Chapter 9 #2
Half an hour later, Van confirmed my house was empty. The intruders were gone, but he agreed that, based on the fading scent trail, someone had been inside my home several hours ago, possibly in the middle of the night when I’d been with Parker.
It had to be the hunters.
Which meant they had either followed me home or they’d found out where I lived some other way. Either option took time and effort.
Van had also found three more listening devices hidden throughout my home.
He didn’t remove any. Not yet. But knowing they were there was like getting a pebble wedged in my hoof.
It didn’t seem so bad in the beginning, and you thought you could manage.
But the longer it was there, the more annoying it became until it was embedded so deeply that you had an abscess and couldn’t walk anymore.
The coffee I’d guzzled on my walk home was churning in my stomach, and my lungs couldn’t quite suck in enough air. What if they’d broken in when I was there? Would they have killed me in my bed?
I needed to buy more antacids.
Van beckoned me to my backyard, where he didn’t expect them to have placed any devices.
Crisp yellow and brown leaves littered the grooves in the labyrinth walk I’d made in the grass.
Walking along the twisted path usually soothed me, but now I wished I had a proper maze back here too, so I could hide in its center right now.
“Don’t panic.” Van spoke quietly as he squeezed my shoulder. “It doesn’t mean they know you are a supe. Hunters are always recruiting. They may have snooped around because you were asking questions and seemed interested in what they do. This could be a good thing. An opportunity.”
I harrumphed and wished I believed him.
“Are you sure nothing is missing?”
We walked through the house a few times, so I could evaluate each shelf.
“They didn’t take anything,” I said, shaking my head. So, what did that mean?
“And nothing you have suggests you’re a supe. Your…” Van waved to the house as he searched for the right word. “Your displays don’t have any supernatural references. Your apartment upstairs?—”
“Which I still can’t believe they didn’t find,” I muttered.
The whole situation was making my skin crawl.
Someone had been inside my maze. I shuddered.
I needed to change the configuration of my shelves.
Pronto. I needed a new maze. I needed a more complex route through the downstairs.
I might need to move to a larger place to accommodate all that.
Or I could build some additions. I could do a lot with an additional four feet all around the house.
“It’s safe,” Van continued, as if I hadn’t spoken.
“The maze is a dead giveaway…” Anyone who knew anything about minotaurs would know about our love of mazes.
“I think most humans would assume you’re a hoarder.”
“I’m not a hoarder,” I bellowed. Both anger, and fear if I was being completely honest, were eating away at me. “And would a hoarder move the kitchen to the second floor? ”
“I hear what you’re saying.” Van raised his hands to placate me. “But minotaurs are rare. Hoarders are much more common.”
I grunted.
“Do you want to move to a safe house until we get to the bottom of this?”
“No.”
Being in a strange place wouldn’t make me feel better.
I wanted my home with its maze. But I wanted a better maze with more twists and turns and dead ends.
Until I could make those improvements, I had the motel.
I spun on my heel and stomped off toward the Tarbeck.
I didn’t bother locking the door. Why would I?
Apparently, hunters waltzed in regardless of whether the place was locked or not.
When I got to my office, the first thing I did was call the local locksmith to change all the locks on my house.
I agreed to the upgrade they suggested without batting an eye.
They’d do that work on Monday. I contemplated asking them to come out now, but decided it would be better to wait until the hunters left on Sunday.
I really hoped they didn’t change their minds and decide to stay longer.
Unfortunately, the little mom-and-pop lock company wasn’t equipped to deal with the motel and the other security measures I wanted, so I wasn’t surprised when they referred me to another company from the city.
Within an hour, I had everything in motion.
By Christmas, the room keys would all be replaced, and cameras and sensors would be installed everywhere .
But even with all of that, I still didn’t feel safe. I wasn’t sure when I would ever feel safe in my home again.
Still, I needed sleep. Just a little bit.
And if I could grab some shut eye today while there were witnesses around to keep watch, that’s what I’d do.
I settled on the sofa in my office and shut my eyes.
I really wished I had some shelves or room dividers set up in the reception area, so my office wasn’t quite so vulnerable.
But at least I wasn’t home alone, where hunters could storm my house without being seen.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep, but I did rest with my eyes closed for a bit. I’m not sure it helped, but it couldn’t have hurt. I wasn’t used to feeling this distracted. When I worked on my miniature scenes, I could forget about the rest of the world. The hours ticked by without me noticing.
But my mind wouldn’t settle today. It was too busy with visions of camo-clad strangers wandering through my maze, touching my things, cackling as they invaded my home, coming at me with sharp hunting knives.
Every time I opened my eyes after another failed attempt at sleep, I checked the time and glanced out the window to see if the hunters had returned or if Parker was on his way.
It was exhausting.
I gave up the pretense by about noon and tackled some of my paperwork.
Finally, around two o’clock, Parker strolled into the reception area. Through my new one-way mirror, I watched as Jasmine, my front desk clerk—or hospitality specialist, as she had dubbed herself—welcomed him and told him to go right into my office.
I wasn’t expecting anyone to check in today, so normally I would have left Jasmine to run the place on her own. But not today.
Jasmine couldn’t see me through the one-way mirror, but she still waggled her eyebrows in my direction and fanned herself after Parker walked by her.
I sighed. It would soon be all over town that Parker came to talk to me this afternoon.
Supes were a bunch of gossips and Jasmine was one of the best.
She was a chipmunk shifter, who spent more time chattering on the phone than doing anything else. But people liked her cheerful smile, so I kept her on.
I wished I had remembered she was working this afternoon when Parker had originally suggested talking. I would have…
What? Suggest we go to my house?
No way. I couldn’t have Parker in my house. I’d never be able to control myself if I led Parker to the heart of my maze. And what if the hunters returned?
I shoved the paperwork I’d been pretending to work on into a pile and dragged my gaze away from whatever other gesture Jasmine might make.
“Hi,” Parker said, as he stepped through the doorway. His cheeks were that pretty pink color again. Had he seen Jasmine’s gestures? Or was he chilled from his walk over? The wind had picked up in the last few hours and it was bitingly cold.
“Hi.”
I stood quickly, knocking my chair back abruptly. He’d never been to my office before. I didn’t quite know what to do. I wanted to show him around, which was ridiculous. My office was dull and drab and, well, an office. So, uh, yeah. A tour would be weird.
What if I gave him something? My gaze darted around, looking for a suitable offering.
Coffee wouldn’t work because there was a reason I bought coffee every single day.
Mine was terrible. We had a box of cookies kicking around somewhere from a gift basket our soap supplier had given us last Christmas, but they would probably be stale.
And what did that leave? Water from the tap? Were the glasses clean?
Then I realized he was carrying a small cardboard box, a handful of paper napkins, and a tray with two coffees.
I wasn’t surprised he’d shown up with food; he was always trying to feed me.
It was a thing he did for his friends. Although now that I thought of it, I couldn’t remember anyone else talking about that.
Maybe he just did it so often that people didn’t bother mentioning it. Maybe it was just that common.
Yeah. I wasn’t convinced that was it.
“Is this a bad time?” he asked.
And now I’d made it awkward.
“No. Not at all,” I said quickly. I waved him forward. “Come in…”
“I, uh, brought something…” He held up the box and the coffees. He set the offerings on the corner of my desk before casting his gaze back toward the reception area. “Can I shut the door?”
“Of course.”
The door snicked closed, and we stared at one another for a beat.
Other than the car ride through Willow Lake last night, we hadn’t been alone together since I’d walked him home from the park a few weeks ago.
That day, the town supes had gathered for an impromptu track and field day.
Magic was supposed to keep humans away from the event, but of course that hadn’t worked on Parker, and I’d had to intervene.
Parker fiddled with the zipper on his jacket as his gaze darted around my office.
“Do you want something? Water?”
“No. I’m okay.”
He stripped off his jacket and flung it over a chair.
Without his zipper to fidget with, he played with the cuff of his shirt instead, rolling it up to expose the fine smattering of ginger-colored hair on his forearms that I always found so fascinating when we played pool.
It always led me to wonder if all his body hair was that color, and that was a dangerous thing to think about. I dragged my eyes away.
“So, what did you bring me?” I nodded to the box.