelled it and seen it.

I hadn’t sensed it, though. Something about that was off. I rubbed the back of my neck and turned to Sophie. “Do you want a ride to the dojo? It’s almost time to head over there anyway.”

“No. I’ve got my mom’s car. I’ll meet you there.”

Ben and Sophie left, and I went to gather my stuff up for the rest of the day. I’d need my
gi
and I’d want a snack. I’d probably also want some clothes to change into after I was done teaching. I might as well take the little box I’d found under Neil Bossard’s bed, too.

I pulled it out of the pocket of my blazer, where I’d stuffed it the night before. It looked innocuous enough. Brown paper wrapping. Cellophane tape. Neil Bossard’s name and address written in Sharpie in block letters on the front.

I set it down on the counter and sat in front of it. The vibration off of it was weaker here than it had been in Elmville. Whoever had made it was probably farther away now than they were when I’d been at the memorial service. Like Ginnar’s axe, whatever was in the box was losing power as it got farther and farther from its maker.

The buzz might be less, but it was still there. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me, and a cold shiver ran up and down my spine. I didn’t like whatever was in there. It didn’t have a nice feeling to it, not nice at all. I snapped my eyes back open and closed off my senses a little. I like a little buffer between me and malevolent things and this thing definitely felt malevolent. And witchy. It didn’t do anything. It just sat there, humming its little hum of power that felt distinctly witchy to me.

I used to not be able to distinguish between various kinds of power. A buzz in my head, the lifting of the hair on my forearms—it all felt the same, whether there was a vampire nearby or a ghost or a troll. Well, generally I can smell a troll, but that’s not any big power. Pretty much anybody can smell a troll. Most people think a sewage system is backing up somewhere or that someone is dumping garbage under a bridge, but it’s a troll.

Over the years—and while I’m only twenty-six years old, I have been at this job for close to twenty-three of those years—I have become more of a connoisseur. The subtle gradations of different supernatural beings are hard to describe. There’s a coppery tang that reminds me of blood to a vampire vibration. Werewolves have a bit of a musky scent. Witches tend to have a bit of a cinnamon taste to their vibration. I got a bitter cinnamon bite from this package.

I don’t know how else to describe it. I could be wrong, but while this item had been made by someone who wielded power, I didn’t think that person was supernatural. I thought about the woman I’d seen crying behind the tree at the graveside service. I’d gotten a similar feeling from her. I wished I knew who she was. I hadn’t exactly had a chance to follow up on that, what with being kicked out of the memorial service, having my boyfriend tell me he loved me and then immediately afterward being attacked by a cadejo.

The next best thing would be to find out what this thing was and I knew just who to ask.

I stuffed everything into a bag and dialed Meredith’s number. “What do you need, Melina?” she said, without bothering with a hello. Sometimes I hated Caller ID. At least, I’m pretty sure Meredith has Caller ID.

“I want you to look at something I found.” Two could play the up-front and honest game. I don’t know what it said about me that up-front and honest was now some sort of maneuver, but I didn’t run into it nearly as frequently as I wished I did.

“Found where?” she asked. Interesting that she was more interested in where it came from than what it was.

“Under a dead man’s bed.” “Man” might be stretching it a little. Bossard was barely a man. “Dead boy” didn’t sound right to me either though.

“Nine o’clock at McClannigan’s?” she suggested.

“Sounds perfectly lovely.” It could potentially be a little tense, depending on where in Meredith and Paul’s on-again/off-again relationship we were these days, but that would add a little spice to my night. We hung up.

I dialed Ted’s cell number as I grabbed my bag and keys. “Is it urgent?” he answered. Great. Another person who was dispensing with hellos when I called.

“Nope. Just checking in. Where are you?” I could hear the sound of traffic in the background.

“At work,” he said, as if explaining things to a rather slow person.

I’d sort of expected him to take at least a day off. “You feel well enough for that?”

“Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. Can we talk later? I’m kind of in the middle of something.” He sounded distracted.

“Sure. How about McClannigan’s at nine?”

“What now, Melina?” Now I had his attention.

“I thought you wanted to talk later.” I teased.

He made a funny noise, but then apparently whatever was going on caught his attention again. “Fine. McClannigan’s. Nine o’clock,” he said, and hung up.

I left the apartment and bopped down the stairs, feeling slightly more energetic than I had any right to. It wasn’t until I was on the street and headed toward Grandma’s Buick that I became aware of the distinct feeling of being watched.

I didn’t get the buzz of anything supernatural, but I did get that uncomfortable sensation that makes the hair on my neck stand up a little. I whirled around and examined the street behind me. Nothing. No one was out. The street was a sunny panorama of a perfect northern California day.

I turned back around and started walking again, listening for the scrape of a footstep or the sound of breathing behind me. I thought I caught the slight tap of a boot. I turned again. Nothing. Maybe it had been an echo of my own footstep. I hurried the rest of the way to the Buick and leapt inside. The solid thunk of the door as it closed reassured me.

I stayed quiet in the car for a few moments before I started it up and let my senses open. Damn it. There was nothing. But I knew I’d been watched. I’d felt it too many times before not to know the sensation and I’d learned to ignore it at my own peril.

I started the Buick and headed to the studio, keeping a careful watch on my rear- and side-view mirrors.

 

 

“STOP CROWDING ME!” CONNOR HILL TURNED AND GAVE WILL Greer a good hard shove.

Will stumbled backward, keeping his balance but knocking down Cassie Trebatchnik behind him.

“Hey,” I waded in, not waiting for the melee to escalate. The class had not been right from the second they’d walked in today. I’m not saying thirteen-year-olds were the easiest group of human beings to keep a handle on. I personally think that all junior high teachers deserve some kind of special combat pay bonuses, but this group was generally pretty respectful of one another, at least inside the studio.

“He keeps coming up right behind me.” Connor turned to me, arms flung out, trying to express his frustration.

“I do not.” Will was clearly just as frustrated. “You keep saying that. I’m nowhere near you, dude.”

“Don’t ‘dude’ me!” Connor advanced on Will.

This would not do.

“Both of you. Opposite corners. Now,” I said in my very best sensei voice, then thanked any lucky star I might have that it worked. I wasn’t all that much bigger than them and wasn’t sure what I’d have had to do if they hadn’t listened. Oh, I could take them, but it wasn’t the way I wanted to run my dojo. In the end, both boys were still steamed, but at least it wasn’t about to escalate into a fistfight.

“Take a moment. Breathe. Count to ten. You can come back to the mat when you think you can behave in a way that’s appropriate.” I marched back to the head of the classroom, rubbing the back of my neck. The feeling of being watched hadn’t left me all afternoon.

“Yes, sensei,” both boys muttered from their corners.

I looked over the class. Everyone was tense. Were they getting it from me? If they were, maybe they could get rid of it the way I usually did. I hung the heavy bags and had them line up. We proceeded to drill. More precisely, I proceeded to lead them in beating the crap out of the bags. By the end of the hour, even Connor and Will were smiling again. Heck, I was smiling a little again. There’s nothing like the release of endorphins brought on by really pounding on an inanimate object to make a person feel that all is right with the world.

The class bowed their way off the mat. I gave the parents a few weak smiles as they took their now tired and significantly less aggressive teenagers home.

“What’s wrong here?” Sophie asked, as she started shoving chairs back into neat rows, as she had to do after every class. I don’t know what possessed people to always need to move chairs around, but they did. It was a fact of life, as immutable as gravity, that if the chairs weren’t bolted to the floor, someone was going to shift them into little groupings.

“I’m not sure. Everybody’s cranky today. It happens.” I sat down on the mat to stretch a little.

Sophie marched across the floor with the broom to sweep the entryway. “It’s more than that. Don’t you feel it?”

I looked up at her. She wasn’t exactly the most physically impressive specimen. I don’t think she was much more than five foot two and with her reddish blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, she didn’t look much more than fourteen. Of course, she wasn’t much more than fourteen. In some ways, that was a boon to our kind. We didn’t look threatening. People—or things other than people—tended to underestimate us.

She did, however, have good instincts. It would be foolish of me to ignore them when they were offered up like that.

“What are you feeling?” I asked, still pancaked on the floor.

“I keep feeling like there’s somebody behind me, but when I turn, there’s no one there.” She shivered a little.

That was in keeping with the fact that I felt like I was being watched and, come to think of it, with Connor and Will’s spat. “Go on.”

“It’s not much more than that. Maybe a little like someone’s watching me. I just know I don’t like it and it’s making me all jumpy. What is it?” She started sweeping.

“I’m not sure what it is, but I’m pretty sure I know where it’s coming from.” It was coming from the little box I’d taken from under Neil Bossard’s bed. Didn’t Ted say he’d run into the road saying something was behind him? That he’d thought he was being chased?

I explained the box to Sophie. She stopped sweeping and sat down on the mat across from me, hazel eyes wide. “What do you think it is?”

“Nothing good.” I straightened my legs in front of me, grabbed my insteps and touched my nose to my knees.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going to take it to Meredith and see if she knows what to do with it. It feels witchy to me,” I said to my knees.

“Witchy?”

I straightened back up and spread my legs in a V. “Yeah. You know . . . how the axe spoke to you a little about what it was and where it needed to go? This box speaks to me in a witchy accent.”

Sophie sat back on her heels. “Can I come with?”

I shook my head, shook out my legs and stood up.

She scowled, clearly gearing up for a fight. “Why not?”

“Because you’re too young to go to a bar.” I love it when the law is on my side.

I CLEANED UP IN THE BACK OF THE STUDIO AND CHANGED INTO jeans and boots and a shirt Norah had helped me pick out on one of the infrequent occasions she had been willing to leave the apartment. It wasn’t quite as revealing as the one she’d had me wear the other night, but it was a step up from my usual plain T-shirt. I even dabbed on some lipstick and mascara.

It was kind of pointless. No one was going to look at me, anyway. I had a disturbing ability to melt into the background. In all fairness, it served me well. I was better off if no one remembered me coming into the room—or leaving it, for that matter. A Messenger was safest when no one even remembered the delivery. But the real reason no one would notice me tonight was because Meredith would be there.

Meredith was one of those women who everyone turned to look at when she walked through a room. More so even than Norah, and Norah attracted plenty of attention all on her own. Norah had a glow about her. Granted, that glow was a little dimmer these days and for that I felt way too much responsibility. It wasn’t quite an aura, although she had one of those, too. This was more like the incandescence of her goodness shining through.

Meredith, on the other hand, had presence.

Oh, sure, she was a good-looking woman, but someone with the exact same looks wouldn’t get a second glance. There was something in the way she walked through a room. A waft of power seemed to stream behind her. Most people had no idea what they were responding to when they turned to watch her go. I wasn’t even sure that Meredith was always aware of it. It was there, though.