I sense him pulling away. He’s always superprotective, but he’s also ready to back off when I need him to. The best possible kind of older brother.
“I have an idea,” Milo says cheerfully.
He leans away from me, taking his lion-bird smell-neutralizing cologne cocoon with him, and I open my eyes to see if he’s trying to put distance between himself and the crazy girl. Instead, I see him setting his glass on the bar.
He holds out his hand to me and asks, “Wanna dance?”
A cooler girl would hesitate and then coyly accept. A girl with more boy skills wouldn’t want to look so eager. Or desperate.
Not me. Nope, I break out in a goofy—and grateful—grin and blurt, “Yes!”
As his hand wraps around mine, all thoughts of the creature hallucinations disappear. In this moment, there is only my hand in Milo’s as he leads me out into the center of the dance floor. Just as a slow song begins to play.
And as he tugs me close and guides my arms around his neck, I can almost convince myself that everything is perfect. I can almost completely ignore the feathered serpent I see slinking after the lion-bird into the back room of the club. Almost.
Chapter 6
If a member of the monster squad is going to pull me out on a Friday night, the least it could do is pick a better club than Synergy. It’s bad enough I have to spend all day with the hormonal sheep at school, I’d rather avoid them in the off-hours. But this seems to be a favorite freakazoid haunt lately. I’m practically a resident.
Nightclubs give me the snooze in general, and Synergy is more nondescript than most. It’s on a side street in the industrial section of Potrero Hill—which might as well mean
Leaving Moira double-parked behind a Hummer in the empty lot next door, I do my mental gear check as I stifle a yawn. Hunting three nights in a row is tough, especially on back-to-back-to-back weeknights. I feel like I might never catch up on sleep again.
My boots crunch on the gritty sidewalk as I head for the front door. I hand my ID to the bouncer. He’s six four, about two eighty, with a buzz cut and bug eyes that indicate one too many steroid cocktails. A dead ringer for the Gegenees giant I took out a few weeks ago, only without the two extra pairs of arms. Even though I’ve been here a lot lately, he scrutinizes my driver’s license like he’s trying to read Plato in the original Ancient Greek.
“Gretchen Sharpe?” He eyes the photo, then me, and then the photo again.
This one is my actual ID. Synergy is all ages, which means my sixteen-year-old self is perfectly legal. On occasions when I have to track into an alcohol-serving, twenty-one-and-up club, I’ve got a collection of fakes to get me in the door, with my hypno powers as a convenient backup.
Bug boy takes his job a little too seriously. If I were in search of underage drinking opportunities, I wouldn’t be here. They don’t even serve alcohol.
“That’s me, Jocko,” I say, giving him my best I’m-not-trying-to-do-anything-even-remotely-illegal smile. He probably wouldn’t appreciate my I’m-just-trying-to-get-rid-of-the-deadly-monster-you-let-inside smirk.
After cross-checking my license and my face a few more times, he hands back my ID and says, “Ten dollars. Pay inside.”
I breeze past him and push open the door. The nauseating rotten-garbage scent of the griffin is worse than the overused fog machine. It’s so strong, I can’t immediately pinpoint the source. Guess I’ll have to rely on other senses this time.
After handing my cover charge over to the cashier, I step into the giant black box that is Synergy. The space is wall-to-wall people, most of them under twenty-one. It’s a sea of bumping and grinding, penned in on one side by the virgin-beverage-serving bar and on the other by a raised stage that is a favorite of PVC-pants-and-eyeliner- wearing boys who like boys. And the occasional girl who likes boys who like boys, despite their obvious lack of interest in what she has to offer.
Tonight there’s a DJ set up at one end of the stage, shouting out dance instructions and tweaking the bass on the unidentifiable music pounding through the speakers. Permanent eardrum damage in the making.
With the added filter of my sunglasses I mostly make out shapes and outlines. The lights hanging from the ceiling grid turn the throbbing masses into a sea of yellow, teal, and hot pink. A normal girl would be nauseous. I’ve never claimed to be normal. Putrid eau de griffin and the revolting color combination are everyday hazards of the job.
“If I were a bloodthirsty half-lion, half-eagle, where would I be?” I muse.
Being a few inches taller would definitely be a benefit at this point. I need line of sight, which means I need a better vantage point. Higher ground.
Shoving through the labyrinth of bodies, I make my way to the elevated stage. I place one hand on the front edge and vault myself up onto the platform. From my new perch I can see the entire room. I lift my shades to get a better look.
Plenty of gyrating hips, glitter-enhanced cleavage, and titanium body piercings, but no griffin.
After winding across the stage to the back wall, I leap down, landing Doc Martens–first in the doorway that looks onto the techno room. It’s almost as full as the main room, but with a tenth the lighting.
“Why do they always go for the back rooms?”
Easier to lure some lonely, heartbroken, or otherwise desperate human into a dark corner, I suppose. Synergy’s back room is darker than the deepest corner of Hades. Even if the monsters had no veil, no one would notice them standing two feet away in this black hole.
I sniff test the room and discover that the smell is coming from outside, from the open door leading onto the small courtyard to the right. As soon as I step out under the stars, I see it. Prowling around a pair of girls at a picnic table who look like they’ve been drinking something that didn’t come from the alcohol-free bar.
They’re sitting ducks.
I’m about to step through the doorway and introduce the griffin to a shiny pair of fangs when I catch a new scent.
I stopped my scan of the courtyard when I spotted the griffin and the party girls, but as I complete my survey, I see the second beastie. A great big serpent thing covered in dark green and brown feathers.
“What?”
Before they spot me—or notice that I’ve spotted them—I duck back into the techno room to regroup. Two monsters? That’s impossible. They can only get out of their realm one at a time. It’s one of the first things Ursula taught me when I followed her out of that warehouse four years ago.
She’d led the way to a nearby diner, not uttering another word to me until the waitress set a steaming bowl of stew at my place. Ursula waited until I had a spoonful in my mouth before saying, “I know you see monsters.”
My only response was a brief hesitation before swallowing and taking another bite. If this lady was going to tell me I was nuts, just like Phil and Barb always did, I’d just take the hot meal and then take off.
“I also know you are not insane.”
At that point I didn’t think anything could shock me more. I set down the spoon and asked, “How do you know that?”
“Because,” she said with a warm smile, “I see them too.”
I was wrong. That shocked the life out of me.
“You—” I couldn’t even speak. Someone like me. I never knew how much I wanted that—needed that—until right then. I balled my fists in my lap and asked, “What
“You belong to an elite lineage of guardians,” she explained. “Destined to hunt down the monsters that escape into our realm and send them back to theirs.”
