Loose Changeling: A Changeling Wars Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

folded away into a harmless-looking tube. He turned.
    “I'll bet you want to know what those were,” he said.
    I crossed my arms. For the first time since he had walked in the door, my head felt clear. “Yes.”
    He pursed his lips, walked over to the briefcase, and dropped the metal tube back inside. “And you're probably wondering why they're after you.”
    “Yes again.”
    Kailen looked at me, eyebrows raised. “No chance I can convince you that they were just burglars dressed in frightening costumes?” He snapped the briefcase shut, but didn't, I noticed, lift it from the table.
    I didn't even dignify that with an answer. It just hadn't been a good enough day for me to have any sense of humor. “You're going to tell me what this was all about, or I'm calling the police.”
    “Okay, okay,” Kailen said, hands held up in a gesture of surrender, “but don't blame me if you don't believe me. Those were hobgoblins. Nasty critters. Very grabby, as you noticed. They get a hold of you with any two of those arms, they'll tear you into pieces. They may look foggy, but cut them in any of their vitals, and they dissolve.”
    “Hobgoblins.” I repeated, slowly.
    He shrugged. “People are discovering new species all the time—guess they just haven't gotten around to hobgoblins yet.”
    Something—call it instincts, call it a bullshit meter, call it whatever you like—told me he wasn't giving me the whole story. “And you're a lawyer who's here to protect me,” I said flatly.
    “Yep.”
    I made my way to the kitchen counter, where the only landline phone in the house sat in its cradle. “I'm calling the police.” I picked up the phone. I pressed the call button and stopped. The number to the police station wasn’t something I’d memorized, and 9-1-1 was overkill at this point.
    The light tickle of a breeze brushed against my neck. I turned. Kailen was gone, as was the briefcase. It was as if he'd never been there at all. I stepped gingerly around the island, phone held in my hand like a weapon. When I reached the area where carpet met tile, I lowered my hand. The only reminders of what had happened were the black stains on my rug. I looked to the right. My front door remained shut.
    A squeaking sound, loud and insistent, began to emanate from the cupboard next to my microwave. “And there's more?” I said out loud, to no one in particular. I went over and opened the door. There, on the lowest shelf, was the brown mouse. It had chewed a hole in my bag of pasta. The spilled noodles neatly spelled, “MEJANE.”
    I slammed the cupboard door shut, grabbed my keys and purse, and fled the house, my heart leaping in my chest.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    I didn't sleep as well as I'd planned to that night. I’d wandered the grocery store, picking up a few things before returning home. After dinner, I even encouraged myself with a nightcap. Images of the hobgoblins kept flashing in my mind, despite my best efforts to forget. And then there was the fact that this was only the second night after I’d caught Owen in bed with Mousy Jane. It made me wonder when that had started, and whether or not anything between Owen and me had been real at all. I tossed, turned, and managed to fall asleep somewhere in the realm of two 'o clock.
    The dreams followed. Dreams of monsters made of black smoke, with six arms and clawed fingers. One had its cold hand on my arm, gripping it so tightly I could only flop from side to side, helpless. As I watched, one of its other hands approached from the other direction, narrowing the gap between us. It seized my opposite shoulder. A burning pain started at the center of my chest as the creature pulled with unnatural strength.
    I woke screaming.
    A few things happened all at once.
    The light at my bedside flicked on without me touching it. The shock of the bright light in my eyes made me yell all the louder. A figure leapt up beside my bed, and I saw the quick, indistinct flash of steel. I