Chapter 8

"We do have to figure out what the ever living fuck is going on around here in creepy town, though," he continued. "Then we can be inappropriate."

"What happened to not sleeping with your partners?" Anderson asked.

Lynn shrugged. "Impulsive, reckless, and argumentative with a propensity for placing himself in volatile situations—that's what my performance appraisals usually say. Along with the whole stop cussing thing. But I close too many cases, including some cold ones on the rare occasion I'm bored, to ever get more than slaps on the wrist. They'll get me eventually, I'm sure, but right now my attitude problems don't outweigh my value."

Anderson laughed and pushed him out of the way so he could head on down the street. "Which house is next?"

"Down a couple, I think," Lynn replied. "Mr. and Mrs. Wright. I will refrain from mockery."

"No, you won't."

"Not a fucking chance. If the last two stops are anything to go by, Mr. Wright is actually Mr. Wrong Six Ways to Sunday."

They walked up a brick walkway that, unlike the last two, was not perfectly maintained to the point of horror movie creepy. It was opened by a handsome, friendly looking man with gray-touched brown hair and hazel eyes framed by blocky, brown and gold glasses. He was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black tee, and only the bone-white pallor of his skin gave away what he truly was.

He was also exchanging surprised looks with Anderson. "Anders?"

Lynn snorted a soft laugh. "Let me guess—ex?"

Anderson shot him a quelling look. "Yes, actually." He turned back to Wright. "It's been what, ten years? How've you been, Mikey? Did I hear correctly there was a Mrs. Wright now?"

Mikey beamed. "Yes, there is! It's good to see you again." He gave Anderson a quick hug, then ushered them inside. "So what brings you and your friend to see me? How did you even know where I live?" He winked over his shoulder as he led them into a large, sunlit kitchen done in green and brown with a huge island in the center. "I'd accuse you of stalking, but it's not really your style."

"Yeah, unicorns would rather be stalked, preferably through the woods or a meadow—" Lynn broke off with a grunt of pain and rubbed at his stomach where Anderson had driven an elbow into it.

Chuckling, Mikey went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of soda and a larger bottle of club soda. "Who's your friend, Anders?"

"This is my partner in the Bureau," Anderson replied, waiting until Mikey returned to the island with a glass and a lime before he continued. "We're here about that missing persons call you placed."

Mikey paused in the process of squeezing juice from the lime. "You're with the Bureau? Cool. You really did manage to avoid working for your family."

Lynn's brows rose. "What is the family business? Tell me, tell me."

"I'm not telling you anything, asshole," Anderson replied. He picked up the bottle of soda Mikey had set in front of him, an almost clear crème soda.

Mikey slid a glass across the island toward Lynn: club soda and lime on ice. Lynn smiled, surprised. "Thank you."

"My wife's best friend is a kraken. Comes over all the time and drinks those things like they're going to disappear forever in the next five minutes."

"Blech," Anderson interjected. Lynn flipped him off and sucked down a generous swallow of his bitter drink. Anderson rolled his eyes and turned back to Mikey. "I'm surprised your neighbors tolerate a kraken visiting, especially on a regular basis."

Mikey's lips curled, showing off a hint of his drawn-up fangs. "Met the neighbors already, have you? As you say, they do not approve of Karen. They disapprove of my wife more, however, because Jesse is half-brownie, half-ogre." He went over to a small desk on the far side of the kitchen and came back with a photo: Mikey in a pair of bright orange board shorts, pasty white and hair plastered to his head; a large, pretty woman with curly brown hair in a bright red one-piece swimsuit; and a taller, broad woman with short spikey hair in a black two-piece swimsuit.

The broader woman was clearly the kraken—even in a picture Lynn could pick out one of his own. The other woman he would have pegged as a brownie just by her smile and brightness. If she was also part ogre, she could also probably bench press six of him. He could just imagine how scathing the oh-so-perfect neighbors were. "A vampire, a brownie-ogre, and you hang out with a kraken. Positively disgraceful."

Mikey just sighed and ran his fingers through the condensation on his own barely-touched green apple soda. "Who did you talk to, if I may ask?"

"The Moore family and the Thompsons."

"Oh, lovely," Mikey muttered. "I'm astonished you're still here. Those two couples are the worst offenders. They're eighty percent of the reason we're moving in a few months."

Lynn really wanted to gossip, but work came first. "So, what did you see that provoked you to notify the Bureau? So far we've been told people went into the woods and never came out and that you can smell the kraken that ate them and that it's been there for some time." Which… now he wasn't creeped out or pissed off, that didn't make sense. "Something is funky. Wynn is only half-kraken. If he was around, they would have commented on a dragon smell, too. He smells more like dragon than kraken. Goblins hate dragon, generally speaking. They smell so strongly of ash and smoke, it tends to ruin the flavor of everything else."