“Her opinion of me doesn’t matter anymore.”
This gave me closure in the arena of our friendship, but that was about it. It didn’t help, and it didn’t hurt. Information in one ear and out the other, only passing through.
“I haven’t had my heart broken in a good long while.” He kept a step ahead of me. “I had forgotten how utterly miserable love makes you.”
I didn’t love him.
That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t speak through the tightness in my throat.
I didn’t know him that well.
Just enough I could see the hazy outline of a future together.
He didn’t know me at all.
Only better than anyone.
A long shadow peeled from the darkness ahead and planted its feet wide across the mouth of the alley.
Not to be outdone, Ambrose mimicked it. Mocked it, more like. Swelling himself to its size.
The short man who walked up behind it wearing a lab coat and thick glasses squinted at us.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “You’ve got the stink of fae and witchcraft on you.”
Thanks to the sight, and the charms I used to conceal my identity, he wasn’t wrong.
“Who are you?” I reached into Ambrose for my second blade. “Are you coven?”
“Are you coven?” He pointed what I realized was a pen at me. “Have you come to steal from me too?”
“I’m Hadley Whitaker.” I lowered my weapons. “The coven stole from you?”
“The new potentate,” he said thoughtfully. “Prove you are who you say you are, and we can talk.”
Aside from my debit card, I didn’t carry much in the way of ID. “What proof will you accept?”
“Your word.”
“I’m a necromancer,” I reminded him. “You get that my word isn’t magically binding, right?”
“Oh.” His nose quivered. “Fair point.” He eyed Bishop. “How about yours?”
“You have my oath that we mean you and yours no harm so long as you claim the same,” he said without hesitation, and magic saturated the vow. “My word is given.”
“Best we do this inside.” He jabbed the shadow in the knee. “Eustice, come along.” He glanced back. “I’m Dr. Ronald Smythe, by the way.”
The towering giant shriveled to the size of a large dog and loped beside the peculiar man.
Ambrose, not to be outdone, reduced himself into a cat that pranced over to strop my ankles.
Since he had been a good boy and leapt to defend us, more or less, I tossed him a salted caramel square.
“We’re safe enough.” Bishop allowed me to take the lead. “He’s a minor fae.”
“What’s that thing with him?”
“No clue.”
Ambrose, in a plea to get more chocolate, volunteered that the shadow and the man tasted the same.
“All right then.” Like a sucker, I dropped another chocolate into the void. “Let’s be alert, shall we?”
Hurrying to catch up to the man, we met him at the entrance I had detected just yesterday.
“You’ll have to forgive the mess.” He flushed. “I don’t often get visitors.”
“You’re fine,” I assured him. “You should see my place. It looks like a bomb went off in there.”
Bishop shut his eyes, as if my sense of humor caused him physical pain, then shook his head.
Laughter was a great coping mechanism. It was also a great defense mechanism. I tended to joke, a lot, with varying degrees of success.
The doorway I’d discovered opened smoothly once our host found the right key, and he ushered us inside then sealed us in. He had been right to warn us. His place looked worse than my apartment, and that was saying something. Since, you know, the bomb thing had been literal.
A living area occupied the left side of the space, and it was tidy in the way of unused rooms. A lab cluttered the right side, and it was utter chaos. Potions bubbled in honest-to-goddess caldrons suspended over the hearth. Vials of liquids oozed vapor onto the aged-wood countertops. Aquariums teeming with all manner of creatures lined the back wall, most of them insectoid or amphibian.
“I expect you’re here about the periplaneta compressa. That’s what the coven stole from me.” He indicated a tufted couch and claimed a chair across from it. “Poor darlings.” He clucked his tongue. “They’re so misunderstood.”
“We’re here about giant cockroaches that infect live hosts, control them while they mature, and then explode out of them to start the cycle over again.”
“Miraculous creatures.” Reverence seeped into his voice. “The mechanics of it all...”
“Did you hear the live host part?” I pressed. “Or do you just not care?”
“They feed on insects,” he said slowly, his eyes shining. “Oh! Are you a fellow entomologist then?”
“Hold on.” I raised my hand. “You’re saying these things you created preyed on fellow insects?”
“That was the whole point, my dear, yes.” He grew animated. “A hybrid of predator and prey. One might call it the ultimate hunting machine.” He laced his fingers. “I hypothesized that, using modified radio waves, I could control the minds of the infected hosts. Can you imagine?”
Roaches that listened to this guy? No. Not really. “How does that work if they don’t have ears?”
“Well, that is to say, I…” He flushed. “To ensure the success of the project, you understand, I made a few slight modifications.” He shoved his glasses up his nose. “The alpha hybrids’ reactions to radio waves weren’t quite as promising as I had hoped, so I modified them. I gave the beta hybrids the superior ears of the katydid, Copiphora gorgonensis, which are almost mammalian in their complexity.”
I had known the Martian Roaches could hear, but I hadn’t been sure how much of that was based on their current host’s faculties, and, honestly, it was all so gross I skimmed a lot of my reading material.
“Initial testing proved the beta hybrids were viable,” he continued, “their hearing flawless, but then there was the break-in.”
“How did they find your…” I wavered on what to call this place, “…facility?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” He patted his thigh, and his shadow dog padded over to flop its head onto his lap.
