“When did you meet Gaire?” I ask, and feel the heat of Jane’s anger run up my chest and into my scalp. I can also feel Smith & Wesson between our lower back and the waistband on our jeans.
“I haven’t met him. Not personally. His father, with the help of a vampire at Purgatory, implanted several images in my mind of human forms Rogaire was said to have purchased through an aboveground organization, ROAR.”
“Yeah, right. Roar? You pullin’ my leg or somethin’?” Jane says. “And what’s with this Rogaire shit? It’s Gaire.”
“Which one of your queries should I address first?” Vuur asks, eyes locked on Jane’s.
I wiggle in and say, “And Down Under allows an organization like that to operate above ground? It’s hard to believe they’re getting away with it.”
“For years,” Vuur says through a scowl. “The ticket is high for any information leading to the breakdown of this operation. They are transient, cautious, evasive, and hard to infiltrate. I know, because I have tried, unsuccessfully, several times.”
As the dragon spoke, I’d scanned the walkways and parking lot outside of a coffee shop located center campus. Students hustle in and out, sweaters and light jackets fluttering in the crisp fall breeze. A sign hanging on a pole by the curb clacks angrily at a gust of wind. I’m freezing.
Jane notices the man before I do, and gasps, alerting Vuur.
“What? Do you see one of them?”
I feel Jane’s skin quiver.
“No,” I say, eyes on the tall man in a dark suit sauntering up to a black sedan parked in the first row of vehicles, across from the coffee shop entrance. We stand two rows back, where the jeep is parked.
When he turns into the sun, and I can see his face clearly, I realize he’s the serial murderer from the Ambassador hotel, in Orlando. The man we know as Dick.
Dick’s hair is trimmed neatly and parted to the side. The wind lifts a small section and tosses it onto his forehead. He palms it back as he stands near the car and watches the doors on the coffee shop.
A dark-haired girl dressed in a pink and gray running suit steps through the door. Her hair is in a ponytail, arms loaded with books, and she’s talking over her shoulder as a short blonde girl follows her out. It’s CeCe.
Leaning against the sedan, the man in the dark suit pulls a cell phone from his jacket and clicks off pictures or video. The girls walk away from the building and down several steps.
“That’s CeCe,” I whisper to Vuur as the girls hurry toward the sidewalk on the other side of the road in front of the parking lot. “She’s the one in the gray sweats.”
There is a flirty burble of laughter in CeCe’s words as they take a left down the sidewalk toward another building. When their backs face us, Dick stuffs the cell back into his pocket. His randy smile follows the girls’ movement for a moment, and then gold cufflinks toss a ray of sunlight off the side of the black sedan as the man in the dark suit, Jane and I know as Dick, reaches for the door handle.
Gaire
I walk out of Starbucks and down the stairs in time to see CeCe and her friend round the corner of the building, and quicken my step to a jog. I need to get her alone to be sure, but this girl doesn’t smell the same as the CeCe I thought I tore apart in the apartment above my diner. She smells human—one-hundred percent human.
It had taken me a little over an hour to get ahold of her parents from the parking lot at Michigan State yesterday and then get to Ferris State University via one of my local travel tokens—another seven hours to find her in this small college town. Well, I didn’t find her. I ran into her at a store near the university. When I walked toward the registers, there she was trying to find the one with the shortest line.
She checked out, and then I followed her from the parking lot to a small two-story off campus a couple of blocks from the university. Unfortunately, seven other girls live with her. Time alone with CeCe would be a chance encounter there.
Tired from being on her tail for almost forty-eight hours, I need a few hours of sleep. I’d passed a Motel 8 on Perry Street, tucked between and behind an AutoZone and Bob Evans restaurant. It should work perfectly to keep me under the radar, yet close enough to walk to the university.
If I don’t get some answers from CeCe by tonight about what the hell happened above the diner, and who she really is, I’ll have to hit the sewers some time before morning and check out the otherworld situation in town. Down Under creatures can smell each other. It won’t take long for them to know I’m here even if they’re unable to discern what I am. In Florida, wendigo is the last thing they would think, but up here, especially with winter coming on fast, it’s a possibility. Daddy’s ticket on me would be well advertised.
Jane