Pocket Apocalypse
Page 22

My impression of the front room had been that it was functional but not lived in. Looking closer only reinforced that idea. All the furniture was exactly weathered enough to be believable—the sort of effect that comes either from actual use, or from carefully patronizing the local thrift stores until you’ve put together the right combination of couches, chairs, and slightly scuffed coffee tables. It was too perfectly flawed to be real, which should have been an oxymoron, and yet somehow wasn’t. It was a television set, not a home.
Shelby caught me squinting at the couch and smiled wryly. “Should’ve guessed, I suppose,” she said. “Well, it wasn’t my call and it’s too late now, so we might as well make the most of it, don’t you think?”
She hadn’t said anything to confirm or deny my suspicions. She didn’t need to. “No one lives here,” I said. “This is . . . a way station? A safe house?”
“Sort of a combination of the two,” Shelby said. “It belonged to one of our founders. Anyone can use it, if they have legitimate need and can get approval from the rest of the Society. Basic furnishings and such come with the house, and we all work to keep them updated and keep the place in proper shape. It’s good to have bolt-holes, when you need them.”
“It is,” I agreed, thinking of the family home back in Buckley. It was old and crumbling, and the walls were full of black mold, but we kept it all the same. You never knew when you might need to run away. “I thought we were going to your house.” It was hard to admit, even to myself, but the fact that I wasn’t seeing the place where Shelby had grown up stung. I knew less about where she’d come from than I liked; I’d been looking forward to seeing her childhood home, and starting to get an idea of what it had meant to her.
But this wasn’t about me. This was about werewolves in Australia, and the danger they presented to the entire continent. I tried to remind myself of that as Shelby pressed a hand against the hallway wall and a section swung inward, revealing a hidden door. The smell of our waiting dinner grew stronger. “Seeing the places where we actually live comes later,” she said. “Maybe after the danger’s past. Now in you get.”
“Is this a ‘so everyone can aim a weapon at me’ request?” I asked warily.
Shelby smiled like the sun rising across Botany Bay. “Call it a bonding exercise,” she suggested, while Flora chirped and flapped her wings.
I sighed. “If they shoot me, you get to explain it to my family,” I said, and stepped through the door in the wall to the room on the other side.
It was a large space, big enough to be considered a small ballroom, with several long wood tables pushed together in the center, bringing back unpleasant memories of summer camp. Half the tables were full, packed with people I had to assume belonged to the Thirty-Six Society. Some of them were in the archetypical Australian khakis, but most were dressed like the sort of people I saw every day at the zoo back in Ohio: jeans and light shirts, knee-length skirts and tank tops, shorts and sundresses and every other combination of casual clothing that could be easily moved in while still being substantial enough to conceal a reasonable number of weapons. Some of those weapons were on display.
As soon as I had stepped through the wall, almost every person in the room had drawn a gun, knife, or sling of some sort, and aimed it in my direction. Only Raina, whose attention was back on her DS, and the thin, short-haired blonde girl sitting next to her were disinterested in threatening my life. Given placement, the short-haired girl was probably Shelby’s other sister. It made sense that she’d be reluctant to attack me: the sooner we dealt with the werewolf problem, the sooner she could get back to opera school.
“Er, hello,” I said, offering a small, nonthreatening wave. “I’m Alexander Price. You must be the Thirty-Six Society. I would greatly prefer it if you didn’t put a bullet into my brain; it would complicate my plans for life, most of which involve not being dead.”
Shelby appeared behind me, pulling the door shut as she entered. She crossed her arms, looking at the gathered crowd with the bland disinterest that she always brought to staff meetings at the zoo, and asked, “Well? You lot going to shoot us or what? Because I’m starving, and I’m going to take it personally if somebody decides to kill my boyfriend.”
“Well, I’m going to take it personally if I get eaten by a werewolf because we went and shot the dude who actually knows how to kill them,” said Raina, finally looking up from her video game. It was a video game now, not a monitoring device—when she tilted her screen, I could see colorful animated monsters beating the snot out of each other. “Can we all say ‘yay, we waved our dicks around,’ and eat our damn dinner already?”
“I think I like your sister,” I murmured.
“Don’t worry, she doesn’t like you,” Shelby murmured back. Louder, she said, “I’m Shelby Tanner; you all know me; my parents are custodians in residence of the house you’re all sitting in, and my mum cooked that stew you’re getting ready to enjoy; I affirm and testify that Alexander Price is who he says he is, and that he’s here to help us, assuming all this nonsense doesn’t scare him off. I further affirm and testify that if you don’t all stop being such right twits, I’m going to take him and go find a nice motel. Dad.” She turned, focusing on her father. His cheeks were red, and he looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be amused or angry. “I know you’re just trying to look out for the Society, and I also know that when Thomas Price came through here, he was still with the Covenant, but you know that he was in the process of quitting, and we both know his descendants never signed up at all. So can we stop? This isn’t funny, it isn’t fun, and it isn’t dealing with the werewolf problem that’s threatening to eat us all.”
Shelby wasn’t the sort of person who got impassioned. Even when her old apartment had been set on fire, she had remained relatively calm, right up until we were free and clear and passing out from shock and pain. But as she addressed her father, spots of hectic pink appeared in her cheeks and her hands clenched into fists at her sides, clearly telegraphing her frustration. I hesitated before reaching out and taking her hand in mine. She shot me a quick, surprised look, but she didn’t pull away. She needed me as much as I needed her. That was becoming increasingly clear.