Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) Read online

  At the bottom of my underwear drawer, I found another sticky note.

  I’m not interested in your unmentionables. Don’t be weird.

  Somehow, despite everything else, the note offended me the most. I wasn’t the one showing up in a stranger’s house, leaving notes and stealing sugar. What was this creature playing at? Irritated, I carried the pink square to my office, grabbed a pen, and wrote in the bottom margin: I’m not the one being weird, you freak!

  Satisfied I’d put the creature in its place as well as I could—considering the fact that I had no actual access to it—I contemplated the note. Where should I leave it? Was I actually hoping to get it back to the thief? I held it as I wandered back into the kitchen, stared at the fridge for a moment, and then stuck it to the door over the magnetic phrase, “Werewolf puppies!!”

  Deciding there was nothing else to be done at the moment, I fed the bird and went to get dressed. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Mel, but if he had answers about what had gotten into my home and what had shown up in my office, I needed them.

  Chapter Four

  I loosened my scarf as I stepped into the warmth of The Internets half an hour early and did my best not to make squeaky excited sounds at the sight of the pastries in the case. Madeline, the owner, greeted me with a lift of her chin and a smile before going back to the customer in front of her. The line was long, curving along the counter to fold back around toward me. I rubbed my hands together as I tried to decide which geek-themed items I felt like eating.

  I’d tried everything from the butterbeer to the slice of Lie (chocolate cake with cherries on top) and, since it all had at least some sugar in it, it all looked good to me. Today the display case was filled with plenty of cakes, cookies, donuts, and even pre-wrapped sandwiches. Half the selection was vegan but it wasn’t just that Madeline and Chloe were in cahoots; Seattle has a pretty good-sized vegan community and it’s getting less likely to see a place within city limits that can’t adequately feed someone who, like Chloe, eschews animal products. I’m not against vegan food but it seems to me that limiting oneself to a smaller section of the sweets in the world will only end in heartbreak.

  I eyed the D-20 cookies, despite their lack of eggs, butter, and processed sugar and decided it was going to come down to their pink and white frosting versus the 1-UP cupcakes and their green and white fondant. In the end, I went with my old standby.

  “Hey, Madeline,” I said as I stepped up to the counter. She smiled at me again and I felt a curl of something velvety reach out of her and snake around me. Madeline isn’t human but, as with the few other non-humans I’d met, I’d never had the guts to ask exactly what she is. The fact that she’d never offered an explanation for her strange, breezy emotions made me think she either didn’t know I had a power, or she didn’t want to talk about it.

  I wasn’t about to risk her peeling back her head like a Pez dispenser to reveal a giant mouth with teeth specifically designed for chomping into an empath, so I’d never mentioned that I could tell she was different.

  “Saw you eyeing the 1-UP cupcakes, so I’ll assume you want your usual,” Madeline teased. Her affection for me brushed across my empathy like a soft summer breeze.

  My lips tugged up in a goofy grin as I absorbed her fondness easily and reflected it back. Since Madeline had never offered me any harm and her emotions were pretty pleasant, I’d fallen out of the habit of shielding around her. Thus, I usually found myself pretty damn happy to see her once I was close enough. Sometimes, despite the fact that she’s not much to look at, I was even convinced I had a crush on her.

  “It’s a bit early for sweets, though,” she said with a wag of her finger and that was definitely playful and maybe even a little flirty. I shrugged, my usual irritation at being policed for my food choices nowhere to be found.

  “I keep hoping to get a life and yet, despite eating dozens of the suckers, I’m still lacking.”

  Madeline chuckled. “A friend stopped by, wanted me to give you some things,” she said, leaning into the case. I frowned at her through the glass as she scooped a green and white spotted cupcake and an oatmeal carrot muffin onto a plate. She pointed to the muffin I had no intention of eating. “This, and I’m also supposed to give you this...” Sliding the plate across the counter, she stuffed a hand into her massive apron and pulled out a copy of a paranormal romance book that had seen better days. I took the book from her, perplexed.

  “Who was it?”

  “Friend of the café, that’s all I’m allowed to tell you. Said to give you the book and the health food. Did you want a drink?”

  “Uh,” I mumbled, still staring at the paperback. The spine was badly creased, the cover had been scrawled with red scribbles, and the pages were folded back at the tops and bottoms. I recognized the title, but this copy looked like it had gone through the wringer. I’m not always the best with books, but even I didn’t torture them this much. “Ah, sure, yeah. Gimme a Chestburster.”

  “You got it.” Madeline rang me up for my drink and cupcake, then shooed me out of the way of the next customer. I took my haul to a small round table near the front window to wait for my drink. It was a little chillier the further away from the horde of excitable nerds at the back, but that just meant I got more solitude. With a little distance between us, I could better block out the buzz of emotions from the geeks and gamers swarming around. Despite the fact that it was early, the place was jumping with the before school/work crowd.

  The tables at the back were surrounded by people cramming together to take advantage of the free wireless on their laptops and tablets, while the massive couch in front of the gargantuan TV was packed with gamers watching each other take turns street fighting through the magic of pixels and button mashing. Sitting next to the front window left a few tables empty to stand guard between the cacophony and me.

  The book intrigued me enough that I held off forking into my treats until I’d given it a good look-see. Nearly every page was covered in red pen, notes scrawled in the margins, between the lines, along the header, below the text in neatly printed footnotes that would have looked pre-printed if it weren’t for the color and slight bleeding of ink. From the look of it, the friend of The Internets did not like the book. I flipped through, reading notes like, “Whose hand is this?”, “Is this a person's chest or a chest of drawers?”, and “Why does he have a Bedazzler?” before I flipped to the title page and felt my mouth drop open.

  To Gwen,

  Since I know you’re not getting any action in real life, at least enjoy something steamy to read!

  Love, Robin

  Now I knew why I recognized it. My sister had given me this book as a birthday gift. It had been sitting in my home office waiting to be read for two weeks and now it was here at The Internets, covered in red pen. As I looked over the notes more carefully, I realized the handwriting looked familiar and the nonsense phrases reminded me strongly of the notes I’d found on my fridge.

  “Son of a bitch,” I sighed, setting the book down.

  “What’s up?”

  I jumped. Holly, the assistant manager, set my mug down and lifted a hand to her wide hip.

  “I… Who left this here?” I asked, waved the book spastically at her.

  Holly shrugged and shook her head. “No idea. I didn’t even know Mad had it until she handed it to you. Why?”

  “This is mine. Someone stole it out of my desk at home and wrote all over it.”

  “Someone you know?” Holly asked, taking the book out of my hands.

  “I don't think so.”

  “Has to be someone you know. That's your handwriting,” she said, peeling a sticky note out of the middle of the book. She watched me as she handed it over and then leafed through the book. I blinked down at the little pink square I'd left on my fridge an hour before, feeling my face pull into a snarl. The creature had somehow already found my retort and evidently wrote all over my book as punishment for calling it a freak.

&nb
sp; Why you gotta be calling me names? I was just being nice :(

  “Probably for the best,” Holly said as she set the book on the table. “It’s a crappy book. Most of the notes are dead on, though I can’t read the ones in French so I can’t vouch for those.”

  “French?” I demanded, realizing I’d missed those.

  Holly laughed at me and I got the feeling she thought I was joking. “I gotta get back to the counter, but I think Madeline knows French if you want her to translate.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I muttered, distracted.

  “Everything okay otherwise?”

  “Other than having an arch-nemesis that destroys my books, yeah. Sure. Why?”

  “You’ve only got two things on your plate today. That’s practically starving yourself.” Holly winked and headed back to the counter. I sighed, stabbing into the crumbly carrot muffin as I stared at the cover of the book, wondering what the hell I’d done to deserve some sort of pest that stole sugar and wrote all over my reading material. I had a brief bout of panic over my books at home and told myself I’d have to check the margins of each and every one as soon as I could.

  Figuring it was probably for the best that the creature was stealing sugar instead of using its red pen to stab me in the jugular, I took a sip of my super-spicy Mexican hot cocoa and tried not to obsess while I waited.

  Chloe showed up a few minutes early, zipping straight over. She had only to wave a hand at Madeline to order her usual: a green tea soy latte and a Monster Carrot muffin of her own. I wondered briefly if she and the candy thief were conspiring against me; why else would it have instructed Madeline to give me something healthy?

  “Sleep well?” Chloe asked as she slid into a chair next to me, unbundling herself. Her eyes dropped to the ragged book in the middle of the table. “What’s that?”

  “It goes with these,” I sighed, reaching into my bag to pull out the prints I’d made of the pictures I’d taken that morning. “I wasn’t lying. I woke up to find that something had eaten all the sugar in my place—all of it! It even downed my jars of white sugar! What am I supposed to put in my tea?”

  “You could drink it plain,” Chloe suggested, skimming through the book. She stopped on the sections that contained French and squinted at them. Amusement blossomed inside her, but I pressed on with my complaints.

  “This is not the time for jokes. Something was in my house! It left me with these.” I shoved the pictures across the table to her and she set the book down, making a giddy ooh! sound as she yanked them out of the envelope.

  ‘“These aren’t tasteful nudes!” she joked after a few moments of fanning through them like a flipbook. Then she made a thoughtful noise. “What are they?”

  “That’s what I was looking at when you called. I found the fridge covered this morning. Hundreds of messages—most of them nonsense, far as I can tell—were spelled out in my magnets.”

  “Weird!” Chloe said, still looking the pictures over. “Was anything else touched? Did you find lipstick messages on your mirrors or threats spelled out in blood on the walls?”

  “No, nothing like that. In fact, the only other change I could find was that all my sugar is gone. The magnets, fine, I can deal with that, but the asshole ate all my Twinkies and candy. It even ate my fruit pop cereal.”

  Chloe threw me a look that was decidedly less than sympathetic. I went quiet in an epic pout, watching her flip through the pictures. She skimmed quickly, only stopping on one or two to give them a closer look. About three-quarters of the way down the stack, she let out a loud, shocked laugh. I peered over and found her looking at one that focused on the phrase, “The Gavel will bang again.”

  I raised a brow. “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s uh…” She trailed off and then looked up at me as if considering something. “I like it. Can I keep it?”

  “I guess. I have copies at home. I saved them everywhere, just in case.”

  She brightened, tucked the picture in her jacket pocket, and then put the pictures back into their envelope. “Mel should be here, although he didn’t sound completely conscious when I called him, either.”

  “Well, you called him at, what? Five in the morning? He’d probably only just gotten home from nailing hammered co-eds.” Chloe snorted and I changed the subject back to my problem. “So what do you think?” I asked, gesturing to the envelope.

  “About what?”

  “About someone breaking into my house to eat my food and leave me weird notes? That last note, about the phone? I read it right before you called. It’s like it knew.”

  “Well, it’s more likely something and not someone,” Chloe pointed out. “Your capacity for taking down sugar and cholesterol is impressive, but you’re saying something managed to eat all the sugar in your house overnight?”

  “I think so. There were crumbs and empty boxes, cupcake wrappers even.” I huffed at the fact that I wouldn’t get to enjoy my own birthday treats. “I didn’t find any sign of the stuff in the garbage, but I can’t imagine anyone throwing away perfectly good food like that.”

  I felt a puff of loving chagrin, but she didn’t engage me about my stance on what constitutes good food.

  “Well, then, it’s got to be a thing and not a person. I’ve seen your house, Gwen. Nothing human could eat all that in one night without ending up in a diabetic coma on your floor. You didn’t find any corpses stuffed awkwardly in the couch cushions, right?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “And it didn’t touch you at all? It left Sonny alone?”

  “I… guess it did? I mean, I didn’t wake up with sticky handprints on my boobs and Sonny can get pretty loud if a stranger tries to get all up in his business. I’d’ve woken up.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine, then.” Chloe waved off my concern, which made me a bit grumpy.

  “What if it’s not? What if it’s something dangerous?”

  “Then I think it would have already hurt you.” Chloe held her hand up as if sensing I was about to argue some more. “Gwen, you sleep like the dead, but you’re not deaf. You said it yourself, if this thing had messed with Sonny, he would have let you know. I can guess it’d be the same for you. Did you hear anything? Notice anything else weird? Did you hear any glass breaking when—wait, how’d the thing get in?”

  “I have no idea. I checked all the windows and doors when I was cleaning up and they were all locked. It must have beamed itself in.”

  “Well, then clearly it was just an ensign from the Enterprise using your kitchen as an away mission. I wouldn’t worry.”

  I rolled my eyes, deciding her attitude was not helping. Despite my confusion and concern, Chloe was completely unbothered by my predicament. I could feel it in her, could tell she wasn’t going to be sympathetic. Before I could dive right into a hissy fit, though, I felt Mel as he entered the café.

  Mel Somerset is a good-looking guy; even I can admit that. He's got a strong, straight nose and a square chin like a cartoon superhero. There’s a shallow dent in that superhero chin that isn’t quite a dimple and his smile can immolate panties from thirty paces. His eyes are a clear, bright blue under thick eyebrows that lend a puckish bit of sex appeal.

  That said, he's one of the most arrogant jackasses I have ever had the unfortunate luck of running across in a bar. Even his dark hair, blue eyes, and fabulous body cannot make up for the frustration and anguish I experience just being in the same room with him. Part of my aversion to him is just Mel. He’s inappropriate and has no sense of personal boundaries. On top of that, he knows how my empathy makes it physically painful for me to be near him and yet he still insists on dropping by the office once or twice a week “just to say hi.” Jerk.

  Mel wagged his brows at us as he crossed the room to take a seat across from me. Immediately my skin started jumping, twinges of electric agony twisting my nerves into knots.

  “Ladies,” he said, leaning back in his chair as he laced his fingers behind his head and flexed conspicuou
sly. Despite the weather outside, he was wearing only a snug sweater and pleated khakis. It made him look good, but I was in too much pain to appreciate it. He waited for one of us to speak—or perhaps to vault the table and try to tear his pants off. To listen to him talk, this is how every encounter with a single woman of legal age ends when you’re Mel Somerset.

  I resisted the urge to tell him where he could cram his flexing biceps.

  “Gwen slept poorly; she’s cranky,” Chloe said with a smile.

  “She’s always cranky,” Mel said, catching my gaze. The bottom corner of my left eye started to twitch and I let out a low sound like vomiting. The sooner we got this meeting over with, the better. “And I barely slept at all. If you know what I mean.”

  I made another vomit sound, but Chloe pressed on.

  “We had an interesting night last night. We stopped by the office and got visited by some... people?” Chloe turned to me, curiosity wafting out. “I guess that’s what we’re calling them?”

  “They were monsters,” I said, shaking my head. “Some people are monsters, but no people look like these two. I knew them, sort of.”

  Chloe’s eyes went wide. “You did?”

  “We’re not, like, pen pals or anything, but I’ve seen them before. I don’t think they remembered.”

  “Well, spill it!” Chloe urged. Mel was still resting in his chair like a photographer was perched outside taking candids.

  “Yeah.” One eyebrow went up as he paused to lick and bite his bottom lip as if inviting me to some naughty, private party. “Spill it.”

  My other eye started to tic and I snarled his way, “Shut up. It’s bad enough I have to be in the same building with you.” He chuckled and his emotions sizzled along my skin, his amusement taking on a white-hot edge. I leaned away, as if that would take me out of range of sensing him. “When I was four, these two—I don’t know what to call them. Still Laurel and Hardy?”