Odd Stuff (36 page)

Vickie glanced up as if she sensed my eyes on her and glared. I smiled, and she rolled her eyes. A flick of the dial on the dashboard sent heat pumping from the vents. Even though the sun still shone brightly, an Alberta Clipper moving in from Canada brought a wash of arctic air which made standing outside for even a few minutes unbearable. Then again, gas prices made sitting in my car and running the heater at a stationary position equally painful.

In the distance, I caught a flash of yellow, and I leaned toward my daughter for a kiss. After granting me a quick, obligatory peck, she smacked me in the face with her backpack as she spun to battle with the car door. As it was unintentional and she had to hurry, I let it go.

“Be good, and have a great day!” I used my best soccer mom tone.

Vickie looked unimpressed. “Try not to eat too much MSG.”

I smirked as she jumped out of the car and made a dash for the bus. If she hadn’t been outside, the bus would not have stopped. When I was a kid, the bus stopped. It honked. It waited. Not now. Now the driver paused and kept on a-rollin’. Nobody wasted gas, not even the school buses. Shutting off my car, I burrowed into my coat to make the short jog back to Odd Stuff, Mia’s store. I paused just inside the doorway, as I always did, to inhale the incense and candle scented air. I loved the smell of Mia’s store. It relaxed me while most of my life did not. Each day provided a new beginning, though. I promised myself a fresh start and ignored the niggling little voice that whispered I had told myself the same thing last week. Last week, I worried where I would find a job and how I could help Vickie adjust to life after divorce.
Ah, the good old days.
 

This week I had to figure out how to be a siren, how to have a vamp boyfriend, how not to get killed while working for the FBI
and
help Vickie adjust after divorce.

Somehow, the list had grown rather than shrinking.

I needed to get cracking on my to-do list. Usually a massive infusion of coffee jump started Mondays and, as I had only ingested about half a pot at that point, I headed upstairs for another cup. With luck, Mia would be awake, but I didn’t hold out much hope of that. As I plodded up the stairs, I scratched absentmindedly at my wig. Unfortunately, when I made the change from whatever I had been before to full siren, my hair altered dramatically from dirty, dishwater blond to an unearthly silver. Since walking around with moonlit hair painted an even bigger bull’s-eye on my forehead, I purchased a wig of my natural hair color yesterday. It itched abominably.

Behind the pink door at the head of the spiral staircase, I heard off-key singing. It took me a minute to place the tune. Ahhh, Owl City, Fireflies.

“
It’s hard to say that I’d rather stay awake when I’m asleep, Cause everything is never as it seems.”
Mia’s head tilted back as she belted the lyrics and I cringed.

“No, it’s not.” I cocked a hip on the counter and waited for my presence to register with my roommate. I didn’t have to wait long.

She whirled around. Perfect ebony curls bounced as she spun, and her eyes sparkled as the hypnotic lyrics pulsed through the shop. I studied my eclectic best friend in her white tunic style blouse and floaty skirt in shades of emerald and azure—Mia’s usual witchy wear. Sparkles accented the outfit including bangles at the wrists, some girlie thing at her hips, and necklaces hanging nearly to her waist.

In comparison, I looked like a boy. Jeans with holes in the knees, a tee shirt topped with a hoodie big enough to fit two football players created my comfortable look—a far cry from Mia’s feminine attire.

“Leave the singing to me from now on, witch.” A wave of unreasonable and uncalled for jealousy washed over me, leaving me with little more than a grumble for a voice. I wished I could be as girly as her sometimes. Not often, but sometimes.

She glared. “At least my voice doesn’t make men go mad.”

“I wouldn’t place bets on that. Go public. My money’s on you.”

“Ha ha. And here I was going to offer you a cup of coffee.”

Shifting my weight to another leg, I waggled my eyebrows and tried to look hopeful. “My kingdom for your Maxwell House?”

“Cheap aren’t you?” Mia poured me a mug. “Vickie catch the bus today?”

“Yup.” I looked at the mug curiously. Weird symbols circled it. Maybe runes? I sipped carefully. It tasted safe. You never can tell with a witch.

“You meet with the FBI lady today?” She either didn’t notice my coffee mug study or discreetly ignored it.

“Yup.”

“Monosyllables…up late?” Practically purring, Mia peered at me out of the corner of her eye.

“I am not gratifying you with a sick rehashing of my sex life.”

She smirked. “Since when?”

Just then, Sven swept into the room in a cloud of
Cool Water for Him
, wearing his favorite blazer—leopard print. He was one of a kind. In deference to the weather, he sported a pink fuzzy scarf and matching mittens. His tee shirt of the day read,
Ask me about the Other Side
. All this caught my eye because, aside from the fashion train wreck, he stood nearly seven feet tall. The man was a modern gentle giant. “Morning, Sven.” I nodded in greeting.

He slouched in the entrance and leaned on the wall. “Morning.” He spoke through a yawn so enormous, it stretched his cavern-like jaw to its limits. A person could lose a two year old in that mouth.

Right then, the theme song to
Gilligan’s Island
began to play. I grabbed my cell phone and picked it up as it sang,
abo-o-ard this tiny ship
.

“You gotta change that.” Sven did an exaggerated eye roll. “That is just wrong.”

I rolled my eyes back at him and mouthed
Never.
I grinned at his disgusted expression and used my business voice to chirp, “Good morning!”

“Janie?” I recognized FBI agent Shawna Pierson’s voice immediately. My new boss, Shawna, offered me seven hundred bucks a week to look into the cases which struck her as weird, so I’d snatched up the job. The
X-Files
nature of the position appealed to me.
I am Sculley. Yeah.
 

“Hi, Shawna. What’s up?”

“I am going to have to bump up our meeting, if that is okay with you. I have this interoffice lunch thing. Can we get together for coffee instead?”

“Let me check my schedule.” I stared at the cupboard for a minute and Mia tried not to laugh at me. I glanced at Sven, nearly falling asleep on his feet.
That is weird.
 

“Uh, yeah, I’m free. When do you want to meet?” I fiddled with the rune markings on my coffee mug to occupy my eyes and hands instead of staring at Sven.

“How long would it take you to get to the Jefferson Diner?”

“Fifteen minutes?” I glanced out the window. A few random flakes had started falling, but the snow had yet to get serious.

“Great! I’ll see you there.” Mia sneezed as I hung up.

“Bless you. I have to go to Jefferson and meet with Shawna now rather than for lunch and—”

“That sucks.” Mia sniffled and reached across the counter to pull a tissue from the box. “At least before, you were reaming the government for lunch.” She sneezed again.

“Bless you.” I straightened and pulled my keys out of my pocket.

“You better go run a brush through your wig. It’s a rats’ nest.” Again, Sven yawned deeply.

“It can’t be.” It was bad enough I had to wear the wig; it didn’t seem fair that I would have to look like crap while doing so. I shook my head, denying the criticism. “I just bought it yesterday.”

“I don’t know how you did it, but it’s a wreck.”

I blew at the front of it, knowing exactly what I had done. My scratching probably matted the damned thing. “Do you think I should just lose it and go with my siren look for the FBI anyway?”

“Might as well.” Mia rubbed her nose with a tissue. “It isn’t like that half-ass disguise is going to work for long anyway. We aren’t cartoon characters or superheroes, you idiot. You can’t don a pair of dork glasses or a wig and hope that no one notices that you’re Superman.”

I gave her a dirty look and huffed out of the room. Sven shuffled after me. “Ignore her. She’s a raving bitch when she gets sick.”

“I know.” I looked at him in the mirror. “Is she right? Is it really that bad of a get up?”

“No. You aren’t trying to hide big buff muscles in a suit, just pretending your hair is a different color. If the truth comes out, big deal. Say you went punk. If people find out you lost weight, say it was Jenny Craig. It’s the two thousands, not the medieval era. No one is going to look at you and gasp, ‘O-mi-god-she-is-the-last-siren’ if they notice you have silver hair and weight loss.”

I sighed and looked in the mirror. He was right. For the most part, modern cosmetics could explain my transformation. I yanked off the offending wig, pitched it in the sink, and ran my fingers through my short cap of hair. It glowed silvery white and framed my narrow face, which looked more elfin than before, but that was bone structure. I couldn’t do a hell of a lot about genetics. My eyes reflected the colors of the sea, blue for the most part with hints of green and turquoise. The week before, I wore contacts to spice up my mundane blue eyes, but since the change it was all me. My skin, when I fed—
long story, tell you later
—shone like pearls, but as I had not consumed anything other than coffee and junk food recently, it was a reasonably normal color. I didn’t look very predatory at the moment. All good things. I congratulated myself. Probably no one would try to kill me. Probably no one on the day side would even sense I had come to power or know that I existed.

I hoped.

Too many conjectures, even for me, bounced in my head, but I didn’t have time to worry about them. I had told Shawna I would be in Jefferson in fifteen minutes. Jefferson is a fifteen minutes’ drive south of Ashtabula, and I had blown a good five staring at myself in the mirror. I looked at Sven, who leaned on the wall, eyes half-closed.
What is with him?
 

I shrugged, punched him in the arm to rouse him, and grabbed my coat and car keys. I yelled a goodbye to a crabby Mia, and got a,
Later, Wonder Bitch
, in reply.

On the drive to Jefferson, I sang along to the radio in an attempt to keep warm. The temperatures, already frigid, kept dropping. The heat kicked on and pumped out delicious warmth by the time I turned off Route Eleven. Jewel came on with
Have a Little Faith in Me.
 

I sang along quite happily until I realized that Jewel and I had company. Looking like a forbidden dessert plopped into my passenger seat, Chance had appeared without my notice. I hit the off button and Chance sang alone for a minute.

“
I been lovin’ you for such a long, long time and all you gotta do is have a little faith in me!
” He wailed rather than actually harmonizing.

I glared at him.

“What?” His eyebrows rose innocently.
As if Chance could ever be innocent of anything.
“Good song, not a bad cover.”

“And you are here why?”

“You didn’t miss me?” He flipped in his seat to face me.

“No.”

“Where are we going?”

“You are going back to wherever you were before you beamed into my Focus.” The waver in my tone probably undid my attempt to sound firm.

“It isn’t beaming.” He glowered at me, as if disappointed I wasn’t thrilled at his entrance. Not that Chance’s tendency to pop by unannounced ever thrilled me, but he seemed hopeful I would magically change my mind about it.

“Bye.” I gritted my teeth in irritation. Somehow my car, spacious moments before, seemed overfull. I wasn’t sure if his scent permeated the very air around me and stole the available oxygen, or if he filled the space with emotions I didn’t care to deal with.

I stared at the road and hoped he would disappear. We were getting close to Jefferson, and I didn’t want to meet Shawna with Chance in tow. Who knew what damage he would do, and I had just landed the job. I had to get rid of him.

Chance is…hard to describe. Hair some shade between brown and red framed eyes so green, they reminded me of beer bottles. No one knew exactly
what
he was. He wasn’t a vampire, a witch, a siren, a were, or an elf. He was something Other. Maybe an alien. As if the ability to shove power into me akin to eating a bolt of lightning wasn’t daunting enough, when he hung out with me, a silver cord attached us. He claimed the cord meant we were soulmates and that he’d waited his supposedly long life for me. I felt pretty confident he was nuts. “I have a meeting in a couple minutes and self-defense with you later. Can’t you leave me alone until then? You can’t touch me anyway. Remember, the game?”

“I could leave you alone, but it would be dull. Besides, your little protective game has an interesting rule. I can’t touch you, but you can touch me. I have to be close for you to do that when you want.” He tucked a lock of hair behind one of his ears. “Have you ever considered the lyrics to that song?”

I sighed. “I am not going to touch you, and no, I have not considered the lyrics, but I am sure you’re about to tell me why I should have.” He wanted to have some deep, meaningful, conversation before he left me alone, even though I wasn’t going to get it—I never did. I tossed my hair back and then remembered I didn’t have enough to toss. A muscle in my jaw hardened as I remembered that this too was his fault.

He gestured a hand at me, and I licked my lips as I looked at those long fingers. Although logic reminded me I had no interest in him, my libido sometimes had other ideas. Like when it popped a picture in my head of those fingers on my skin, for instance. “You should touch me because you know you want to. Since you’re not ready to admit that, let’s look at the lyrics, pretend your life is a sitcom.”

“First my life is compared to a comic book, now a sitcom. Today is going to be one of those Mondays, isn’t it?” I met his gaze for the first time since he’d poofed into my car.
Big mistake.
 

The cord suddenly appeared between us. It thrummed like a pulse in my chest, and I sucked in a breath at the shock of it. I shut my eyes for a moment and tried to block the feelings out before remembering to watch the road. Through the open cord, I sensed him tremble and collect himself. I stared down the highway ignoring him and the visible connection. He might have been a lot older, but the cord clarified that the unfamiliar feelings affected to him, too. He wasn’t fond of all of them either. I kept my eyes deliberately on the road and waited.