“Jeeze, Mother, could you have picked a riper cadaver? How long have you been wearing this guy?” Luna says. “He’s already missing an eye, only a bloody dark hole where his eyeball used to be. Why don’t you dump him? Poor thing.”
There’s a stretch of quiet. I think about moving closer, but Luna and her mother laugh.
“Oh, I do love this spirit you’ve found,” the male voice says, inappropriately effeminate.
Evidently, Nan is amusing Luna’s mother, and a bit of mommy is bleeding into her host. I silently chuckle.
I take the risk, lean out briefly. They don’t seem to be moving closer. I can hear them well, so I relax a bit.
“Are you going to turn me and Gaire in for hooking up?” Gracie asks.
So much for relaxing. I hold my breath, mind spinning with sudden realization; Luna’s mother knows I’m alive, and creatures of darkness be damned, I wonder what else she knows?
“No,” the manly voice says.
I grit my teeth, spine tingling—a warning from within. I slowly let out the breath I had been holding.
“Why?” Luna asks through Gracie.
The host Luna’s mother is wearing smells like road kill. While that doesn’t bother me or most Down Under creatures, I’m betting it bothers Gracie. This makes me smile.
“I’m your guardian,” the manly voice burbles. “Naturally—purely to stroke my own ego—I would revel in your success. Especially in lieu of the fact I will not be held accountable when the elders find out you assisted Gaire in the death of a Down Under creature, above the sewer, and in broad daylight.”
“I did not assist in Vuur’s death. Jane and I were helping Gaire try to save the real CeCe from being raped by a serial murder.”
“A match made in the sewer,” her mother’s man-voice cuts Gracie off, “a doppelganger with a conscience and a wendigo who tries to save damsels in distress. Well, young lady, it doesn’t matter.” Her mother swings the cadaver’s arms. Stench rides a tunnel breeze. “You can get on with your save-the-world crusade. You have my blessing.”
“Nope, not buying it,” Gracie says. “Why are you letting me try to build a relationship with a wendigo who has a price on his head? Not to mention find the doppelganger who tried to kill my last host and snuff the...”
“Excuse me?” Luna’s mother says.
Wait, did Luna just tell her mother we are going to hunt a doppelganger and kill it? I can barely hold the need to be by Gracie’s side.
Then Luna’s mother growls. “Dead woman! Stay out of this! I’m speaking to my daughter.”
There’s more silence. I mildly relax and wait patiently, sensing no movement, and then Luna’s mother breaks the quiet with a cold stoic voice.
“Did you just tell me you intend to hunt down one of your own kind and try to kill it?”
The tension in the air is heavy.
“That disgusting creature is killing women for no reason,” Gracie hisses. “He is not even wearing them!”
Mom’s same stoic voice answers at a moderate volume. “Killing humans, for whatever the reason, is not a crime in the little red eyes of your elders.” The cadaver’s voice is phlegmy as it escalates. “Killing another doppelganger is!”
There’s a long silence. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears.
“Old woman,” Luna’s guardian finally says, “you can do your summoning spell with the host my daughter is wearing. It’s true, I cannot say in all honesty that I am one-hundred percent sure the dragon-shifter is dead. I can tell you he did not come out of the house after the dark-haired man who drove up in the black car. And now I know the brazen trollop my daughter was wearing shot him—thank you for that image—and that he was one of us. I should not have stayed near the house until the fire department put out the flames.”
I cover my mouth and swallow hard to hold back my rising tension.
“Truth be told, I can care less if you want to further your relationship with the wendigo. Doppelgangers are not held responsible for others’ actions, meaning you have no moral obligation to turn your wendigo playmate in to his tribe, pack, whatever they call it.
“And furthermore, if you choose to search for the doppelganger, which I strongly advise against, you are within your rights to do so. Now if you take it upon yourself to try to destroy one of our brethren—one who has done you no personal harm—I will have to report it as I see it. And I will be there to see it.”
“But he’s killing innocent women. He’s not nice,” Gracie says.
I swell with pride—me, a blood-thirsty murdering cannibal.
“You and this wendigo are an abomination to your breeds.”
I go cold with anger at the guardian’s words.
“There is no mercy, empathy, or heroism in our kind or his! Nothing good can come of this humanitarian rampage you are both on.”
“I’m proud of the way I feel, Mother!”
“Yes, I know you are,” she says. “Wendigo! Show yourself!”
Chapter 21
Gracie