chapter seven
We went with protein bars and some pain medications Mrs. Amanda had from a past surgery, for the injured officer, who most likely had a split kneecap. Mrs. Amanda said he could take one every four hours, and the pain would probably settle. If I were him, I would want something more than probably and a dose of drugs she probably wasn’t supposed to keep this long. Did medicine like this expire?
But the cops would probably be with us for some time, and we needed to get off on the right foot. The alliance, planning foot.
Zoey and I stopped at the door to the Marantines’ bedroom, and I knocked. “Hey, it’s us, the, uh, humans. We have some pain meds and snacks.”
There was a shuffling sound from inside, muffled voices I couldn’t understand, then furniture was being moved out of the way, and someone asked, “How many of you are there?”
“Just us two.” Zoey said.
“Okay.” The officer opened the door just an inch, still holding the last gun. he saw us standing there alone and ushered us inside before anyone could follow.
inside, he moved the dresser back in front of the door and turned to look at us.
The other uninjured officer stood nearby, still holding a radio that did nothing. The injured man sat in the bed, leaning against the headboard. His left leg was propped up on top of a pillow, and he stared at us through hazy eyes.
“Have you already gotten into the medicine cabernet?” I asked, remembering the adjoined bathroom. We’d only left them alone for about 20 minutes, but I supposed that would be an eternity if he was in pain.
“No,” the man managed to say. “But I sure would like to.”
I held up the medicine bottle and shook it. “Well, we have the stuff. it’s from a surgery, only one pill every four hours, but we’ve been told it will help.”
“Thank you.”
Zoe set the snacks on the chest at the base of the bed, and then went to the bathroom to get a glass and water. I set the pills on the dresser, then saw a book lying on the floor, and a pen on the dresser.
Plan forming, I picked up both and held a finger to my lips as I looked between the officers.
I flipped the book open and wrote on the inside of the cover, not really caring at this point whether or not I would get into trouble for it. How could the Marantines possibly care? ‘They can hear us anywhere in the house.’
I showed it to the nearest officer, and he sucked in a breath, gritting his teeth and taking the pen from me. He wrote on the opposite side, ‘what are they?’
‘Demons.’ I had made up my mind on that one– whether they were truly demons or not, I would be referring to them as such. They certainly deserved the title. ‘Are your radios working at all?’
The officer shook his head. ‘Are the others still here?’
‘Who? your friends?’
Zoe returned with a glass of water and handed it to the injured cop handing him a pill he took gratefully. She set the bottle on the nightstand and walked over to us, surveying the little conversation, and nodding forlornly in agreement.
‘The other officers, yes’ I wrote. ‘How are they planning to go about this?’
the officer snorted and wrote back, ‘How the hell should I know?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘So sorry.’
Suddenly Sohan’s voice filled my head, and I froze at his sharp words.
What are you two doing up there? I haven’t heard a single voice in several minutes now.
I ignored him, wondering if I really should’ve answered.
I wrote to the officer, ‘How long will it take to get others here?’
’15, maybe 20 minutes’
Sohan asked, do I need to come up there?
I looked at Zoey and mouthed, “We have to go.”
She nodded, realizing why. I held a finger to my lips and wrote, or rather scratched in the book, ‘When they arrive, maybe hold up a sign to only shoot, not approach, and that they aren’t human? Try to get that message across? You figure that one out.’
We moved aside the dresser and stepped into the hallway just as Sohan and Roland crested the top stair. They stopped just as we did, and Roland raised an eyebrow at me specifically.
From this adventure I’d learned that if I wanted to do any conspiring, Zoey and I needed to do it while speaking at the same time, and that the fae didn’t trust me after the paperweight stunt.
The memory of that rushed through my mind, of Sohan pressing me into the dirt and staring in mild confusion at the neighbor’s shattered front window, but not actually doing anything about it. It was odd, now that I thought about it, that he didn’t immediately go to retrieve it. It was possible he forgot in his anger at me, but then again, it was also possible he did it on purpose. What could be gained by that though?
His face revealed nothing, I shrugged, looked to Zoey, who stared back in equal fake innocence. Roland narrowed his eyes and Sohan crossed his arms over his chest.
His antlers were just tall enough that there was less than five inches of clearance below the ceiling. If he did a little hop, he’d break something, whether that be him or the roof.
“I don’t trust you anymore.” Roland said through clenched teeth, at me specifically.
“Thanks,” I said uncertainly, trying to move past them to the stairs. Roland grabbed me stiffly by the shoulder and jerked me back, nearly pushing me into the wall.
His grip was harder than Sohan’s, and it caught me by surprise. I stared at him for half a second in genuine fear, then asked, “Do you need something?”
My mouth would get me killed one of these days.
“You’re planning something again.” Sohan answered for him. “What is it?”
“We haven’t planned anything,” Zoey lied quickly. “I wrote down the instructions for taking the medicine on a sticky-note, and we examined the man’s leg.” She looked to Roland. “It’s broken, by the way.”
He snorted but didn’t answer. Her response seemed to be good enough for him, or he was too cocky to think she’d lie to him. Sohan on the other hand was still watching with narrowed eyes. “And none of you felt the need to speak?”
“I told them you could hear them,” I said honestly. “They didn’t feel like chatting after that.”
“Watch yourself.” Roland told me harshly, eyes flashing. He said something neither of us humans understood under his breath to Sohan, who made no move to show he’d heard him.
The most I caught was ‘go’ and maybe ‘she’—but that was still stretching my abilities to comprehend it when I’d only ever seen the words before.
I nodded, lips pressed together to keep from either yelling or crying. The ability to keep calm in confrontations had never naturally come to me—and yet with them, I wasn’t afraid like before. Sure, I was afraid I would die—but I didn’t fear them anymore.
Roland’s lip curled but he said nothing, and Sohan’s expression didn’t change. He looked somewhere between suspicious and annoyed, not really a mixture I wanted to stir.
I brushed past the both of them with Zoey following close behind, and we made our way to the office as quickly as possible.
Her parents were leaning over a laptop—trying again to connect to the internet. It wasn’t working, needless to say.
“What’s cracking?” Zoey asked bleakly, coming to hover behind her mother’s shoulder. I took up a position near the bookshelf, pretending to have something to do.
“My bones,” Mrs. Amanda sighed, standing straighter as her husband closed the laptop. “Still no luck.”
Mr. Brandon held up a finger for silence and pointed out the window toward the cop cars. Nothing to see presently—the fog was rolling into the neighborhood again and the world was somewhat blurry—but the cop cars outside were still present. I could vaguely make out the outlines of people, waiting.
For backup?
“There’s no way this will work,” I whispered, staring in rapture at nothing.
It felt like it was just then sinking in. That I might die here. That these things keeping us here were more powerful than anything human. We just hadn’t seen it yet.
If they were fae, where were they from? Why were they doing this? I couldn’t ask them that yet, and if I was going to ask anyone it would have to be Sohan-- once he felt like talking to me again.
But why would they keep us here? That seemed to be their only motive, unless they needed a hideout, in which case surely there were better places. Then, hideout from what? Why us?
It wasn’t as if anyone else knew better than I did, I’d know that by now if any of the Marantines knew. I needed to ask Sohan some yes-or-no questions, as I suspected he couldn’t lie directly. If I was right, he’d answer in more than one word, and I could read between the lines to what he wasn’t saying.
‘I can give untruths’ he’d said. But we also knew, though we had no way of verifying it, that he was a messenger. ‘give’ probably was referring to him delivering the lies of other fae, not his own. I believed that was why he’d worded it like that, to throw me off his track.
Could the others lie? Or were they better at it? I needed to come up with a trial of sorts, but currently had no idea whatsoever what that trial might entail.
I wanted to step back from it all, just for a few minutes. I wanted to pretend nothing was happening out of the ordinary. I wanted to pretend my family wasn’t worried, I wanted to pretend I wasn’t missing anything. I wanted to forget the possibility I might die in the Marantines’ house, away from my own family. I wanted to forget, or at least accept, that these things existed.
I could see Kael’s outline on the porch, sitting calmly in a rocking chair, watching the cops. The picture of calm anticipation. Like a panther.
Could I join him?
His head tilted toward me, and he nodded, though his voice didn’t fill my head like I was used to with his friend.
I left the Marantines to whatever they were doing and walked to the front door.
No one stopped me, though Zoey noticed, and watched me with narrowed eyes. I nodded to alleviate her concerns and opened the front door.
The second I stepped out, Sohan spoke, though I couldn’t hear him. He was still inside, probably upstairs with Roland, maybe tormenting injured cops or snooping through human stuff.
Darling, where are you going?
His tone was light, so I responded in turn, taking up a seat one rocking chair away from Kael, who hardly responded to my presence. ‘To sit with your friend on the front porch.’
I heard Sohan sigh quite clearly. Try your best not to aggravate him.
‘Alright.’
I got no response from him, indicating to me he was being a spiteful bastard now— and honestly I couldn’t blame him. He was probably realizing now that I was more trouble to keep alive than to just kill.
The air outside was thick, like breathing in steam, and the sky was dark. A beautiful but very dreary day.
“What are they planning?” Kael asked. His voice was low and quiet, and it made me think for a moment that I hadn’t really heard him at all.
“What do you mean?” I tried to keep my voice quiet to match. Sohan could hear us, I knew it.
“Those men,” he nodded toward the officers by the street, who were watching the road for backup. “They’re planning something—have they called for reinforcements?”
“Yes. They’re probably waiting for them to arrive.” I said plainly. Lying didn’t seem wise.
“How many men?” he didn’t look at me, like he would prefer I was someone else.
“I don’t know.” How would I know that? Why did it matter?
“Because we do not have the food here to maintain too many people.”
“That makes sense. You’re not going to kill anyone?”
“Not if it isn’t necessary.” He looked at me for the first time, yellow eyes scanning my face for any reaction.
I’d always assumed either we or the officers would be dead by this time, but maybe I was wrong. Knock on wood—they hadn’t killed anyone yet. Injured, yes, but to be fair the man had been about to tase Roland. I probably would’ve struck back much the same way.
So, if they weren’t here to kill anyone, what were they here for? Money?
“Not really, no.” Kael said with a vague smile. His teeth weren’t pointed like Sohan’s.
“What? Can you hear all my thoughts?” I hadn’t been aiming that thought at anyone— it wasn’t even a real question.
“I can.” He saw my expression—or maybe heard my thoughts—and added quickly, “Neither of the others can hear them. We each have our own thing.”
“What do you mean? Your own thing?”
He watched the cops as they sat back down inside the cruiser, brows relaxing. “I can hear your thoughts—all of them, not just the ones addressing me. There’s Sohan with his enhanced senses and nature-based attributes, and then Roland—he manipulates emotion and subconscious behavior.”
“What do you mean he manipulates emotion and subconscious behavior?” I repeated, wondering why he was giving me so much information without my asking for it. I liked it but was confused at the same time. Was there some trap here I wasn’t seeing?
“Exactly what you’re thinking,” he said plainly, as though it were simple, but didn’t want to make me feel dumb. “That’s probably why you dislike him so much.”
“Because he wants me to?” I asked, watching the distant street, waiting for sirens. Any moment now, the rain would start up. I could smell it in the air.
“Exactly.”
“Why?” I watched his expression, but it didn’t change. Besides, I noticed, a slight mischievous glint to his eyes.
“Because Sohan asked him to.” Kael turned to look at me fully then, pinning me to the spot with those sharp eyes. Looking at them properly now I wasn’t sure what to think—they looked almost reptilian. “Do you know why?”
“No,” I leaned away from him, wary, heart racing.
“Do you speak our language?” Kael asked, clearly already knowing the answer. He leaned forward, as if imparting a secret. “Listen to what he says to the others. You know a few words—learn a few more—”
The door opened and none other than Sohan stepped out onto the porch.
I could almost feel how angry he was, how still he stood, how swift he moved—I was afraid.
But he wasn’t angry at me—he was angry at Kael. Very angry at Kael.
“Julie—” he jerked his head toward the still-open door. “Go inside– now.”
I gave him a wide berth as I went back inside as quickly as I could without tripping on the step, shutting the door. I considered locking them out, then decided that wouldn’t do anything.
Inside, I moved to stand at the top of the stairs, where I could see straight down to the front door windows. I was shaking, knowing I could be caught watching—and of course Kael knew I was—but unable to keep myself from doing it.
Outside, I could just barely see Kael had stood to stand a few feet away from Sohan, and now they were arguing. Or at least Sohan was—gesturing with overly-controlled little motions, teeth ground together. Kael was the picture of serene and pleased with himself. His arms were crossed, and he was so close to grinning at whatever it was Sohan was upset at.
He waited for a few more seconds, before he nodded in my direction, and Sohan snapped his head to look me in the eye through the window.
Eyes glued to his, I slowly backed away. He narrowed his eyes and looked back to Kael, who was moving toward the door.
Sohan didn’t stop him. Kael shut the door behind him and Sohan seemed to immediately forget about him, turning irritably to watch the cops in the driveway.
Kael was chuckling as he made his way to the living room again. “Don’t you wish you could understand what he says?”
He knew I did. I wanted to know what they were saying not just to find a way out of the Marantine house, but just because I wanted to know what they said about us while we stood in front of them.
“Then listen, Julie.” Kael told me, much softer now, voice fading as he walked away.
I went upstairs to hide with the Marantines now, waiting in a locked room. We waited for over an hour, standing by the windows– watching for nothing. The fog was so heavy we could hardly see through it at all– then the street disappeared into the gloom. We gave up at that point, wandering away to go about our own little activities in separate corners of the room.
Mr. Brandon was standing with the bat by the door, glancing murderously out the window every few seconds, pacing. Mrs. Amanda was sitting on the couch, head in her hands, crying very softly while Zoe tried to comfort her silently.
I started back on my next Old English lesson– I had downloaded a PDF of a textbook a while ago, so I didn't need any internet for that. Two hours passed like this– I eventually laid down behind the couch, ear pressed to the ground, listening for voices and finding nothing. I fell asleep within minutes, despite the worry and apprehension.