[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company Page 3

  Steph pulled me closer. She must have told the clerks that she was Eric’s relative, so they let us be.

  “Jess, what the hell?” Hair fell in Steph’s face, and she swatted it away. “He’s breathing, he has a pulse. Is this some kind of spell?”

  “Not a spell. He’s become a ghoul.”

  Shaking her head, Steph sat on one of the deserted chairs. “Ghouls are what addicts become, aren’t they? Eric…” She stared at him, her eyes widening with realization.

  “Excuse me.” A shadow lengthened by my feet, and a woman cleared her throat. “Are you a Gryphon? Did I hear you suggest Mr. Marshall was an addict?”

  I glanced up. The woman hovering over me had been standing next to Eric during the signing. I hadn’t paid much attention to her because I’d been pondering Eric’s little addict problem—which apparently wasn’t so little—but I’d assumed she was his wife or girlfriend. If that were true, then she was one of the last people I wanted to talk to. Explaining this was going to suck. It sounded like she hadn’t even known he was an addict.

  Unfortunately, Steph jumped in before I could respond. “Yes, Jess is a Gryphon.”

  “Well, not exact—”

  “Oh, God.” The woman collapsed on the chair next to mine. “It’s true then? Gryphons can identify addicts, can’t they? I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself. I’m Marissa Walker. I’m Mr. Marshall’s assistant.”

  “Oh.” I pulled myself together. Assistant wasn’t good, but it also wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. The smorgasbord of stressful emotions around me was hard enough to deal with. A weepy or angry significant other would have been too much of a head rush. “I, uh, consult for the Gryphons. Sometimes.”

  “So Eric was an addict?” Steph’s voice was as strained as her face. She was sickened and in total disbelief.

  Slowly, I nodded.

  Before I could say anything else, I was saved by the EMTs. As they burst into the bookstore, I scurried out of their way, leaving the awkwardness of that conversation behind.

  It’s no good, I wanted to tell them, but they’d figure that out themselves soon enough. Eric’s assistant ran over to meet them, as did the store clerks. I debated joining them and explaining, but Steph maintained her grip on my arm.

  “I thought…” She made a queasy face. “I don’t know much about addicts or ghouls, but doesn’t it take a long time to become a ghoul?”

  Over Steph’s shoulders, I could see the EMTs checking Eric’s vitals and discovering they were fine. I dragged my attention from them.

  I rubbed my eyes, no longer with tiredness but with frustration. “Yes. Ghouls are what happens to addicts whose pred masters suck them dry. If a soul is a person’s life energy, then it means the pred has taken away all the good parts of it. And yes, it takes a long time in many ways. First, it takes years of being fed on. Second, it happens slowly, over a long period. People don’t become ghouls in a matter of seconds. Eric…” Shit. There was no easy way to point it out. “Eric likely sold his soul in order to gain his success. He could well have been an addict for years. But even if that’s true, he shouldn’t have become a ghoul this way.”

  Steph groaned and closed her eyes. “What the hell was he thinking?”

  I forced a humorless smile. “Probably what everyone thinks—something else is more important than their own suffering.”

  “But you’re saying this isn’t normal?”

  “Definitely not normal.” I shrugged. “At least I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”

  “Great. You’re supposed to be my encyclopedia of magical knowledge.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from snorting. “Sorry. I’m nothing of the sort.”

  Across the room, someone said “Gryphon,” and both Steph’s head and mine snapped that way. Marissa was gesturing to me. Peachy. I might not be an encyclopedia of knowledge, but Steph wasn’t the only one assuming I was.

  Repressing a curse, I headed over, Steph on my heels.

  “Jess?”

  I paused, turning at the sound of a familiar voice. The real Gryphons had arrived, and my friend Bridget was in the lead. A wave of black-and-gold uniforms parted the shop’s remaining gawkers.

  “Hi.” Checking out the new faces, I let out the tiniest of sighs of relief.

  My former partner, Andre, wasn’t one of the four Gryphons who’d shown up. Until this moment, I hadn’t thought to worry about running into him again. Our last—and only—case together had ended in some serious, naked awkwardness thanks to Lucrezia and her powerful magical drugs. Oh, and I’d hit him with a chair.

  It was too bad because I liked Andre, but the last time we’d talked it had seemed like he wanted it to be the last time we talked. It was hard to blame him.

  Two of the Gryphons kept right on walking to where the paramedics were tending Eric, but Bridget frowned at me. “Did you call this in?”

  “Yeah. That’s Eric Marshall over there. He was doing a reading.”

  “And?” Bridget’s raised eyebrow made it clear she had no idea who Eric Marshall was.

  “He became a ghoul,” Steph said. “He’s my cousin. Jess says it shouldn’t have happened.”

  Bridget glanced between us. “Why not? Was he an addict?”

  I held up a hand in Steph’s direction. Her nerves were getting more frayed by the moment. “Let me start from the beginning.”

  I filled Bridget in on what happened. The remaining Gryphons returned by the time I finished, and the paramedics were packing up. Apparently, they’d discovered they weren’t needed, or the Gryphons had told them they’d take over.

  “So he was fine earlier?” one of the unknown Gryphons asked. “Were there any indications that his health was declining?”

  Steph had no idea, but Marissa had joined us as well, and she shook her head forcefully. “No, he was fine. He competed in a 5k run yesterday. It was his hobby. He was telling me on the way here that he’d made his best time yet.”

  “That shouldn’t be the case, right?” I asked Bridget.

  She sighed. “No. That wouldn’t be right. He should have been undergoing a steady decline. There would have been signs.”

  “So was this some kind of curse or something?” Bending under the pressure, Steph had pulled out her cigarettes and was tapping the pack against her hand.

  The Gryphons glanced at each other, baffled.

  One of the guys held up a vial. “We’ve got a blood sample. Initial analyses look normal so far—for a ghoul, I mean—but I’ll be analyzing it at the lab in more detail.”

  Bridget produced a notebook and a pen from her bag. “I doubt you’ll find anything unusual if you haven’t yet. My guess is that this is exactly what it looks like.”

  I placed my hand over Steph’s jittery one because the tapping was getting to me as badly as the spearmint anxiety that she radiated. “How is this possible?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” Bridget said. “It’s rare magic, but I’ve heard of it being done. It’s also illegal. We need to find the goblin who did this.”

  “Because that will be so easy,” Steph muttered.

  “It’s what we do.” Bridget sent two of the Gryphons back to headquarters to begin work on analyzing the blood sample. Then she and her partner interviewed Steph, Marissa and the bookstore staff.

  I hung around with Steph while she went outside to smoke. “Does Eric have family to take care of him? A wife or something?”

  She shook her head and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the night sky. “Nope. He divorced a few years ago. I don’t even know his ex-wife’s name. What happens to him?”

  “Without someone to take care of him?” I let the silence be my answer.

  Sadly, ghouls comprised the largest percent of the homeless population in any city. They were mostly unable or unwilling to take care of themselves. Just shells of peo
ple. If you gave them food, they would eat. If you didn’t, they might not think to find it themselves. Holding down a job was impossible. Those without family to take care of them almost always found themselves on the streets.

  Lucky for Eric he had family, and he was wealthy. I didn’t see why some of his money couldn’t be used to pay for care if his family didn’t want to bother.

  “They won’t,” Steph said, crushing her cigarette butt. “Mark my words. My family is evil.”

  “Come on, you used to include Eric in that. Now you’re getting along. Or were.”

  Steph adjusted her earrings with a wry expression. “We were getting along because he admitted he was wrong. I know the rest of the family didn’t approve of him making nice with me.”

  I winced. For all my issues, a loving family was not something I lacked. My choices confounded my mother, but that seemed normal enough. Of course, I’d never come out to my family like Steph had. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Steph to tell her family: “I’m a woman, and from this day on, I’d like you to call me Stephanie, not Stephen.”

  All I knew from Steph was that it had gone over every bit as badly as she’d anticipated. Since I dreaded finding out what would happen if I ever sat my mother down and said, “I’m a really messed up type of satyr, and just so you know, I feed on misery,” I’d never done it.

  Steph had way more courage than I did.

  “I should take him home,” Steph said.

  “What about his assistant? She came here with him.”

  “He pays her. I’m family. And all signs suggest he’s not going to be selling any more books so that he can keep on paying her.”

  True enough. Eric’s writing career, or any career, was over.

  We went back inside the dead store. All the people who’d turned up for the reading and signing had left. The clerks spoke in hushed voices, their faces long. The inviting atmosphere given off by the heavy wood and book-lined walls weighed on my shoulders. All it struck me as now was a jungle of dead trees. Dark and depressing.

  Bridget was getting off the phone, and she beckoned us both over. “If what we’re thinking happened is really what happened, then it’s dawned on me that not all is lost. We might be able to save Eric if we move fast.”

  Hope lit up Steph’s eyes. I felt it too, a quickness in my heartbeat, but I tried to suppress it. Me and hope didn’t usually end well. “How? What do you mean?”

  “Assuming Eric was healthy, there’s no way the goblin who did this would be able to feed on his soul to the point of depletion so quickly. That means the goblin must be storing it somewhere, and if it’s stored, theoretically, it can be returned. But we might not have a long time to do it.”

  “How long?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I need to do some research.”

  Steph turned to me, and I didn’t like the desperation on her face one bit. “Jess, you have connections in Shadowtown, don’t you? You can help.”

  “I…” I don’t work for the Gryphons. I hate the Gryphons.

  Bridget’s phone buzzed. She glanced at the caller ID and ignored it. “I’d be happy to bring Jess in on this case if the director approves it.”

  “I…” Dragon shit on toast. How could I say no to Steph?

  Easy answer. I couldn’t.

  I swallowed down a thousand rebuttals. “Yeah, of course. I want to help.”

  “Thank you.” Steph draped an arm around me, the closest my not-so-touchy-feely best friend came to hugs.

  I forced a smile, though I felt sick. After my epic storming out of Gryphon headquarters and vengeful vow that I would never, ever work with the Gryphons again, here I went.

  Wouldn’t Lucen be so pleased?

  And, oh, wasn’t I? The Gryphons had experimented on me as a child. They’d withheld damning information about what they’d done and what I was. Yet they, and the knowledge and resources they possessed, were the best hope for helping Steph’s cousin. So, sick as it made me, I would do this for Steph because she was my best friend, and she and her cousin deserved my help.

  Much as I hated to admit it, by doing this, I was acknowledging that the Gryphons weren’t all bad. They served a useful purpose, and sometimes they were the only people who could be counted on to help humanity.

  Although they’d destroyed my life, they saved other lives. How could I condemn them all for that?

  As usual, nothing could ever be simple.

  Chapter Four

  Getting Eric home became a complicated dance of logistics. Marissa offered to help, but Steph didn’t like turning over the key to Eric’s house—and his BMW—to someone she didn’t know, so it was up to us. Eventually we worked it out, got Eric into said BMW and hit the road.

  “You haven’t explained to me how we’re going to return to Boston,” I said, inspecting the GPS. I was trying to figure out how to program it to take us to Eric’s house. We wouldn’t need the directions until we were well out of the city, but it might take me that long to convince the thing to cough them up.

  Steph braked nervously as she wound through heavy Cambridge traffic, and I grimaced as my seat belt choked me. “I’ll drive us back. It’s not like Eric needs the car tomorrow.”

  “Okay then.” It was just that she was as anxious driving the car as she was doing things like entering Shadowtown.

  “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re making this face like you do when you taste spearmint.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s your fault.”

  “I know, and it’s making me more nervous. I’m driving a fucking BMW. The last car I drove was Jim’s Honda, and that thing’s almost as old as you.”

  “All right! Sorry.”

  She shushed me.

  Fighting a smirk, I went back to poking at the GPS, and we made the rest of the drive in near silence.

  Eric lived in a ritzy development on the New Hampshire seacoast, about forty-five minutes north of Boston. I’d made the GPS obey my will by the time we hit I-95, so it guided us dutifully off the highway, through dark winding roads, and finally onto the curved driveway of an enormous brick mansion.

  “Whoa.” It actually took a couple seconds to scope out the whole place. It was that big. With a shaky laugh, I shut the car door. “To think, I contributed to his ability to buy this monstrosity. What does a single guy need so much house for?”

  Steph opened the back passenger-side door for Eric. “Got me, but I bet my family’s going to be wondering that too.” She pressed her lips thin.

  With a bit of coaxing, Eric stumbled out. His eyes were unfocused, and he seemed to be moving on autopilot as he lumbered up his front steps without assistance. But that was as good as he got. He stood in the shadows by the door, as if waiting for it to magically open.

  Sighing, Steph unlocked it.

  Eric’s house was as amazing inside as the outside had led me to believe it would be. There was nothing modern here. Nothing glassy or sleek. The floors were beautiful parquet, the furniture heavy and dark, and the rugs thick and soft. Everywhere I turned—on the walls, in a cubby or simply standing around on a pedestal waiting to be appreciated—was art. No wonder Eric needed such a house. It was as much a gallery as it was a home.

  It took us a few tries before we found what appeared to be Eric’s bedroom, though in our defense, I counted six rooms on the second floor, not including the bathrooms. We convinced him to lie down on the oversized bed, which was done up in very manly shades of plaid, and Steph removed his shoes.

  “Will he sleep?” she asked.

  “I assume so.”

  “You assume?”

  I backed out of the room so Eric could have whatever peace ghouls could find in solitude and darkness. “I’ve never seen one sleeping. I told you—I’m not an expert. I see
ghouls hanging around Shadowtown. Some are more lucid than others, but I don’t know why.”

  “Fucking preds.” Steph stormed down the hall. “I swear, Jess, if I could kill the one who did this to him with my bare hands, I would do it. I’d kill them all.”

  Since I could sense her fury, I didn’t doubt it.

  I took my time catching up to her at the bottom of the stairs. I knew her rage wasn’t personal, yet my internal conflict writhed and burned in my gut like a salamander trapped in water. The only thing that was clear was that the drive back to Boston would be the wrong time to confess my species.

  “Most preds don’t let their addicts become ghouls,” I said cautiously. Like Lucen. Lucen would never allow that to happen. I’d seen him take care of the ghouls that hung around Shadowtown, making sure they got fed and sheltered.

  Steph threw me what I called her Medusa expression, the one that turned the hapless people who pissed her off to stone. It didn’t have quite the same effect on me, but it was the first time she’d ever directed so much aggression my way. “Don’t defend them. Ever.”

  Right. I opted to change the subject. Now was not only not the time for personal confessions, it was not the time for a more nuanced discussion on pred personalities. Steph had a right to be angry. Respecting that was appropriate behavior for a friend.

  Not cowardly avoidance.

  “We should leave out some food,” I said, pretending to be distracted by a glass sculpture of a seahorse.

  “Will he eat it, or do you not know that either?”

  I decided to assume that wasn’t intentional snark. “The latter, but if we leave stuff out, there’s a better chance he’ll eat than if we don’t leave stuff out.”

  Steph nodded. “Okay. Let’s find the kitchen.”

  That was easier than finding the correct bedroom, although I did get sidetracked by a gorgeous library on the way. Apparently, Eric Marshall didn’t only write books. He coveted them. His library was two stories of books, covering nearly as much floor space as my entire apartment. He even had one of those cool ladders for reaching the second story.