Of Mice and MacKays (Maggie MacKay Magical Tracker Book 10) Read online

  Chapter Two

  I woke in the morning to the stunning silence. No sound of showers. No sounds of feet. No dog running up and down the hallway. No one clattering around making me breakfast pastries.

  I feel that when one saves the world, one deserves Pipistrelle's cinnamon rolls.

  I got out of bed and walked downstairs to the kitchen to figure out what exactly was going on. Dad was at the counter pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  "What's up?" I asked. My voice was muffled and I felt like I was walking through a fog. Mom walked in and glared at Dad. He gave her a sheepish smile, but she was having none of it.

  "Mom?" I said.

  She pointed to her ears and shook her curly, red head. She then pointed at Dad and shook her fist, causing the wings of her green caftan to flap. He made a driving motion and I realized he was asking for the keys. I walked into the coat closet and opened the door.

  Pipistrelle was curled beneath all of the coats, his knees up against his chest. Oh man, they had freaked out the brownie. He was totally going to quit us.

  "Hey, Pipistrelle!" I said, again, my voice barely louder than a murmur. I got out my keys, trying to act all normal. He just watched me, and then, stood, pulled on a tie he had attached to the door handle, and closed the closet door.

  Mindy was going to be SO pissed if Mom and Dad pushed Pipistrelle into the "I'm Done with You Humans" zone.

  I walked past the living room and Mindy's dog was bounding up and down in front of the door barking. I could barely hear it. I walked into the kitchen and put the keys in Dad's hand. He gave me a salute, handed me a cup of coffee, grabbed a reusable Trader Joe’s bag with something heavy in it from the counter, and scuttled towards the door. Mom folded her arms and leaned against the counter, glaring at him the whole time. The moment he left, suddenly my sister's dog was back to normal volume and all the noises came back to the house.

  Pipistrelle came tiptoeing into the room.

  "Hey, little guy!" I said, trying to be a cheerful as I could.

  He let out a huge sigh, shaking off all the weirdness. "The sound has returned. You have brought back the sound, Maggie MacKay." He looked up at me adoringly.

  "Um... I didn't—" But then I shut my mouth when I saw the look Mom was throwing me. I realized Pipistrelle needed a hero and corrected myself. "You are absolutely right. I have brought back the sound. Hip hip—"

  "HOOOORAAAAY! The Mighty Maggie MacKay has command of the noise!" Pipistrelle cheered. He started humming to himself and tied on his apron.

  I hoped bringing back the sound meant I'd get rewarded with cinnamon rolls.

  "What happened?" I asked Mom.

  She shook her head, fluffing out her orange curls primly. "Your father decided to go out and do a little treasure hunting."

  "Oh no..." I said, thinking of the stack of artifacts Trovac had been looking for. I left the entire list unsupervised and under my father's care.

  "Oh yes. I guess he decided you were having too much fun on your own and he ought to have a little fun himself," she retorted, going over to the cupboard to raid Mindy's tea collection.

  "Oh no...."

  Mom was just getting started. She banged the creamer and sugar on the counter beside the mugs and kettle. "And he goes and brings that whatever it was into Mindy's home, and here she's pregnant and due soon, and he can't get rid of the artifact because you and Killian have taken the car, and we're stuck staring at each other all night playing charades."

  "Mindy and Austin couldn't have driven Dad...?" I offered.

  "What? And have a trace put on their car? No, ma'am," she said, shaking her finger at me like this was all my idea. "You and your father can go charging around with no accountability, no responsibility for what you do and how it affects this family—"

  "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" I said, holding up my hands to stop her before she said something we were going to have to fight about later.

  "But I am not about to have you drag Mindy and that lovely husband of hers into your messes."

  "No one wants Mindy and Austin to get into any trouble," I tried to reassure her. "Listen, Killian and I had to save the world last night—"

  "AGAIN?"

  "Yes, again," I replied. "And you knew about it! You were the one that met us at Little Bavaria and gave us all those supplies."

  "Well, I didn't know then what I know now and I want you all to cut it out with all of this artifact gathering before you gather something that you didn't expect to gather up."

  Her words sent a chill through my bones. "Did we set something in motion last night that we shouldn't have set in motion?"

  "How do I know?" she said, her passive-aggressive fury spilling over as she sipped from her cup. "What do I look like? A fortune teller?"

  "You are a fortuneteller, Mom," I reminded her.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. "Then heed my advice. Don't go looking for any more artifacts. And tell your father to stop this foolishness about reopening his own consulting business to pick up things you haven't grabbed yet."

  "Oh no... he's not thinking of getting back into the game..."

  "All you World Walkers eventually become smugglers," she ranted, stomping into the dining room like Stompy the Bear. I followed her. "It is the way things are and I should have known better."

  "I'll talk to him," I said, knowing full well that I could not keep that promise. Killian needed something to give him some form of power if he was going to have to wear that locket for the rest of his life.

  Fortunately, we were interrupted by an earthquake. Part of me sort of hoped we'd luck out and it'd pull the house down so we could end this conversation.

  Mom braced in the doorway. The cupboards in the kitchen rattled.

  "I don't know what you and Killian did last night—" she swore at me.

  "Nothing!" I said, not wanting to tell her all of the everything that we had done, including maybe sealing up the boundary and letting the queen know that he was alive. "We... it was nothing."

  The earth stopped shaking and Pipistrelle came wandering into the kitchen. He was wringing a dishtowel. "The earth has stopped moving?"

  "See?" said Mom. "You are frightening the brownie."

  "A lot of things may be my fault, but the faults of tectonic plates are not."

  Pipistrelle came over and took my finger in his hand. I looked down at him, getting ready to reassure him everything was fine, that it was a case of if-mama-ain't-happy-ain't-nobody-happy.

  But, instead, he looked up at me with his great, big, wide eyes and whispered, "Something is waking."

  Shit.

  Fortunately, Mom didn't hear him. She was too busy shouting, "Well, it's either you or your father. These earthquakes are not natural!"

  I stopped myself from pointing out there were all sorts of other magical people walking the Earth who might be responsible. "Did you yell at him about it yet?"

  "How could I? He brought in that artifact that masked all our sound and I haven't been able to say a damned thing to the man!"

  It suddenly dawned on me that perhaps Dad could have delivered the artifact last night, he had just opted not to.

  Killian came wandering down. I'm pretty sure that our bickering woke him. That or the earthquake. Both equally as terrifying.

  His face was haggard and there were dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing a dragon kimono he had bought in Chinatown, tights, and a Patrick the Starfish knockoff shirt featuring an extra leg whose positioning bordered on indecent. He could barely keep his eyes open and he frowned at me.

  "Oh, it is waaaay too early in the morning for this," I muttered, going back into the kitchen to pour myself another cup of coffee.

  Killian waited patiently for his turn. He ran his fingers through his bed head causing it to stand up on end.

  "Killian, you aren't dressed," I mentioned.

  He looked down at his attire. "You stated these were proper sleeping clothing. Have I committed a social faux pas?"

  "Pants in common areas are usually suggested before 9 AM," I replied.

  He shook his head. "There are so many cultural nuances. I will continue to try and integrate them."

  He didn't get the hint that maybe he should go upstairs now and get those pants.

  "Do you have pants?" my mom shouted at Killian. "Or were you planning on using Austin's wardrobe for the rest of your visit?"

  He looked from her to me and back to her again, confused by the sudden hostility. Usually, they were BFFs and she was nagging him to become a legal part of our family via arranged marriage. "I have lederhosen..." he offered.

  Mom looked at me and pointed her mug at my face. "You take your partner out to the Goodwill and you get him a respectable set of clothing. Take one of Austin's baseball caps. Killian's going to need it. If you are going to successfully hide here on Earth, you are going to need to blend in a whole lot better than you've been doing."

  Again, the stuff she wasn't saying sent up signal flares of danger. "Is something about to happen that is going to make hiding a necessity?"

  "Your partner went and took off his locket, did he not?" she replied.

  "Yeeees..." I admitted. "But it was for a good cause. He was saving my life."

  Mom threw up her hands. "I'd say that's a pretty good reason to start hiding out better! And make sure to get him some work clothes! Something he can get dirty. He's going to need it." She turned the corner and went into the living room. She shouted at us. "And you need to plan your sister's baby shower!"

  Killian walked over and stood at my side, staring at where my mother went.

  "She is a very, very scary woman sometimes," I said.

  "I think some pants might be in order," he replied.

  "Most indubitably."

  "INDUB
ITABLY!" shouted Pipistrelle from the kitchen.

  Chapter Three

  We headed over to the outskirts of Hancock Park. There were a couple thrift shops on La Brea, and it was close enough that when Father Killarney finished his morning masses, we could drop in unannounced.

  Killian and I wandered through the rows of secondhand clothing racks. To spare my credit card overage fees, I just handed Killian a $20 bill and told him to go wild.

  He kept looking up at me and repeating, "Are you SURE this is correct? I can buy ALL OF THIS for only this piece of paper that represents twenty pieces of the American monetary system?"

  "Yes indeed, my friend."

  "We must come back here," he said, motioning to the wide expanse of the room. "All this?"

  "All of this."

  "Why have you taken me to any other shopping destination, Maggie?" he asked, piling several garish, paisley polyester shirts into his arms to try on.

  "I have no idea," I replied. "Probably because most of the places you blew your wad—"

  "Isn't that a human euphemism?"

  "Not in this case. As I was saying, most of the other shopping places where you broke my bank, we were merely there because we had a job to do. It made all of your purchases a tax write-off."

  Killian tilted his head back to properly squint at me from under Austin's old baseball cap. It was a move made a little harder by his new neckguard.

  "Business expense," I replied. "Mainly, the expenses I end up paying every month to do business with you."

  Killian was completely not paying any attention to me at all. He held up a prom dress with more tulle and sparkles than the entire Miss America pageant. "I can get this, too?"

  "Do your math, Killian. You know your budget."

  I saw him counting the numbers in his head and then decide it was most definitely coming with him.

  I leaned against a rack and shoved my hands into my leather coat pockets. "Yeah, Mindy and I put in a lot of time of our misspent youth in places like these."

  "Like these? I do not believe they have anything like this on the Other Side. There would be holes in the used fabric from the fangs and claws..." He gave me a little claw action to demonstrate.

  "Well, you know, when the family used to live on Earth," I clarified, flipping through the racks to see if anything caught my fancy.

  "Misspent youth?" he remarked offhandedly. "I wish I had been present for that epoch of your life."

  "Still in it, it appears," I replied. I walked down the rack to see how many items were similar to stuff I still had in my closet. Turns out, it was very fortunate that I had walked away. For at that moment, a gigantic creature pounded his monster fists upon the window of the shop. The safety glass cracked into a million pieces. And then the monster lumbered through like the Kool-Aid man.

  The place erupted into screams as customers ran for the door.

  And, truth be told, he looked a little like the Kool-Aid man. He was at least fifteen feet tall, and he seemed almost as wide. His skin was this mottled brown surface. It almost looked like clay. He wasn't wearing any clothes, but there didn't seem to be anything in the nether areas to hide.

  He turned and looked at Killian. I mean, I think he looked at Killian. He didn't really have any eyes. His head was just this big blob with slight indentations where features could have been. It looked like something was written on his forehead.

  The monster picked up one of the clothing racks and tossed it aside with about as much energy expended as throwing away a tissue.

  I pulled out my gun from the inside pocket of my jacket and started firing. It didn't do a damned thing. That monster just absorbed my bullets like jello around a toothpick.

  "Golem," whispered a petite woman hiding in a clothing rack next to my feet.

  I turned and crouched down. She wore a modest, gray skirt over black tights and sensible shoes; a button-up shirt buttoned to the top of her neck and down to her wrists; and a fantastic brown wig.

  "It's a golem!" she stated louder.

  "Right," I said, looking at the monster as he tossed another rack to the side as he slowly stalked towards Killian.

  "He must have your friend's name in his mouth," she said. "He is coming for him."

  Killian had dropped all of his purchases and came running up to me. His staff had been pulled out of the reaches beyond and was in his hands. With a battle cry, he ran towards the golem. Both the woman and I shook our heads.

  I stood up. "Killian! You idiot! That's not how you defeat a—"

  I didn't even have time to finish the sentence. Killian went flying across the room and hit the wall with a smack.

  "—a golem," I replied.

  "I served in the military," the woman stated, scoping out the situation. "You need help?"

  "Maybe...?" I replied. I then spotted her pram hidden under the rack with her. "Eh, I think I've got him. I'll distract him while you get out."

  "Kick his tuchus," the woman said, giving my arm a pat. "Wipe off the first letter on his forehead. It will change the word to 'death' and he'll fall over." And then she grabbed her stroller and skootched out the back door like any smart person should have done.

  Unfortunately, I knew if I didn't fight this golem now, he would follow Killian to Mindy's house and we would have to fight him there. At least battling it out here meant avoiding another argument with my mom.

  He picked up a rack and threw it at my head, as if figuring out what I was figuring out. I sort of dodged it. Okay, not at all. I missed the metal parts but the clothes still hit me and knocked me on my ass.

  I jumped up and ran straight forward, weaving around the sunhats and umbrellas he chucked my way. Using a foul-smelling recliner he had knocked over, I propelled myself into the air and landed on his shoulders. He wound up his arm to swat me away. I hung on like a cowboy on a bucking bronco. And man, this monster was spinning like a tornado. In between trying to keep my seat and dodging his flying fists, I used my sleeve to wipe away the first letter on the golem's forehead.

  He disintegrated into a pile of dust and I fell ten feet to the floor. It hurt like a bitch. I stood and held up both arms. "New queen of the rodeo! And you didn't even have to send in the clowns, Killian."

  My partner picked himself up off the ground, swaying. "Oh. That is the way to defeat a golem." And then he fell over again.

  Chapter Four

  I managed to get Killian out of the Goodwill before the cops arrived. We didn't need an EMT taking his vitals. Even though, judging from his dazed expression, the golem might have knocked off a couple IQ points.

  "Stay here," I said, sitting him down on a concrete bus bench. "I'll be right back."

  I sighed as I went back into the shop. In the past, after a hit like that, Killian would have come back swinging. But not with that locket around his neck. Killian was going to have to learn he wasn't immortal anymore. I was going to have to learn he wasn't immortal anymore.

  I needed to fish around for that piece of paper in the golem's mouth to see exactly who he was after. Plus, not that it was much to go on, but sometimes being a tracker meant I could feel out a person or creature's signature from something they touched, and then could find my way to them.

  I was elbow deep in clay dust when the red and blue lights of LA's finest began flashing around the store.

  "Shit!" I said. I had hoped to get in and out before anything happened, but that didn't seem to be in the cards. All they were going to find was a pile of dirt and me, a woman with a discharged gun and too many concealed weapons.

  It was just one cop. Guess budget cuts had hit City Hall. But he came busting through the door, his firearm drawn. "Ma'am, I am going to have to ask you to drop any weapons and lay face down on the ground," the officer shouted.

  "Shit..." I muttered again. I got down on my knees and lay down. "I was here helping," I explained.

  "I'm going to have to ask you to remain silent."

  "That's fine!' I tried to reassure him. "There's a gun that is mine over in the corner. I have a permit for it. I have several knives on my body and... a silver... pointy thing... in my boot."

  I heard him pause. "A silver pointy thing?"

  "It was from my sister. She got it at Things Remembered."

  "Is it a weapon?" he asked.