14. ROADKILL
Finding my brother exactly where I expected him—reposed on the boat’s deck with sunglasses and a book—brought fleeting relief. I might have told him so, but I didn’t get a word in before he leaped up and flapped his paperback at me.
“You owe me big. Forty-eight hours and counting.” He swung his arm toward the cabin behind him. “She doesn’t sleep. Did you know that? I didn’t, either. Too afraid I would wake up missing my damn brain.”
His clothes were rumpled and his brown hair mussed. That, plus the shadows ringing his eyes, proved he spoke the truth. His paranoia was unfounded, though. Maggie had never made the slightest aggressive move toward any of us. She preferred her meals postmortem.
I dragged myself up the steps onto the deck, holding my suit coat over one arm while tugging my tie loose. “You got a little…” I gestured to the strip of burned skin across Donovan’s freckled nose an d cheeks.
“Peace and quiet is what I got,” he snapped and shook the book again.
Sniffing, I rolled my eyes. “Hell, Donnie, she doesn’t talk. How much quiet do you need?”
“Peace, then,” he retorted. “And precious personal space. I can only take so much beauty parlor and Tic-Tac-Toe.”
“She likes Dots and Boxes, too,” I mumbled.
Donovan nodded. “Sounds like you have your night planned, then. I’m going for dinner. Been licking crumbs off the counters in there.” He aimed a spiteful glare at the cabin.
“You could’ve had something delivered,” I said. “Bet you’ve got the pizza place on speed dial.”
“Real funny, Fitch.” Tossing the book into the plastic chair’s seat, he brushed past me on his way to the dock. “Maggie’s hungry, too, by the way,” he called over his shoulder.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” A whine edged into my voice. “I could’ve brought something from the morgue.”
I pulled my tie over my head, then threw it and my jacket on top of Donovan’s discarded book. Digging into my slacks pocket, I pulled out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes. The lighter rattled around inside, but there were no cigarettes to be found.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
“So, go back up there.” Donovan stopped on the steps and gave an exaggerated shrug. “Take Maggie with you.”
“Capitol’s closed,” I said. “And I’m not about to call Vinton and explain… this.”
Considering what Ripley had said about the burly necromancer’s connection to Maggie, it seemed best he stayed in the dark about recent developments. I wasn’t sure how tight his grip was on the zombie girl or the extent of his sway over her, and I didn’t care to find out.
Donovan’s sunburned nose scrunched. “Does it seem to you that our lives keep getting weirder? I thought when we moved out things would settle down.”
“I try not to think about it.”
I couldn’t let him leave. Fear for his safety had brought me here, and sending him into the city alone felt too similar to Ripley wandering off from the hotel one day and not coming back. If I didn’t want to make my brother feel more like a prisoner than he already did, I needed to keep him engaged.
“How hungry?” I asked at length.
“Huh?”
“Maggie.”
Donovan’s posture relaxed, and he rotated, still on the steps but less eager to leave. “She drew some pictures this morning,” he said. “Stick figure people with Xs for eyes. One of them looked like me.” He shuddered and cast a wary glance at the closed door separating us from the zombie inside. “I took it as a warning. Been out here ever since.”
I chuckled, already planning to tape those masterpieces to the houseboat’s fridge. A few pieces of art would give the place a real homey vibe.
Our lives were certainly getting stranger, and more dangerous with a hungry zombie staying in our house and Jax’s minions prowling the streets looking for hands to cut off. But chopping off a hand wasn’t enough to merit Hex membership. The rules clearly stated you had to kill someone to take their place in the gang. At least, that was my understanding since accidentally earning my spot by murdering one of Grimm’s “best men.” I created a gap in the ranks and was subsequently pressed into it in a chain of events so rapid and fateful it made my head spin.
“…Does it have to be people meat?” Donovan’s question pulled me from the mire of memory.
“What?”
The boat swayed underfoot as he climbed the steps and closed the gap to me. “Does she have to eat people meat, or could it be another kind of meat?”
It was the second time that particular combination of words passed through my ears, and it proved more unsettling with repetition. I stabbed my finger at Donovan. “First of all, stop calling it people meat—”
“Human flesh?” he teased.
“Secondly,” I shot him a look of warning, “this is weird to say, but I’m better at killing people than animals, so unless you’ve got a hunting rifle stashed somewhere…”
“You have more experience killing humans than animals,” Donovan said. “A broken neck is a broken neck, right?”
Images flashed through my mind of hapless woodland creatures staring at me with wide, dead eyes while Maggie sucked the meat off their bones.
“I hate everything about this,” I said .
Donovan was already past me, snickering as he pulled open the houseboat cabin door and called inside. “Hey, Mags, Fitch is taking you out for dinner!” He slammed the door and spun away with newfound pep in his step.
Sliding into the path between him and the dock, I corrected, “We’re both taking her.”
“Why me?”
I twitched a finger toward his jeans pocket where I knew his car keys were stashed. He smashed his hand against his thigh too late to prevent the keys from shooting up into the air in a launched toss that delivered them swiftly to me.
“No fair!” Donovan yelped. He sounded so much like his younger self that I grinned.
Maggie must have been waiting because she burst out onto the deck with wild eyes and a toothy smile. She wore short overalls with striped leggings and a babydoll tee, and her hair spilled from a scrunchie in a frizzy fountain of pink.
“There’s my girl.” I offered her my hand. “And you look so pretty, too. Ready for our date?”
She ran to me and clasped my hand, letting me give her a ballroom twirl that started her giggling. A piece of paper peeked from her chest pocket and, once she’d come to a stop, she pulled it out and opened it toward me. It was a crude doodle of a boat with a man standing on the deck, wearing sunglasses, holding a book, and sporting Donovan’s swoop of dark hair. As described, Xs covered his eyes, and his mouth was drawn as an exaggerated frown .
Pocketing Donovan’s keys, I took it from her, holding it to the light of the setting sun and giving a snort. “It does kinda look like you.”
Donovan scowled and shook his head. “You’re the worst.”
Maggie pointed at her mouth, then stomach, and made a low growling noise.
“Yes, ma’am.” I pulled her alongside and strode toward the steps off the deck. “You’re coming in loud and clear. We’ll get you a feast fit for a queen. Or at least something that tastes better than Donnie.”
At half past ten, Donovan and I sat on the Bronco’s tailgate on the shoulder of a remote highway. Donovan smacked loudly through a bag of beef jerky while I nursed a can of beer between drags on my cigarette.
The convenience store stop had been the most successful part of our outing and was necessary to ensure my brother’s company. After making a meal of roller grill hot dogs and potato chips, we drove aimlessly. There were no designated hunting grounds in the city, and tracking wildlife was not a skill either of us possessed, so I pulled off near the first wooded area I found, and we started walking.
Maggie proved to be a model citizen, holding my hand and humming to herself while we wandered. That was an hour ago. Now, we were miles down the road, parked and defeated, watching the zombie girl peel pieces of a squashed raccoon off the pavement.
“It’s a miracle,” Donovan said, his cheek packed with half-chewed jerky. “We’ve finally found something you won’t kill.”
Pinning the cigarette between my lips, I laid back in the truck bed and let a long breath ease out. “Shut up, Donnie.”
My brother chortled a laugh. “Took us forty-five minutes to find that stupid deer, and you just stared at it. Totally choked.”
It had been a grueling near hour of dragging through mud and decaying leaves in crisp, New England air. Weather I was not equipped for in a thin button-down shirt and slacks—the new ones Nash bought, now smeared up the shins with wet dirt. That was without mentioning my only pair of dress shoes, soaked through and squishing mucky water out the sides.
By the time we reached the clearing, it was dusk. The whitetail doe stood like a statue with its ears pricked and big, black eyes dialed in on our approach. It stared, unmoving, and so did I. Blame it on Disney movies in my youth, but I was not prepared to orphan Bambi.
When Maggie gurgled a sound of sudden salivation, the deer bolted. It disappeared into the trees while Donovan howled with laughter. He hadn’t stopped grinning since.
Propping up on my elbows, I glared at my brother’s back. “I did not choke,” I said. “I made a conscious decision—”
“To chicken out.” He glanced back at me; his dark eyes creased with humor .
“I was studying its anatomy,” I replied. “Didn’t want it to suffer unnecessarily.”
Donovan punched my leg. “You’re full of shit.”
Taking another draw on my cigarette brought the ash end dangerously near the filter. I slid the new pack out of my pocket and rested it on my stomach in preparation. It was a chain-smoking kind of night.
“Don’t sweat it, though,” Donovan continued. “It’s good to know where you draw the line. People yes, animals no.”
Finishing the cig, I flicked it out the Bronco’s backend. I had already kicked off my soggy shoes and socks, so my bare feet swung alongside Donovan’s as we languished in quiet.
No other cars came by, so the only sounds were owl hoots and Maggie’s enthusiastic munching. I reposed once more, staring at the headliner while mentally clicking the dome light on and off.
Donovan’s cell phone buzzed. I felt the vibration but didn’t think much of it until he pulled it out and muttered, “Ripley. Finally. Two days later. Guess he wasn’t very worried.”
That spurred me to sitting. I snatched the phone in the middle of his typed response.
The splintered screen was open to a message chain that started with Donovan’s all-caps announcement about Maggie’s unexpected visit and ended with a succinct reply.
meet lazy daze motel. room 145. fitch with you?
I squinted at the message. “That’s barely English. Much less the queen’s English,” I said, more to myself than Donovan. “Does Rip usually text like that?”
Scrolling further back found Ripley predictably precise in his communications. The guy even had proper comma usage. The only thing vaguely formal about this recent text was the addition of “motel” after Lazy Daze.
Donovan’s response was spelled out and ready to send, so I pushed it through.
Yeah why?
Seconds passed before bubbles bounced along the reply line, then the phone buzzed again.
bring him too
Donovan crushed in beside me, straining to see the tiny screen. “What’d he say?” he asked, his head fully eclipsing my line of sight.
I pressed the cell into his chest and grabbed my can of beer. “That’s not Ripley.”
Sliding forward off the tailgate, my bare feet hit the scrubby, still-warm asphalt. I downed the last of the beer, then tossed the can into a stand of tall grass just off the road. A few feet away, Maggie crouched with the raccoon’s ragged tail hanging from her mouth. She turned toward my approach, her face caked with gore.
I reached toward her. “Time to pack it up, sweetheart. It seems I’m double booked tonight.”
Maggie’s red eyes flickered with cognition, and she stood, chewing on the striped animal tail. She followed me to the passenger side of the Bronco, where I opened the door for her entry.
“Where are you going?” Donovan called as we passed .
“Lazy Daze Motel,” I recited from the message. “Room 145. Ask them what time.”
Donovan scooted out of the truck bed and rounded the car after us. “But you just said it’s not Ripley,” he protested.
“Definitely not,” I replied.
“Then why are you going?”
Ushering Maggie into the backseat, I checked for her feet then shut the door before turning to face my brother.
“Because it’s a trap,” I said.
Donovan swayed back and shook his head. “That means you shouldn’t go. They’ll be expecting you. Whoever they are…”
Jax’s goons if I were a betting man. York and Jette were a couple of punks I could handle, and needed to, because they were the key to finding Ripley alive, dead, or otherwise. Though why they had decided to get between their leader and his quarry remained a mystery. But they asked to see me, and I intended to give them exactly what they wanted.