Page 35 of A Malicious Menagerie
I wonder if Nathan is ready to go, because I’d like to do the same.
Turning toward the entrance, I’m ready to march back toward the carousel but halt abruptly when a hand catches my arm. When I spin around, it’s to find Mathis grasping my bicep in a grip that toes the line between firm and painful.
“Anna.” He waits until I meet his eyes to continue. His voice is deceptively soft but no less authoritative for it. “Do not interfere in my affairs again.” He leans closer, his words barely louder than a whisper but as forceful as cannon fire. “Those who do tend to disappear. Do I make myself clear?”
Disappear? Like the vampire’s victim? My stomach plummets at the thought, and icy-cold dread prickles my arms.
Mathis’s eyes are flat black, his expression eerily blank, and a shiver of unease coasts down my spine. Suddenly, I remember that feeling I had the first night we met, as if I were a fly caught in the spider’s web. He hides it, but there’s a predator under that genteel veneer. Maybe a more vicious predator than the vampire. “Yes, sir,” I answer, falling back on years of training in not rocking the boat even if, internally, I’m seething.
His smile doesn’t touch his cold eyes. “Good.”
19
The Bananas
The gala took place on the first of my two usual nights off, so I have to wait over thirty-six hours before I can confront the werewolf who has beenlying to mefor the past several weeks.
And sure, he didn’toutrightlie to me about being a werewolf. He didn’t lie to my face. But not revealing that he could change forms is the biggest lie of omission I could ever imagine. And when I think about the things that I confided in him—the embarrassing, heart-wrenching, very personal things that I never would have told him had I known what he is—I just want to crawl into a dumpster and live there with the raccoons. At least the little masked critters don’t lie about being able to turn into men.
Or do they? Are there wereraccoons? My entire worldview has been turned upside down. It seems that things I’ve been told and had known to be true my whole life are as flimsy and deceitful as a street magician’s card trick.
But more than anything, I just feel… betrayed. Hurt. I thought there was some kind of trust and understanding between us. Had thought we werefriends. Obviously, I was mistaken. Not that I’ve had a close friend in a long time, but I know that friends aren’t supposed to keep secrets that big from one another.
And when I’m not obsessing over that particular revelation, I’m haunted by the memory of the vampire and her victim. Edward Jefferson. His friends called him Eddie, and he was only thirty-six. I looked him up once my handsstopped shaking enough to type. It was easy to find Rutherford Williams and then to expand my search to news anchors from other networks. Eddie had recently been offered a regular gig on Comedy Central, where he used satire to relay recent political events. While watching clips, I find more than one of him poking fun at Rutherford Williams, and I wince every time the older man’s name comes up. More than once, Eddie called Williams a coward for softening facts to stay in a particular politician’s good graces. He would comment that Williams would rather pad his pockets than be an honest journalist.
Guess Rutherford Williams didn’t like that.
By Sunday night, twenty-four hours after he was murdered, the news breaks that Edward Jefferson is missing. He was an avid runner, and he had gone for a jog in the woods near his mountain vacation home and never came back. His tearful wife makes a plea for any information about his whereabouts, but she fears he might have fallen down a ravine or been attacked by a wild animal.
My stomach lurches at those words.
Because hewasattacked by a wild animal… and he wasn’t. I can’t reconcile the woman who treated her victim’s body with such care and respect with the beast who threw herself bodily against iron bars to try to reach me and took a full-grown man to the ground so she could flay him open.
The next morning, feeling hung over even though I didn’t consume a single drop of alcohol, I make my way to Sunny Shores in a daze. I don’t even know that I made a conscious decision to come here so much as I just wanted comfort, and my internal compass pointed to Nan.
One of the caretakers points me to her bedroom, and I knock twice before listening for her curious, “Come in?”
When I push the door open, Nan perks up where she’s lounging in bed. “Anna! What a surprise. It’s early for a visit. Didn’t you work last night?”
“Sorry,” I say by way of greeting, feeling guilty that I disrupted her morning routine. I recognize the swooning actress on the TV screen as one of Nan’s favorites from a soap opera she follows religiously. “I had kind of a weird night, and I just thought…”
Nan doesn’t need more explanation than that. She only pats the mattress, her expression inviting. “Come here, darling. Tell me all about the party. That’s why you said you were working an extra night this week, right?”
“Yes, the party,” I agree with a sigh, sinking onto the bed in the slim space beside her. “It was… fancy.”
“Hmm,” Nan says, her eyes still on the TV but her attention on me. Coaxing me out, as she’s always done. “‘Fancy’ is an unoffensive way to put it.”
“I just…” I sigh. “Remember what I told you before? About some of the animals I’m taking care of?”
“Yes,” she says slowly, obviously trying to feel out my odd mood. “You said they’re too smart for captivity, but your boss won’t let them go.”
“Yes, and you told me to try to make their lives better however I could. But, Nan… I don’t know that I can make anything better for them. I don’t know that I have that kind of power. It’s just so… much.”
Nan shoots me a lopsided frown, which is endearing from inside the collar of her puffy housecoat. “Do you need to quit? You know your happiness comes first. How can you take care of anyone else if you’re not taking care of yourself?”
Such a Nan thing to say, but she doesn’t understand. If I’m not able to take care of her, I’m nothing. Just a failure. She wouldn’t agree, but I can feel the threat of it like a fishhook tugging at my soul. Besides, even with the raise, I might still have quit even a few days ago. But knowing what I know now about the vampire, and the wolf—thewerewolf… I just can’t. I can’t leave them in that extravagant hellhole to face the whims of that madman all alone.
Plus, Mathis’s words keep echoing around my skull. “Do not interfere in my affairs again. Those who do tend to disappear.”
