Phoenix in My Fortune (A Monster Haven Story Book 6) (3 page)

I threw the door open, grinning, and grabbed Sara as she was trying to come out. Her arms were more muscular than they used to be, and I was still getting used to maneuvering around her new horns, but demon or not, she was my best friend, and I’d missed her. I hadn’t let go yet before Maurice moved in and hugged us both.

“We saw you on the news,” Sara said once we’d disengaged. “Since nobody was here, we turned on the TV and there you were, standing in the background on the beach.”

Maurice nodded. “You looked cold. I made chicken soup. Anybody hungry?”

Riley and Darius groaned and headed for the kitchen. Mom kissed the closet monster’s cheek, patted Sara on the arm and followed the guys.

I stepped away from my friends for a good look at them. Maurice, especially, appeared different somehow, in a way I couldn’t immediately place. Then it hit me. “You’re tan!”

He grinned so wide I thought his jaw would break off. “I got to be in the sun! Australia has so much open space, I actually walked around during the day. Outside!”

His skin wasn’t exactly a normal color. It had started as a mottled, pale gray, but now it was darker and didn’t look so
translucent,
all the way to his pointed ears and sparsely haired skull. Even his enormous yellow eyes were different, though the difference was more from an inner glow than any cosmetic difference. I was glad to see he’d stopped wearing the plain, presentable dress shirts and polos Sara had tried to get him to wear a few months ago. He’d returned to draping his tall, lanky figure in a bright Hawaiian shirt and yellow-and-green-striped chef’s pants.

“A month of sunshine looks fantastic on you,” I said, squeezing his arm.

I returned my attention to Sara and gave her a closer look. Gone were the tailored suits and perfectly arranged hair. Sara had embraced her newly acquired demonhood with open arms. She’d let her silver hair grow out and left it hanging loose down her back. The sun hadn’t altered the color of her glittering gold skin, but how she chose to cover that skin had changed. She wore a loose-fitting skirt with colorful, hand-painted aboriginal pictures on it and what appeared to be a red and gold scarf that she’d wrapped around her waist, then crossed to cover her breasts and tied behind her neck. Her stomach was bare, revealing a brand new piercing in her belly button. A tiny golden sun with a ruby in the center sparkled up at me.

She was a brand new person.

Sara laughed at the disbelief on my face. “Oh, come on,” she said. “I was on vacation.”

I sobered. “Seriously. You are breathtaking.” How much of the change in my friend was acceptance of her new form, and how much was due to the love of a good monster? It filled me with joy to think Maurice’s quirky ways had mellowed her out.

She put an arm around my shoulders in a half hug. “Thank you. I’m getting used to it.” She led me toward the kitchen and the sound of clinking bowls.

The soup was delicious and warmed me as much as having my house full again of people I loved.

Maurice took a bite of buttery, cheesy biscuit. “When’s Kam coming home?”

Darius brushed a crumb from his shirt. “She texted a few minutes ago. We should see her before lunch tomorrow.”

I scowled. “I told her not to drive straight through.”

He shrugged. “Nobody tells Kam what to do any more than they tell you what to do.”

He made an excellent point.

Sara yawned and pushed her bowl away. “I’m going to crash soon. Fill us in on what’s going on.”

Maurice scraped his chair as he rose. “That, I think, will require pie.”

I sighed. Yeah. So good to have them home.

Chapter Three

No telling how fast Kam had to have driven to get home as quickly as she did, but she arrived hours before lunch the next day. She jumped out of her pickup truck in a pair of white go-go boots, an orange and pink mini dress, and with a long white scarf tied in her dark hair.

Kam had brought the ‘60s home with her.

The clothing and the exuberant attitude were a far cry from the lonely vagrant I’d pictured—stopping in every town, picking up work where she could, maybe helping someone in need before her secret was discovered and she had to move on, accompanied by sad walking-away music.

I shook my head. No wait. That was
The Incredible Hulk
.

Kam had been out chasing escaped souls for freelance pay. She’d taken the removal of one of her three magic gems better than I had, apparently. I had to stop thinking of her as having been maimed. She was doing fine, apparently.

“Hello, foxy people!” She made the rounds, hugging each of us, pausing to admire Sara’s new look, then ended with me. She pressed her forehead against mine. “You okay?” She kept her voice low so no one else would hear. “Are you freaking out?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I’m okay. We knew he’d show up eventually. I was ready.”

“So, are we keeping you at home again, out of harm’s way?” She glanced sideways to see who was listening.

Everything Kam did was exaggerated. It was part of her charm. But she also understood me. She knew being stuck at home for my own safety had nearly driven me crazy the last time. If I were in prison, Kam would be the first to smuggle in a hacksaw baked into a cake to break me out. Kam had been kept in a box for most of a century. Nobody understood the twitchy feel of being confined like she did.

“Not this time,” I whispered, then raised my voice so everyone would hear me. “I’m not hiding out. This is the last battle, and I will not wait for it to come to me this time.” Behind me, Darius let out an irritated chuff. I spun around and gave him a nice solid stink-eye. “Not negotiable. I will hunt this bastard down if I have to. And I refuse to let anybody or anything dictate whether I can do my own grocery shopping and take in my own dry cleaning.”

Kam winked at me. “Understood. I’ve got your back.”

I knew she did.

Maurice whipped up a bunch of sandwiches and a huge pot of tomato basil soup, and we all sat around the table, feasting and planning for war.

Mom pushed her spoon around in her bowl. “Do you think he’s on his own this time or should we expect minions?”

“Expect the worst, hope for the best.” Riley reached for a second sandwich. “We’ll double check the invisibility bubble in the backyard. Make sure there aren’t any holes. Maybe talk to the fairies about reinforcing the fairy ring around the property. Double check that it’s all secure.” He took a bite, chewed with a thoughtful look on his face, then swallowed. “We should keep a full-time watch on the property’s perimeter in case we get a bunch of those cultists again.”

Darius grunted in agreement. “Glad we fixed the roof last month. Looks like I’ll be spending time up there again.”

Maurice gave him a half-threatening glare. “Try not to knock any more shingles off this time.”

Darius’s dark face split into a gleaming smile. “I’ll be careful.”

Maurice couldn’t keep the glare for long, and his lips curled in a smile. “See that you are.”

The fondness the mothman and the closet monster shared had grown over time, and the goofy looks they gave each other filled my heart. In the beginning, Darius had been hard, gruff and not particularly likeable. Now, I couldn’t imagine not having him around.

Plus, he made my mom happy. Since they’d moved into their own place, it was a lot easier to be pleased for them. Not living in the same house with them took away the ick factor. In fact, I’d spent more time with both Mom and Darius since they’d gone to the cabin than I had while living under the same roof with them, trying to avoid awkward moments.

By the time we finished lunch, we had something of a plan—as well as some rules. For safety, a team of at least two people would always be positioned as lookout, keeping an eye on our property either for a tall, thin man in a dark red suit, or suspicious Hidden wandering around my yard causing trouble. Mom and I were no longer allowed to go anywhere alone outside of the fairy ring surrounding the house. Riley, Kam or—during the day—Darius had to be with us.

So, yay. I could still go out and buy bread and tampons, but I had to have a magically charged buddy go with me to do it. Sara had turned out to be pretty kick-ass when the zombie apocalypse played out in my yard, but she couldn’t pass for human anymore. Spending sprees with Sara would be limited to websites or television shopping channels now—a fact that broke my heart, in spite of being proud of how well she’d embraced her new situation.

We still didn’t know what we were up against, exactly, so the third rule was simple, but crucial.

“Nobody approaches this Shadow Man alone.” I swung around and fixed Darius with a hard stare. “Nobody.”

He opened his mouth to object, then snapped it shut. The muscles in his jaw tensed in a hard line. I didn’t alter my expression and, finally, he nodded once. “As you wish, Aegis.” One side of his mouth lifted in a barely perceptible smile. “I’ll call for backup if I spot him.”

I returned his smile. “That’s all I ask. Thank you.”

So, three simple rules.

The plan wasn’t complex, either. We’d researched the hell out of the fictional Shadow Man while we’d been waiting for him to turn up. Now that he was here, we had to be more proactive in our research. We all agreed he’d kidnapped the children practically in our backyard to get our attention. Well, now he had it.

Darius and Kam would head out to the beach at night to try to find anything indicating where the bastard was hiding out. The area was likely to remain a crime scene for a while, so night was a better option for avoiding the police.

“Also, Darius is the only one of us who can fly,” I said, tapping my fingers on the kitchen table. “So, once you change over to mothman at sunset, I need you to fly over the area and see if you can find anything unusual, while Kam does the same from the ground.”

Kam pulled a pencil and pad from her tasselled handbag. “Unusual like what?” She held her pencil poised above the paper, ready to take notes. “Rocks shaped like David Bowie’s face? Shells with eyeballs poking out? Strange, talking doors?”

Maurice snorted. “Kam’s been watching
Labyrinth
again.” They reached across the table and high fived each other.

I shook my head, trying not to laugh. “Sure. Whatever you find that looks like it doesn’t belong.”

Kam scribbled something on her notepad, frowned, erased, then wrote something else. “Got it.”

I had no idea what she could be writing. It wasn’t like I’d given intricate directions. But it was Kam, so I let it go. Who knew why she did anything?

I redirected my attention to Maurice. “You and Sara stay here with Mom. Watch the driveway especially. Mom, I need you to follow the news. Keep the TV on, but try to stick with the local stuff on the Internet, too. Watch for anything strange, especially if it has anything to do with kids, though let’s not assume Shadow Man will limit himself. The less assumptions we make, the better prepared we’ll be for his next move.”

Sara nodded, one silver brow raised. “And what are you and Riley up to in the meantime?”

“I thought we’d pay a visit to Pastor Wendell at the Church of Hidden Wisdom. Those cultists who attacked us four months ago started out as part of his congregation. If anybody knows what they’re up to now, he will.”

* * *

Riley and I headed out to the little church in Nicasio, about forty minutes away. The building was deceptively run down on the outside and hidden along a dirt road that ran past farmland and ended at the edge of a wood. Once a beautiful structure with a giant golden cross, a bell tower and tall steeple, the cross now leaned sideways, the bell was long gone and the steeple had collapsed and hung precariously over the front steps. Most of the windows were long gone, including large chunks of the colored mosaics that once told Bible stories with the sunlight streaming through them.

The whole thing was a mess—on the outside, anyway.

Inside, the building was bright and clean, the bell sounded every hour and the intact stained-glass windows depicted stories no Bible had ever contained. Certainly not the human Bible.

The door creaked as we closed it behind us. We made our way down the carpeted aisle, past the wooden, velour-cushioned pews and the windows showing minotaurs fighting a golden three-headed snake, flowery dryads cavorting with oak trees and dragons snoozing in fields of red poppies. At the green-silk-covered podium, we hung a right and followed a series of lit candles down the hall to the pastor’s office.

We got lucky. The pastor was in.

Pastor Wendell was an elf. He stood approximately three feet tall, wore a goatee the color of the sky before a thunderstorm and had a weird tic that caused him to sniff, then flare his nostrils every minute or so. He’d been very helpful last time we’d visited, though, so I was hoping he’d help us out again.

He sat behind his desk, swinging his feet, nose buried in a paper he was writing with a big wavy peacock feather as a fountain pen. The pen was taller than he was and jutted over his right shoulder. I rapped my knuckles on his office door, and he peered up at us through thick spectacles.

“Yes?” He blinked several times, then lowered his glasses on his nose to peer over them. “Ah! Miss Donovan. Mr. Banks. Please.” He waved us toward a couple of chairs on our side of his desk. “Have a seat. What can I do for you?”

I perched on the edge of my chair, a little uncomfortable in the ripped jeans and baggy, lemon-yellow sweater I’d thrown on without thinking. It was a church. This was a pastor. Regardless of what religion—or species—he was, this was not appropriate church wear for anybody. I glanced at my chipped, hot pink and green nails and folded my fingers into my palms. Obviously, I hadn’t thought this through.

Riley, thoughtfully dressed in a navy polo and khakis, took the seat next to me. “We’re sorry to bother you, sir, but we were wondering if you had any current information on the small group we contacted you about a few months ago.”

The little man sniffed, flared his nostrils and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “If I remember correctly, we’re talking about a handful of folks who split off from my church to worship an idea of the Last Hidden or some such. Yes?”

I nodded. “That’s them. They caused a lot of trouble, but we lost them when their high priest let the zombies loose. The cultists sort of took off, and we didn’t see them again.”

Wendell’s swinging legs stilled beneath the desk, and he cleared his throat. He gave us each a long look, then removed his glasses and busied himself polishing them with a handkerchief. He addressed us without looking up. “Sometimes lambs go astray. Unhappy hearts can be manipulated by bad souls. But over time, those lambs will often wander home, a little wiser, a little less uncooperative and much happier for the homecoming.”

I gave Riley a questioning look, and he shrugged. No longer ashamed of my inappropriate nail art, I leaned forward and rested the tips of my fingers on the pastor’s desk. “Are you saying they came back to your church?”

He replaced his glasses securely on his face, sniffed and flared. “I’m not saying anything. Why are you looking for them, exactly? It’s been several months.”

Riley leaned in closer, too. “Sir, the Last Hidden has made threats against us, and now he’s in the area. We just want to be aware of whether we’re fighting only him or if we’re fighting his people, as well.”

“We’d really appreciate your help.” I added a hopeful smile for good measure.

Wendell’s brows rose and his upper lip twitched. “I’m sorry. I’m certain I misunderstood you. I thought you said the Last Hidden was here.”

“Yes, sir.” Riley’s face was solemn. “That’s what I said.”

Sniff. Flare. “That’s absurd. Whoever you’re dealing with is an imposter.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s the real deal,” I said. “The First Hidden warned me that Shadow Man was coming. We’ve been waiting four months for him to appear.”

His eyes grew wide. “You’ve spoken to the First?”

“She sent visions to my mother and me.”

He took his glasses off and polished them again, though they couldn’t possibly be smudged already since the last time he’d done it. “What you’re saying is impossible, Miss Donovan. By the very nature of you, yourself, saying it. The Last Hidden can’t emerge while the last Aegis still lives. And there are still...” He gave us a questioning look. “Two of you?”

I fought the urge to do some twitching of my own. I didn’t care for his condescending tone. “Yes. Two of us. We’ve been through this impossible-type scenario a few months ago when the zombie portal opened without Mom and me being dead. The Last Hidden—Shadow Man—doesn’t play by the rules.” I pressed my lips together to keep from adding how he hadn’t lifted a finger to help, though part of the problem had been his own parishioners gone rogue.

Twitch. Nostril flare. Sniff. “This isn’t natural. If this Shadow Man really is the Last Hidden, he’s forced himself into the world prematurely.” Under the desk, the pastor’s foot bounced in a frenetic pattern. The laces on his dress shoe bounced and flailed.

I lowered my mental shields a bit and reached my empath ability toward him. Nervous energy pelted me like bits of gravel, and fear oozed down his legs and into the drab brown carpet. He took a deep breath and went still.

The elf sat staring at us for so long, I thought he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. He shifted, then rested his chin on steepled fingers. “Whatever this creature is, Final Hidden or pretender, you’re concerned that those lost sheep who followed his voice four months ago are following his flesh now. Correct?”

His fear was still there. I could taste it at the back of my throat. But it was different now—a subtle change to the quality of his fear. He was afraid for others, not for himself. “Yes. That’s correct. If the cult is still in existence, then Shadow Man has minions he can rely on to do some of his dirty work.” I paused. “Do you know that yesterday he kidnapped six children who were on a field trip?”