Club Monstrosity (6 page)

But Natalie . . . Natalie was a different egg, and that interested him. She never reacted the same way twice. She kept her emotions close to her vest. She was really good at not going monster . . . in fact, he’d never seen her do it even once. If it wasn’t for the scars and the superhuman strength, he might not believe she was a monster at all.

Today, faced with Blob’s hoarding, and now his murder, was no different. Natalie’s face was still, and though her eyes were unbearably sad, she didn’t show any other emotion. She just stared at the lock in his hand.

“Someone did this to him,” she repeated.

It wasn’t a question, just a statement. Blank and flat.

He nodded slowly. “The lock is small, but it’s really strong and it was holding the doors shut. When I smelled a very faint scent of death, I broke it off, and there he was.”

Linda had been staring at the dead body, but now she let out a low sob and sank into a faint on top of another pile of pizza boxes. Both Alec and Natalie looked at her for a moment, exchanged a bland look of little concern, then turned their attention back to Blob.

“You know how he died in his movie, right?” Alec asked.

“I’m afraid I do.” Natalie shivered, and not from the temperature caused by the open freezer. “I looked up everyone’s cause of death after Ellis. I didn’t want to be caught unaware a second time. He was frozen to death, right?”

Alec nodded slowly and they both stared at Blob a little while longer.

“What do we do now?” Natalie whispered. “Besides call the cops, of course.”

Alec recoiled. “Uh, no. No cops.”

“Why?”

“You know how you don’t like fire?” he said. When she nodded slowly, he continued. “Well, cops are like fire to me. Fire bad. Cops
bad
.”

Natalie glared at him and he couldn’t blame her. He
had
used the Frankenstein’s Monster Voice, after all. That was a bit out of line.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Alec. There’s a dead body of a guy who was locked in a freezer by someone. He was our friend and he was
murdered
. We need to call the cops and at least report the death.”

Alec shifted. Now she was making him feel like a total shit. “Okay. Maybe we
do
have to call the cops. But . . . can you wait until I go?”

Natalie stared at him even harder, and there . . .
there
was that little glimpse of a monster as her irritation turned to anger.

“Seriously?” she managed through gritted teeth. “You’re going to bail?”

“Um, I might be . . .” Alec felt blood rush to his cheeks and cursed it silently. “I might be er,
holding,
at present.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Natalie huffed through an angry exhale. “You’re carrying pot?”

He shrugged. “Helps keep me calm before the full moon.”

Which was true. It didn’t help a lot, but sometimes it cut the edge of the wildness that was already coursing through him and would only get worse with each passing day until finally he had no control over it anymore and it was Moon Fever time. Natalie arched a brow. Pure disbelief almost swept off her in waves.

Alec rolled his eyes with frustration. Of course Miss I’m-Always-in-Control wouldn’t get it. She never even growled, let alone locked herself into steel handcuffs once a month to keep from marauding through the city and killing people.

“Believe me or not, Natalie, but it’s medicinal. Only it’s not legal and I don’t really want the cops asking questions.” Alec backed toward the door. “So I’m going to just go. And you call the police.”

She shook her head and Alec looked at the scene in the kitchen once more. Poor Natalie was going to have to deal with a dead Blob, cops,
and
an unconscious Linda. He felt bad, but he had other problems to deal with. Ones more straightforward than this. This was better, necessary.

When Natalie got home, she’d understand.

So he turned on his heel and bolted, with Natalie’s call of “You
SUCK
!” echoing in his ears as he opened the front door.

“So you know the deceased how?” the bored, cold cop asked as he scribbled in his notebook.

He seemed so unmoved by her friend’s death that Natalie couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking notes on something other than the circumstances of the case. Maybe about what movie he planned to catch that weekend or the stats for the two New York football teams (the Giants had Eli Manning, but Rex Ryan was a good coach
something, something, something, human guy talk
).

“Well, er,” she stammered, trying to think of the best way to put her relationship with Blob. “We’re in a s-support group together.”

The cop glanced up and stared at her, but said nothing. Natalie’s cheeks flamed hot with a blush. One that deepened when he said, “A support group. For what? Was the deceased into drugs or—”

“No!” Natalie burst out, louder than she had intended, probably because when he said drugs she thought of stupid Alec and his stupid pot that had caused her to be the one to deal with this shit.

“Then what?”

“I-it’s a chronic condition,” she explained slowly. “We all share.”

“One that might have made him suicidal?” The cop looked at the corpse. “Or just fat?”

Natalie bit back a curse. The guy didn’t have to be an asshole. Or maybe he did.

“It’s not something that would make anyone suicidal. Bob was definitely not suicidal.”

“But you came looking for him,” the cop said after yet another long pause. “How come?”

Natalie shook her head. “He didn’t show up for a couple meetings in a row, which wasn’t like him. So we came.”

“You and the lady who is sobbing on the pizza boxes?” the cop said with a quick jerk of his head toward Linda.

She was sitting on the boxes she’d fainted on earlier, hugging herself and softly crying. At least she was conscious.

“Yeah.” Natalie sighed. “That’s the one.”

“She’s very upset by this,” the cop observed, and then frowned. “She’s not going to puke, is she? She almost looks green.”

Natalie bit her lip. Yeah, Linda did look green. Because she
was
green and all that crying did a number on her cover-up.

“I—I’m not going to throw up,” Linda interjected through tears. “I—I just f-feel so bad for Bob. To die like your movie is just awful.”

The cop wrinkled his brow and stared at Natalie. “Movie?”

Natalie tensed. “Sorry, she’s just distraught. I think she should go home. Is there anything else you need from us?”

The cop scanned over his notes again, likely relieved that Natalie had given him an out on further inquiry with Linda. “No, I don’t think so. At least not right now. And we know where to find you if we do.”

Natalie had been looking at Linda, who was still muttering about movies and monsters, but now she turned to face the cop with a gulp.

“You . . . know where to find me?” she repeated on the barest of squeaks.

He nodded. “Yeah. The medical examiner’s office, right? Detective Blass said he’s seen you there.”

Relief poured through Natalie like ice water, cooling her suddenly heated mind and body. “Yes, of course. I should have recognized the detective. Good-bye.”

The cop gave her a dismissive nod and wandered off toward the fridge, where two other detectives were debating how to get a frozen four-hundred-plus-pound corpse out of a four-story walk-up. Natalie grabbed Linda’s arm and pulled her to her feet.

“Come on, let’s go before they decide they have more questions,” she snapped under her breath.

Linda followed her, but she was dragging her feet so much and crying so hard that Natalie practically had to carry her down the hallway, where neighbors were peeking out through the spaces in their chain-locked doors.

Once they were outside and had walked a couple of blocks, Natalie hauled Linda over into the shadow of a building and shook her.

“Get it together, girl!” she ordered in a no-nonsense tone she thought even Kai would have liked.

Linda shook her head and kept crying. “I don’t want to get shot ten times and found in the Hudson.”

“Is that how you die in The Story?” Natalie asked with a sigh. She had looked up Linda’s movie and book history, of course, but she was too distracted to remember any of it.

Linda nodded. “Not in the Hudson, but that would be the obvious choice when someone kills me here.”

“Well, there’s always the East River,” Natalie said as she rubbed her eyes. Part of her understood Linda’s freak-out. But the other part . . .

“What is the first rule of hiding our identities?” she asked in a low hiss to keep passing strangers from hearing them.

Linda sniffled. “D-don’t draw attention to yourself.”

“Then
stop crying,
” Natalie ordered, though she found herself rubbing Linda’s arm in a comforting fashion. “Seriously, you’re going all green, even the cop noticed.”

Linda gulped back tears and drew a few deep breaths before she withdrew a lighted compact and examined herself.

“Oh shit, you’re right. Hang on.” With a few expert sweeps of a brush, Linda redid her makeup and suddenly looked like a real-life girl again.

“Better?” she asked with only a sniffle.

“Actually, yeah.” Natalie shook her head with begrudging respect. “You’re really good at that.”

Linda sighed. “Well, I’ve had practice.”

Natalie couldn’t help but smile. She understood that. She might not have green, scaly skin like Linda, but she had to cover her scars on a regular basis. The summer was a nightmare.

Linda checked herself again and snapped the compact shut. “My crying is water-related, you know.”

Natalie stared. “Not all of it.”

Linda pondered that statement for a moment. “No. I’m emotional. But I kind of like it. It makes me . . . human. Kind of like your sarcasm or Kai’s being a raving bitch.”

Natalie pursed her lips. She hadn’t thought of it that way before. “Yeah, I guess we all like our human bits, don’t we?” She shook her head. Heaven help her if she was going to start to “get” Linda. “Anyway, I’m going to walk you to your train and I’ll see you later.”

“What?” Linda’s eyes went wide. “You aren’t coming with me?”

Natalie shook her head. “No, I’m going home. I’m going to text the others and let them know that Bob has been found . . . sort of. Then I’m taking a hot bath and going to bed. I just want to forget this day.”

But as they headed down the stairs into the dark, dank subway station, Natalie knew that forgetting wasn’t possible.

6

The apartment door flew open before Natalie could even start looking for her keys, revealing the pudgy, mousy figure of her roommate, Whitney. She was still wearing the uniform for her job as a waitress in a ridiculous fifties-themed restaurant in the heart of Times Square: a poodle skirt and puffy sweater. Her brownish hair was tied back in a tight ponytail and her brightly painted red lips were pulled down in an angry scowl.

Not that the expression was different from any other night; she’d seemed pissed pretty much since the moment she moved in.

They had met via Craigslist a year and a half before when Natalie was looking for a roommate. In the end, she’d chosen Whitney not because they’d connected on any kind of natural level, but because she needed a paying body in the house who didn’t seem like she’d be too nosy. They had
nothing
in common, from their personalities to their hobbies, but they had always tolerated each other. Barely.

Today Natalie just wasn’t in the mood. Her head had started to throb about twenty minutes before and all she wanted to do was lie down in a dark room and try to pretend she hadn’t seen Blob dead in a freezer. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. She forced a tight, unnatural smile on her face.

“Hey, Whit—”

Whitney cut her off. “What the fuck, Natalie?”

Natalie blinked. She’d seen Whitney annoyed over dishes, music, the state of the bathroom . . . but never really
mad
. Now her full cheeks were splotched with red and her normally boring brown eyes were bright with what could only be described as rage.

“What? What the fuck
what,
Whitney?” Natalie asked as she counted to ten in her head.

She just wanted to go inside. Why couldn’t they talk about this shit inside? Why did they have to do it in the hallway, with its bright lights and buzzing exit sign that sounded like a shotgun in her head right now?

“You gave some random guy your key?” Whitney barked.

Natalie shook her head. What was Whitney talking about? She pushed past her roommate into the apartment and looked around. There was no random guy. Had her roommate let
all
the hamburger grease go to her head?

“What are you prattling on about?” she asked, her own voice elevating. “I
never
gave anyone my key.”

She was feeling a little . . . monstrous, actually. It wasn’t something she allowed very often, mostly because she feared she might not be able to control it once it started. It was
not
to be fucked with.

“Yeah. You did.” Whitney slammed the door and folded her arms. “He could have
raped
me, Natalie!”

Natalie shook her head as she dug into her pockets for her keys. Once she found them, Whitney would have to admit she was full of shit. Maybe even apologize . . . though she had never done so in the whole time they lived together. It was actually Natalie who normally said sorry for everything.

And she couldn’t think of why at the moment.

She gritted her teeth and kept patting her pockets. But there were no keys.

“Um,” she began.

Whitney threw her hands up and rolled her eyes. “
See?
You can’t even
fake
that you have your keys. You gave them to that guy, you gave him our address, and you let him come in here, without even consulting me first. I mean, shit, at least have some common courtesy.”

“Whitney—” she managed past gritted teeth.

“No, just don’t say another word. It’s too late now. This is the last straw. Your pick-up is in your bedroom waiting for you and I hope he can pay the rent, because
I’m
out of here.”

She turned on her heel and grabbed a purple duffel bag that read
Dance!
in swirly letters. Not that Whitney and her fat ass had ever danced.

“What are you talking about?” Natalie cried, stepping forward as panic gripped her.

The medical examiner’s office paid fine, but not well enough to cover one hundred percent of the rent even on her modest place. It was in Manhattan, for Christ’s sake! Not the greatest part, but still . . .
Manhattan
!

“Look, I’ve put up with your hours, the fact that you come home with blood all over you at least once a week, your nineteenth-century music choices, and your general . . .” Her roommate waved her hands at Natalie. “Your general
weirdness
. But this is it. A friend at the diner has a spot opening up in her place and I’m moving out. I’ll be back for my stuff tomorrow.”

“No—” Natalie said with a shake of her head. “Wait.”

But Whitney pushed past her into the hallway without another word and slammed the door behind her. Natalie flinched as the reverberation of the door made her sensitive ears tingle, and then she turned back into the apartment.

Every light was on, but somehow she still felt . . .
scared
. Scared like kids had been scared of her for generations. Except she was afraid of the light, not the dark. Of what it might reveal when she went into her bedroom and saw whoever had somehow gotten her keys and was waiting for her.

It wasn’t a common feeling, that fear. Normal people couldn’t best her. They underestimated her strength.

But what if it wasn’t just a normal person waiting for her? What if it was the same person who had incited a crowd to kill Ellis? Or frozen Blob alive? Human or not, they had managed to get past the monster defenses of both her friends. Who was to say they wouldn’t get past hers?

Would she end up on a funeral pyre tonight, a dead monster no one even missed?

No way. That was
not
going to happen. She reached out and grabbed an antique silver candlestick on the console table by the door. Dear old Dad’s castle had been a good source of décor, for sure. Décor that doubled as protection.

She moved down the hallway, candlestick poised above her head. As she reached her closed bedroom door and touched the knob, her hand started to shake.

“Come on, you’re a monster,” she muttered, and then threw the door open with a horrifying guttural cry she hadn’t executed in over a hundred years.

What she found inside, though, wasn’t some human ready to kill her. No, instead Alec was sprawled across her bed, reading a three-month-old issue of
Cosmo
. He glanced up as she entered and grinned.

“Nice candlestick,” Alec quipped. “And that monster yell was killer. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Natalie continued to stare at him, candlestick raised above her head and confusion on her face. Not that he could blame her. She hadn’t exactly invited him here. Which was kind of the point.

He closed the magazine. “Hope you don’t mind, I took the sex quiz since you hadn’t. Turns out I’m kind of a whore, but good to my friends. Accurate.”

Natalie blinked and then slowly lowered the candlestick to set it on the dresser by her door. “Alec?”

He almost had to laugh at her blank, perplexed expression.

“Yes, we’ve met before.” He pushed to his feet and extended a hand. “Alec. And you’re . . .
Natalie,
right?”

She didn’t smile, but reached up to rub her eyes.

“What the hell are you doing here?
How
did you get here?”

Alec knew what she meant, but he was in no hurry to get into it. “Same way you did, I assume,” he said with a shrug. “Subway.”

She glared at him. “How did you get into my apartment, dickhead?”

He laughed. Hardly anyone used
dickhead
as a curse anymore. Natalie was a throwback in so many ways.

“Oh, that!”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and held out her keys, complete with the little pink cartridge of pepper spray attached to the key ring.

“Here you go,” he said. “Though I don’t know why you have pepper spray. You’ve got monster strength and good ears. Or is it for show, since so many women in the city carry it for protection? You constantly think of all the details when it comes to fitting in. I always sort of admired you for that.”

She blinked as if she didn’t really understand the words coming out of his mouth.

“You
stole
my keys,” she said, more to herself than to him. “When?”

“Blob’s apartment,” he said with a shrug. “Figured we could meet here and decompress.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it was as good a start as any.

“Asshole.” She advanced on him with a scowl befitting any monster. “You realize you pissed my roommate off—and now she’s moving out!”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah, I heard her through the door. But I never would have raped her.”

Natalie shook her head. “Am I in
The Twilight Zone
? Is this really happening?”

“I don’t know about
The Twilight Zone,
but that’s not the point. The point is . . . sorry about your roommate.”

For a moment, Natalie just stared at him, but then she pressed her hands into his chest and shoved as hard as she could. To Alec’s surprise, he staggered back a step. Just a few hours before, he’d been musing on how Natalie never went monster . . . but here she was, brown eyes flashing, dark hair flying around her face, and all her impressive strength on display.

She was a monster. And for the first time Alec truly saw her. She was . . .
hot,
actually. He’d never noticed just how pretty her face was or the way her eyes sparkled.

“You aren’t sorry!” Natalie growled, a fitting interruption to his very weird thoughts. “I can see in your eyes that this is just a big joke to you, just like everything else is. Well, some of us have to
live
. And work. And pay our damn rent, which is why I had Whitney living here with me in the first place. It wasn’t for her awesome company, by any means.”

Alec knew all that. But he wrinkled his brow anyway, like he didn’t have a plan. Nope, not at all.

“Come on. She’ll get over it in the morning.”

“No.” Natalie sank down on the bed Alec had vacated and rubbed her temples. “This time, I think she might not. She was going on and on about all the things she doesn’t like about living with me.”

“Do you
really
listen to nineteenth-century music?” he asked.

She glared up at him. “Seriously?”

“Sorry.” He shrugged. Now was the time to announce his plan to Natalie. “I’ll tell you what . . . I find myself currently, um, between residences, as well. How about I move in and
I’ll
help you cover the rent, huh?”

Natalie’s mouth dropped open. “Wait, you got kicked out of your apartment?”

Alec nodded. It had happened a day before. The notice had said something about excessive noise infractions (like it was his fault that he thrashed and howled when the full moon was close).

He had intended to mention it at the meeting, but then Blob hadn’t shown and looking for him was the priority. When he was hanging out with Natalie, he’d kind of remembered some roommate problems she mentioned now and then, and . . .
poof
. Somehow he’d ended up with her keys and a potential solution to his impending homelessness.

Natalie was still talking. “Are you trying to tell me you just
happened
to create enough problems to make my roommate move out?”

He didn’t answer, but raised both eyebrows.

“You . . . you . . . mutt!”

“Hey! Hurtful!”

With a groan, she flopped down on her back on the bed and threw an arm over her eyes. “You did this on purpose.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, just stared at her. Well, first at her boobs, then at her. She was pretty pissed. Like, legitimately pissed, not Linda-getting-attention pissed.

When she moved her arm to stare at him, he actually felt sheepish.

Mmm. Sheep.

“You did, didn’t you?” Natalie asked as she pulled herself into a seated position, almost as if she hoped he would deny it.

He shrugged. “I heard you mention a couple times what a bitch she was . . . and you were right, by the way. I tried to be nice to her when she got here. I explained I wasn’t a random guy but a friend, and she still started yelling like a banshee on crack. Drama queen.”

Natalie sighed. “Yeah, a little. But—”

He interrupted her. He could see he was working past Rage Natalie and he couldn’t stop now. “That girl totally did not deserve a nice pad like this or a roommate like you.
And
I admit . . . when it gets close to the full moon, I . . . well, sometimes I trash a place, so it’s hard to keep an apartment on my own.”

Natalie shook her head. “You think the fact that you trash your apartments is going to be a selling point for me letting you live here?”

“You have monster strength,” Alec pointed out. “When you shoved me, I staggered, and that’s pretty rare, having a bit of monster strength myself. You could help me control myself. Lock me up in a room during full moons and stuff.”

Natalie just stared at him, but her expression had softened a little. Alec could see he was close to getting what he wanted.

“C’mon, Nat!” he pleaded. “Wouldn’t it be nice to live with someone you didn’t have to hide your true identity from? Someone who doesn’t mind weird music, or at least remembers when it was cool, and keeps your same hours?”