Chapter Twelve

The next morning, Charlie woke up, saw Odin and was instantly happy. Daz made coffee and Renee made them all waffles. They sat at the breakfast nook in the kitchen, eating in quiet companionship, broken by Charlie’s occasional questions about the cat.

If it wasn’t for the need to catch the person stalking her son, Renee might have melted into a little puddle of domestic bliss. Instead, she just tried to memorize the scene, in case it vanished in a puff of air.

Charlie polished off his waffles, scraping the plate with the flat of his fork to get the leftover maple syrup. “I want to talk to Odin. I bet he’ll come out of the crate for me.”

“Shower first,” Renee said. “It’s been two days, and cats have sensitive noses.”

“I will!” Charlie tore off down the hallway to the shower.

“He seems good today,” Daz said.

“So far.” The habit of always searching for signs of the next crisis with Charlie would take a long time to go away, if ever. “How about you?”

He put a hand around her waist and drew her close to him. “Never been better. And you?”

She put her hands around his neck. “Aside from the fact my home seems under siege and there’s someone after my son, I’m good.”

“Things that I will fix ASAP,” he said.

“You are very optimistic this morning.”

“I have good reason to be.” He kissed her. “What’s that logo on the T-shirt you’re wearing today?”

“Blackhawks. They’re a DC Comics special-ops unit. No superpowers, just well-trained fighters, including Lady Blackhawk. It seemed appropriate for today.”

“Perfect. You’ll have to get me one.”

“I will.” She and Daz were a long way from perfect, Renee thought, but they were closer to it than yesterday.

Charlie showered in record time. Renee wondered if he’d washed up that well or simply let water run over himself, but she let it go. Her son was happy.

They walked the dogs first. Even Charlie agreed because as eager as he was to talk to Odin, Thor and Loki kept insisting on going outside.

The sun shone bright in a cloudless sky, a day so beautiful that she wondered if the past few days had been a dream and paradise might vanish if she closed her eyes. Only patches of snow remained on the outskirts of the Phoenix Institute grounds.

She and Charlie romped with the dogs, tossing sticks for them to retrieve. Thor and Loki did their business, and they went back inside.

Beth joined them in their quarters. Renee sent Thor and Loki to one of the bedrooms to keep them out of the way while they talked to the cat.

“Thor and Loki say they won’t hurt him, but Odin doesn’t believe it,” Charlie said.

“Odin’s about a tenth their size. I don’t blame him,” Renee said.

Charlie sat down in the living room and opened the door to Odin’s crate. The cat didn’t move.

“He’s worried about all the new people,” Charlie said.

“You can’t tell him to come to you?” she asked.

“Ma, just because I can talk to him, it doesn’t mean I can order him around. Jeez,” he said.

She put up her hands and smiled. “My mistake.” At least not yet, she thought. Leave that conversation to another day.

“We’ll wait over here while you coax him out.”

Renee motioned to Beth and Daz to back off.

“Are you overhearing what they’re saying to each other?” Renee whispered to Beth.

Beth nodded. “Odin is reluctant to come out. He’s really scared.”

“Weird,” Renee said. “Because he didn’t seem at all scared of me or Daz before. Maybe it’s being brought from the house.”

“His old master coming back plus the bear attack probably freaked him out,” Daz said.

They watched in silence as Odin finally scooted out from the crate and into Charlie’s lap. Charlie grinned at them. Renee looked at the other two and in unspoken agreement ventured over to the pair first.

She sat down next to Charlie and scratched Odin’s ears. The poor scared thing even purred. She could get to like cats. Okay, she could get to like this cat.

Beth and Daz eventually joined them. Odin stayed complacent in Charlie lap.

“Charlie, we’re going to do something that might be scary to you,” Renee said. “In order to catch all the bad guys, we need to know about Odin’s mean man. But Odin’s memories of the mean man are going to be pretty rough stuff.”

Charlie nodded. “I know. Odin tried to show me once but I told him to stop because I was afraid.”

“If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to do it,” Renee said.

“What happens if I don’t?”

“We keep investigating and we’ll come up with something. But don’t worry. You and your mom will be safe here in the meantime,” Daz said.

Charlie narrowed his eyes. “You mean we can’t go home until you find the mean man?”

“No, that’s not what he said.” Renee shot Daz a glance. He hadn’t meant to pressure Charlie, but that was how their son had taken it. “We’ll be safe whatever you do. Whatever you feel comfortable with, Charlie.”

He bent down his head to Odin. Renee held her breath.

After a minute, Charlie raised his head. “The man hurt Odin. He’s gonna hurt more animals. Batman would stop him but he’s not real. But I’m real and I wanna stop him.”

Oh, Charlie. Renee sat next to her son and hugged him.

“Cut it out, Mom. You’re getting too mushy.”

“Okay.” She put her arm around his shoulders.

“Protecting animals runs in the family,” Daz said.

Renee could tell what Daz was thinking just from the expression on his face. He was remembering how she’d jumped in front of a bear to protect her dog. “So how do we do this?”

“We sit together and hold hands. That way, we can all be in your head if anything gets scary, okay?” Beth asked.

“Okay!”

“Give me your hand?” Beth asked.

Renee kept her arm around Charlie’s shoulders. Daz enfolded her hand. Beth and Daz held hands to complete the connection.

One big, happy family, Renee thought.

“Here we go. Charlie will talk to Odin and I’ll listen, and connect everyone else in,” Beth said. “All we’re looking for is a good image of the mean man or any clue to his identity.”

“This is going to be interesting,” Renee said.

Her perception abruptly shifted from the room around them to Charlie’s point of view. Just as she was getting used to seeing Odin sleeping in Charlie’s lap through his eyes, the visual abruptly shifted once more to a tiny room with bars.

She was seeing Odin’s memories from when he was in the cat carrier. Contentment mixed with fear colored the scene.

“Take us earlier in his memories, Charlie.”

The carrier coalesced into a larger room. Furniture seemed impossibly big but not as large as the man looming above Odin. Unlike the intruder at her house that Daz had described, Odin’s “mean man” was dressed normally, in casual clothes.

Fear was all over this memory and she could feel herself as Odin crouching below the man, terrified, with memories of being smacked. Bits of the man’s voice floated down to Odin. He sounded incredibly familiar.

I know this person, Renee thought. If only Odin could give her a better visual.

The man knelt down on one knee next to Odin. Good, good, she thought, now we’ll have him.

But the face was all out of proportion, seen through cat’s perspective. Renee took a deep breath and tried to focus on the person.

“I know him, Mom!”

The man’s eyes loomed closer. He looked very familiar, maybe it was—

The man smiled like a Cheshire cat.

Gotcha!

Charlie screamed.

Inside Charlie’s mind, Odin’s mean man grabbed her son. Renee leapt at him. The man backhanded her and she fell to the floor. Blood trickled from her mouth and she froze, unable to think straight. This was a memory. They were sitting on the floor in a living room.

How could this be real?

Charlie’s screams sounded damn real.

The man ran away, holding Charlie tight against him. Real or not, it didn’t matter. She had to save her son.

“Charlie!” She took off after them.

The man looked back at her, grinned again, and waved his hand. Knives appeared from thin air and zoomed at her. She threw up her hands to protect her face. A knife embedded itself in her palm. She screamed Charlie’s name again, a cry of frustration and pain.

Blood oozed down her palm and onto her arm.

“He’s mine now!” Odin’s master ran toward the blackness at the edge of this…whatever this was. In a few steps, his body wavered, as if he was going to vanish in much the same way as he’d appeared, except this time he had Charlie.

She ripped the knife out of her palm, shredding her hand into two pieces. Yet there was no pain.

She threw the knife at the man holding her son.

The blade sank into his back all the way up to the hilt. He fell sideways. Charlie scrambled out of his arms and ran toward her.

“Mom!”

The closer she got to him, the more the world took shape around them. Now she was in her yard, outside her home, and was back in that damned snowstorm again. Ice and snow swirled around her, cutting her off from her son.

“Charlie!” she screamed. The wind whipped away her voice. But she heard a faint answering “Mom!” and plunged in the maelstrom toward the sound of his voice.

A hand enclosed her throat from behind. The creator of this nightmare closed off her breathing and twisted her arm against her back. She kicked out, flailing, and hit only empty air.

Absently, she noticed her hand was back to its normal shape.

This wasn’t real. And yet it was.

“You shouldn’t be inside this, that shouldn’t be possible,” the voice hissed into her ear. “But we’ll take care of it.”

He dragged her sideways, and she realized she was at edge of the cliff where she and Charlie had been trapped. “This way you can’t come after him, ever.”

“Mom!” Charlie screamed.

Her attacker lifted her off her feet to fling her over the edge. She had no leverage. She couldn’t stop him. But that didn’t mean she was helpless.

She’d promised Charlie that she’d protect him from the mean man.

Just as her captor tossed her, Renee curled her fingers into his coat and dragged him over the edge with her.

“You’re coming with me, asshole!”

They fell.

His face came even with hers, and she finally recognized who he was.

Fuck. Him? Oh, that made too much sense. She should have known.

And then they hit bottom.