Phoenix in My Fortune (A Monster Haven Story Book 6) (9 page)

My phone vibrated in my hand, startling me. I didn’t answer the call. Riley would only yell at me and try to get me to go back outside to wait for help. The call went to voicemail.

I tried whispering up the stairs. “Ashley! Miles! Are you here?” My foot settled on the first step close to the wall. I tested the strength of the wood, then moved up. The kids didn’t respond to my whispers, so I kept moving. “Anybody up there?” Each step was a careful measurement of my weight against the rotten wood. Twice I skipped a step for fear it would disintegrate beneath me.

Halfway, I thought I heard someone moving from above and increased my speed. Speed was not my friend. A loud crunch shattered the silence, and my foot plunged ankle deep through the step I was on. A sharp pain shot up my leg as the splintered wood dug into my skin. I hissed between my teeth and pulled myself free, then leaped to the step above. My heart fluttered at dangerous speeds.

Come on, Zoey. Simple physics. Focus.

I took several deep breaths to calm my heart and control a mad case of the shakes. When I was as calm as I was going to get, I concentrated hard and made a slow, steady assault on the last of the stairs until I arrived at the top.

Shuffling sounds disturbed the quiet, and I followed the noises down the hall to a dead end with two closed doors. “Ashley? Miles?” I raised my voice to a conversational level, still unwilling to alert Shadow Man or alarm any resident vermin by yelling or even speaking too loud. There was no response.

I opened the door on my left and shone the light inside. The room had once belonged to a child, judging by the small bed missing its mattress, the headless dolly and the burned train set in the corner. In fact, the far wall was blackened with soot, and everything near it was destroyed. I gagged at the stale smell of burned plastic and charred wood. My friends and I had made up stories about this place when I was younger. Whatever had happened here was far more haunting and disturbing than anything a bunch of kids could imagine.

There were no children in the room. Not anymore. My hand shook as I closed the door and turned to the one on the opposite side of the hall.

The knob was gone from the door, so I pressed my fingertips against the wood and gave it a push. The door swung open, creaking as it went. The room was a mirror image of the other, down to the blackened wall and charred train. The only difference was that here was a bodiless dolly head, one cracked blue eye staring at me, the other in a frozen wink.

This room also held no missing children that I could see.

Twice the tragedy. Twice as disturbing. I pulled the door closed. The space between my shoulder blades itched, as if eyes were staring at me from behind. I spun around, expecting to see a pair of anemic twin blondes in old-fashioned dresses holding hands and watching me.

The hallway was empty. I shook my head to clear it.
Stop freaking yourself out, Zoey. It’s just an old house. Don’t make this worse than it already is.

I waited, listening for the shuffling sounds, and was rewarded. The noises came from above me. I glanced up, shining my light, and found the outline of a small attic door in the ceiling. A cord hung loose, ready to be grabbed if I dared.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Oh, sure. The attic. Of course. It was either that or the basement for maximum panic inducement. Why the hell not?

The cord looked brand new with none of the decrepitude and neglect of everything else in the house. Did Shadow Man add it so he could carry the kids up there? Was it a recent addition by a squatter who really wanted to get into the attic?

Was it there for me?

That last thought threatened to undo my nerves and send me running down the stairs with no regard for the deathtrap on each rickety step. I took a deep breath and tugged.

The door opened and stairs unfolded, leaving me with the terrifying need to climb up and stick my head through the opening.

This is probably a stupid idea. I’m going to get beheaded, I just know it.

I held my breath as I climbed, fighting the urge to make a run for it before I had to pop my head through the opening.

Riley was going to kill me if I lived through this.

As if he’d heard my thoughts, my phone vibrated again. I ignored it.

At the last, I charged all the way through rather than stand there with my face vulnerable to attack rats or vampire bats. I stood with my feet planted on the attic floor, panting and aiming my pitiful light at every corner.

When my heart stopped pounding in my ears and my breath returned to normal, I slowed my search and looked around.

For the most part, the attic was empty. A few trunks were parked against the walls, and the obligatory dress mannequin stood in the corner, but most of the floor was bare of the mass of boxes and junk I expected.

And huddled under the window were two little lumps, one lying motionless, the other curled protectively around the first, wide eyes catching the light from my phone.

“Miles? Ashley?”

“Please don’t hurt us,” the girl whispered.

“Ashley?”

She nodded. “Miles is sick.”

I rushed over, the floorboards squealing beneath my feet. I dropped to my knees in front of them. “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart. You’re safe now. What’s wrong with Miles?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was tight, like she was fighting a bout of tears. “He’s not breathing right. He keeps fainting.”

“Does he have asthma?” I felt his head and neck. He was burning up, and his heart rate was crazy fast. I slid my light over him to check him over.

She shook her head. “No. Is he going to die?”

“No, honey. I won’t let that happen.” I stopped the light on his right arm. A large welt, hot to the touch, had risen above his elbow. “Have you seen this? Did he have it when you came in?”

Her eyes grew even wider. “I don’t think so. Did something bite him?”

“I believe so.” I considered how to get him safely out of here down the attic ladder and then down the ridiculously fragile staircase, over the pile of chairs and out through the hole in the kitchen door. I couldn’t do it. Not with the dead weight of a passed-out kid and a second kid I would also be responsible for. “How did you guys get in here?”

I hoped they had a new way in that hadn’t been available twenty years ago.

She didn’t answer at first, probably worried about getting in trouble. “Through the kitchen,” she finally said.

Well, that was no help. I tapped Riley’s number on my phone.

It barely finished the first ring. “I am going to kill you.” The relief in his voice said otherwise.

“I know.”

“Are you all right? Did you find them?”

“I did. I’m fine, but Miles isn’t. He might be in anaphylactic shock from a spider bite, and we’re all the way up in the attic. I don’t think he’s got much time.” I racked my brains for a solution and could only come up with one.

“Can you get them out?”

“Not on my own. We’ll need to fly them out of here.”

Chapter Nine

The operation took nearly the whole team of us, and required a little talk with Ashley first.

“Honey, I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you to trust me, okay?”

She gave me a cynical look but nodded. “Okay.”

“Can you tell me what happened here? Why did you come up here?”

“We heard it was haunted, so we came to see.” She looked like she was going to cry for a moment but pulled herself together. “When we got here, it was so pretty. Like a gingerbread house in the stories, you know.”

I raised an eyebrow at that and leaned forward, trying hard not to be obvious that I was sniffing her. There was no trace of the gingerbread scent reported on the last batch of kidnapped kids. The gingerbread quality of the illusion on the house might have been a coincidence—but the fact that the house had an illusion on it at all made it obvious this wasn’t some random bad guy kidnapping kids. I knew exactly who it had been.

“So, you went inside?”

“We couldn’t get inside. The front door was jammed, and all the windows were covered up.”

I nodded. There was only one way in, and you had to know where it was. “So, what did you do?”

She stared at her hands in her lap. “Miles said we should go, but I wanted to keep looking. Then we heard the music.”

“Music?”

She dragged her gaze to my face. “Flute music. We ran to see who was making it, but nobody was there. Then the music came from around the corner. We both got scared and didn’t want to follow, but we did anyway. I couldn’t help it. It was calling to me. We followed it around the house until we came to the kitchen door. The music was coming from inside the hole.”

I knew exactly what hole she was talking about. Shadow Man had led them to it, and for some reason had played the role of the Pied Piper to do it. “So, you followed the music into the house. Did you ever see anyone?”

Her face clouded. “Well, I don’t know. I can’t remember. After that, we were up here, and the door wouldn’t open.”

“You didn’t see anyone?”

“Uh-uh.”

Weird. I knew Shadow Man was behind it, but I couldn’t understand his end game.

“Ashley, in order for me to get you out of here and for me to save Miles, you’re going to see some strange things. They might be scary things. But everybody you see is a friend, no matter what they look like, okay? And you can’t tell anybody afterward. It’s very important. Do you understand?”

She nodded, her face solemn. “I understand.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye and may a lizard eat your gizzard?”

She dragged her finger over her chest in the traditional way. “I swear.”

“Okay, then.” I reached over her head and opened the window. “Let’s get all of us out of here.”

She scurried out of the way while I pulled Miles closer. Almost immediately, a shushing of mothy wings filled the air, and the enormous bulk of Darius in full mothman form hovered on the other side of the window.

I spoke in a low, careful voice, knowing how terrifying Darius could appear. “Ashley, this is my friend Darius.”

The poor kid looked like she was going to have an aneurysm, but she swallowed hard and tried to be polite. “Hello.”

I knew Darius was smiling because I’d known him for so long, but he honestly didn’t have much in the way of facial features. “Hello, Ashley.” His voice was deep and rumbly. “You’re going to be okay.” He reached through the window and gathered the limp Miles in his arms, then dropped out of sight.

Ashley yelped and ran to the window, peering after them.

“He’ll carry you down next,” I said. “Will you be okay?”

“What is that thing?” She sounded breathless, more awed now than frightened.

“He’s called a mothman. And he’s saved my life a time or two.”

She didn’t make a sound when Darius reappeared and held his arms out for her. Ashley climbed over the sill and clutched his chest, trusting him not to drop her. They dipped out of sight.

I glanced around the room, shining my phone light into the empty attic.

“I don’t know what your game is, you bastard, but it’s not cool. Messing with kids is not acceptable.” I had no idea if Shadow Man could hear me, but I spoke to him anyway. I should have been afraid at the idea that he could be hiding in a corner. Anger overshadowed any lingering fear. My voice was strong and didn’t shake. “I know you think you’re coming for me, but you’ve got it all wrong. I’m coming for you.”

When Darius came back for me, he cradled me to the ground and deposited me on feet. “You are in so much trouble,” he said.

“So I’ve heard.” I glanced over at Riley, who was bent over Miles. “I did what had to be done.”

“I know.” Darius’s voice rumbled in his chest. “It’s hard for him to accept, though. Be gentle with him.”

Right. I was supposed to be gentle with Riley. He was the one who was probably going to bite my head off when this was over. Still, he was all business now. At least I had a reprieve.

Riley was busy putting his EMT skills to work on Miles, a first aid kit beside him. Across from him, Mom sat in the dirt, legs crossed, hands splayed over Miles’s chest.

I’d never seen Mom use her supernatural skill before. All Aegises had some sort of gift—mine, of course, was being an empath. Mom was a necrofoil.

Necrofoils could hold off death until help came or, in extreme cases, until the body healed itself enough for medical attention to finish the job. Since Mom had joined us, we’d seen a lot of death, but nothing she could have stopped. A necrofoil was useless when death was sudden. A life snuffed out is gone forever. She wasn’t a necromancer. She didn’t bring back and control the dead. She held off imminent death.

A sick boy on the edge of dying—that was her specialty. And so she sat in the dirt, keeping Miles alive while Riley tended to the bite and waited for medicine to arrive.

Nearby, Ashley stood huddled against a tree, scanning the clearing. I felt the panic rolling off her and followed her gaze. Sara, in all her demon glory, stood guard across the clearing, her gaze directed out into the trees, watching for anything threatening. Kam stood on the other side doing the same, while Darius watched from a perch on the roof of the house.

I kneeled next to Ashley and took her hand in mine. “That’s Sara,” I said. “She’s my best friend in the world, like Miles is yours.” I pointed. “I promise, she won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her panic receded a little, but she kept a wary eye on our less human members while we waited.

After a few minutes, there was movement at the hole in the back door. I tensed and, feeling my tension, Ashley squeezed my hand. When she saw what crawled out of the hole, I had to hold her tightly so she wouldn’t bolt.

“Shh, it’s okay.” I stroked her arm. “That’s Maurice. He’s here to help, too.”

I felt a twinge of guilt. This poor kid was going to need so much therapy. Try explaining to anyone that the good guys were a demon, a mothman and a closet monster.

“I’ve got it!” Maurice ran into the clearing, waving something in the air.

Riley gave a sigh of relief and took the object from him. “Was it hard to find?”

“The antivenin was easy to find. Grabbing it and disappearing into the janitor’s closet without a nurse seeing me is what took me so long.”

“You did a good job, Maurice.” Mom never took her eyes off Miles.

Riley gave Miles the injection, and it wasn’t long before Mom was able to remove her hands from him. “He’ll be okay,” she said.

We had no choice under the circumstances but to make an anonymous call to the police to let them know where the kids were. Darius stayed hidden where he could keep an eye on the kids until the police came for them. Maurice took Sara home through a closet in the Corning House, the same way they got there in the first place. The rest of us walked.

Ashley was a smart girl. We all tried to make suggestions for a cover story she could tell, overcomplicating things as adults usually do. In the end, she shut us down.

“I can just say I don’t remember how we got out.” She smiled, exhaustion settling over her. “That’s what happens in ghost stories. They say they can’t remember, even if they do.”

Everyone looked to me for a decision, and I nodded. It would have to do. There was no explanation that would cover two kids lost in the woods, getting medical care, then left there with an anonymous tip to the police. It was absurd. Better to leave them guessing. Miles never saw anything anyway.

So, the remaining four of us trudged home the long way. Mom and Kam led the way, and I was left to face the music with Riley.

He was quiet for a long time, I didn’t want to be the one to break the silence. It wasn’t easy. A million apologies and excuses sat on the tip of my tongue. Finally, he let out a weary sigh and stopped walking. I turned to face him, and he took my hands in his, though he stared at the ground as he gathered his thoughts.

“You really scared me.” He stopped, his brow wrinkling.

“I—” I didn’t get to finish the thought.

“No. Let me say this first. I trust you with my life. And I know you trust me with yours.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I don’t trust you with
your
life.”

I frowned. “Okay.”

“I know that doesn’t make sense. I’m saying this all wrong.” He pulled his gaze to my face. “I’m angry with you for going in there. And I’m angry with myself because I know I didn’t give you any choice. And I’m terrified you’ll get yourself killed in a million different ways every day because you barge into things like a rhinoceros, even though you don’t have any offensive skills or powers.” His hands shook in mine. “And I’m terrified that we’ll all die if you don’t save us.”

I let out a lungful of air. “That’s...that’s a lot.” He was right. I barged. I didn’t think. And every time I put myself in danger, I risked everyone else. I could have waited for backup, and bolting on Riley had been selfish and irresponsible. We’d been through so much together—weathered a breakup and nearly lost each other, only to come back together stronger and more open and honest in our relationship. What I’d done was in direct opposition to all that we’d learned.

He nodded. “Yeah. So, here’s the deal. I won’t kick your ass for bolting in there if you won’t kick mine for telling you what to do.”

I gave him a small smile. “That seems fair.”

“And from now on, we’re a team, okay? We act together. With a plan.”

My smile widened. “I think I can do that.”

He pulled me into his arms. “God, Zoey. I thought...I thought he was in there waiting for you. I tried all the windows and doors. I couldn’t fit through the hole you went through.” His voice cracked and dropped to a whisper. He held me tighter. “And you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

I pressed against him, taking in the comforting smell of him. “I shut the ringer off. It’s the first thing you should do in a horror movie.”

He laughed and buried his face in my hair. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about that.”

We stood like that for a while, right in the middle of a side street several blocks from my house. If people looked out their windows and saw us, I didn’t care. Let them think what they wanted.

After a few minutes, we drew apart, both comforted in the knowledge that our relationship wasn’t broken. Last year, this probably would have ended things between us permanently. But we’d already tried living without each other, and it had sucked. We’d learned that avoidance didn’t solve problems. Relationships couldn’t grow stronger when problems were ignored. We dealt with things head-on now. But it didn’t mean we couldn’t hurt each other sometimes. It just meant we had to mend that hurt before it festered.

Shortly after we made it home, Darius dropped onto the porch and came in to let us know the kids were all right.

“The police were there in a matter of minutes.” He chuckled. “Ashley heard them coming and lay down next to Miles, pretending to be asleep. She was quite the little actress, faking disorientation. She’ll be okay.”

That night, I slept fitfully, tangling my legs in the covers, caught between waking and sleeping. My dreams were filled with the glowing eyes of a raccoon staring at me from the darkness. I woke with a scream wedged in my throat and couldn’t shake the vision of those eyes staring at me through my bedroom window.

I blinked, and they were gone. I turned over and went back to sleep to the sound of crickets chirping.

In the morning, I looked out the living room window and saw Sara and Maurice standing outside, brows furrowed in worry. Maurice had his hands on his hips, and Sara squatted, examining something on the ground.

“What’s going on?” I stepped out on the porch, still wearing my nightgown.

Sara stood and brushed her hands off. “Nobody was here last night,” she said. “We left the house unguarded.”

Confused, I looked at Maurice. “So? Not like anybody could get in and rob us or anything. We’ve got the fairy ring.”

“That’s just it, Zo.” Maurice’s enormous yellow eyes were wide and frightened. “There is no fairy ring.” He pointed at a section of blackened circle I hadn’t noticed. “We didn’t notice it when we got home. The fairies aren’t here. The fairy ring is gone.”