Golem in My Glovebox (9 page)

Bernice shifted in her seat. “I don’t see how this is relevant.”

“It is relevant,” Art said. “I’m sure of it.”

I leaned forward. “You said a prisoner escaped. This was her?”

He nodded. “Her name is Kathleen Valentine. There’s no telling how long she’d been gone when they finally noticed. Golems had been taking her meals to her. Everyone she ever knew was dead, so she had no visitors.”

“Wait.” I frowned. “She was alone in a prison cell for sixty years and nobody ever talked to her? That’s cruel.”

“Kathleen was the cruel one.” He stared into the fire, as if seeing the events unfold in front of him. “She was too powerful, and she took that power and warped the people around her into killing machines.” He swallowed hard, his eyes wide. “They say the McKenzie sisters cried as they were forced to eviscerate each other while Kathleen laughed. Martin Francis stopped breathing on her command. The order was so strong, his body refused to breathe, even after he lost consciousness. Albert Finney put a hot fireplace poker through his own eye. All four of them had voted against her on whether to cut funding on social services. It was a bloodbath before they finally caught her and locked her up.”

I swallowed hard, fighting queasiness.
No wonder they locked her up
. “That certainly sounds like somebody who could—and would—kill off the entire Board.”

“See?” Art said, turning to Bernice. “Even she understands what I’ve been saying.

Bernice threw her hands in the air. “Kathleen’s a hundred and seven. She couldn’t have done these things. She’d break a hip.”

“Fine,” he said. “Then where do you think she went?” The tension between the two stretched taut across the space, vibrating like a rubber band. When I’d last seen the two of them, Art never would have spoken to Bernice that way. The last several months together, under terrible stress and unable to get away from each other, must have been taking its toll.

“I don’t know.” Bernice’s face turned pale in the firelight, and her voice softened. “Maybe she crawled off to die somewhere.”

Art’s disappointment in Bernice puddled on the floor and spread across the carpet. “You know that doesn’t make any sense, Bernice.”

The Head of the Board of Hidden Affairs stared at her fingers cradled in her lap and said nothing.

“Art,” I said, breaking the awkward silence. “You said on the phone I might be the only one who could stop her. Why? What kind of gift could make people do such terrible things?”

Art’s thumbs freed themselves from confinement, both clicking non-existent pens so fast, he might have been playing a video game in a retro arcade. “Because of her powers.” A drop of sweat trailed down the side of his face. “She’s the most powerful empath in human history.”

* * *

I wanted to leave at the crack of dawn the next day. A clue is a clue. Whether the killer was a one-hundred-year-old escaped prisoner or some new threat didn’t matter at this point. The faster we could get to the scene of the latest murder, the more likely it was we’d find something useful.

After a drawn-out argument with Bernice over whether or not Riley and I were going at all, she and I arrived at a compromise. The trip would take about seven hours. If we left by ten, we could get there with some daylight left. Since she couldn’t convince us to stay, Bernice had another job for us to do, and she wanted time to prepare us.

“Of course, your safety is paramount,” she said. “But I’ll be honest. I’m at the bottom of a very frayed rope. I need the help.”

I frowned. “If we’re in a hurry, why aren’t we taking the private jet? Art practically kidnapped me in it last year, so I know it’s here.”

She shook her head. “My pilot spooked when he figured out what was going on around here. And he took the damn plane with him. He left six weeks ago. The Goblin Switchboard managed to get a look at him on their network, but by the time they had their sites on him, he was gone. Probably using
my
plane to smuggle for some South American drug lord.”

I was both appalled and amused, and I had to school my face not to either look slack-jawed or burst into laughter. The poor woman had been through so much. My sympathy for her went up a few notches.

One of Bernice’s golems loaded the back of my car with our suitcases. I shivered and looked away. The construct was a duplicate of a dead board member. I recognized her—it—from my previous visit. The creature was made to look like Darcy Farthingale, the first victim in all this. They’d found Darcy’s body in the funhouse at an old carnival. She’d been strangled with a deflated balloon animal. The killer had posed her holding cotton candy, though rats had come and eaten the snack itself, leaving nothing but the paper cone. The rats had eaten other things by the time they found her, but I refused to think about that.

This emotionless, empty duplicate of someone who’d died in such a harsh manner made me want to run for the front gate and not wait for my car to be loaded. Bernice’s golems were not cool, as far as I was concerned. They creeped me out. Fortunately, they couldn’t go far from her sphere of influence, so they stayed inside the fence.

Art, in his element now that he had a clipboard and his clicky pen, oversaw the crew. “I’ve had them refill your gas tank,” he said. “Also, there are fresh drinks and ice in the cooler behind your seats, and snacks are coming out with the next load.”

He didn’t wait for my startled thanks before moving off to bark orders at an automaton scrubbing bugs off Mabel’s front bumper. At least Maurice would be happy.

I touched Bernice’s shoulder. “It’s only an eight-hour trip. This seems excessive.”

She shrugged. “I can’t fly you out there. At least I can make sure you’re safe and comfortable.”

Her worry hung in the air between us. “Bernice, we’ll be fine. Really.”

“I have one more item for you.” A golem strode up next to Bernice and handed her an object the size of a large remote control. She held it in the palm of her hand. A tiny man blinked up at me. “Due to a magical fluke, he can sustain mobility outside of my influence. He will be my representative when you are conducting business. Frankly, I have no idea what else to do with him. He should be helpful to you, and you’d be doing me a favor taking him with you.”

I tried to keep my face neutral. The last thing I wanted in my car was a creepy junior golem. The thought crossed my mind that I should say something to it, but its dead eyes staring at me sent a shiver down my back.

“Thanks, I guess.” I grabbed it between two fingers and tossed the unsettling thing into the glove compartment through the open window.

“I wish I could give you some sort of weapons,” Bernice said, opening my door for me. “But anyone who can take down an incubus, the Leprechaun Mafia, and whatever the hell else you’ve run into, is probably safer without trying to add weapons to the mix. Plus, you have a reaper to protect you.” She smiled at Riley. “He’s been pretty good at it so far.” Her words were meant to sound light and confident, but her nervous chatter wasn’t the slightest bit convincing.

From behind the car, Art muttered to himself and slammed the hatch. “Pretty lucky, is more like it.”

Bernice gave me a quick hug. “Be so very careful, Zoey. Take no chances. Check in with me frequently. Please, please, please. If anything looks wrong, just run. We need information, and we need to put the O.G.R.E. squads back in place. You don’t need to go off and solve the crimes and then take down the bad guy, okay? In fact, there’s another team already on the way to your first stop.”

I stepped into the car and buckled in. “Another team?”

She waved her hand as if the question were unimportant. “They weren’t far from the crime scene, so I sent them to keep an eye on it until you could get there to search. But I need them out of there as soon as possible on another reconstruction assignment.”

I nodded. “Fine. As long as they know I’m in charge once I get there.”

Her lips curled in a half smile. “Oh, I think you can handle them.”

She shut my door and stepped back. The last thing I saw in the side mirror was Art standing in our dust cloud, dangling his beloved clipboard and looking forlorn. I had the feeling being on the Board of Hidden Affairs wasn’t all he’d ever dreamed it would be.

Leaving the protective bubble around the compound didn’t require any assistance. We could see out into the field. Seeing in had been the problem. The golem attendant opened the gate and waved us through. It was broad daylight this time, and a few tourists having a picnic gave us odd looks as we drove out of a field that, by all appearances, went nowhere.

We waved at them like maniacs, then turned toward the main road.

“So,” I said. “If we play good cop/bad cop, will you let me be the bad cop sometimes?”

Riley snorted. “Like you could ever pull that off.”

“I could totally pull it off.” I folded my arms and looked out my window. “You don’t know.”

“Sure.”

I gave him a playful punch in the arm. “I’m tough.”

He nodded, looking solemn but not taking his eyes from the road. “You’re tough.”

As I tried to flip around to face him better, my knee banged into the glove compartment. The door popped open, and the tiny man rolled to the edge of the compartment door.

His skin looked unfinished, somehow, like unvarnished wood. His features were indistinct, and his eyes were bits of polished turquoise.

He pulled himself to a standing position, brushed off his tiny pants, and bowed low.

“Good afternoon, Aegis,” he said. “Griswold Abernathy, at your service.”

To my credit, I neither shrieked, nor pulled away. I gave myself a mental pat on the back for being tougher than my boyfriend seemed to think I was. Still, the creepy thing was
looking
at me.

“Griswold,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

He bowed again. “The pleasure is all mine, Aegis.”

“Aegis isn’t necessary. Zoey is fine.” I couldn’t believe I was conversing with it. It had no emotions, so no feelings to hurt. I contemplated picking it up and searching for an off switch, though I knew there wouldn’t be one. “Is there something you need?”

I gave a sideways glance at Riley. He had one fist pressed against his mouth, as if trying not to laugh at the new batch of crazy trying to talk to me.

Awesome.
I
love me some new crazy.
Next up:
a
pie fight at the Texas border.

“I should explain,” Griswold said.

I nodded. “That would be good.”

He stood for a moment, tapping his chin in thought. “I asked for this assignment. I believe I can help you with your quest. And I believe you can help me with mine.”

Chapter Six

I stared at the tiny man without speaking. My emotions were at war with each other. My initial reaction was to slam the glove compartment shut. He was one of Bernice’s golems, so he had no feelings to hurt. This also made him creepy, the same way all of Bernice’s constructs were creepy, so I’d be justified in my actions.

Except, he wasn’t the same. For one thing, we were outside the gates of the compound and miles down the road. The rest of her creatures would have collapsed in a lifeless heap by now. Yet, here Griswold was, upright and chattering—and seeming to enjoy himself. Which was all wrong, because he shouldn’t be able to feel any emotions at all. Bernice had called him a fluke, but that didn’t explain anything.

While our Pinocchio wasn’t exactly a real boy, the Blue Fairy had certainly made him autonomous. Or something had.

I pulled my legs up on the seat and got comfortable, my brow creased in a cynical frown. “So, Gris,” I said. “Explain.”

He bowed again. “Aegis, the story is not long, but it is a sad, lonely one.”

I wove my fingers together and settled my hands in my lap. “Make it as long as you like. We’ve got all day. But quit with the bowing, already. Sit. You’re making me nervous.”

He sat, but he didn’t look comfortable. He dipped his head at me in a quick compromise to the
no-bowing
rule. “My life began in my mother’s workshop, as all of her golems do. However, I am not one of mother’s
real
children.” He stopped and gazed out the window as Riley passed a big truck full of cows. The chips of polished stone that served as eyes seemed to fog over. He shook his head. “No. I was a scale model—a blueprint—for my larger brothers and sisters. While they are fashioned from many sculpted pieces of clay joined together, I was roughly carved from a single block of leftover wood that had been used earlier as a doorstop. Mother never even bothered to animate me.”

I reached in the back and grabbed a couple bottles of water, opened one and set it in the drink holder for Riley, then cracked open the cap on the second one for myself. “You seem pretty animated to me.”

“That came later.” He shrugged. “Consciousness was gradual. I listened for a long time before I started to understand what I was hearing. Eventually, vision came to me, though it was hazy at first. Over the course of several years, I gained control over my body. The energy Mother poured into her creations spilled over, and I absorbed the leftovers. After all that time sitting on a shelf in her workroom, I consumed and stored far more energy than any of my brothers and sisters, and they’re all hundreds of times my size. I grew self-aware and wanted more.”

I took a sip of my water. Art had done a great job making sure it was cold. I wiped my palm on my pink shorts to warm it up. “So, you asked Bernice to send you with us.”

“Yes, ma’am. I hoped maybe I could help.”

Riley tossed him a cynical look. “How do you plan to do that?”

Griswold threw his shoulders back. “I’ve read all the books in my mother’s library. I speak every language, both human and Hidden. I’m schooled in all the Hidden bylaws, and have a knack for contract negotiations. I should prove very useful when dealing with the O.G.R.E.s.”

“Impressive,” I said. “What is it you think I can do for you, though?”

He looked at his feet for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “I want to see the world. I want to meet people. I want...” He trailed off and looked up at me. “I want to be more than my brothers and sisters.”