Chương 3: Chapter 2 - Jerk Mayor

Since the majority of my powers went dormant when things were calm, the rest of our meeting didn't take long. I was out of there in under an hour. I left the library and walked down the main hall. Kappa froggy hopped around my legs the whole way.

"What do you think?" I said.

"Should we go harass Igor for a snack, harass Conrad for attention, or harass Olivia for the fun of it?" With one hop for each syllable, Kappa chanted, "Huh-uh-rat's ass!" I bit down on my lips. It was important to correct Kappa's English, but I had to be able to do it without laughing. Kappa stopped and turned his head to look at me with his huge black eyes.

"What's ha-rat's ass?"

"It's harass." I scooped him up and hoisted him high in my arms so our eyes would be level. Black eyes to black eyes, we stared at each other.

"Say it with me, buddy. Huh-rass."

"Huh-rass."

"Very good. It means to bother or annoy." He tilted his head to the side and made a trilling noise. Ugh! That bog-monster was so adorable, I swear there were times I would've eaten him if he wasn't so slimy. It was nature's defense mechanism against people like me.

"You know how to bother," I assured him.

"You bother very well. So do I. Who shall we go find?"

"Conrad!" Kappa shouted. My heart rose on a cloud of cotton-candy contentment. Now that Kappa wasn't afraid of Conrad, the wolfman was swiftly becoming one of his favorite people. I had to applaud his taste; Conrad was one of my favorite people too. The three of us got along beautifully, without a smidge of jealousy between us—although, I had made it clear to Conrad that, unless I was gone, I was the one who got to give Kappa his precious can of tuna. A door opened behind us.

I turned and saw Jack Noctis emerging from his study.

"Hey, Big Jacky!" I said. Kappa watched him, motionless and silent.

"Good afternoon, Emerra, Kappa," Jacky said. Another man stepped out from the study and stood beside Jacky. The moment the man came into view, Kappa crawled from my arms, up to my shoulders, and around my back. I shuddered when his cool, wet skin brushed over my neck. It was like having an oversized gecko climbing up for a shoulder ride. He tried to hide behind my head. It wasn't anything personal. Kappa was wary of strangers. He hid whenever someone came to the door.

Since people who weren't aware of the magical world weren't supposed to know he existed, we never discouraged the behavior, but this time, his caution wasn't needed. Big Jacky always warned everyone before inviting someone inside the mansion who wasn't an initiate. The stranger was in his late fifties. He had receding blond-brown hair with white streaks on the side. It was cut short and combed back from his high forehead. His face looked big for some reason. Big nose. Big lips. Big lines around his mouth and eyes.

He looked serious—not stiff, like a rock, but heavy, like clay. He wore a casual, checkered, button-up shirt, and a jacket. The jacket could've belonged to any workman, but it was clean, and the fact he'd paired it with a light-blue dress shirt didn't fit with the idea of him being a working man. I didn't know what to make of him. He looked at me and Kappa and said to Jack Noctis in a flat voice with a slight accent, "Is this it?" That simplified things for me.

I still couldn't guess his job or social class, but I had no difficulty shunting him into the "jerk" category.

"Did you mean me, sir?" I asked. I used my friendliest tone. I'd been wrong about first impressions before, and if I was right, and he had been talking about me or Kappa as if we weren't there, I thought it'd make a nice contrast to his manners. When his eyes shifted, I realized he hadn't been looking at me.

"No," he said, "I was talking about that thing on your shoulders." There still wasn't any emotion in his voice. The fact that he could be so casual about referring to Kappa—to my beloved little buddy—as a "thing" bothered me more than if he'd been angry or resentful. Where there was emotion, there was often a story that explained why they felt the way they did. This sounded more like thoughtless bigotry.

"Emerra," Jacky said.

"This is Benjamin Gladwyn. Mayor Gladwyn, this is Emerra Cole." Ah. A jerk mayor. Good to know. We both stepped forward to shake hands. My dislike might have been instant and unreasonable, but he was Big Jacky's guest, so I was going to be polite.

"How do you do," I muttered. I'd learned that phrase from Darius Vasil, my Victorian-Era vampire. He used it all the time without sarcasm, and it worked for him—which made sense considering the time period he came from. Whenever I said it, it was nothing but sarcasm, reserved for the people I'd subconsciously decided would never get the dubious honor of my friendship. Friends got "hey."

"Are you that thing's keeper?" Mayor Gladwyn asked. His accent sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. All the words had a subtle roundness or gentleness to them, and the t's came out more like d's, turning "that" into something closer to "dat."

"Oh! You must mean Kappa!" I said with false cheer. I turned my head.

"Kappa, this is Mayor Gladwyn. Would you like to say hello?" Before Kappa could answer, Gladwyn said, "You named it?" That was about all the politeness and manners I could fake. When I spoke, I'm pretty sure that even Jacky picked up on my irritation.

"Kappa is male, and I didn't name him. He's been living here longer than I have."

"But he's your pet, right?" I gave him a grudging point for changing the pronoun, and as much as I hated to admit it, it'd be easy to mistake Kappa for a pet. He was small, cute, non-human, and we took care of him. The only reason he wasn't a pet was because he was too intelligent. On the other hand, he wasn't as intelligent as the rest of us, so it was like living with a permanent toddler.

"He's my friend, sir," I said.

"Is it true he can talk?" I glanced at Jacky. This was getting weird, and I was hoping for some guidance. I got nothing. Just a skull watching me, waiting for me to answer.

"Yes," I admitted. Gladwyn dropped his head in a single, firm nod.

"Good." He turned to Jacky.

"What do you say, Mr. Noctis?" I wrangled back the urge to blurt out, "What do you say to what?" Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. As much as I adored Kappa, it wasn't like I was his mother. I had no official standing with him (unless you count Distributor of Tuna) which meant I had no authority either. Jacky was the closest thing that Kappa had to a guardian, and it was only because he allowed Kappa to live in his house.

That meant I was just as much of a pet as Kappa was. Kappa and I looked at our mutual owner.

"I say nothing." Noctis's voice was low and always seemed to have a strange depth to it, like it echoed out from a cave instead of his chest.

"Kappa is his own person, if you want his help, you'll have to ask him." I lowered my head so no one would notice me gritting my teeth. Good for Jacky for respecting Kappa as an individual with his own free will. I appreciated that—even more now that I'd heard Mr. Gladwyn refer to Kappa as a thing—and it was very like Big Jacky to think that way. It was also very like Big Jacky to not realize that autonomy was only valuable if you understood what was happening.

And if I had barely any clue what was going on, then Kappa had none. Official standing or not, I wasn't going to make him deal with that on his own. No one got to use my little buddy like that.

"May I ask what you're talking about?" I said. Mayor Gladwyn glanced my direction before turning toward me.

"I'm the mayor of a small town down in Louisiana. We're having some trouble with our lurkers, and I heard from my torrman that Mr. Noctis…kept…one that was used to working with humans. I was hoping to borrow him, to see if he could help us." I was ninety percent sure Gladwyn had been about to say "owned one" before he thought better of it. He must have had enough diplomacy to consider his audience. No wonder he was the mayor.

"What would that entail?" I asked. Gladwyn blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"You want to find out if he can help you. Fine. But what would you want him to do?"

"I don't know. I've never worked with them. There's an expert who's residing in the area, but her hands are tied."

"Tied how?"

"She can't communicate with them, and the contact she has with them is supposed to be limited." Jacky put two skeletal fingers to his skull. He looked bone-weary. (Pun only moderately intended.) As Jacky lowered his hand, he said, "I'll have a word with the Torr. It's ridiculous to maintain such a position considering the circumstances."

"What circumstances?" I asked.

"The Sauvage Preserve is meant to be left alone with minimal impact to the land or any of the wildlife," Jacky explained, "but if something isn't done in the near future, the consequences will be far greater than if we interfered now to find a solution." My eyes shifted from Jacky to Mayor Gladwyn. I'd lived with Jacky long enough I'd come to accept some cryptic comments as inevitable, but a fellow human would probably understand my need for information. Gladwyn said, "Miss—I'm sorry, Miss…?"

"Cole," I supplied.

"Miss Cole, you have to understand, most of the time, the lurkers are a nuisance, but nothing worse than that. They stayed in their swamp, and if they came up to town, they were shy enough that they didn't get noticed much. But they've been coming up a lot more lately. There's rumors that they've been stealing things. Strange things are happening. There's a lot of people who're nervous, and it's getting harder and harder to deal with the secrecy laws.

Half the people in my town are convinced that the government is lying to them—and what am I supposed to tell them? We are! No one's died so far, but all it'll take is one missing child, and people will be out for blood. It won't matter if the lurkers did it either. The preserve has never been popular. All it'll take is one incident, then those fences will come down in a rain of fire." Okay. Wow. Dramatic. But the way he'd said it made it sound as real and serious as anything could.

I stood there, frozen and overwhelmed in a low-key, buzzy way. I barely felt Kappa put his legs over my shoulder and slide into my arms. I glanced down. He was pressed against me, but his black eyes were fixed on Gladwyn. I shook my head to dislodge my brain from its stupor, took a breath, and hunted around for an idea to grab hold of. And I wasn't being choosy.

"You keep calling them lurkers," I said.

"You're talking about Kappa's people, right?"

"I wouldn't call them people—" Gladwyn said. No, I'll bet you wouldn't, I thought.

"—but I mean that species, yes." Jacky said, "Innaturalis Paludicola vigiles."

"What do you call them?" Gladwyn asked.

"I've always called him a bog-monster," I said.

"Or a bog-creature."

"We don't have bogs where I come from. We have swamps and bayous."

"There's a difference?" The long, deep lines that led from the side of Gladwyn's nose to the side of his mouth arched to accommodate his smile.

"You're a city girl, aren't you, Miss Cole?" I bristled. If we went by "time spent in an environment," the man had me pegged. The only debate would've been if I was more of a suburbanite. But he didn't have to know that.

"Right now I live closer to the mountains," said the world's pettiest contrarian. The mayor shrugged as if I hadn't completely devastated him with my correction.

"We call them lurkers. I don't suppose it matters much. Most of them don't come when they're called." He eyed Kappa, as if he wasn't sure this one would be able to either.

"And you're worried that they might get killed?" I asked.

"They might. Before that, I hope the Torr will relocate the colony." I felt Kappa's angry hum vibrating my arms before I heard it. When I looked down, he was scowling at Gladwyn. The mayor paused.

"He understands me, doesn't he?" Gladwyn asked. Jacky said, "Paludicola vigiles are territorial creatures in a way similar to humans. They won't exclude others of their species— most others—but they have a range they think of as home. Displacing them would be traumatic, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find another home that could accommodate them so well." The planes of Gladwyn's face shifted through a frown and a scowl before they settled into an expression of frustrated resignation.

"Then I guess they die. I guess the Torr loses control of their secret, and maybe that preserve gets destroyed." He raised his hand, palm up, in a fierce shrug, and slapped his thigh when he brought it back down.

"I'm at the end of my rope here, Mr. Noctis. Do you think I'd be here, looking for help from one of them, if I wasn't? Now, am I going to get some help or not?" Jacky and I glanced at each other before Jacky lowered his eye sockets.

"Kappa," he said, "what do you think?" Kappa stood up in my arms so he could put his mouth closer to my ear. We had a whispered conversation where Kappa made me repeat almost everything I'd learned in smaller words so he had a better chance of understanding. I tried to ignore Benjamin Gladwyn as we talked, but I couldn't help noticing the frustration slowly hardening the clay of his features into a grimace. Eventually, I couldn't ignore it.

"Is there something wrong, Mr. Gladwyn?" I sounded as irritated as he looked. He frowned and looked away. His shoulders jerked up in a brief shrug. But I knew that trick. And I was annoyed enough, I wasn't about to let him get away with it. I raised my voice.

"You seem unhappy about something." Before I opened my big mouth, I should've considered that I was dealing with a powerful man, and powerful men don't like to be challenged. Our eyes met.

"Yes, Miss Cole, I'm unhappy. Wouldn't you be if the fate of your town was resting in the hands of something no smarter than a dog? I thought I'd be dealing with intelligent and reasonable people—with humans— so I'm disappointed. What of it?" When I heard the emphasis he put on the word "humans," my mouth soured and a wave of anger spilled through my guts. Never had I met a man in such desperate need of help that I wanted to help less. Most of my friends weren't human.

There was a strong debate going about whether or not I qualified as human. If he was so in love with them, maybe he should go ask them for help. That would teach him how intelligent and reasonable they were. But I was worried about the bog-monsters. Or lurkers. Or whatever they were called. They were up against us intelligent and reasonable humans, and while they were smarter than dogs, I was pretty sure they wouldn't stand a chance without someone on their side.

I glared for another second, to show Mayor Gladwyn that I wasn't intimidated by him, then returned my attention to Kappa.

"We can help?" he repeated. He'd asked me that right before I got distracted. The fact I didn't have an easy answer was probably part of the reason why I'd found Gladwyn's grimace so annoying. I hesitated, then settled for, "We can try." He padded his webbed hands around my arms, as if he was trying to feel out a rock or pace in a circle when there was nowhere to pace.

"Okay." He raised his black eyes to mine.

"Will you come?" I opened my mouth to assure him I would, but before I could say anything, Gladwyn spoke.

"I won't have that thing down without a handler." Jacky and I both stared at him. Not even the combined power of our eyes—or, my eyes, Jacky's eye sockets—could make that man squirm.

"I don't have anyone who can take time off to watch him," he explained, "and I know there are all kinds of rules about where he goes and who's allowed to see him. He'll need someone there."

"Oh." I made my voice nice and bright, and laid a hand on my chest.

"So you want me there?"

"Yes." Given the strained nature of our relationship, I was surprised how fast he answered. And how serious he sounded. He really must have wanted a… human… there to help him deal with Kappa. Well, I had to do my best to make the man happy, didn't I?

"I'd be glad to, sir," I said.

"Do you mind if I bring a guardian?" Gladwyn's brows pulled together.

"How old are you, Miss Cole?"

"Not that kind of guardian. Conrad's a friend of mine. We've worked together before, and he's friends with Kappa, so he can help me keep an eye on him." I said to Jacky, "You wouldn't mind, would you?"

"Honestly, I would prefer it," Jacky said. A ripple of annoyance murmured through my head. I mean, yeah, I was the one who'd suggested it, and of course I wanted Conrad to come…but did Jacky have to sound so darn earnest when he said that? It was like he didn't trust me on my own. He didn't, of course. But he could've tried to hide it better. Gladwyn said, "As long as he's dependable, I'd welcome more help."

"Oh. Dude." I gave him a thumbs-up. Kappa mimicked my gesture, but his thumbs-up was cuter.

"He's so dependable. Absolutely first-class. I'd trust him with my life." An evil grin snuck onto my face when there was supposed to be nothing but innocence.

"Would you like to meet him?"