Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

I stood in the eye of the storm—or ground zero. The scene was calm now the riot of ricocheting balls had passed, but it had left a swathe of destruction behind.

Victor arrived and casually assessed the carnage while the rest of us checked for mortal wounds. “I see.”

“It was Adam.” Zee pointed. His wings had popped out during the pandemonium, probably from shock.

Victor sighed.

“It happened so fast,” I admitted.

“Was it an accident, perchance?” Victor asked.

“It was exactly that.”

A distraught manager sprinted toward the carnage and stood on a bouncy ball. Her bottom half went up, her top half fell. Victor, being the dashing sort, caught her before she could break her neck and cause the well-known Scandinavian furniture company to sue us for manslaughter.

“Why leave a million bouncy projectiles where they might explode?!” Zee whined, clutching his tail, probably to prevent it from whipping up more damage.

Victor righted the woman on her feet. She huffed and straightened her uniform. “Sir, sirs!? Why did you molest the balls?”

“Excuse-moi.” Zee dropped his tail and realigned his wings with a ruffle. “The balls molested us.”

She gaped at the scene. “How is this level of destruction even possible?”

“It’s a skill,” Victor said, unhelpfully. “As you two are clearly enjoying yourselves, I have a shopping list to complete.” He strode off, wheeling the bright yellow basket behind him.

“You’d better still have my spiky dick in there!” Zee called.

“His... uh... He means his cactus,” I told the manager. Which didn’t sound any better, honestly. I wasn’t sure she cared anyway. She continued to eye the debris and clutter, twitching every few seconds, traumatized by the destruction.

I began picking up some balls, but with nowhere to put the lethal little things, I quickly stuffed them into my pockets. I’d find somewhere to stash them later. “So... uhm... I guess, Zee, we should maybe... uh... just... get the thing for the thing...” Sidestepping toward the kids’ bedroom displays, I beckoned Zee to hurry up, and together we scooted away, leaving the manager twitching and muttering to herself.

“Nobody died ,” Zee mumbled. His wings fizzed away, dusting purple sparks behind him as they vanished.

“I know, right? It was just a few balls.”

“It’s not our fault they exploded.”

“Exactly.”

We ambled on, oohing over various displays of kitchen cutlery and wall art, then into the drapes section with its enormous floor-to-ceiling curtains on racks. Gremlins had eaten most of our curtains during the last few weeks, meaning we did need a few more, and they weren’t on Victor’s list so this was something useful we could do.

I studied some of the tall racks, looking at colors and thickness. And price. Yikes.

“Hey, Kitten? Where’d the arrows go?”

Stepping back from the curtains, I scanned the shiny floor around us for the guiding arrows. There didn’t appear to be any nearby. There weren’t any signs leading the way either. “We’ll just head back the way... we came...” If I could remember it. The shelves of cushions and rows of curtains all looked the same. “Didn’t we take a left at the cow cushion?”

“Yeah...” Zee shrugged. “That was right over—” He poofed away, was gone a few beats, and poofed back to my side. “Nope. Not back there. Maybe over there?” He pointed toward a gloomy section of the store.

“It’s fine...” I picked an aisle and headed down it. “These aisles all lead back to the same place anyway.” But the more we walked, the darker and sparser the aisles became. And where were the other shoppers?

A few minutes of walking past stacks of rugs, and it was clear the arrows had gone. “I don’t think we’re in the right part of the store anymore.”

“But we followed the fuckin’ arrows.” Zee worried his bottom lip between his sharp teeth.

The store lights dimmed and a disembodied voice came over the Tannoy. “Please note, this store will be closing in fifteen minutes. All shoppers please make your way to the checkouts.”

“It’s fine,” I said again, hoping to ease Zee’s concern. “It’s this way.” I hoped... and set off in a new direction. The aisles had to lead somewhere. We couldn’t have wandered too far off the main pathways. The store wasn’t a subdimensional portal to a mirror realm that looked exactly like ours but happened to be devoid of all life... That wasn’t likely... Right?

“Where is everyone?” Zee asked, whispering now.

Maybe walking aimlessly wasn’t a great idea. I stopped by a shelf of coffee mugs. “Try your phone.”

“Oh, fuck, yeah.” He pulled his phone from the pocket of his little shorts. “No signal.”

“Store closing in five minutes.”

“Ugh.” He frowned and turned on the spot, looking around us. We were lost in a maze of blue and yellow mugs and bowls. “Imma take a look ahead,” he said. “Wait here. Do not move.”

“Yeah, but?—”

He poofed away, leaving me to huff a sigh. The last time he and Victor had told me to stay I’d been stalked by a robot murder dog. This store wasn’t Reynard Technologies, but there was something creepy about the place, especially when empty.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and aimlessly studied the different mugs.

Victor must have noticed we were missing by now. He’d be looking for us. This was just some silly mix-up with the arrows, and we’d be back in the right aisle at any moment.

Zee poofed back. “So... I didn’t find an arrow, or a way out—everything looks the same. But I did find this.” He showed me his phone’s screen and what looked like four jagged grooves carved into a drywall.

“What’s that?”

“I know exactly what that is.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “That is a fuckin’ neon sign that says”—he swept his hands through the air—“ Leave Now ! Do not pass Go. Do not collect Daddy Vampire. Get the fuck out!”

We had been trying to do that. “Okay. But what is it?”

“It’s claws, Kitten. Big claws!” He raised both his hands and bent his fingers, showing off the shiny nails—also known as claws. But even his looked small compared to whatever creature had made the gouges in the wall.

“Oh.” It didn’t have to mean anything bad. “Maybe it’s old, and they didn’t get around to decorating that part of the store?”

“They left fuck-off ginormous claw marks in the walls so human spawn can get their daily dose of nightmare fuel?”

“Wait, that was in the kids’ section?”

“Right over a cutesy crib.”

I winced—“Yikes”—and started walking again. “Can’t you just poof outside and find someone?”

“I would, but nothing is where it’s supposed to be, and I haven’t found an outside wall. Even if I did, I’m not sure what I’d be poofing into on the other side. Everything feels fucked-up.”

“Yeah.” It was definitely time to double our efforts into leaving.

“This store is now closed. Have a good night.”

We hurried on, jogging but not running. Running might attract whatever had left those claw marks.

Everything was going to be fine. There would be a way out. The store couldn’t go on forever.

Halloween hadn’t been that long ago—another strange human custom. Humans did all sorts of weird things for Halloween, such as dress themselves as skeletons and pretend they were being chased by axe murderers. Zee’d had a great time dressed in black and purple leather while wielding an axe and stalking the hotel’s corridors, until we’d gotten complaints that his performance had been a bit too realistic. So maybe those claw marks had been left over from their Halloween decorations?

The aisle ended up ahead. We’d take a right and be back on the arrows. I was sure of it.

Zee’s pace quickened. He turned at the end of the shelf. “It’s probably right around this—” And stopped dead. I plowed into him, teetered over someone sleeping on the floor, and grabbed Zee’s arm to keep from falling.

“Woah, there...” Zee scowled at the sleeping form. “Hey lady, we’re walkin’ here.”

The person didn’t move. Or respond.

“What a strange place to fall asleep.”

He toed her shoulder with his sneaker, and when she didn’t move, realisation sunk in. She wasn’t sleeping. “Oh, fuck. Are we like, fuckin’ murder magnets or something?”

She wore a store uniform, and as the word murder echoed around us, a pool of glossy, dark red blood creeped out from under her, toward our shoes.

“Wait. We didn’t do this, right?” Zee asked, face stricken.

“No, what? No. Wait, did we?” The bouncing balls couldn’t have murdered someone... That wasn’t a thing that happened. “No. This wasn’t us.” We had accidentally murdered a few people lately, but we usually knew about it at the time.

“Good.”

“Although, if we didn’t, someone else did, I guess.”

“Right.” Zee scanned the gloomy shelving units, only half-stocked with what looked like rejects and returns. He scooted me along beside him, and we hurried on, reaching a plastic-plant section.

Zee pinged a trailing ivy, then batted it out of his face when it came back at him. “So... imma just put this out there. Are we fucked right now? Like... are we trapped in some weird Scandinavian furniture dimension with something that’s slicing up drywall and unaliving the staff? Because that’s what it kinda feels like. But also, this was supposed to be a normal afternoon out with Daddy Fancy Fangs to buy a fuckin’ shelf and some fairy lights for my pole. Yes, that pole—I heard you thinkin’ it.”

“Maybe. Apart from the pole thing.”

“Okay. Fuck. Fine. I knew I shoulda brought Shareen.” He stopped in the middle of an aisle. “Christmas can suck my bouncy balls.”

I scanned the shelves, unsure if we’d passed this way already. “I don’t think aimlessly wandering around is helping.”

“What other options we got, Kitten?”

“We should go back to the bedroom section and hole up there for the night. If there’s something here that wants to eat us, it probably won’t find us there.”

Zee cocked his head. “You mean hide?”

“I mean... yeah, I guess. Hiding’s not so bad.”

“Ugh. So which way are the fancy bedrooms?”

“Let’s retrace our steps. We’ll find it . . .”

We turned around and headed back, stepping over the unalived staff member again. Whoever had killed her hadn’t cared about cleanup or getting caught. That wasn’t a good sign. Leaving the body on display meant they were either insane or powerful. Or both.

Passing by shelves of cutlery, Zee picked up a metal spork.

“What’s that for?” I whispered.

He made stabbing motions. “In case we get company,” he whispered back, poking the spork’s prongs to test their sharpness.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him his own claws were longer and more deadly than a spork. “Wouldn’t a knife be?—”

He shoved a knife into my hand. I thumbed its edge. “It’s pretty blunt.”

“If we find a sword section, you can switch it out. Until then, you get a table knife.”

It was better than nothing. I dropped it into my pocket alongside the collection of rubber balls.

We pushed on, moving quietly, keeping low. Only the hum of air-conditioning ducts high above our heads accompanied our soft shuffling.

“Do you think Fancy Fangs is okay?” Zee whispered. “Not that I care or anything. I don’t. But he’s looking for us, right?”

“Oh, for sure.”

The bigger question was why hadn’t Victor found us yet?

We rounded a bend and were met by a wall of twinkling lights, a forest of giant plastic Christmas trees, fake-snow blankets strung over the aisle to make a long, wintery tunnel, and a whole lot of creepy gnome yard ornaments wearing homicidal grins.

“What in the flying fucking reindeer is this creepshow?”

“It’s the holiday section.” We definitely hadn’t been through here yet.

Zee’s wide eyes quickly narrowed. “No way am I going through the twinkly fuckin’ snow tunnel of death. Nah, dawg. Nope. Fuck. That. With a side order of Fuck No , and a dessert of Fuck Off .”

We hadn’t arrived that way, so the bed section definitely had to be behind us. I didn’t much relish the idea of walking through that tunnel of wintery doom either. “It’s okay... let’s... uhm... go back...”

A crackling sound scratched from the store speakers and tinkling music began to play from all around. “Do you hear what I hear...”

Icy fingers of dread tickled down my spine.

Zee straightened, pinched his lips together, and pointed up. He grimaced and gave his head a rigid shake, rattling his horn-ring. “Nope. Nuh-uh. Hello nope sleigh. We leavin’ this fuckin’ creepy-ass reindeer ride to nightmare hell.”

I was on board with that idea.

Zee grabbed my hand and hauled me in the opposite direction from the holiday nightmare display, leaving the creepy music and weird gnomes fading behind us. But as it quietened, a hearty “ho, ho, ho” rang out, that didn’t sound as though it belonged to the music.

The fine hairs on my arms lifted.

We weren’t alone.