Chapter 3

Asire.

As predicted, the werewolves didn’t take their dead lightly. Reggie and Henrik had taken the body to them and left me behind, so thankfully I only had to hear about how they yelled. And threatened. And apparently threw something at Henrik, which he caught, so I guess he wasn’t offended by that.

The rest of the night had passed without another incident and we all split up to go home.

It was the day after Christmas, so I was back at work. Busy time for all kinds of stores. I came out of the rain just before six o’clock and relieved the person who manned the desk before me. I dumped my bag in the back room without bothering to put it in my locker. I was the only one here until two in the morning, so I didn’t see a reason to worry over thieves.

The previous employee had just finished restocking the rings in the counter display and had left the tray out. I put it away and then promptly reorganized the rings because my artist’s eye couldn’t handle how they looked. He had mixed the jewels and the colors in such a way that your eye skipped over everything and I couldn’t get to work until I fixed it.

Once that was done, I put on music and sat behind the counter with a sketchpad. Until someone came in, there wasn’t much for me to do. Inventory had been done just before Christmas. All the displays were up and there were several new items already placed around the shop. The only shift quieter than mine was the one right after mine.

There was a fairly steady stream of people in and out of the shop for the first two hours. Some who needed a belated gift. Some who needed money to make up for how much they spent this holiday season. Others who couldn’t stand what they had been given. The crowd died down around nine and it stayed pretty vacant. Most people do their shopping at a real store, not Captain Awesome Pawnshop.

I was doodling, not having an image already in my head, when my cell went off. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to answer it on shift, but I was the only person here and who’d know?

I checked the screen and immediately answered when I saw Reggie’s name. “Has something happened?” I asked, without bothering to say hello. I’d been waiting for her to call since my shift began. So far, the Martinson Family only seemed to attack after I went to work. They didn’t always wait for the sun to go down, and they were usually done before I finished with my shift. That was most likely coincidence, but I didn’t like the pattern.

“Not yet,” she said. “I was calling to check on you.”

“Nothing much happening here,” I said. “I’ll get a few more customers around midnight. Mostly vampires, but that’s about it for me.”

“Good,” Reggie said. “Call if you see any werewolves hovering around, as well,” she continued. “I don’t like how pissed they were.”

“Okay,” I said, having no intention of doing that. I’d call after I dealt with them, but generally speaking, stopping before a fight to talk isn’t a good idea.

“Maybe I’ll come over this weekend,” she continued.

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I feel you need to brush up on all the shows you missed as a child, again. Or cuz I’m paying for most of that house. Or because I can.” Her tone was full of levity and I rolled my eyes, despite her not being able to see me do so.

“I can’t go through another cartoon marathon,” I said, “I just won’t. The last one nearly made me break that giant TV.”

“You have no appreciation for good shows,” Reggie said.

I was about to respond when I glanced out the window and saw a shadow moving away from the glass. “Hold up, Reggie,” I said. “I’m putting the phone down.”

My tone had become deadly serious, and she picked up on it right away. “Don’t hang up,” she said.

“I won’t.” Mostly because I knew if I did, she’d get in her tiny mustang and be here in five minutes by breaking every traffic law. Hell, she might do that anyway, but there wouldn’t be a lot panic if I could talk to her.

I set the phone on the counter and moved around the glass display. The shop wasn’t large, but there were shelves and displays everywhere, so I had to maneuver around them. At the front of the store, I stood behind the window that had our name painted on it. I could see over the graphics, but it would make me slightly harder to spot.

There were three shadows standing across the street, far from the streetlights. There was only a moment to study them in the darkness before one of them flicked open a lighter. The flame was just enough to see by. There were three blonds, two men and one woman. None of them were looking over here and the woman was holding a bottle in her hands. A quick check of my senses confirmed they were legions. Ones I had never met before.

Without another glance, I turned my back on them and rushed across the room. I grabbed my phone up and started speaking quickly, “Reggie? I got three Annihilists outside about to torch the shop. I’m heading out back.”

“Damn it,” she yelled. “Can you get out in time?”

I rounded the counter, snatched up my sketchbook and grabbed the door handle to the back room before the front window shattered and a bottle exploded on the carpet. Fire whooshed across the carpet before getting more sluggish. Heat exploded along my back and the displaced air pushed me forward a step or two.

“We’ll find out,” I said into the phone.

I grabbed my bag off the floor, feeling a moment of relief that I never put it in my locker. I hurried across our storage room and to the backdoor. It was locked from both the inside and the outside, but it was the work of a moment to open the door and shove myself out into the cold winter air.

“Out,” I said. “No burns.”

Living in the city that has the highest crime rate in the country, we have to have something going for us. And luckily, that was the quickest response time for fire trucks. I was barely out the door before I heard the sirens coming down the street.

The fire crackled loudly behind me and orange flames started to reach the ceiling. But it was all in the front. It hadn’t caught on the more flammable items yet, but I knew they would soon. The scent of burning things filled my nose, obscuring everything else in its path.

“Are you okay?” Reggie asked, sounding deadly calm, which meant she was anything but.

“Didn’t even get my hair singed,” I assured her. “I’m going around the front. I’ll see if I can’t find them.”

“I’m on my way,” she said and the phone went dead in my hand.

I shoved it into my pocket and hurried down the side alley, until I was in the street. There weren’t many spectators yet, and the shop’s burning might not get many more. Citizens of Seattle were used to this kind of thing. Some of them didn’t even take a second look before hurrying along their way.

I rushed across the street just as the fire trucks careened around the corner. Two of them. Half the shop was up in flames at this point, so hopefully they could get it under control before I found myself without a job. The spot where the arsonists had stood was vacant, of course. But I still sensed them, rushing away from the scene at a pace only achieved by a car. They would be out of my reach before I could get to my truck.

“Fuck,” I said, turning back to the building.

The trucks had stopped and were starting to hook up the hoses. The men and women working at a fast pace.

The falling snow turned to slush over the building and helped put out the fire.

It was still raging by the time Reggie got there. She peeled into the parking lot of the bookstore I was standing in. My truck was still behind the pawnshop, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I always parked under a light and currently the only one working was half a dozen yards away from the building.

“I take it you couldn’t catch them?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Glad you made it out,” she said.

I shrugged. I worked a night shift at a pawnshop in the most crime ridden city in the country.

I had a plan for everything.

“You call the boss, yet?” she asked.

“Probably should.” I took my phone back out and dialed his number from memory. He picked up on the third ring. I told him what happened, leaving out some of the more sensitive bits.

He sighed. “Guess I have to call that interior decorator again.” Then he hung up.

I wasn’t surprised by his lack of emotion. This wasn’t the first time the shop has been shut down for repairs. We get a lot of people who fancy themselves as armed robbers. However, because of all the thieves, we were smart enough to keep all the really expensive stuff out of the shop. Me and the two other employees sold that shit online.

The fire was out before the cops arrived. And once we saw those red and blue lights, we decided it was time to go. I went around back to retrieve my truck and Reggie took off in her mustang. I left just before the police arrived to barricade everyone in. Not surprisingly, most of the spectators vanished before that happened.

We got back to the gallery and went up to Reggie’s office. Henrik was already there. He took one long look at me, and seemed satisfied that I wasn’t hurt. Then he went back to the map. He had added the two new attacks. Their circle had broken up, leaving three stray black tacks in our map of destruction.

“So they know where our meeting place is,” Reggie said, running a hand through her curls. “They know where Asire works. And they’ve hung out in the warehouse district.” She put her hands on her hips and stared down at the map for several seconds before finally shaking her head. “I don’t like this.”

Instead of saying something sarcastic and unhelpful, I waited for her to finish with her thoughts. When she did, she looked up at me. “And we still can’t find them. We’ve found their leftovers. We’ve seen glimpses of them. But we haven’t found them… within the city.”

“Maybe they aren’t in the city,” I said.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Reggie demanded. “We can’t leave the city. The patrolmen will shoot us on sight if we try.”

Coming into the city was easy. No one gave you a second glance. Leaving the city? You needed to show ID to the patrolmen who lined the exit roads. They ran the ID through their computer and they let you past if it all checked out. If any of us who were exiled here tried to leave? Shot on sight. We could get permission to leave. Kind of a like a furlough.

I haven’t seen it happen in the five years I’ve been Orphaned. I’d only heard of a few times that it happened to begin with. You needed the people that exiled you to sign a paper agreeing to the furlough.

If the Martinson Family was staying outside the city, we couldn’t get to them. If they were inside the city? Then they had some skills that we couldn’t even begin to touch. There were ten of us, every night, trying to find them. We should have been able to find them.

If they were in the city.

“I really don’t like this,” Reggie said.

Of course you don’t, I thought, no one likes bad things that happen around them.

There was silence for almost a minute before Reggie finally shook her head and looked over to me. “What are we going to do about all this? Any thoughts?” I knew she was at a loss then.

I looked at the map and took a deep breath. “We need to get everyone to the safe house, I think,” I finally said.

She nodded. “I agree.”

“We need to get supplies, because currently the only things I have is what I need,” I told her, snatching up my bag again and flinging it onto my back.

“I’ll do that,” Henrik offered. He set the map aside and collected his own keys, leaving before Reggie or I could say anything.

“I don’t think they’ll do anything else tonight,” Reggie said, “But I don’t like the idea of everyone moving at once without them noticing. They’ve been careful enough to learn our locations without us realizing it. What about the safe house? How do we know they aren’t aware of it?”

“I’ve never been followed home,” I said. “And even if they knew, the whole point of it is that it’s safer than your other homes.”

Reggie’s lips compressed and she stared at the map. “I’m not happy about moving everyone there, but I think it’ll be more dangerous for everyone to be in their own homes. Certainly those who live in apartments.”

Yet, that wrinkle between her brows remained. The tightness the only indication that she was panicking.

“Okay,” I said. “You go to the safe house and let everybody in. I’ll call everyone and split them up into groups. I’ll get the children to you first. Everyone will be there by morning.”

Reggie paused and then nodded her head. Her dusky skin was paler than normal and the tightness remained around her eyes. “I just… I think something’s going to go wrong. I can’t explain it. My stomach’s in knots. We can’t lose anybody, Asire. We aren’t tight enough that a loss will keep the others from running.”

“I know,” I said. “But we can only do our best.”

“You’re right.” She turned on her stiletto and walked toward the door. She grabbed a purse and was almost out the door when she stopped. “Call in an hour?” she asked.

“Thirty minutes,” I said.

Her shoulders relaxed and she marched out the door, looking composed in her suit and her heels with her untamable curls. I couldn’t comfort her because she wasn’t wrong. If these people had been so careful to find our houses, our businesses, to find who was in charge and who wasn’t… How could they not notice that we all move into one building?