8. Cal
CHAPTER 8
CAL
A woman sat on a wooden bench in a park I didn’t recognize. A walking path wound through dense trees to either side of the clearing where the bench was situated. On the right a large sign chastised dog owners to pick up after their pets.
It was daytime, and the sun was bright, but it filtered at an angle through the trees. The woman’s face was blank, so I hadn’t met her. She was wearing a tank top with a short flouncy skirt and Doc Martens. A denim jacket was draped over the back of the bench. She opened a blue nylon bag and pulled out a plastic food container. I looked around but didn’t see anyone else in the clearing. The trees were too thick to see if we were near a road or parking area.
The woman ate some grapes. After a moment, her body stiffened. She jerked her head to her right, then she exploded off the bench, the grapes and nylon bag flying into the air. She ran to her left, off the path and toward the trees. Her speed was astonishing.
When she was within a few yards of the trees, her back... changed. She had wings, and they flapped furiously, lifting her body off the ground and sending her even faster into the woods.
My view of the trees blurred, like condensation had formed across a window. The same fog from my previous vision. I strained to see more, but I couldn’t.
The woman screamed. Then she stopped.
I sat up in bed, heart pounding and breathing hard. Blinking to focus, I squinted at the clock. 6:35am.
I threw back the covers and ran to the window to peek through the blinds. It was still mostly dark out. Shit. I pulled my phone from its charger and looked at the forecast. Sunny today. Fuck.
I had no way of identifying the park the woman had been in. I’d never had a vision occur more than about fifty or sixty miles away from me, but there were a lot of parks in that radius.
“Okay, okay, what do we know?”
I opened the notes app on my phone and made a list.
Victim:
Female-presenting
Hidden wings
Young? (short skirt, Docs)
Park:
Wood bench
Wide gravel walking path
Blue “pick up after your dog” sign
Lots of trees
No road visible
And that was it .
The only real lead I had to identify the woman was her wings. I considered calling Delphia, but I’d confirmed that Greg Shaw would be at the pet resort today.
He’d better be willing to help me.
The sun was above the horizon when I pulled out of the Starbucks drive through. It was closer than Pour Some Sugar on Me, and I needed fortification before meeting Greg Shaw.
There wasn’t much traffic, but I did have to stop suddenly when an idiot in a Tesla SUV cut me off. My truck was too old to have cupholders, but fortunately my mocha latte had been in my hand instead of tucked between my legs. The resulting coffee dribble down my “Moist” t-shirt was unfortunate, but less important than the winged woman’s life.
I finished my coffee and, wincing, tossed the cup on the floor of the cab with last week’s coffee cup and bakery bag. Why hadn’t I noticed those when I was at the dump on Saturday? I’d make time to clean the truck after all this was over.
The Bark no extra meat on those bones. His biceps popped out from under the sleeves of his polo, and corded muscles strained in his forearms where they gripped the arms of his chair.
He was so attractive my brain surrounded him with a kind of aura of sparkles, as if instead of a second self, Greg Shaw had glitter.
In an instant, I was flooded with a combination of yearning, body shame, and defensiveness. Greg Shaw might be the prettiest man in Texas, but he’d never want someone who looked like me. And I’d learned a long time ago that pretty people couldn’t be trusted. They all figured out at a young age how to use their looks to get what they wanted.
And Greg Shaw’s slightly curled lip as he examined me made it obvious that I was absolutely not what he wanted.
No matter. As long as he helped me find the winged woman before it was too late, I didn’t care how much of an asshole he was.