Enemy Mine

Chapter 48

Wall Street beckoned Vincent away after our amazing elevator encounter, but I still wore a Cheshire smile when I walked into Mr. Pearlman's apartment. Griffin and Amelia had his kitchen smelling like the Keebler Elf treehouse, and Griffin immediately abandoned her post to corner me, offering an oatmeal cookie as compensation for dishing the details of the amulet exchange.

"I can't believe Hadria is taking over the hive," Griffin said. "The last hostile takeover happened three hundred years ago in Rome. That was a sticky-wicket, as Gramps would say. Has your friend, Christoph, left his post?" Griffin rattled off her comments as she licked her fingers, and I was forced to guess how much she knew.

"I think he has. Have you seen him around?"

"Not recently. He doesn't try to hide from us, only humans. He's going to fight against his own, isn't he? That's what Colin told me."

"Christoph is committed to Cecile, and if the hive is changing queens, he wants to be there to protect her."

"I can tell you're worried about him. He saved your life. You share a connection even though you're supposed to be enemies."

"You're right. There's a connection between us, but we're connected to everyone on the planet in some way. I try not label people before I know them."

Griffin smiled. "That was deep. You've been meditating, haven't you?"

I tried to recount the number of times I'd meditated in the past few weeks, wondering if I could count sex. "I'm prone to deep thoughts," I said in lieu of an answer.

Griffin giggled as she shoved her unruly curls behind her ears. "Did you have fun visiting your grandmother? What's her name again, Petunia?"

"Petula, and our visit was very... intense. She showed me a picture of my birth mom in her hybrid form."

"Wow. What did she look like?"

"Blonde hair like me, pretty, but also fierce. She had an impressive wing span."

Griffin looked intrigued. "I wonder how fast her spirals were. The longer the wing span, the tighter the spiral." She pressed her arms to her sides to demonstrate. "There's more skin to snag on things though, so long wings can be a disadvantage."

Amelia made her way toward us, but she didn't have a chance to nix Griffin's probing before Nurse Kathy shooed us out. It was Mr. Pearlman's bath time and nobody needed to witness that. I returned to an empty apartment save for the whippets. Of course, Bonnie and Clyde were glad to see me, and they led me to the pantry where I could find treats.

An SD card with hundreds of church photos beckoned me to my laptop, and I stayed occupied with that for the next hour. The problem was, I couldn't stop obsessing about the plight of the demons, and every notification that chimed on my phone had me startling in response. Why hadn't Christoph called? Didn't they have wi-fi at the apiaries? He could just walk outside and text me for Chrissake. Or maybe he couldn't walk at all.

At five o'clock, I picked-up my silent phone to call Sylvie while she made her commute home. This always made me feel better, even though Rizzo rode the same subway now. I also wanted to ask about her battle wound.

"Perfect timing, chica. I'm just shutting down my computer." Sylvie's cheerful voice did exactly what I hoped it would, brought a smile to my face as I paced the room. 

"Hi, Sylvie. How goes it? Another fabulous day in paradise?"

"It was a great day, even though it was busy. And the people here aren't assholes like my old bossman, so that helps."

"How is your wrist feeling?"

"Annoyingly painful, but it doesn't look infected. Ori couldn't have picked a worse location. Rumors are circulating that I tried to cut myself and check-out."