Once Bitten, No Longer Shy by Julie Steimle (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

are the kind of people who would personally protect individuals in your support group, including hunt down anyone daring to harm them. They would be indispensable. You need them to do this right.”

Indispensable? Those guys with the red crystals and flaming swords? Was he joking? Troy stared.

Matthew read his thoughts, rolling his eyes with a retort forming his lips.

Deidre perked up. “What’s this? What kind of support group are you making?”

They turned with a look.

“Oh, I don’t think you should get involved in this,” JJ said to his cousin.

“And why not?” Deidre rose, not accusatorily but with curiosity.

Matthew said with the kindest and most apologetic of smiles, “Because we—you, I, and the NYPD—are still dealing with the Unseelie Court who have targeted you and that witch for a reason. They had wanted something out of you when they snatched you. And now that they have taken a huge blow because Eve had killed their boogieman, they have got to be furious. That means you are still in danger. We don’t need to expose you to more.”

“Boogieman?” Troy felt a shiver up his spine, remembering the last boogieman he had seen, way back when Chen was a Gulinger. It was green and transformed into larger and more horrible shapes of animals, and it terrified Tom. It had also wounded Rick, something Troy did not want to remember.

“Yeah, they had a boogieman,” Matt said with a nod to him, exchanging a look. “As insurance against Tom interfering.”

Troy nodded. It made sense.

Hanz looked confused. “What’s a boogieman? I mean, beyond something that kids are afraid of, like a monster under the bed?”

Deidre went pale, glancing to Matthew.

Matthew was about to reply, yet Troy said, “A boogieman is a shape-shifting demon that even imps are terrified of—because they eat imps. They grow from the fear of others.”

Staring, Hanz seemed to freeze for a second. Then he shook his head with a twitch. “And Eve killed their boogieman?”

“At our request,” Matthew interjected, implying Eve was not doing it for fun.

Hanz nodded to himself. “Ok….”

“Have you ever seen the movie, Gremlins?” Deidre asked, seeing he still appeared confused.

“No,” Hanz replied, shaking his head. “It was rated R, I think.”

They all stared at him.

Hanz stared back. “What? I generally don’t watch rated R movies. Ok?”

Troy rolled his eyes. Matthew smothered a chuckle, reading more into what Hanz was thinking, which apparently was more elaborate in explanation. Clearly he had other reasons but he thought it not worth explaining.

“Well, anyway,” Deidre cut into the awkward silence, “What happened to Eve after all that? I watched her kill the boogieman and fight the death angel they had working for them, but—”

“Wait,” JJ interrupted. “They had a death angel working for them?”

Matthew nodded. “Yeah. An ugly one, according to Tom. I couldn’t see it, but it was the one Eve called Gollum-wocky.”

Deidre raised her eyebrows.

“Gollum-wocky?” Troy repeated, exchanging a look with Hanz who was growing uncomfortable in this conversation. Perhaps he was still coping with the fact that his fiancée had killed a demon called a boogieman and was fighting angels.

“She said it looked a bit like a cross between Gollum from Lord of the Rings and the Jabberwocky from Alice in Wonderland,” Matthew said. “Which Tom said was pretty accurate.”

Deidre hmm’d and nodded. “Yeah. Kinda. Real tall and sinewy, and bald with a face not even a mother could love.”

“Not even the big eyes?” Matthew repressed a chuckle.

She snickered. “What? Like when he said ‘When Baggins loses, we eats it whole’?”

Matthew grinned broader. He was liking this.

Hanz stifled a laugh. Troy was surprised Hanz even knew about Lord of the Rings. Didn’t religious people only read scripture? Weren’t fiction novels a sin?

“Well, anyway,” Deidre said, waving all that away, “Is there something I can do to help?”

JJ’s eyes widened. Matthew colored a little, glancing to her cousin. Clearly they did not want her at risk with vampires.

“Well…” JJ looked desperately to Matthew for a good answer.

“Um…” Matthew said, “Uh. Like I said, the Unseelie Court is still—”

“Look,” Deidre said, eyeing her cousin first before Matthew. “I don’t want to just sit around and do nothing while waiting for the Unseelie Court to catch up with me again. I want to be out and about doing something. I have skills, you know. So let me help with his group. I can keep an eye out for ghosts and shady characters. After all, I don’t look like a cop—unlike you two. No one will suspect me.”

Troy shot her a thoughtful glance. “She could pull it off as a bite victim. A bandage and a high neck shirt would work for the image, and we could make up a convincing story for her.”

She grinned at him for the first time, getting comfortable now with his presence. “Exactly. From my experience in Cliffcoast, I know enough about vampires to make up a backstory. I can even say Eve McAllister rescued me—and no one would lay a finger on me.”

“Maybe,” Hanz said with genuine reservation. “Or maybe someone from the Order of Blood might take revenge on you.”

She was about to say “I doubt it.”

But Matthew cut her off with, “He has a point.”

“Well… you’ll be there,” she said, grinning at him next.

Matt nearly melted, his cheeks now warm. His smile however, was full of concern as he heaved a shrug and added apologetically, “Not all the time. I work with mostly with homicide and my hours are often on call.”

She frowned.

“But I’ll try to be,” he added, giving in. Yet with a peek to Troy and Hanz he then said to JJ, “The Holy Seven would be there anyway. She’d be safe with them.”

JJ nodded. “Actually, I had thought about getting Jessica to hire her to help out with the baby.”

“I’m not sure they can afford a nanny,” Hanz interjected, then looked to Deidre. “No offense to you.”

Deidre shrugged. In her eyes, one could tell she had no clue who Jessica even was.

“Alright, she can come to the group and act as lookout,” Troy said. Yet changing the subject, Troy asked, “Well now… Have you two finished your conversation?”

Hanz and Deidre exchanged a look. Deidre said, “For now. We can continue this conversation later.”

Hanz nodded. “When I can get a notebook to take notes.”

She smiled at him, meeting his gaze. There as a lot of sympathy in that smile. She clearly liked Hanz, but then Hanz was naturally likeable. Troy could tell she mostly liked Hanz for Eve’s happiness, and she genuinely liked Eve. Eve must have done her a major favor… or maybe Eve was not that different from Hanz. Maybe she was just likeable. Matthew liked her. So did Rick. Hanz was head over heels for her. …And yet Troy remembered the way she appeared that night. She was terrifying.

Deidre waved good-bye from the office doorway, not leaving the room. Matthew and JJ escorted Hanz and Troy to the front of the police station, giving them the information which ought to be on the reference card for the support group to use. When Hanz and Troy left the police station, the decided to head back to their own apartment rather than Matthew’s place.

While on the subway, Troy murmured to Hanz, “Does it seem odd to you that everyone your girl meets ends up connecting back to us in some way? Or am I being paranoid?”

Shaking his head, Hanz replied, “In my experience, relationships are all connected like threads in web, or my mother put it—a lacework.”

“Lacework?” Troy thought that was a funny word choice. He folded his arms and ignored the stares of the kid sitting across from him the subway car. The kid had a fauxhawk and a nose ring with one tattoo on his neck with the number sixty-nine.

“Like a crocheted doily,” Hanz said, seemingly not even noticing the staring faux-punk kid.

Troy raised his eyebrows.

“You know, because comparing it to a spider’s web or a net sounds ominous, and a lace doily is beautiful, and the connections create a nice pattern with meaning.” Hanz sighed. He shook his head.

That was actually a nice picture, Troy thought. Hanz’s mother sounded sweet. Troy envied him.

The woman sitting next to the faux-punk looked up from her cellphone. Her deep browns stared at them now.

“But really the world is actually quite small,” Hanz continued, thinking as more people listened in. “And though it has a huge population, you tend to bump into the same people because you frequent the same places. It does not surprise me one bit that the people Eve knows are the same people you know. What is surprising is when people of very different circles cross over—like Art. Most people in my world don’t know about yours. And the rest of the world is even more ignorant.”

Though that was true, Troy nodding at that while thinking Hanz unusually observant, he could tell some of the people around them bristled in offense at what Hanz was saying. But Hanz was right. Everyone lived in their own echo chambers. Religionists had their own pockets of reality which, to be honest, Troy had kept clear of. But their world was closer to his than that of the atheist. Atheists were often so thoroughly convinced of the lack of deity, not merely because they never entered the circles where elves, demons, or vampires dwelled—it was more than that. It was mindset.  

It had been his honest observation that people only saw what they want to see. Christians saw miracles whereas atheist saw coincidences. The argument that ‘correlation does not equal causation’ got whipped out so phenomenally fast these days that he believed that people would soon think that there was not even such a thing as cause and effect anymore. And those moments when they still did think there were causes that had effects, they explained all supernatural things away as a human phenomenon—or maybe aliens. Troy always found it ironic that atheists would readily believe in aliens but not demons. Both were other-than-human beings that were a threat. And what was in a name?

When they got off at the subway station, Troy noticed the stares of the people which followed them out. Faux-punk stayed on, but a guy from two seats down had followed them out and onto the escalators. He was eying them without a word. Troy worked to ignore him. Hanz did it effortlessly. When they were out on the road, nobody followed them further. Hanz led the way back to the apartment building in the dimming light.

Once back at the apartment, already dark, they came in to find half the open living room covered in plastic, all tacked up to keep construction dust at a minimum. On the other side of the plastic, the carpet was torn out and some plumbing had been laid for the sink area, as well as a lifted floor with insulation. Wiring and a wooden framework was also built up. He could see where things were being laid out. The rest of the apartment was hardly different. Just… shorter. 

Art trotted into the kitchen from his room, carrying out printed fliers. When he saw Hanz, he smiled. His smile was more cordial to Troy. He too had taken on a posture of ‘sucking it up’ when dealing with their new living situation. However, he said to Troy, “Here are the fliers. Did you make any headway on your research?”

Troy nodded. “Some.” He then gestured to the construction. “How long do you think this will take?”

“At the most, two weeks,” Art said with a precise nod, meeting Troy’s gaze solidly. “At the least, one. I got to talk with Henry and the workers, and they figure they can get the outside finished first. They are putting in ventilation, which will help to suck out any fumes. However Henry suggested we all shack up at the Deacon’s penthouse for three days once the paint has been sprayed.”

“Rick’s family penthouse?” Troy puzzled. “But didn’t Rick say his father would have guests from Paris—?”

“It fell through,” Art replied with