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Authors: Eileen Rendahl

Dead Letter Day (7 page)

BOOK: Dead Letter Day
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I would have liked to know the answer to that myself, but it was going to having to wait. “I’m fine. I’ve been too busy. I need a vacation.”

Meredith stared some more. “Have you ever taken a vacation?”

“Of course I’ve taken vacations. I wasn’t raised in the
wilds of Siberia.” Besides my family lives in northern California. We’re driving distance from easily a dozen places that the rest of the country spends hundreds of dollars flying to for their vacations. Lake Tahoe. Napa. San Francisco. Lassen. Yosemite. Monterey Bay.

“When did you take a vacation?”

“Last summer?”

“This past one? I don’t remember you taking any vacation. There was the whole
kiang shi
thing, then the whole deal with the
bruja
started.”

“So maybe it was the summer before that.” I scanned my memory. It must have been.

“Where’d you go?”

“I’m thinking.” I must have taken a vacation. Everyone took vacations. But no, I couldn’t muster up a memory of me getting on a plane or into my car and heading off to someplace to do anything besides work or deliver a message or a package or letter. “Fine. I don’t vacation. What’s your point?”

“My point is that there’s something going on with you.” She looked at me through narrowed eyes.

I had been thinking the same thing, but didn’t really want to deal with it. “And whatever’s going on with me is more important than what might be going on with Paul?”

She sucked a breath in through her teeth. “No. You’re right. Let’s stay on the topic.”

That was more like it. “Ted is going to check out any odd reports that have crossed the police blotter around were the Pack is most active. Alex and I are both checking our sources for gossip.” Working at one of the busier emergency rooms in Sacramento meant that both Alex and I heard about a lot of what was going on in the area before anyone else did. Add to that Alex’s fairly extensive network of
supernatural buddies and we knew about most of what was up and what was way way down.

“And me? What am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Have you looked for him with…you know, other methods?” I asked.

Meredith bit her lip and then nodded. “I have, but I’m getting nothing but static.”

I thought about that for a second. “Maybe you’re too close to it. It’s making static for you, like my feelings for Ted are making static for me, apparently.”

“Interesting,” she said. “I could ask someone else to do a little scrying for him, I suppose.”

I blew out a breath. That hadn’t been so bad. Meredith had a job to do and she wouldn’t get in our way or get herself into any trouble. I walked her to the door a few minutes later.

I opened the door and found a package sitting on our welcome mat. It looked like it had been wrapped in an inside-out paper grocery bag and had an address written in neat block printing in Sharpie. Meredith froze and looked from the package to me. “What is it?”

“It’s a package.” I have a very firm grasp of the obvious that I am nearly always willing to share with others.

“I can see that. Who left it here?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t hear anyone. Did you?”

She shook her head. “What about with your other senses? Did you feel anything?”

“Nope. Not the least little tingle.” I looked down at my hands. They weren’t glowing, but that didn’t mean anything. I crouched down next to the package. I was getting nothing from it. Literally, nothing. Not a shiver, not a tremble, not a frisson on an ant’s ass. Nada. I picked it up.

Meredith gasped. I shot her a look. “It’s a package. Not a bomb.”

“Well, pardon me for me being concerned, but I’ve had some experience with a few of your packages and no way would I pick one up with my bare hands.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest.

It wasn’t like she didn’t have cause for concern, but not with this one. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. This finally looks like a simple one. I might even have Sophie do it.”

Sophie is, for lack of a better word, my protégée. She’s my Messenger in training. She came to Mae and me just a few weeks before Mae was killed. In retrospect, I should have realized what it meant, having her appear like that. I sometimes think that Mae did.

Sophie’s an amazing kid. Smart, funny and kind. She’d been doing a great job and I’d started letting her do more and more deliveries on her own.

Sort of like Mae had done with me. I looked at the address again. It was out near the Sacramento Slough, not exactly close by, but it shouldn’t be a big problem for her to find.

Meredith nodded. “That’s good. You need to delegate more. You’ve been swamped for too long.”

True that.

3

IT WAS NEARLY NOON WHEN I GOT TO THE RIVER CITY Karate and Judo. The message light was blinking on the phone and there was a pile of mail inside the door. I sighed, scooped up the mail and listened to the messages. There were two hang ups, one robo call telling me about a fabulous opportunity to refinance my home and one call from a guy wanting to know more about the studio’s children’s classes and if they would be appropriate for his five-year-old.

I jotted down the number of the actual phone call and deleted all the messages. The mail was the same time-consuming waste. Ads. Flyers. Circulars. Offers for credit cards. Catalogs. Oh, and the electric bill. On the best of days, this administrative stuff made my head hurt. This wasn’t the best of days. I put my head down on my desk and closed my eyes.

I woke up with a start, fifteen minutes later, drool crusting the side of my face. I had fallen asleep at Mae’s desk.
I am not a napper. Meredith was right. I needed to start delegating more and I needed to take a vacation, even if the only place I traveled to was my own bed.

I went to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face and returned to the desk. I kept my head up and my eyes open and slogged through all the annoying and irritating stuff that makes a small business like a karate studio run. I even returned the phone call from the concerned dad who wanted his five-year-old to channel some of his wild energy into something more productive. I have to admit, I have a soft spot for the rambunctious five-year-olds and I happen to think our Little Dragon classes are the perfect place for them, so that call was at least a pleasant one.

By the time I was done with all that, Sophie showed up. She hadn’t even sat down when I presented her with the package I’d found on my doorstep and said, “This one is all yours.”

She stared at it then looked up at me. “It’s got no buzz.”

“Not that I could sense either.” I liked that she had used her Messenger senses before she ever reached out to touch the thing. It made me feel like a good teacher and it was all about me, wasn’t it?

“What do you think it is?” she asked, now taking it in her hands and turning it over.

“I have no idea. Nor do I much care.” Caring about these things invariably got me into the kind of trouble I couldn’t seem to get out of by myself. Caring had ended up with me in a cemetery shooting lightning bolts from my fingers while the man I loved lay trussed up and helpless at the feet of an evil
bruja
. It also apparently got one of my best friends in trouble, enough trouble that he was told to go and get his thinking straight, which in turn had set me on a path of sticking my nose where it wasn’t wanted in the first place. Can you say downward spiral? I know I can.

“Okay. Have you looked up the address at all?” She set the package back down on my desk.

Sophie was asking all the right questions. I felt so proud of her. “Yep. It’s the middle of nowhere.”

“Okeydokey, then. I’ll put it in my car for now.” She grabbed it and headed out the door.

It wasn’t uncommon for our deliveries to be made to places that didn’t appear to be places at all. Supernatural beings called things home that didn’t look like homes to most ’Danes. While I preferred to know where I was going and who I was looking for, it certainly wasn’t a requirement. I was glad that Sophie seemed to be adjusting to that as well.

After she came back from her car, we set up the studio for the afternoon and evening. Classes started pretty much right after school let out most afternoons and ran into the early evening. For a while, I’d been teaching most of them, but now Sophie was to the point where she could teach the Little Dragons classes. I’d even let my former nemesis, T.J. Hamilton, teach some of the upper-level classes.

To be honest, if I’d known how much T.J.’s attitude toward me would change, given a little responsibility and a whole lot of extra work, I’d have done it hella faster. He’d gone from constantly trying to knock me down—often quite literally—to being one of the people I relied on most to keep me standing, on a metaphorical level.

The first time I’d asked him to teach had been a fluke. I’d been desperate. I’d had a delivery to a leprechaun that really could not wait. He was only passing through the area and I had a very tight window when he would be here. Sophie had been busy with finals and Mae was, of course, gone. T.J. had been the most experienced person in the room. I asked him to take over during warm-ups and he’d done a terrific job.

He really was a natural teacher. He had a good sense of where everyone was ability-wise and where their strengths and weaknesses were. It’s also what made him a formidable sparring partner. He had everyone sized up. When he was teaching, though, he used that knowledge to help them work on deficiencies while making sure they knew their skills were valued. I should probably be taking a few teaching lessons from him.

For now, I was content to use him, which remarkably seemed to make him like me. We’d always had an adversarial relationship. I always thought he’d resented my relationship with Mae, and even after Mae was gone he resented my position at the dojo.

Now it seemed like we were on the same side. He was respectful without being too deferential, which was good because brownnosers irritate the hell out of me. He’d had some suggestions about scheduling that had been really helpful and his rapport with the teenage boys was awesome. I counted myself lucky.

The afternoon whirled by with one class flowing into another until T.J. came in to oversee the green belt sparring session. Sophie and I retreated into my little office.

“So I guess I’ll get going,” Sophie said, gathering up her jacket and keys.

“Does your mom know you’ll be late?” I asked.

Sophie’s mom didn’t interfere much with Sophie’s work at the dojo or as a Messenger, not that she realized the latter was going on. I figured the best way to keep it that way was not to upset her much.

“Yep. She thinks I’m studying for my statistics test with Ben.”

I blinked. Math was not my thing. “Do you need to go study?”

She dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “All covered, Melina. Not to worry.”

“Great. Text me later and let me know how it went.”

“You bet.” She headed out.

And came right back in. She tossed the package back on my desk. “I’ve got a flat.”

I sighed. I can change a flat. My father felt strongly that no girl should leave home without knowing how to swim, drive a stick shift and change a flat tire. “Come on, then,” I said. “We’d best get to it.” Too bad it was already dark out. Tire changing was significantly easier in daylight.

“Don’t worry about it. My dad is coming to pick me up. He said he’ll come by tomorrow and fix the flat while I’m at school. I couldn’t figure out how to tell him that I needed the car tonight. Can you make the delivery?” She flung herself down in the chair, clearly disgusted.

“No problem. I’d rather make the delivery than change your tire in the dark, to be honest. T.J. has things handled here.”

Sophie swept her blonde ponytail around and twirled it with her index finger. “So you’re not mad?”

“Of course not. In fact, call your dad and tell him I’ll drop you off on my way out. Save him a trip.” Mad? At a flat tire? What kind of monster was I?

“I could go with you on the delivery. Keep you company.” Sophie tilted her head and smiled.

I turned the idea over in my head. Normally company wasn’t actually high on the list of things that I wanted. I spent a lot of time alone. I always had. I was used to it and was about to tell Sophie that.

Then I saw her face. Really saw it. She was the one who wanted the company.

Being a Messenger isn’t the easiest thing in the world.
It’s made a bit harder by the fact that you don’t really have anyone to talk to about it. If you told most people that you spent a big chunk of your time delivering items to mermaids or goblins or even elves and fairies, they formed opinions of you that were not uniformly positive. I knew it had been hard for Sophie to maintain the friendships she’d had before she’d had her accident and become a Messenger. Let’s face it. Friendships are pretty darn important when you’re a teenager. I’m not sure there’s anything more important to most adolescents. It had been easier for me as a teenager. I’d been weird since I was three. I didn’t have many friends. Pretty much just Norah and Mae. I hadn’t had to keep any secrets from Mae, and as it turned out, I had pretty much sucked at keeping them from Norah.

BOOK: Dead Letter Day
13.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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