haven hollow 00 - 01 to 10, page 44
Ophelia’s eyes glittered with a hatred so vile, I could taste it on the back of my tongue. It was like sweet rot, a stench so repulsive, it made me gag. I could see her struggling with the command, but in the end, she turned mechanically and walked toward the door. She paused on the threshold and dropped her gaze to me, where I was still on hands and knees.
“I’ve been lenient with you thus far for services rendered, but associating with hunters is a step too far. Consider your grace period over. Decide what side you’re on, Ms. Morton, or I’ll be selling Ms. Depraysie the property she’s been after. Then I’m afraid you’ll be out of time.”
My heart thumped unevenly.
With one last contemptuous glance in my direction, Ophelia swept out the door, leaving me in the midst of my broken crystals and leaking potions.
Chapter Nine
“I’m dreadfully sorry about that,” Fox said as he offered me a hand up, which I refused. “I never dreamed Ophelia would reveal herself in front of a mundane.”
I glared up at him. “I’m not a mundane.”
He cocked his head to the side, and that charming smile was back in full effect. “Gypsies are hardier than most, true, but you’re still mortal.”
He did sound sorry—at least a little bit. When I peered up at him through watering eyes (not that I was willingly crying—whatever magic Ophelia had just weaved around us had done a number on my body), his expression was suddenly sober, the impish twinkle in his eyes gone. He looked ten years older than the man who’d first walked through the door.
“Please.” He offered me a hand up again and, this time, I took it. My knees wobbled, and he had to put a hand on my waist to steady me.
“W-Why didn’t Ophelia’s little stunt affect you?” I asked, only after catching my breath. The power inherent within that woman was no joke. And it scared me.
Fox tugged at the collar of his coat with his free hand and gave me a soft smile. “This coat is witch-spelled.”
I looked first at his coat and then at him. “Your coat is magic?” I asked, not meaning to sound simple but…
“More immune to magic than magic, itself, but perhaps the meaning is still the same.”
“A witch bespelled the coat?”
He nodded. “I had a feeling I’d need something… unconventional when I agreed to the business that brought me to Haven Hollow. Normally, I wouldn’t need such an enchanted item for a regular mission but…” He trailed off, half-smiled and shook his head. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. Where Ophelia Ponsobby is concerned, you should keep on your guard, Ms. Morton.”
“Why do I have the feeling she’d say the same about you?”
“Regardless, I was telling Ophelia the truth when I said I didn’t come here to kill anyone. If it came to the choice of my life or someone else’s, though, then my hand would be forced. Regardless, I’ve got a job to do, and I’m not about to let Ophelia stand in my way.”
Fox slipped a hand inside the enchanted coat and produced a card from the seemingly endless pockets. It was a deep green with the letters FOX ASPEN printed in raised gold letters. A phone number appeared just below. No address, no additional contact information, just the number and the name.
“Think about what I said, Ms. Morton,” he said. “If you’d truly like to assist in finding the missing children, dial the number on the card.”
I looked down at the card again. “Fox,” I started.
But when I looked up, he was gone. There were only a few curling brown and gold leaves floating in the air, where he’d been standing only moments before.
I had to blink a few times for my brain to register what had just happened. Hmm, I didn’t imagine a witch-spelled coat allowed for such manipulations but then, what did I really know?
***
I strode into the spacious lobby of Hallowed Realty, past the many glass and steel partitions that separated the individual offices, looking for one in particular. I felt eyes on my back while I passed, and whispers broke out as I made for the last office in the row.
Coming to a halt just shy of the large executive desk, I waited for its occupant to acknowledge me. Ophelia stared stubbornly at her day planner for several long seconds, scribbling notes in a language I couldn’t read. She didn’t bother looking up once.
So, I waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Keep your cool, Poppy, I told myself as I swallowed hard. Whatever you do, don’t get emotional. Ophelia doesn’t respect emotion.
When she still didn’t look up or otherwise acknowledge me, I slapped the desk in front of her with an audible smack. The room seemed to hold its collective breath as Ophelia raised her eyes from the planner at last, peering at me over the wire-rims of her rose-colored glasses.
“Can I help you?” she bit out frostily.
“Two hundred dollars,” I said in as firm a voice as I could manage.
It was difficult to tell through the mass of lines on her face, but I thought a muscle near her eye might have twitched.
“Pardon?”
“Your little rampage in my store earlier caused two hundred dollars in damage. I’m here to request you to pay it back.”
Ophelia’s lip curled. “Talk to your insurance company, Ms. Morton.”
I smiled at her, but I could feel my eyes narrowing.
“Actually, after you so rudely barged into my shop and destroyed my property, I examined that contract Marty and I signed. And do you know what I found? What was mentioned as a foundational principle?”
Ophelia’s lips thinned, and she began fiddling with her pen. She knew damn well what I was getting at, she just wasn’t going to answer me.
“Guest rights,” I answered my own question, continuing to glare down at her. “You came into my place of business, and you destroyed my things, you cost me business, and you’re going to give me two-hundred dollars.” I took a deep breath. “Unless...”
“Unless?”
I sat down in the seat opposite her. “Unless you’d rather grant me two favors I deem of equal value.”
“Two favors?” she repeated, eyeing me narrowly.
I nodded. “Actually, less favors and more a question, and a promise.”
Ophelia set her pen down and folded her arms across her ample yet amorphous chest. Ophelia may have looked like an exceptionally unattractive human woman, but beneath the revolting clothing, she was a hag, a hideously deformed shape made of dusty, leathery, skin stretched over a rickety ladder of bones and blubber.
“What is it you want?” she demanded.
“The truth.”
“The truth about what?”
I cocked my head to the side, but didn’t break her gaze. “You hate humans. I want to know why.”
Her snort was phlegmy. “I think the answer to your question should be obvious.”
“It’s not.”
“Then, here’s an exhaustive list. Humans are a menace. Anything they don’t understand or fear, they destroy. Most monster populations that can’t pass for human have been hunted to near extinction. Some are already extinct. As far as hags are concerned, I’m a rarity among my race, in that I’m stronger than most hags so I can magic myself into passing for human. Most of my people can’t and thus, they live their existences in hiding: skulking in shadows, huddling in alleys, pretending to be beggars. It’s too dangerous to exist otherwise. Now, there are only a handful of places where monsters are safe globally… places we term ‘Hollows’.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, and it turned out I didn’t have to say anything because Ophelia wasn’t finished.
“Even when we aren’t being hunted, we’re being erased by the careless antics of mundanes. Sasquatch are routinely left homeless by deforestation. Dryads are slaughtered, naiads poisoned by the chemicals dumped into their streams. Sirens choked to death by plastic rings and oil slicks. Cruelty is one thing. It’s the stupidity that galls me most. The Hollows were created when it became very clear that mundanes could not be trusted to police their own impulses.”
“And what’s your answer?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I’m merely taking a page from their playbook.”
“Which means what?”
She sighed. “It means that those of us who possess magic, ‘monsters’ as we’re termed, are stronger than mundanes. We are more powerful.”
“So?”
“So, we should be the leading powers. Not the other way around.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m going to edge the mundanes out, and make a safe place for monsters to live, one Hollow at a time.”
“You’re trying to get rid of the human population of Haven Hollow?”
She nodded. “Eventually, yes.”
“By killing them?”
She laughed. “Goodness, no! That would be far too… obvious.”
“Then how?”
“By not allowing them to continue to habitate here. By edging them out—not selling them homes or land. Frightening them into leaving. Monsters should be doing what we do best—scaring people.” She took a big breath and smiled up at me like a shark. “You can either fight with me or against me. With the monsters or against them.”
“Then everyone in the Council agrees with you and supports you?” I asked, wondering if Roy thought along the same lines, if he agreed with her about humans.
“You said you wanted one question. That would be two.”
I inhaled deeply.
“Now state your other demand, and then you can leave,” she said.
“I want to know what you’re doing about the Stomper girls and the Rutledge boy.”
Ophelia paused and glared at me. “What do you know about that?”
“I know they’re missing and still haven’t been found.”
“How did you find this out?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I answered with tight lips.
“Have you told the police?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
She laughed acidly. “It most certainly does. If you’ve gone to the police, you will be in breach of our contract, our agreement. And that won’t end well for you.”
I decided not to think about that. For the moment, anyway. I squared my shoulders and somehow found the courage to stare into the pitiless depths of those beady black eyes.
“What, if anything, are you doing to find the missing children, Ophelia?”
“We scoured the woods and the town for any sign of them.”
“Yet, all your searches turned out to be fruitless.”
She nodded. “Correct. And then he turned up.”
“Fox?”
She nodded again. “We would have taken him into custody if that damned human policeman hadn’t arrested him first. Cain Morgan is a nuisance.”
I shrugged. “He might be a nuisance, but he could help you.”
“Help me?” she scoffed and immediately shook her head.
“If Cain knew about the monsters, as you call them, living here, he could help protect you and them.”
Ophelia’s fist hit the desk so hard, her pens rattled. I jumped, and I wasn’t alone. Everyone in the vicinity had been leaning in surreptitiously, probably hoping for ringside seats to my smackdown. Now they ducked back into their cubicles, hunching over their paperwork as if it had suddenly become very interesting.
“Are you really so daft, girl?”
I didn’t answer that.
She continued. “No more humans! Three in the know is already an egregious security breach, and I will not have that prying police officer announcing the truth to the rest of the town. It would mean the end of us and the end of Haven Hollow as a Hollow.”
She raised a pen and jabbed the end at me like she held a saber. I jerked back on instinct. “But, the children that are missing…”
“Will eventually be found. We will increase our efforts and we are already in the process of considering other routes.”
“Other routes?”
She glared up at me, and I could tell she didn’t want to continue this subject. “There are others outside the Hollow we can call…”
“Oh,” I started, but she interrupted me.
“The point is, we must approach this case with caution. First and foremost, I will not jeopardize this sanctuary, this Hollow, because some silly centaur girls and a wolf boy got their tails caught in a bramble. Now, good day.”
She made the last two words sound very much like ‘get lost’ and I took the hint.
Chapter Ten
I couldn’t get rid of the gnawing sense that something else was about to go wrong. It was just this feeling—lurking like a shadow—impossible to see, but there all the same. I kept thinking about the migratory ghost, Fox Aspen, Ophelia and the contract, the missing children…. I still wasn’t sure how everything was connected, but that didn’t change the fact that I believed it was connected, all the same.
As I pulled up to Finn’s school, I spotted him standing right in front. Seeing me, he immediately headed my way. Opening the door, he threw his overloaded backpack onto the floor of the Wrangler, grabbed the door handle and slid into the passenger seat.
When he looked at me, his eyes were wide and concerned. “Is something wrong with Uncle Joey? Is he gonna die?”
It took me a second to understand the near-panic in Finn’s eyes, and when I did, I felt like the crappiest mom in the state. Scratch that, the country. I’d called the school and requested Finn be pulled out early, giving a half-baked excuse that it was a family emergency. Don’t ask me how, but it’d completely slipped my mind that Uncle Joey was home, still nursing a burned throat.
“No, sweetie pie. Mommy’s just... I just wanted to see you.” I sighed, kneading my temples.
“Then Uncle Joey is fine?”
“As fine as he was this morning, yes.”
“So if no one’s sick or hurt, why am I going home early? My teacher said it was something important.”
“Well, it is something important,” I answered, shifting in my seat uncomfortably.
“What happened?”
“Well, nothing… nothing happened exactly.”
“Then why am I…”
“You and I are going to go to Sweeter Haunts and Stomper’s Creamery!” I interrupted as Finn looked at me and further frowned.
I’d noticed Stomper’s Creamery was now open, even though Stanley hadn’t been the one manning the counter. Neither had Shelby. Instead, it was a teenage girl I’d spotted through the window, probably a family friend.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Finn didn’t appear convinced and continued to stare at my profile. “Are we going to get ice cream so you can tell me a new ghost moved into our house?”
I looked over at him, immediately wondering if somehow he’d found out about the migratory ghost. “No, why would you…”
“Or is this your way of telling me you’re breaking up with Roy?”
“No,” I said, realizing the ghost question was simply a coincidence. “I’m not breaking up with Roy.”
But, maybe Roy’s going to break up with you as soon as he finds out you went to Cain Morgan with the information about the missing children, information Roy told you.
I winced.
“Is everything okay, Mom?”
Finn had always been too savvy for his own good—knowing or intuiting things that most people couldn’t. He was a sensitive. That was owing partly to his minor magical talent, and partly to watching the pitfalls of my dismal dating life. An intense sense of shame filled me as I wondered just what sort of template I’d handed my son for his future relationships.
“Everything is fine,” I said. “I just… wanted to spend some time with you.”
“Oh, cool,” he said and gave me a big-toothed smile, his braces catching the light.
We sat in silence for the rest of the ride into Haven Hollow’s small downtown. Finn didn’t speak up again until the shops on Main Street came into view. The clouds overhead bore down on us, threatening another storm. As we drove, the heavens opened up and snow began coming down in earnest, swirling in little curlicues, gathering in piles on the sidewalk.
The lines delineating the parking spots outside Sweeter Haunts were already half-obscured by snow when I maneuvered into a spot just in front. I parked too close to a very nice blue BMW and had to hold my breath to squeeze out my door, lest I ding the paint job.
Finn jumped down from the Wrangler and wrapped his arms around himself, trying to fend off the cold wind that suddenly picked up, sending the snow straight at us. He was right behind me as I pushed the door open and was immediately assaulted with a wave of aromatic bliss, including candy corn, the sharp twist of peppermint, a subtler undercurrent of saltwater taffy, a hint of licorice, and the overriding scent of fudge. All melded together into one of the most delicious scents I’d ever had the pleasure to inhale. At the same time, it was a little overwhelming, like the candy man himself had shoved his fingers up your nose.
I seized a plastic sack from a rack at the front of the store and handed one to Finn.
“Can I get whatever I want?” he asked.
I nodded and gave his head a little pat. I wanted to reach out and wrap my arms around him and squeeze him as hard as I could, but I wasn’t allowed to do that in public. He had a ‘reputation’ to uphold, as he’d termed it. At home, it was a different story—Finn was an especially affectionate child and loved to cuddle up while watching a movie or just for the sake of cuddling.
“I love you, buddy,” I said in a soft voice.
“Mom,” he warned and frowned at me. He looked around the store and apparently finding it empty enough, looked back at me and whispered, “I love you too.”
Sweeter Haunts played into Haven Hollow’s spooky reputation for all it was worth. Its checkerboard tile floors were orange and black, and the walls followed the same motif, some painted orange and some painted black. There were tables and tables of every variety of candy you could imagine. On each tabletop were numerous plastic Jack-o’-lantern pails, overfilled with confections. And a few stuffed-animal black cats grinned maniacally at us. The corners of the store were draped with fake cobwebs, and Halloween music played in the shop year-round. I was told Ophelia despised the place. That made me like it even more.
