Business With Pleasure (Empathy in the Preternatural PNW Book 2) Read online

  “His fans, they call themselves Sneeds.”

  “Are you a Sneed?”

  Chloe smirked at my question. “I’m too wild to be a Sneed. If you’re going to the SneedCon, you’ll see.”

  “It’s just for him?” I asked, thinking of the conventions I’d read about on the internet and seen on posters stapled to telephone poles around the city. “Is he that popular?”

  “He is and isn’t,” Chloe clarified with a shrug. “He’s no Stephen King, but his fanbase is very loyal and…um. Unique. They’re a little old-fashioned, too, so a few years ago, they started talking getting together for an in-person meet-up, thinking it would be better than chat rooms and mailing lists or whatever. Then someone realized they could use it as an excuse to organize this and coordinate that and, when one of them politely inquired if Stanley would be willing to join in on the fun, boom. Full-on convention.”

  “He couldn’t say no to the request?” I asked with a sappy smile.

  “Nope, though you can tell he’s not sure what to do about the attention.”

  I winced at the reminder that I’d be stuck in the middle of a bunch of strangers, figuring they’d all be as giddy and over-excited as Chloe. Pushing on, I patted my bag.

  “He gave me some of the letters the fan’s written. I’ll read them over tonight. He thinks he might be overreacting, but that’s patently impossible. I once dragged him into the girl’s bathroom at lunch to make out, then accidentally dropped his pager in the toilet, and his only response was, ‘Oh dear.’ I could probably light his house on fire and he’d just look sort of—” I made a face like I’d taken a sip of tepid tea expecting it to be the perfect temperature. Chloe laughed, and I pressed on.

  “He wants me to hang around the convention and see what her deal is, like if she comes up to say hi or something.” I perked up slightly, realizing Chloe had known about the convention without my mentioning it. “Will you be there?”

  “I’m out of town, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” I nodded, thinking of Chloe’s parents in Bremerton. Every year on the same date since we’d met, she would take a few days off to go see them. Delight possessed me in an instant when I realized she wouldn’t be able to drag me to the gym on Sunday. Pleased that the weekend wouldn’t be a complete disaster, I stabbed at the last bite of my muffin. While I chewed, I eyed the plate and considered that I could probably scrape all the leftover sugar granules into my mouth before Chloe could stop me.

  Knowing me better than I know myself, Chloe grabbed my plate, sliding it to her side of the small table without a word. I scoffed and reached for her last donut. She didn’t stop me. Halfway through, I remembered our earlier conversation and spoke around the cinnamon-sugar mass in my mouth.

  “You know, I just knew Madeline wasn’t human.”

  “You never mentioned it,” Chloe pointed out. I shrugged.

  “I didn’t think you’d know, and it seemed rude to rock up and ask her, ‘So what are you?’”

  “She wouldn’t mind,” Chloe said with a shrug.

  “Did you ask?”

  “Didn’t have to. She’s not the first succubus I’ve met, and I kind of figured it out from the way she disappears with customers every so often and comes back with her fly down and her hair messed up.”

  I considered for a moment that Mel often did the same thing, but their emotions felt so much different I never would have assumed Madeline was a werewolf. Sensing Mel is like lighting yourself on fire, regardless of his mood. Madeline was more like a spring breeze most of the time.

  “So she feeds on sex, right? Her and Callum?” I asked, referring to Madeline’s rarely seen brother.

  Chloe shook her head once. “He’s an incubus, but he doesn’t feed on sex. She does, he doesn’t. It’s like you and Amy, right?”

  It took me a second to figure out what she meant. “Police Amy? From Bellevue?”

  “Yes. You’re both fa—“ Chloe seemed to catch herself before she said something but corrected so smoothly I wasn’t sure I’d actually heard the hitch. “Humans with powers, but you sense emotions and she can heal. Not all succubi and incubi feed on sex. Just depends on what they’re born to, you know, go after.”

  “I don’t understand how you’re monster Wikipedia,” I observed. “I’m the one with the powers, I should know more than you.”

  Chloe shrugged, brushing off my concern. “I’ve just asked a lot of questions, grown up around the right people.”

  I made a noncommittal sound. She’d been open about growing up around other kids with powers like mine, and about having known creatures like Mel. It didn’t entirely explain some of the skills and knowledge she’d busted out the previous year, though. I let it go, knowing that I could trust her no matter what and figuring that I should just be grateful that her learning about the preternatural side of things had worked out so well for me. Chloe smiled suddenly, meeting my eyes.

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I doubted it, but gestured loosely with my fingers on the table. “Shoot.”

  “You’re wondering why Madeline looks the way she does,”

  Her statement made me laugh and I sat back in my chair. “Now that you mention it, it is a little weird. But I guess there’s a key for every lock, right?”

  “She’s the key, and she’s a master. Doesn’t matter that she’s ugly,” Chloe said. I felt my brows go up at her blunt assessment. I’d often thought the same, but it seemed somehow crass to vocalize it in the woman’s own restaurant. “Mel needs to be pretty and charming to lure someone into the back and toss up her skirts. Madeline just has to look their way and they’re game.”

  I shifted uncomfortably at the idea of overriding consent in that way, but wasn’t really sure what to say. Chloe pressed on after a few seconds.

  “I’ve never asked Callum, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t feed on lust. I mean, he’s turned me down for a date, which is crazy.”

  I laughed, thinking of Madeline’s slightly awkward, grumpy younger brother. “You do make it pretty clear you’re open for business,” I agreed.

  “Hey, I stopped wearing the neon OPEN sign, didn't I?”

  Chapter Four

  It had been seven months since the candy thief first showed up to invade my cabinets and leave me a string of wacky messages in magnets on my fridge. My life had gone back to normal since my twenty-ninth birthday, but the creature still felt the need to make itself known occasionally. Luckily, though, it was just to steal my stuff, not to warn me about any more vampires or demons.

  I had moved past worry that the creature might mean me harm and settled into a general despair over the fact that I was no longer able to keep candy or sugar around my house without seeing half of it disappear within hours. I’d even tried stashing a bag of caramels in my fire safe, and woke the next morning to find a bag full of empty wrappers locked inside.

  When I stepped into my bathroom that night and found a pink sticky note in the center of my mirror, I just sighed, wondering what the creature wanted now. Usually its notes were pleasant, sometimes they made no sense for days, and occasionally they made requests.

  As if Sonny, my pet sun conure, was perched on my shoulder solely because he was interested in what the candy thief had to say, I read the note aloud.

  “‘You’ll want to dress pretty tomorrow.’” I frowned at the message. “Because I usually dress like a prison inmate?” Scoffing at the implied insult, I yanked open my medicine cabinet to grab for my face wash and found another note stuck to it. Figuring Sonny was invested now, I read it as well.

  “‘I just mean don’t wear your sloppy jeans.’ I don’t have sloppy jeans!” I protested, though I was pretty sure I knew the pair the thief meant—they had a hole in the left knee. I didn’t mention it aloud, but I wouldn’t have worn them anyway. I certainly wasn’t trying to impress Stan the way I had when we’d been dating, but I felt a certain responsibility to look presentable around him.

  I plucked both
notes down and set them on the counter as I went through my nightly routine. I don’t know when I decided to start keeping all the thief’s notes, but I had a box in my office that was slowly filling with brightly colored squares of paper covered in scribbled handwriting and curious doodles.

  After I was brushed and washed and Sonny was tucked into his cage, I headed in to bed early, setting my alarm for seven so I’d have plenty of time to clean up, dress pretty, and get tea before meeting Stan at the hotel. I’d been asleep maybe twenty-five minutes when the terrified barking of a small dog jolted me awake.

  I yelped involuntarily when my empathy swung outward toward the sound, picking up three distinct sets of emotions somewhere in front of my home. Immediately sucked into the panic and frustration coming from outside, I bolted upright and jumped to my feet. Consciousness hadn’t fully claimed me yet, but I was mobile. I had no real direction for a minute or two, wandering in anxious circles around my bedroom until I stopped long enough to realize where the sound was coming from. I clipped my arm on the doorjamb as I rushed toward the front door. In that moment my empathy was screaming that something was wrong, that someone I cared about was in danger, and that I had to stop it.

  I made it to the door, still barefoot and barely awake. I spent some time fumbling with the doorknob before I paused, blinked down at my hands in the dark, and woke up just enough to ask myself what the hell I was doing.

  “Oh my god,” I mumbled, scrubbing my hand over my face. “What is—What’s—Sonny?” I looked around my living room, at a loss as I took in my surroundings for the first time. The dog was still barking and had now added in some long, panicked, howling whines. I wanted to be irritated at the sound, but there’s nothing like empathy to make you empathetic. I was worried about the dog, wondering what could make any creature so terrified.

  I unlocked the door as I stuffed my feet into my sneakers and then bolted out onto the lawn, heading straight toward where I felt the dog. It wasn’t far, just at the end of my driveway, shifting foot to foot as it stared anxiously at something on the ground and barked spastically. When the terrier noticed me it yelped, suddenly caught between the desire to flee and the need to keep loudly announcing that it was distressed by whatever was hidden from view by my car.

  A man yelled from across the street, “Shut your dog up!”

  Irritation at his callousness burbled up inside me just as I stepped around the bumped enough to see that the dog was barking at a corpse.

  “Oh shit,” I said, dancing back a step. The dog let out a howling whine, pushing forward just enough to nudge the woman on the ground. Despite the fact that I could tell from the void of emotions that she was dead, I found myself waiting for her to move, to pat the dog on the head and say, ‘It’s okay, pooch, I’m fine.’

  The dog started barking again, unable to keep still as it tried in vain to get its master’s attention. A door slammed across the street and I looked up to find an older man I’d seen a time or two marching over.

  “What the hell is—” he cut off as he saw what I was staring at. His emotions shifted like a sharp twist on a roller coaster, and I felt my stomach turn. “Oh my god. Linda?”

  “I don’t—” He didn’t seem to hear my protest, already at a jog.

  “Oh my god, Linda! What happened?” His eyes flicked to me as he closed in. I shook my head, but he wasn’t in a state to listen. Worry spurted from him like an inner city hydrant on a hot day. I took a step back as he dropped down next to the woman. “Wake up, Linda.”

  Evidently placated by someone coming to the aid of its master, the dog stopped barking, letting out a long whine and dropping to its belly as the man tried to help Linda sit up.

  I took another step back, shaking my head. She was dead, but I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. I wanted to run back into my house, settle my churning stomach, and pretend I hadn’t seen any of this.

  “Greg?” I heard from across the street.

  “Call the police, Helen!” Greg called back toward his wife.

  “What’s— Oh my god, Linda?”

  “Helen, call an ambulance!” Greg insisted, shifting to lay Linda out as if he might revive her with CPR.

  “I’ll call,” I offered, turning and rushing into my house without waiting for a response. The sounds of Greg and Helen worrying for the well-being of a corpse followed me over my threshold.

  ##

  My first instinct after the police had left, and poor dead Linda had been carted off in the ambulance, was to call Chloe. She’d left for Bremerton maybe six hours before and I knew she wouldn’t have minded the call, considering the circumstances. I also knew from her previous trips that she was unlikely to answer.

  It took me over an hour to get my brain to calm down enough to go back to sleep, and when I woke up to my screeching alarm I was convinced I hadn’t gotten more than ten minutes, tops. I considered hitting snooze, but the candy thief’s suggestion that I dress well crept into my brain. Sighing as I realized that my promise to Stan trumped my desire to sleep away my emotional trauma, I hauled myself out of bed and toward the shower.

  A mere two hours later, I was grumbling about the cost of parking as I maneuvered the hallways of the massive hotel, heading toward the meeting room in which the convention was being held. Mid-sip of my tea, I flagged down a woman in all black with a silver nametag, and gestured vaguely with my free hand.

  “The convention?”

  “You’re a bit early,” she said, irritation spiking behind her pleasant expression.

  “I’m a friend of Mr. Sneedley.” I wasn’t sure if that was exactly true, but I was sure she didn’t care about our past. The irritation burbled with cynicism, but her expression remained the same.

  “I can show you back to the lobby and you can speak with the desk.”

  I wanted to be frustrated, but I got where she was coming from. Without my empathy, I probably would have assumed I was lying too. Nodding, I took a step back.

  “I’ll figure it out. No worries.”

  Without waiting for her to answer, I turned back toward the lobby as if taking her advice, and pulled my phone out of my bag. Stan answered on the first ring.

  “Good morning, Stanley here.”

  “It’s me,” I said, stopping and stepping out of the center of the hallway. “I don’t know where to go.”

  “I’ll come get you, just give me a few minutes. Is that okay? Are you in the lobby?”

  “I’m…not really sure where I am. I left the lobby and just started walking like I knew where I was going. I figured it would become apparent from there.”

  Stan let out a low chuckle. “I’ll find you. Just stay out in the open.”

  “Don’t jump into any dumbwaiters, got it.”

  Stan was quiet for a moment before saying, “Just a few minutes,” and hanging up. His tone indicated he was worried about my potential behavior, and I felt a little ashamed. Deciding I was going to be good if it killed me, I leaned against the wall and slipped my phone back into my bag. Since I had the time, I set my tea on a stack of plastic chairs against the wall next to me, pulled the letters out and gave them another look-see. It was a little hard to concentrate with the events of the early morning swooshing in and out of my brain, but I managed to at least get my focus back onto what Stan had asked of me.

  Norma Laby’s letters were all hand-written on lined paper, her writing messy but legible. While her words weren’t threatening in and of themselves, the girl made it clear she spent more time than one normally would thinking about Stan's books—and Stan.

  She had entire essays about what she believed the significance behind certain names or characters might be. Even though she’d never asked for anything in return, Stan put sticky notes on some of the letters, saying he’d written her polite thank-you letters for her thoughts. These stopped a few months ago, and I was guessing that his agent or manager or someone had told him to stop encouraging her.

  I didn’t read all of the essays in dept
h, but the talk about Jameson James from Murder in a Time of War was particularly enlightening. She didn’t seem to like him very much. She much preferred Moira O’Mara, the love-interest-slash-accidental-murderer. That was probably what had gotten to Stan, and I had to agree with his assessment that Norma was a little off.

  “Good morning, Gwen.”

  I looked up and smiled as Stan walked over. He looked good today too, and part of me sighed wistfully. The teenager in me was quite taken by the pressed slacks, the corded sweater vest, and the white button-up shirt. He looked bright-eyed, well-rested, and very cute. Shuffling the pages into an uneven stack, I grabbed my tea and stepped close. To my surprise, Stan leaned in to kiss my cheek before gesturing down the way he’d come.

  “It’s this way, in the ballroom.”

  “Sounds fancier than I’m prepared for,” I said as we started walking. Stan took a moment to look me over, and I felt myself straightening slightly as if the inspection was an important test.

  “You look lovely,” Stan said after a moment. My insides bloomed warm with glee and I considered that it had been much too long since a man had said something like that to me. Oh, Mel tells me frequently how attractive he finds me, but he doesn’t count. I could be Madeline’s ugly twin sister and he’d still consider me hot. If you consider yourself a woman, Mel is attracted to you. He’s a rather simple creature when it comes to sex.

  “When do they start letting people in?” I asked, before I could do something stupid like suggest we find a broom closet and relive the sweatier moments of our youth.

  “Usually they open the doors a few minutes early. I’ll be up on stage at the beginning, answering questions. I'm most excited about later, when I'll be doing a reading from The Floating Airship, my newest novel.” Adorable pops and fizzles of mild excitement sparked off his skin like failed firecrackers, and I had trouble not pinching his cheeks.

  I made quiet sounds of interest as we walked, and he continued.

  “I’ll sign things while some of the panels go on without me, but I will join in on a few of the others.” He stepped forward to open a door into a short hallway, where I was greeted with a quietly bustling behind-the-scenes area. As we made our way down the hall, I was handed a little card with “Backstage Access” printed on it. I tucked it into my bag.