Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (3 page)

“Years passed. Then, mysteriously, another Harbor Hammer had a year long run. Once again, never caught. A few years later, another. And then we see the pattern forming. Every
leap
year there is a Hammer who hangs around for twelve months and then disappears. Guess what? Local authorities have found two bodies already.”

She pulled out more photographs and laid them on the table in front of me, this time of crime scenes. Okay, when Sculley looked at this kind of stuff, she didn’t toss her cookies, so neither would I. But I wanted to.
Ick, is that real blood?
Logic suggested yes, but my brain did not want to digest the information.

Wait, I am one of the monsters, and I’m dating a flipping vampire. I was not allowed to be grossed out by a dead body. Who was I kidding? I was so grossed out. I tapped the pictures together neatly and passed them back.

“So, it’s a copycat.” I don’t watch NCIS for nothing.

“No, I don’t think so. It goes back even further than the thirties. I want you to look into it. If I’m right, I might be looking at finding bodies for the next year. So far, I have only two. That means over three hundred more bodies are possible if this continues as it has before. Or you could ask some questions, and I might have a shot at finding a killer. What could it hurt?”

Put that way…”
I’ll ask around.” I stifled my excitement. I could really make a difference and help people! Smiling would probably give the wrong impression, so I bit back the emotion and the expression.

“Here are the files I have on it. I don’t know how much any of it will help, since no one has ever caught any of the Hammers but, here.” Shawna passed the folders to me and her eyes flashed gold for a moment. It must have been a trick of the light. I was on the case.

CHAPTER Two

I got in my car and flipped through the folders while I waited for the engine to warm up. I could not believe I had real FBI files.
Wow
. Okay, enough of my nerd moment. Well, not quite. I called Mia and told her about the files—and the Harbor Hammer. We ran a couple of ideas, but sadly, our best one revolved around barhopping. It had worked last week to solve a couple murders, but it had gotten me in trouble, too. People nearing forty should stay
out
of bars.

Unfortunately, since the killings had occurred in and around taverns since the nineteen thirties, they probably would not stop happening there just so
I
could stay away from the bar scene. Perhaps my boycott of bars would have to be temporarily forestalled.

As soon as I told Mia good-bye and hung up, my cell phone gleefully began to play the theme song to
Gilligan's Island
again. I listened for a moment. You see, even though the readout clearly stated that my mother had called me, I found it difficult to be in a bad mood about it when listening to the cheerful theme song of
Gilligan's Island
.

Once I had stalled long enough, I flipped the phone open. “Good morning!”

“Janie.” Mother’s tone was not even falsely cheerful.

Laughter like bells and music bubbled audibly in the background. “Are you in Court?”

“Yes.” Apparently, someone else was having a monosyllable Monday.

But she had called me, so she must have had a reason. “How are things, Mom?” I told myself she had called to see how Vickie and I were settling in. Or maybe to give me a lecture on my wardrobe, or maybe…

“You came into power.”

Or maybe the Fairy Council knew I had come into power, and as the Queen of the Fairies, and Goblins, and Elves, and all that crap, she needed to either control me or put a contract out for my death.
Good old Mom!
 

“Yeah, I meant to call.” I twirled a strand of hair around a finger as I spoke. I decided the less I said at that point, the better. My best bet seemed to be to stick with the monosyllable. It was my friend.

“We are going to have to talk about what we’re going to do about this.”

I wanted to choke. Let me explain why. My mother never even felt it necessary to tell me I
could
come to power, not to mention how to avoid it. She told me there weren't vampires. Had I known vampires actually lived and breathed—well, sort of—I could have at least avoided them when I met them. To top it all off, she never mentioned that the vampires had killed off all the sirens.

Except for me, of course, who she and my father created as some sort of sick, sexual, science experiment. Like,
if we mix your siren sperm with my royal fairy egg, I wonder what we’ll get? Oh, look! Yup! A really badass monster! Let’s hide it and never tell it the truth is so it can’t protect itself!
 

So
we
weren't going to do anything. As far as I could tell,
we
had never done anything except share DNA at one very critical point.

However, saying this aloud, since my mother reigns queen of all the weird and strange in daylight, seemed beyond unwise. “Yeah, I have been really busy. You know, the move and the holidays and all.”

She tapped her fingers in irritation. My mom is a champion finger tapper. Creatures a lot bigger and badder than me fear that tapping.

I was not always as circumspect. Besides, I survived adolescence with the woman. I lost a lot of fear as a teenager.

Her impatience echoed through the phone even before she spoke. “I think you will find it wise to make time.”

“Mother, I am not one of your minions.” Always good to throw that in. She forgets sometimes.

“Janie, we have gone through this before. You are my daughter. You have responsibilities to this family.”

“Mom, we are not the mafia. We aren't even Italian. You are Irish. I get the Italian from Dad’s side. Well, more Grecian than Italian, but still, anyway, the whole family thing—”

“Enough. You will come home to Court and we will talk. It is not a request. You will come home, or we will bring you. You will fulfill your responsibilities.” Her voice sounded firm. She had used to use that same voice when she said you
will
clean your room.

I hadn’t listened then either. As a kid, I’d shoved dirty laundry and magazines under the bed and into the closet. Hell, I still did those things as an adult. I haven't really changed all that much. She knew that.

“Mom, really, what responsibilities could I fulfill? I am not doing any fairy crap for you. I don’t have any fairy skills. Well, I moved a rock once. Besides that,
Nada
. I am not going up against the vampires for you, so you are not getting anywhere there, either.” I shouldn't have said all that. I had a big mouth. I knew that about myself.

She tapped louder. “Are you or are you not coming to the raft so we can talk?”

I tapped my steering wheel. I caught myself, gritted my teeth, and stopped. “No.”

“Fine. Arrangements will be made.”

“Mom!” I sounded like I had when I was ten, but I couldn't help it. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll find out, young lady.” She hung up on me.

I punched my steering wheel.

Fucking fairy. God damned, fucking, meddling, fucking fairies can never leave me alone.

I apologized to my car, as it had not done anything wrong and looked at my cell phone. It wasn't time for my self-defense lesson yet—another of my monumentally stupid ideas. I was a siren. I could sing the energy from my enemies. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure how any of that really worked.

Sirens, in folklore, sang so beautifully that men would wreck their ships in an attempt to get to them. When sirens sing, men go mad. What folklore did not cover was what was in it for the siren.

What the siren gets out of it is the light.

The brain is run by electricity. Electrical impulses are sent and received and that is what tells the nerves what to do, what makes thought happen. That is life. Sirens feed off that energy.

I feed off that, apparently.

I had begun reading about all of it lately, desperately seeking answers that I’m sure my ancestors shared by simpler means than web surfing. I’d read just about everything, including articles on how epileptics have the equivalent of tiny thunderstorms in their brains, also known as seizures. And that animals can tell when they are going to have a seizure because they can sense the build-up of electricity.

In theory, I could too. When I get hungry, the mental electricity glowed like, say, candle flame glittering around humans. Vampires were brighter—I assumed because it took more of a charge to keep the dead walking. Or maybe they’d built up more of a charge after being around for so long? I wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t like there were any other sirens around to ask. Chance glowed like a supernova. He had more energy than the sun, and I hadn’t the foggiest why. I did know he would make a fantastic battery.

To get back to my monumentally stupid idea, I agreed to take self-defense lessons from Chance.

Okay, I had a logical reason.

Really.

Since I had become a siren, I picked up unknown abilities and hungers. I didn’t know what to expect and had no one to ask and, as the only known half-fairy, half-siren, no one could have explained my abilities or disabilities anyway. Also, the minute everyone figured out what I had become, lots of people would want to kill me. I needed to be able to defend myself and Vickie.

But I didn't know how.

If I had gone to a regular self-defense instructor, I might have accidentally killed the guy. I already had tally marks from three kills. Apparently, when sirens kill, even if they don't mean to, they get very sensitive tattoo-like marks that resemble stars and moons. I did not like them. I did not want to kill, and I did not want more marks if I could help it. I had to learn to control my hunger while not getting killed or offing others.

Both of these things made Chance an ally. Well, if I could get him off his soul mate kick. He couldn’t be my soul mate, something I’d explained to him in no uncertain terms.

I’m not entirely sure he is a good guy. Also I have a really great boyfriend.

I wanted to be with Vance, and I had a better shot of getting over my purely physical attraction to Chance if he cooperated and we got past all the soul mate nonsense.

My self-defense lesson was supposed to be at one thirty. I looked at my cell phone. At only quarter to eleven, I had time to blow and no way to reach Chance to change the time.

Wait. My cell phone. That was it.
I flipped it open to recent calls.

A few nights ago, when Mia had been kidnapped, Chance called me at some ungodly hour of the night. The number had to still be in there.

Bingo.

I hit send and waited.

“Yeah?” His voice came on the other end.

I ignored the little chill that ran down my spine and curled my toes. “Hey, are you busy?”

“Eminently.” His dry tone crackled down the line.

“You came across so much friendlier last week. My first impression was of a golden retriever.” My mouth often worked like a tube of toothpaste that someone twisted too hard. I opened the top and stuff just oozed out.

“Yeah, close association with you has been wearing on my genial nature.”

I nibbled on a nail before trying to get the conversation on the track I wanted. “Speaking of you and me, can we bump up the lesson? I’m available now.”

“Ditch the vampire already? I knew my rakish good looks would get to you.”

“Ha, ha.” I kept my voice dead-panned, but I smiled.
He can't see me, so shut up
. “And we can’t have lessons at Odd Stuff. The store is open.”

“Yeah, thought of that. Meet me at Peaches.”

“The strip club?” Doubt edged my voice.

“Yeah. Two reasons. It’s empty during the day and it has a dance floor. I have mats we can lay out so that when I throw you, you won't get too banged up. Unless you would rather get a hotel room and forget the whole self-defense thing in lieu of exploring our unique bond?”

“Peaches it is.” I disregarded Mr. Solar Soul mate’s comment about the hotel room as not worthy of a response. I tapped the phone off and headed back to Ashtabula as the snow started to fall.

The heavy flakes promised a white Christmas for sure.

~~~

Peaches looked even seedier during the day than when I had gone there in the dark. The cinder block building showed its age. A coat of white paint flaked off as if to disassociate itself from the shady interior. The rutted gravel parking lot had almost disappeared under the snow which collected on every visible surface. We were going to get hit hard.

The sky above darkened from the predicted storm, which would probably thrill my daughter if it caused an early release from school. I looked at my cell phone, relieved to see I still had a full charge, just in case.

Nothing else, no businesses or anything, remained around Peaches. Tannery Hill, the road that it was on, used to be all factories, but they stood abandoned now, signs of a dying economy. I had the uncomfortable thought that if I screamed, no one would hear me. My stomach flipped and my palms sweated a bit in worry. I rubbed my hands against my legs and forced myself to get moving.

Go, Janie. Way to be optimistic
.

I hustled to the front door. The knob turned easily under my hand so I went in. The last time I had been there, a man inside checked ID's. No one waited to stop me so I went through the next door, too.

Someone had turned on the lights, but I didn’t see Chance. He had been there, though. He had pushed aside all of the tables and chairs and put down red mats.
The better to hide the blood stains.
 

God, what was with me and my negativity?

Without warning, the room tilted and spun in crazy circles around me. I staggered, looking for a barstool to sit before I fell. I perched against the bar, as he had most of the chairs stacked on the tables either against the wall or on the T-shaped stage that the strippers danced on. He came out from a door behind the stage.