“Gee, thanks.”
A half mile later, Diesel swung into a drive-through and ordered burgers and fries.
“This is a new car,” I said to Carl, handing him his bag of food. “Be careful. I don’t want to see any crumbs or ketchup stains back there.”
“Eee,” Carl said, taking the bag.
I ate my double cheeseburger and sucked up some milkshake. I checked Carl out in the rearview mirror and saw that he was eating his fries one at a time, working at being
neat. I nibbled at a single fry from my own bag and inadvertently sighed.
“There’s something going on in your head,” Diesel said. “I can feel anxiety leaking out of your ears.”
“I can’t stop thinking about the cupcakes. What if you’re wrong, and they really were part of my Unmentionableness? What if something
did
happen when I was unconscious?”
“You’d still be the same person,” Diesel said. “Being Normal or Unmentionable doesn’t change who you are.”
“It isn’t that. I don’t care that I might not be an Unmentionable anymore. I never wanted to be one in the first place. It’s the way I might have lost it. There’s another possibility besides Wulf.” I squinched my eyes closed. “It’s so awful I can’t even say it out loud.”
“Hatchet?” Diesel asked.
I nodded my head yes.
Carl tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to look at him, and he burped in my face.
“Yuk,” I said to Carl. “That was gross.”
“Eep.”
“He’s drooling,” I said to Diesel. “Have you ever known him to drool?”
“Gorp,” Carl said. And he threw up burgers and fries and chocolate shake all over the backseat.
Diesel grimaced and rolled his window down. “I totally screwed up my karma. I don’t know what I did, but it must have been bad, because now I have this monkey.”
“You made him carsick. It’s your driving in this car. You rocket around corners, and zoom off from stop lights, and then you stop short.”
“Yeah. It’s fun.”
Diesel turned a corner and parked at the curb in front of Melody’s house. He got out of the car and called Gwen.
“I need a new car,” he said. “Immediately. And whoever picks this one up needs a hazmat suit.”
One of the kids was already looking at us from the front door.
“Help!”
the kid yelled.
“What’s with these kids?” I said to Diesel. “It’s like they’ve watched too many
Home Alone
movies. And I don’t know Kevin from Melvin.”
“I can go you one better. I don’t know Kevin from Mary Susan.”
There was another car parked in front of the house. It was a P.O.S. junker, patched with Bondo. It had no recognizable color, a broken side mirror, and it was missing part of the right front fender.
“It looks like Melody has company,” I said to Diesel.
Diesel glanced into the car. “It’s Hatchet.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a superior Unmentionable. I know these things. And there’s a shield with
Sir Hatchelot
written on it in the backseat.”
“Mom,” the door kid yelled. “It’s that man again.”
The kid was yanked back, the door slammed shut, and I could hear the bolt thrown.
Diesel put his hand to the lock, slipped the bolt, and opened the door. Melody was on the couch, holding the baby tight to her chest with one hand, cradling the toddler with the other. Two older kids stood beside her. Hatchet was in the middle of the room, dressed in his medieval regalia of green tights, white tunic, and cheesy chain-link armor. He was holding a sword that appeared identical to the one in my kitchen.
“Halt, rude and lowly beast,” Hatchet said to Diesel. “How dare thee enter without my permission. I have laid claim to this household for my liege lord, Gerwulf Grimoire. Leave before I smite thee with my sword.”
I took one look at Hatchet, and my blood pressure shot into the stroke zone. He’d broken into my house, slashed my arm, kidnapped me, drugged me, and maybe done worse. I heard a very scary sound, like a killer growl from some feral animal, and I realized it was coming from me.
Diesel’s hand curled into the back of my shirt, and he dragged me up tight against him. “Let me take care of this,” he said.
“As soon as I gouge his eyes out and shove his privates so far up in his body he chokes on them. And then I’m going to rip his head off and kick it down the street.”
“It would be good if we didn’t gouge eyes in front of the kids,” Diesel said.
I was so angry I was vibrating, but I saw his point about the kids. I tried to focus and redirected my venom. “Does Wulf know you’re here?” I asked Hatchet.
“He sent me.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think this is another one of your stupid attempts to impress him with your pathetic devotion.”
“It’s not!” Hatchet fumbled in his tunic and produced a folded piece of paper. “I have a list,” he said. “He gave me a list, and this is number three, and the first two people weren’t home. And it’s not pathetic devotion. I’ve taken an oath of fealty. I live by honor and the sword.”
“Great,” Diesel said. “Honor is good, but you need to sheath the sword.”
Hatchet stiffened his spine and pointed his sword at Diesel. “Never will I sheath my sword in your presence. And you will rue my wrath if you don’t leave my domain. You will feel the sting of my sword.”
“Hatchelot,” Diesel said, “give up on the rueing and wrathing and smiting stuff. You sound like a crazy nutcase.”
Even in my enraged state, I knew this was a bad thing to say. It was one thing to tell Hatchet you were going to rip his
head off. It was an entirely different deal to suggest he was crazy.
“I’m not crazy!” Hatchet screamed, face turning red, going on purple, neck grotesquely corded.
He lunged at Diesel and ripped a hole in the hem of Diesel’s loose-hanging T-shirt.
“This doesn’t make me happy,” Diesel said, looking at the hole. “I liked this shirt.”
“Infidel!” Hatchet screeched. “Prepare to die.”
Hatchet slashed at Diesel, and Diesel stepped away.
“This is getting old,” Diesel said.
Diesel reached out, snatched the sword out of Hatchet’s hand, rammed the blade two inches into the wood floor, leaned on it, and bent it to a forty-five-degree angle.
“Fiend!” Hatchet said, his mouth contorted into a snarl. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”
Diesel grabbed Hatchet by his faux armor and lifted him a foot off the ground. “Here’s the deal,” Diesel said. “I could pull the plug on your power, but the BUM wouldn’t like it, and it would put Lizzy at risk. Ditto killing or crippling you. So I’m going to send you on your way, but I’m sending you with a warning. If you touch Lizzy or cause her a single moment of grief, I’ll find you, and it won’t be good for you.”
Diesel opened the front door, with Hatchet still dangling off the ground, and he pitched him out. Hatchet flew twenty feet and face-planted, and Diesel closed the front door and turned to Melody.
“We need to talk,” Diesel said.
Melody’s eyes were wide and her mouth was open. “Unh,” she said.
“Four people inherited a charm from Uncle Phil,” Diesel said. “Were you one of them?”
Melody chewed on her lower lip.
“I know a warning went with the inheritance,” Diesel told her, “but the danger to you and your children is greater if you keep the charm.”
Melody was wearing a honeybee charm on a slim gold chain, and she fidgeted with the necklace while she debated her dilemma.
“It’s the bee, isn’t it?” I said to her. “That’s what you inherited from Uncle Phil.”
“The note said I’d have bad luck.”
“Everyone makes their own luck,” Diesel said.
I put my hand out. “Can I hold it?”
Melody unclasped the chain and placed the necklace in my hand. I felt the warmth radiate from my open palm and up my arm. The bee glowed gold, orange, and finally bright red.
I nodded to Diesel. “This is it.”
“I know this is special to you,” Diesel said to Melody, “but it’s very old and should be returned to the rest of the collection.”
One of the toddlers spotted Carl hanging back by the door. “Goggy!”
“Eep!” Carl said, turning tail and scurrying out of the house.
Two dogs raced through the living room and ran out after him. There was a lot of monkey chatter and barking from the front yard, and the toddler screwed up its face and started crying.
“About the necklace,” Diesel said.
“Take it,” Melody said. “I appreciate the help with Sir Hatchelot, but honestly, I could do without this additional drama. Close the door on the way out, and don’t forget your monkey.”
I thanked Melody, pocketed the charm, and peeked outside to see if Hatchet was still looking like roadkill on the front lawn. Fortunately, Hatchet and his wreck of a car were nowhere to be seen.
Diesel closed the door on Melody and her brood, and we crossed into the neighbor’s yard, where the dogs had Carl treed.
“It’d be so easy to leave him here,” Diesel said, looking up at Carl.
“Would you really do that?”
“No.”
Diesel whistled to Carl, and Carl dropped onto Diesel’s shoulder.
“You’re such a softy,” I said to Diesel.
“Yeah. I’m a pushover for monkeys.”
We walked back to the sidewalk and found that the monkey-barf car had disappeared, and in its place sat a king-size white sedan.
“What is it?” I asked Diesel.
“It’s a Lincoln Town Car. An old one.”
“It’s really long.”
“Yeah. And really white,” Diesel said.
He opened the back door, and Carl jumped in and bounced around on the big bench seat.
“Chee, chee, chee,” Carl said.
I slid onto the front passenger seat and ran my hand over the white upholstery. “I feel like I should be in a wedding or going to a prom,” I said to Diesel.
“I hate to disappoint you, but they’re not on the schedule.”
It was almost two o’clock when Diesel parked the Lincoln in front of my house. It was a balmy seventy degrees, and the sun was bright in a blue sky. General Eisenhower was on his stoop, taking in the day. Aside from the general, the street was deserted. Two blocks away, at the foot of the hill, locals were buying flats of pansies at the little flower shop, sitting on city benches with their coffee and chai, and heading for Crocker Park with their golden retrievers and baby carriages.
“This is a nice family neighborhood,” I said to Diesel. “Doesn’t it make you want to have a baby?”
“No,” Diesel said. “Not at the moment.”
I rolled out of the Lincoln and checked my mailbox. Two pieces of junk mail, my credit card bill, and a letter from an
agent. I tore the agent letter open and read it. Short and sweet. No thanks.
“Damn, damn, damn!” I said. “I’ve had it. I’m done. What the heck do you have to do to get published anyway? I bet this guy didn’t even read my proposal. I hate him. I don’t even know him, and I hate him. I hate the whole publishing industry. And I hate this money-pit, broken-down house. I should never have left New York.”
I tore the letter into tiny pieces, threw them on the ground, and jumped up and down on them and kicked them around. I stopped jumping, closed my eyes, and counted to ten.
“Unh!” I said.
I opened my eyes and looked at Diesel. He was smiling.
“Feel better?” he asked me.
“I guess.”
“Did you mean anything you said?”
“No.”
Cat was sitting in the front window, watching us, and he dropped to the floor when we walked in. His tail wasn’t bushy and his single good eye looked intense but not insane, so I thought it was a good bet the house was secure.
“As you can see, I’m fine,” I said to Cat, bending to scratch him behind the ear. “Next time, I’ll pay attention to you.”
“What’s that about?” Diesel asked, heading for the kitchen.
“Cat knew Hatchet was waiting for me, and I ignored his warning.”
Diesel went to the fridge and got a bottle of water. “Hatchet must have been really motivated to get up and out that early in the morning.”
“He’s an odd guy. He’s stuck in this Middle Ages time warp, swearing fealty to Wulf, but underneath it all, I don’t think he has a subservient personality.”
“Underneath it all, he’s probably criminally insane.” Diesel turned the tap on and watched it run hot. “Gwen had a new water heater installed. No charge. She said it was a necessary business expense. She said she remembers what I looked like after chasing down a yak herder who’d gone to the dark side in Tibet, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“How long were you in Tibet?”
“Weeks. It was impossible to find that guy. All yak herders look and smell the same.”
It was hard to imagine Diesel not looking good. The scruffier he got, the sexier he looked.
Diesel gestured to the counter. “I got you a new cell phone. Your number hasn’t changed.”