Crack the Spine, page 12
Wondering if her mother had triumphed in the end, Kendall pulled her braids together, laid them across her left shoulder, and sank a little lower. Permitting herself to think of nothing but the sensation of the water on her skin, she lay there until the water had chilled to room temperature. Then she washed slowly, giving herself permission to enjoy the privacy.
The others had returned before she toweled off, evidenced by a plastic bag hanging on the doorknob. Perusing Leif’s purchases as she brushed her teeth, she realized he had bought her two t-shirts. One, razorback red, and generically Arkansan with a white outline of the state. The other, black with a white Trojan profile. She stopped brushing and laid it flat to see the familiar red logo for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, her would-have-been alma matter. It only differed from one she had left behind by lacking the “Swimming and Diving” lettering under UALR.
Unsure how she felt at first, a smile slowly worked its way into existence. More good times than bad filled her memories from college, so long as she didn’t think about her senior year or Caitlyn and Wyatt. After all, it was her skill in swimming that had won her the scholarship, finally securing a victory over her mother in their fight over which college she would attend.
She dressed, opting to sleep in the red shirt, and mentally kicked herself for not asking Leif to get a silk scarf to wrap her braids in. Then she gathered her things and claimed the room directly across the hall as hers for the night. The placement of the double bed by the window prompted her to open the shades and partake in another benefit of the country: stargazing. Without taking her eyes off the twinkling spring constellations, she sank beneath the covers and surrendered the day.
Chapter 14: Courting Karma
Another bout of April showers threatened the morning when Kendall woke, later than she had planned due to the dark sky. She removed the tags from her new clothes, changed, and bagged up her dirty ones before heading downstairs.
Amid the cardboard boxes around her feet, Frankie worked away on a laptop, with a second opened next to it. She still wore her clothes from last night.
Rita had changed back to her bald counterpart, Ben. He read the paper through his glasses and sipped his coffee from a pale-yellow mug. “Morning, Sunshine. You help yourself to breakfast.”
An abundance of pastries and donuts had been set out on the counter where Leif sat on a stool with his new book. The number of sugary treats remaining in the spread let her know Diego and Jian had decided to sleep in longer.
When she grabbed a plate, Leif greeted her with a small smile, which grew when he noticed her UALR t-shirt. She returned it and bumped into him affectionately before selecting an apple fritter and wandering back to sit by Frankie. “Any luck?”
Frankie grunted. “Some. I’ve recovered the program but haven’t been able to get through the security prompts, which weren’t present in the database.” She opened the second laptop. “I’m going to look into a few ways around it. I have a couple of contacts who might be able to help too.” She asked Ben, “Do you have Wi-Fi?”
“Do I have Wi-Fi? How else would I troll those glitter cunts back in New York?” Ben smiled to let her know it was a joke. “The password is Timothy dash Olyphant dash two four dash seven.” He fanned himself with his paper. “All day. All night.”
Warily, Kendall said, “Frankie . . . I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“No, it’s fine. I just need to run some OS updates on this one before I connect to the VPN. Nothing else.”
“Have you slept?”
Frankie ignored her question.
As she bit into the sweet fritter, Kendall studied the colorized photo of hula hoopers in poodle skirts on the wall calendar. Tara had been gone for a week now. Averting her attention, she spied a silk-wrapped deck of cards on the table. “Mmph. Did you have any luck?”
Ben’s eyes fell to the cards. “Don’t ask. It was the opposite of luck, almost a goddamn threat if we kept looking, if you ask me—and your Auntie Rita knows a thing or two about tarot.” His head fell forward with a mother’s warning not to keep doing what you’re doing.
Never looking up from her screen, Frankie stopped typing for a breath.
Leif shared a meaningful stare with Kendall before setting his book aside. He got up and nodded for Kendall to follow him out back.
She crammed the last of her breakfast in her mouth, coating her lips in crumbling glaze, and hungrily chewed before licking the sugar from her lips.
Outside, the cool spring morning had left the grass wet with dew from the empty greenhouse up to the back porch. Classic rock poured out of the detached garage, telling her she had been wrong in assuming Jian slept in. He sang along with Aerosmith amid the clicks and clanks of whatever he was doing to Rita’s car.
Leif had opened the storage shed behind the house. When she came closer, he said, “It is time for this . . .” He put his boot on a broom head, unscrewed the handle, and passed it to her.
“Sparring?”
“Practice.” His deep-set eyes leveled on her. “Your gun brought the police.”
“Technically, the racist lady who thought I was carrying a gun brought the police. But, yes, I get your point.” She rolled the broom handle in her grip. “The thing is I’m always going to choose a gun over this when going up against a telekinetic.” She passed the broom handle back to him, creaked open the other shed door, and found their usual bonding tools. “Here.” She smacked a baseball glove against his chest and slid the soft leather of the other worn glove over her hand. Choosing between the softball and the baseball, she grabbed the smaller of the two, an abhorrent highlighter-yellow ball with neon-pink stitching. Marching over to her normal position, she breathed in the fresh air carrying the scent of rain.
Leif stopped several yards away from her.
She wound up and pitched as hard as she could.
He caught it in front of his chest and snatched off his glove to shake out his hand.
“Sorry.”
“It is fine.” He put his glove back on. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“Your mood.” His gloved hand rode imaginary waves. “What’s wrong?” He lobbed the ball to her.
She caught it and fastballed it at his chest. “You know, the usual. Lacey.”
Leif didn’t tease. He never had, not when it came to matters important to her. He frowned and tossed the ball in his hand a few times before sending it back. “What about her?”
If she said it, it was real. It was real. “One of Lacey’s clients proposed to her, and I bought her an expensive lunch, including bottomless Bloody Marys, in celebration.”
He punched his glove twice to get her attention. “You did not want to congratulate her?”
“I did. I’m just—”
“You are worried about this client?”
Exasperated, Kendall turned away from him. In her memory, she could see the excited glint in Lacey’s eyes. At the same time, a heaviness held her. A boulder rode her sternum, suffocating her. Gritting her teeth, she spun back around and hurled the ball at him. “I paid to celebrate my own heartache! Which is so stupid! She didn’t even ask me to do it. I just did because I was supposed to! As a friend!” She caught his curveball with the very end of her glove. “Seriously, why did I pay for it? Am I trying to one-up some guy? Some John she wants me to run a background check on? If he fails, then what? She won’t marry him, but it won’t suddenly make her into women.” She held the ball for a moment, finding her grip. “I don’t mean that. I’m not judging him for being her client. I just—” She yelled out her aggravation to the woods. Holding the ball, she looked to him. “I want the world for her, Leif. I want to give her the world. Should I tell her? I don’t even think she knows how I feel. What if she’s just waiting on me to say it first?”
“Then fuck her. Forgive my language, but you do not play games with my friends’ hearts. She has a mouth, Kendall. She could use it if she wanted to.”
Her toss fell short. “Sorry.”
Ben ran outside in flip-flops, letting the screen door slap closed behind him. Jaunting, he clutched his bathrobe closed over his chest and extended his phone out in front of him. “Here. If you two are going to dillydally, you might as well help take out the garbage.” The map on his phone displayed coordinates in the wilderness near Lewisville. “According to the paper, some poor girl has been missing for two days. She’s in a cave in the woods right there.”
Leif recovered the ball on his way to them and took the phone. “What else is in this cave?”
“Not sure. It’ll be nothing for you two. I’m fifty-fifty on whether the girl lives. That, of course, is heavily reliant on how long you stand here quizzing me. Now, be sure to bring your machetes. That was very clear.”
“Leshy,” Kendall said in unison with Leif. “Saving her sounds better than waiting around here.”
“If you need to borrow a machete,” Ben said, “I keep an extra stashed under the quilt in the linen closet upstairs.” Leif offered the phone back. “Take it. It’s a wonder you kids ever made it all the way out here without GPS.”
Kendall replied, “Definitely wasn’t easy. What’s your passcode?”
“Timothy.” He put his arms akimbo. “I’m not a complicated person.”
“Hey,” Jian said, poking his head around the garage. “Did he just give you a case?”
“Absofuckinglutely not,” Ben yelled, heading back to the porch. His finger circled in the air, directing Jian to turn around. “If you go, you all die.”
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t tempt me, Jian Yang. You can’t eat my kind of magic, now can you?” When Jian didn’t budge, Ben said, “We don’t have rideshare services here; I’m going to need that car. Scoot!”
Eager to hit the road, Leif and Kendall dropped their mitts and the ball on the porch and went to the garage.
Jian had propped up Ben’s cornflower-blue Volkswagen bug on jack stands. He scrubbed a shop towel over the oil on his hands. “I’ll be ready in just a sec.”
“We do not have time,” Leif replied. “Keys.”
Glancing over his shoulder at the slug bug, Jian shook his head. “She’s not going anywhere for at least an hour. I’ve already started rewiring to the headlights. The mice chewed through them. Just let me wash my hands.”
“Bandit,” Leif said, holding out his palm.
Craning his head back, Jian squinted at him. “I don’t think so. Bandit has a manual transmission.”
“I am from Norway. What do you think we drive?” He interrupted whatever excuse Jian was about to throw at them. “Enough. There is a girl’s life on the line.”
“You guys suck. All of you. You’re really starting to make my passion feel like work.” Reluctantly, Jian handed over the keys. “You’re lucky the tunes are good here.”
“Thank you, Jian,” Kendall said.
Under his watchful gaze, they pulled away in Bandit.
Neither spoke as they drove to nearby Lewisville. Yet Kendall dwelled on their previous conversation. “I am hiding a little hope in his background check, if I’m honest. I want it to come back with something awful. Maybe even something small but unforgiveable. Maybe he stole from his dying grandmother or was suspected of money laundering for a cartel or . . . I don’t know. But it wouldn’t change anything, would it? Except break her heart.”
“Mmm.”
“The thing is no matter what I say, that temptation keeps coming back.” She daydreamed of little else. “I don’t want to hurt her. But I do. Part of me wants to be that monster.” She folded her hands over her stomach and gazed at the trees flickering past at the road’s edge.
The GPS announced they should turn left in half a mile, though there was no actual road there. Kendall silenced the guide and monitored their approach on the screen. “Pull over up here. We’ll make the rest of the way on foot.”
Leif turned off the car and pulled the keys from the ignition. “You are not a monster. I have seen your compassion.”
Her hand went to the door handle. “I guess we’ll see if it’s in control when the time comes.” She looked away from his sympathy and popped the door open.
Leif used the key to open the trunk. Next to the small burn kit, their weapons had been neatly organized to the left of the spare tire.
“Just once,” Kendall said, “I’d like to come back here and find a flamethrower. Is that too much to ask?” Ben’s phone vibrated. A text came through. “On my way,” she read. “It’s from the, and I quote, ‘Scrumdiddlyumptious Sheriff Mason Calhoun.’” Kendall scrolled up to see Ben had given the sheriff the same coordinates. She scrolled up a bit farther. “Wow. Someone had a bit too much chardonnay. Damn. How many eggplant emojis can you send a sheriff before it becomes illegal?”
Leif’s eyebrows pinched together tighter as her thumb kept scrolling up through the bountiful harvest. “I would say one, maybe two, if they were unwanted.”
“He doesn’t reciprocate from what I can see, but he’s not rebuffing them either. He keeps responding, just ignoring the sexy bits.”
“Kendall, enough unrequited love for now. We have a person to save and a real monster to slay.”
Her glower forced him back a step. “All right. No, you’re right.” She stuffed the phone in her pocket, resisted taking her gun, and grabbed a machete instead. “At least now I know why Stamps is so special to Ben.”
Leif closed the trunk and led their way down a gentle slope, then eastward into a field. Roughly a quarter mile separated them from the coordinates where the missing girl should be. But it didn’t take long for his curiosity to kick in. “Does the sheriff call her Ben or Rita?”
Kendall scrolled for any use of a name as she trailed behind. “Hmph. Both.”
“Then maybe there is reason for it to be special.”
“Hmm. Not sure. He also uses Mr. Oberle and Miss Fortune. Misfortune! I am so disappointed in myself for not thinking of that one on my own! What the hell, Kendall?”
Soft from a recent rain, the open field ahead of them held little risk for surprises and no caves or even divots in the ground as far as they could see. They trudged through and into the tree line to discover an abandoned cemetery. Lichenous gravestones long ago planed anonymous by the elements stood or lay in the deep grass. Through the rustling breeze, they listened for anything stalking them. Leshy were known to surprise their victims.
“This is it,” Kendall said, presenting the map. “We’re a quarter-mile from the car and standing exactly where Ben marked.” She scanned the woods around them. “I don’t see a cave.” Flickers of white caught Kendall’s eye. Farther down the duff-covered forest floor, flowering dogwoods adorned both sides of a deep ravine. Their white petals fluttered in the wind. She elbowed Leif and pointed her chin that way. “They do love their flowers.”
He nodded and started their slow approach. “Keep a keen eye. You remember the last time we fought the leshy?”
“I remember guns are useless.”
To her surprise, his shoulders rose in disagreement. “Not if it has pet wolves.”
“Wolves?”
“Or bears.”
Kendall stopped. “Are you shitting me?”
He shrugged again. “Probably not. We shall see. Come. We are downwind. It has already smelled us.”
Her sensibility screamed at her to run back for her firearm, but she marched forward. At this point, the leshy would try to confuse her and keep her lost until she was weak and easily conquered. She firmed her grip on her machete’s handle. It was what it was. “The last one didn’t have pets.”
On an inhale, Leif softly said, “Ja.”
Slick, wet leaves coated the slope down to the foot-wide trickling brook at the ravine’s base. The ground separated in the side of the hill, directly in the midpoint of the dogwood grove. They moved closer. Standing at the mouth of the cave, they used the cellphone’s flashlight to see roughly fifty feet inside. Six pits, three on each side, had been dug slightly larger than what was required for a human to stretch out in. Breaching the earthy air, they wandered about ten feet to the first hole on the left. Only a few feet deep, it housed a nest of roots. Streaming white light veined through them, pulling energy from the girl they firmly coiled about.
“It can’t be far,” Kendall said.
Their shadows disappeared in a pool of darkness.
Blocking the light at the entrance, the leshy swelled to its normal size, standing seven feet tall on its hoofed legs, with branching antlers extending three feet higher. The fae creature wore a deer skull to protect its narrow head, save for its circular mouth that protruded from the end. Long, slender limbs crackled with the slightest motion. Bark was its skin, folding and creasing at its joints and crevices. Its cloven hoof scraped the dirt twice before its head twitched and stopped at a tilt, watching them through the deer’s eye sockets.
Leshy weren’t evil, per se. Some had grown to trust humans and bond with them, learning and teaching lore and magic. Considering this one currently fed off someone, however, Kendall didn’t hold a lot of hope for reason to win out, especially when she realized the other five pits did not glow in the darkness. If they held bodies, they were already dead.
“We understand you,” she said. “You’re a protector. You’re a guardian. This land—”
A resounding blare cut her off as the fae creature howled an unnatural, hollow bellow.
Kendall clapped her hands over her ears and hunkered forward.
It repeated in her voice, “We understand you.” The echo of her words returned as the creature crouched and lowered its antlers.
“Dodge!” Leif yelled.
Kendall tossed her machete to the left and leaped into a roll just as Jian had shown her. Like snakes, the roots in the pits on either side of her writhed. They slithered and stretched for her, jostling the corpses contained within. Thankfully, they weren’t able to extend far beyond the brims.
