Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) (4 page)

Less than a minute late
r,
I hit the kitchen at a hop, forgetting about the
water, and went sliding. My foot shot sideways, hit
ting
the counter
,
and I ended up wedged
awkwardly between two cabinets.

My back and foot hurt like
hell
,
but my camera and I were
otherwise unharmed. I swallowed, eyed “
Mind
the towels
” suspiciously, and pushed myself up slowly, awkwardly. I set the
camera down long enough to check myself for bruises and squish myself back far
enough to get most of the fridge in the
frame.
I
took a wide shot of the whole fridge first, then moved in for a series of
closer shots.

I took careful photos of
every section of magnets, making sure that any pictures I took would be legible
if printed out. As I sunk lower and lower, I read random phrases, unable to
make sense of most of them.

Almost at the end, I found
one phrase
sticking
out from others, separated by
blank
space. It said, “
Answer the
phone :) :)
”

Before I could wonder how my
magnetic poetry had manifested smiley emoticons, the phone rang. I yelped,
crawling away to put my back to the wall, my heart pounding away like a boxer.
Whatever had filled my fridge with the magnetic equivalent to
Minority
Report
had left my mobile phone within arm’s reach. I hadn’t even noticed
it missing from my nightstand when I’d woken up. Swallowing, I grabbed it,
tapped the answer icon, and pressed it to my ear.

“
Hello?
”

“I didn’t think you’d be
awake!”
Chloe
chirped.

I scowled
at myself, realizing I’d half expected to hear
some mysterious voice tell me I only had seven days to live.

“Yet you still called at this
ungodly hour.” I got to my feet to look over the fridge again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Some…
some
thing
was in my house last night. It decorated my fridge.”

Chloe was silent for a beat
before saying carefully, “
Okay.
”

“
I
’
m not joking!
”

“Are you sure you’re not
dreaming?”

My gaze fell on six word
magnets that seemed to know exactly what was going on. They spelled out, “
you
took pictures you’ll prove it
.
” The
tiny shiny rectangles
had a point.

“I took pictures. I’ll prove
it,” I said, tipping my head suspiciously at the fridge. “What do you want?”

“
I got ahold of Mel. He
’ll meet us at The Internets for breakfast at
eight-thirty. We can tell him what went down, see what he might know about
these guys. Maybe he has connections in the preternatural world, someone who
knows who Laurel and Hardy think you are.”

“
Yeah, maybe,
”
I
mumbled
. My gaze
jumped to another set of magnets. These instructed me to open the cereal
cabinet. I started to wonder how this prophetic jerk had managed to use words
that I was sure none of my sets even contained. “
I
’ll meet you guys there.”

“Eight-thirty,”
Chloe said, her voice
slow.

“Yes, I got it.”

“Repeat it back to me. I’
m
still convinced you’re unconscious and this is all
some sort of sleep-walking endeavor.”

I
grunted in disgust
and hung up on her
as she laughed at me. I
stuck my phone in my robe pocket, whirling on my cabinets like they’d
threatened me. It occurred to me as I grabbed the handle that maybe they
were
dangerous. Maybe whatever had been in my home had filled them with
giant
radioactive scorpions or possibly even
t
he Scorpion King himself. While having The Rock in my
kitchen sounded pretty pleasant, I figured it was much more likely that blindly
opening my cupboards was going to get my head lopped off by snapping pincers.

“
Dammit,
” I whined. Sonny squawked at me and I sighed,
scooping him up to put him back in his cage, where I hoped he’d be safe. My nex
t stop was
back in
my office, where I grabbed a wooden baseball bat from
next to my desk and stepped into my slippers. They had some pretty solid rubber
bottoms and would probably smash bugs well enough if it came to that.

I stood in front of my
cabinets working up my courage, then
took a deep breath and let
out a quick battle cry, yanked open the door, and hopped back. Nothing jumped
out at me, screamed threateningly, or tried to raise Anubis’
s
army from Hell. I blinked, confused for a few moments
at the fact that all I spied were my boxes of cereal, oatmeal, and—and an
upturned, empty Twinkie box
.

“
No,
” I whispered, dropping the bat to the ground as I reached for what had,
only two days before, been an entire case of spongy, cream-filled delights. “
No!
”
I
snatc
hed the
thing out of the cabinet and shook it, as if that would activate some secret
compartment and my treats would come tumbling out. I should have known better;
there were empty Twinkie wrappers littering the inside of the cabinet. The box
remained barren, but I did notice a pink sticky note on the back.

I didn’t recognize the
handwriting but I could read it; it said,
Laurel and Hardy will be unhappy
with you if you don’t find those kids
followed by
a
sad face. Was my food threatening me? I shook the box again, knowing it
was futile.

Maybe I
was
dreaming.

Slamming the cabinet shut, I
eyed the rest of my kitchen. Who knew what else the Twinkie thief had taken or
touched? Maybe my pastries weren't the only thing it put its hands all over.
Marching to the fridge, I gave it one more scan, hoping for answers. None of
the magnets had moved. The one proclaiming “
Stay away from the baby
sasquatches
” still sat right next to “
Don't accept the ring
!”

Worrying slightly less about scorpions and
slightly more about the state of my kitchen, I went through the cabinets. Gone.
It was all gone. Not a speck of anything sugary or sweet remained anywhere, not
even in my most careful emergency hiding spots. That bastard.

Seething, I took the time to
go through the house, checking windows and doors, checking my valuables,
checking my clothes to make sure nothing had been taken. Maybe ten minutes into
my reconnaissance, I stood at the edge of my closet,
torn
between being disgusted at myself for the state of it
and terrified that I’d actually have to open the box I kept hidden at the back.

I
’d been married once, jumping into it at the tender
age of eighteen with a man who had, even at the time, deserved much better than
an immature sugar addict like me. I hadn’t spoken to him or heard from him in
ten years but that didn’t stop my guilt over how things had ended. That regret
had fueled a series of impulse purchases over the last six years, leaving me
with a box full of milquetoast mystery novels written by my ex. I’d never read
any of them, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. Stanley only had
four novels out, but I had somehow amassed somewhere around thirty copies of
his books.

After a minute of staring at
the pile of old coats that concealed the box from prying eyes, I convinced
myself that my visitor hadn’t found the books, that I didn’t need to check to
make sure they were safe. It was just good sense, you see. Not cowardice. I
swear. I moved on to checking the other parts of my closet.

At the bottom of my underwear
drawer, I found another sti
cky
note.

I
’m not interested in your unmentionables. Don’t be
weird.

Somehow, despite everything
else, the note offended me the most. I wasn’t the one showing up in a
stranger’s house, leaving notes and stealing sugar. What was this creature
playing at? Irritated, I carried the pink square to my office, grabbed a pen,
and wrote in the bottom margin
:
I
’m not the one being weird,
you freak!

Satisfied I’d put the
creature in its place as well as I could—considering the fact that I had
no actual access to it—I contemplated the note. Where should I leave it?
Was I actually hoping to get it back to the thief? I held it as I wandered back
into the kitchen, stared at the fridge for a moment
,
and then stuck it to the door over the magnetic phrase, “
Werewolf puppies
!!
”

Deciding there was nothing
else to be done
at
the moment, I fed the bird
and went to get dressed. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Mel, but if
he had answers about what had gotten
into
my
home and what had shown up in my office, I needed them.

Chapter
Four

I loosened
my scarf as I stepped into the warmth of The
Internets half
an
hour early and did my best
not to make squeaky excited sounds at the sight of the pastries in the case. Madeline,
the owner, greeted me with a lift of her chin and a smile before going back to
the customer in front of her. The line was long, curving along the counter to
fold back around toward me. I rubbed my hands together as I
tried
to decide which geek-themed items I felt like eating.

I’d tried everything from the butterbeer to the slice
of Lie (chocolate cake with cherries on top) and, since it all had at least
some sugar in it, it all looked good to me. Today the display case was filled
with plenty of cakes, cookies, donuts, and even pre-wrapped sandwiches.
Half the selection was vegan but it wasn’t just that
Madeline and Chloe were in cahoots; Seattle has a pretty good-sized vegan
community and it’s getting less likely to see a place within city limits that
can’t adequately feed someone who, like Chloe, eschews animal products. I’m not
against vegan food but it seems to me that limiting oneself to a smaller
section of the sweets in the world will only end in heartbreak.

I eyed the D-20 cookies,
despite their lack of eggs, butter, and processed sugar and decided it was
going to come down to their pink and white frosting versus the 1-UP cupcakes
and their green and white fondant. In the end, I went with
my old standby.

“
Hey, Madeline,
” I said as I stepped up to
the counter. She smiled at me again and I felt a curl of something velvety
reach out of her and snake around me. Madeline isn’t human but,
as
with the few other non-humans
I
’
d
met
, I
’d never had the guts to ask
exactly what she is. The fact that she’d never offered an explanation for her
strange, breezy emotions made me think she either didn’t know I had a power, or
she didn’t want to talk about it.

I wasn’t about to risk her
peeling back her head like a Pez dispenser to reveal a giant mouth with teeth specifically
designed for chomping into an empath, so I’d never mentioned that I could tell
she was different.

“Saw you eyeing the 1-UP
cupcakes, so I’ll assume you want your usual,”
Madeline
teased
. Her
affection for me brushed across my empathy like a soft
summer breeze.

My lips tugged up in a goofy
grin as I absorbed her fondness easily and reflected it back. Since Madeline
had never offered me any harm and her emotions were pretty pleasant, I’d fallen
out of the habit of shielding around her. Thus, I usually found myself pretty
damn happy to see her once I was close enough. Sometimes, despite the fact that
she’s not much to look at, I was even convinced I had a crush on her.

“
It
’s a bit early for sweets, though,” she said with a wag of her finger
and that was definitely playful and maybe even a little flirty. I shrugged, my
usual irritation at being policed for my food choices nowhere to be found.

“I keep hoping to get a life
and yet, despite eating dozens of the suckers, I’
m still lacking.
”

Madeline chuckled.
“A friend stopped by, wanted
me to give you some things,” she said, leaning into the case. I frowned at her
through the glass as she scooped a green and white spotted cupcake and an
oatmeal carrot muffin onto a plate. She pointed to the muffin I had no
intention of eating. “This, and I’
m
also supposed to
give you this...” Sliding the plate across the counter, she stuffed a hand into
her massive apron and pulled out a copy of a paranormal romance book that had
seen better days. I took the book from her, perplexed.

“Who was
it?
”

“Friend of the café, that’s
all I’m allowed to tell you. Said to give you the book and the health food. Did
you want a drink?”

“
Uh,
”
I mumbled
, still staring at the
paperback. The spine was badly creased, the cover had been scrawled with red
scribbles, and the pages were folded back at the tops and bottoms. I recognized
the title, but this copy looked like it had gone through the wringer. I’m not
always the best with books, but even I didn’t torture them this much.
“Ah, sure, yeah. Gimme a Chestburster.”

“You got it.” Madeline rang
me up for my drink and cupcake, then shooed me out of the way of the next
customer. I took my haul to a small round table near the front window to wait
for my drink. It was a little chillier the further away from the horde of
excitable nerds at the back
,
but that just meant I got
more solitude. With a little distance between us, I could better block out the
buzz of emotions from the geeks and gamers swarming around. Despite the fact
that it was early, the place was jumping with the before school/work crowd.

The tables at the back were
surrounded by people cramming together to take advantage of the free wireless
on their laptops and tablets, while the massive couch in front of the
gargantuan TV was packed with gamers watching each other take turns street
fighting through the magic of pixels and button mashing. Sitting next to the
front window left a few tables empty to stand guard between the cacophony and
me.

The book intrigued me enough
that I held off forking into my treats until I’d given it a good look-see.
Nearly every page was covered in red pen, notes scrawled in the margins,
between the lines, along the header, below the text in neatly printed footnotes
that would have looked pre-printed if it weren’t for the color and slight
bleeding of ink. From the look of it, the friend of The Internets did not like
the book. I flipped through, reading notes like, “Whose hand is this?”, “Is
this a person's chest or a chest of drawers?”, and “Why does he have a Bedazzler?”
before I flipped to the title page and felt my mouth drop open.

To Gwen,

Since I know you’re not
getting any action in real life, at least enjoy something steamy to read!

Love, Robin

Now I knew why I recognized
it.
 
My sister had given me this book
as a birthday gift. It had been sitting in my home office waiting to be read
for two weeks and now it was here at The Internets, covered in red pen. As I
looked over the notes more carefully, I realized the handwriting looked
familiar and the nonsense phrases reminded me strongly of the notes I’d found
on my fridge.

“Son of a bitch,” I sighed,
setting the book down.

“What’
s up?
”

I jumped. Holly, the
assistant manager, set my mug down and lifted a hand to her wide hip.

“
I
… Who left this here?” I asked, waved the book spastically at h
er.

Holly shrugged and shook her
head.
“No idea. I didn’t even know Mad had it until
she handed it to you. Why?”

“This is mine. Someone stole
it out of my desk at home and wrote all over it.”

“Someone you know?” Holly
asked, taking the book out of my hand
s.

“I don't think so.”

“
Has to be someone you know. That's your handwriting,”
she said, peeling a sticky note out of the middle of the book. She watched me
as she handed it over and then leafed through the book. I blinked down at the
little pink square I'd left on my fridge an hour before, feeling my face pull
into a snarl. The creature had somehow
already
found my retort and
evidently wrote all over my book as punishment for calling it a freak.

Why you gotta be calling me
names? I was just being nice :(

“Probably for the best,”
Holly said as she set the book on the table. “It’s a crappy book. Most of the
notes are dead on, though I can’t read the ones in French so I can’t vouch for
those.”

“French?” I demanded,
realizing I’d missed those.

Holly laughed at me and I got
the feeling she thought I was joking.
“I gotta get back to the
counter, but I think Madeline knows French if you want her to translate.”

“
Yeah, maybe,
”
I
muttered
,
distracted.

“Everything okay otherwise?”

“Other than having an
arch-nemesis that destroys my books, yeah. Sure. Why?”

“You
’ve only got two things on your plate today. That’s
practically starving yourself.” Holly winked and headed back to the counter. I
sighed, stabbing into the crumbly carrot muffin as I stared at the cover of the
book, wondering what the hell I’d done to deserve some sort of pest that stole
sugar and wrote all over my reading material. I had a brief bout of panic over
my books at home and told myself I’d have to check the margins of each and
every one as soon as I could.

Figuring it was probably for
the best that the creature was stealing sugar instead of using its red pen to
stab me in the jugular, I took a sip of my super
-
spicy Mexican hot cocoa and tried not to obsess while I waited
.

Chloe showed up a few minutes
early
,
zipping straight over
. She had only to wave a hand at Madeline to order her usual: a green
tea soy latte and a Monster Carrot muffin of her own. I wondered briefly if she
and the candy thief were conspiring against me; why else would it have
instructed Madeline to give me something healthy?

“Sleep well?” Chloe asked as
she slid into a chair next to me,
unbundling
herself. Her eyes dropped to the ragged book in the
middle of the table. “What’s that?”

“It goes with these,”
I sighed,
reaching into my bag to pull
out the prints I’d made of the pictures I’d taken that morning. “I wasn’t
lying. I woke up to find that something had eaten all the sugar in my
place—all of it! It even downed my jars of white sugar! What am I supposed
to put in my tea?”

“You could drink it plain,”
Chloe
suggested, skimming through
the book. She stopped on the sections that contained French and squinted at
them.
Amusement
blossomed inside her, but I
pressed on with my complaints.

“This is not the time for
jokes. Something was
in
my
house
! It left me with these.” I shoved the pictures across
the table to her and she set the book down, making a giddy
ooh
! sound as she yanked them
out of the envelope.

‘“These aren’
t tasteful nudes!
” she joked after a few moments
of fanning through them like a flipbook. Then she made a thoughtful noise. “What
are they?”

“That’s what I was looking at
when you called. I found the fridge covered this morning. Hundreds of
messages—most of them nonsense, far as I can tell—were spelled out
in my magnets.”

“
Weird!
”
Chloe said, still
looking the pictures over. “Was
anything else touched? Did you find lipstick messages on your mirrors or
threats spelled out in blood on the walls?”

“No, nothing like that. In
fact, the only other change I could find was that all my sugar is gone. The
magn
ets,
fine
,
I can deal with that, but
the asshole ate all my Twinkies and candy. It even ate my fruit pop cereal.”

Chloe threw me a look that
was decidedly less than sympathetic. I went quiet in an epic pout, watching her
flip through the pictures. She skimmed quickly, only stopping on one or two to
give them a closer look. About three
-
quarters
of the way down the stack, she let out a loud, shocked laugh. I peered over and
found her looking at one that focused on the phrase, “
The Gavel will bang
again
.”

I raised a brow.
“What’
s so funny?
”

“
It
’
s uh
…” She trailed off and then
looked up at me as if considering something. “I like it. Can I keep it?”

“I guess. I have copies at
home. I saved them everywhere, just in case.”

She brightened, tucked the
picture in her jacket pocket, and then put the pictures back into their
envelope.
“Mel should be here, although he didn’t sound
completely conscious when I called him, either.”

“
Well
,
you called him at, what? Five in the morning? He’d probably only just
gotten home from nailing hammered co-eds.” Chloe snorted and I changed the
subject back to my problem. “So what do you think?” I asked, gesturing to the
envelope.