Page 74 of A Malicious Menagerie
Behind her, Nathan clears his throat. “Have the kelpies not arrived yet?”
“Have a little patience,” a familiar voice drawls in its Irish brogue. I glance over to find Fionn shouldering the door open, the older mermaid cradled like a bride in his arms. She has her arms looped around his neck, though she looks less than thrilled by the situation. Fionn, on the other hand, smiles beatifically at our assembled group. “That’s it. I’ve peaked. Nothing I ever do will compare to carrying a damn mermaid.”
The blue-haired siren squints at him as if she can’t understand him but knows he’s talking about her. She bares her needle-sharp teeth at him threateningly, and Fionn gives her a fanged grin in return. “Careful, you fine thing. I bite back.”
Ciara in equine form follows not far behind, the younger mermaid sitting the equivalent of sidesaddle on her back with her fingers knotted nervously in the mare’s coal-black mane.
I huff a sigh of relief. “That’s it. That’s everyone.”
“What about the Mothman?” Nathan asks, glancing around as if he might have missed a winged man with a miasma of doom.
“He’s going to make his own way,” I reply before exchanging a look with Chase. “And so are we.”
Delia gapes at me. “Anna, no—”
“We need to get my grandmother,” I remind her gently, my heart aching at the fear and sadness in her expression. “She’s still trapped in the nursing home with Mathis’s guard. And our original plan to sneak her out in an ambulance is out the window now.”
Nathan grimaces at that. “I’m sorry. My colleague Eli will be, too. He was looking forward to the ruse, but we’d planned on tomorrow night.”
“It’s not your fault,” I assure him, though my stomach clenches. “But we’re going to have a narrow window to free her now. Job will distract Mathisand his men, but not forever.”
Though if Job has his way, Mathis won’t survive the night. My feelings about that are a tangled mess that will likely take days to coax apart. For now, I’m just grateful for the distraction.
The sound of a truck engine rumbles closer outside, and I tense until a moving van backs up toward the open loading bay door. Then, profound relief washes over me. It’s Colby. He’s managed to get his cousin’s truck from where he stashed it a few blocks away.
We’re almost free.
Our goodbyes are rushed and bittersweet as Colby helps get everyone loaded into the van. It’s a tight fit with the centaurs, but with the kelpies riding shotgun and Delia going with Nathan, it works.
Nathan hands me a set of keys to one of the extra cars parked in the back. “You’ll need to ditch the car quickly,” he warns me grimly. “They have GPS tracking. But it’ll at least get you away from here.”
“Thank you,” I reply, remembering how awed I was to be offered a car that first night in the menagerie. It feels like a lifetime ago. “Take care of yourself,” I tell Nathan, reaching out to shake his hand one last time.
“Same to you,” he replies. “And if you ever need anything…”
“I have your card,” I tell him with a wry smile.
“Hey, Anna,” a gruff voice calls. I glance up to see Colby leaning out of the van’s driver’s side window, his expression thoughtful. When no words are forthcoming, I raise an eyebrow at him. He huffs and shakes his head before he finally says, “Good luck.”
An odd mix of pain and pride swirls in my chest. I’m going to miss the surly soldier, but at the same time, we did what we set out to do. Maybe not quite the way we intended, but best laid plans and all that. “Same to you, Colby.”
Chase pulls me into his side with a comforting squeeze as the van eases away from the loading bay and out toward the street, Nathan’s borrowed car just behind. And then, with no more fanfare, the prisoners of Mars Mathis’s Mystical Menagerie leave the crumbling wonderland behind.
34
The Proposal
The drive to my house feels surreal. The words “nothing will be the same” keep playing on repeat in my mind, but as I glance at Chase’s watchful profile, I can convince myself that’s a good thing.
After parking, I lead Chase into the house before closing and locking the door behind us with a sigh. I know my sense of safety is a false one, and we can’t dawdle here for long. “Follow me,” I tell Chase, leading him up the stairs.
In my bedroom, I pull out a small suitcase that Nan got me for Christmas my senior year of high school but I never had an occasion to use. As I begin packing essentials, Chase takes the opportunity to look around my bedroom. I try not to blush as I imagine his reaction to my faded band posters and the small collection of romance novels sharing space with my treasured childhood tomes.
When I turn to look through my dresser, I notice that Chase has paused with a picture frame in his hand. Even though I know what he’s seeing, I still cross the small room and peek at the photograph, my hand instinctively coming up to press to his back.
“My mother,” I explain before he can ask.
“You look like her,” he notes, scrutinizing her face as she smiles from her place kneeling on the ground over a half-finished scarecrow. I’m sitting beside her, maybe four years old at the time, all of my attention focused onputting straw in burlap.
