CHAPTER

Three

JULIE

The girl living at Mrs. Sudek’s place is pretty cute. Innocent-looking. Sweet. Like she spends all her time studying and worrying that she’s not going to make straight A’s on her report card. Julie wonders if she’ll see her around again. Probably. It’s a small town.

“I could pay one of you to hang out in her yard,” she says to the monster. “Then I’ll definitely get to see her again. What do you say to that?”

The monster’s still curled up in its cage, which she strapped into the front seat. She’s supposed to stash them in the back of the van, but sometimes she lets them ride shotgun. This one’s not particularly chatty.

“Girl,” it says, in that low hissing voice they all have.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a girl, she’s a girl.” Julie pulls up to the blinking red stoplight at the edge of town. “Figures I’d have to take shit about it from y’all too.” She guns the van forward, out toward the highway that leads back into civilization. Only one direction out of town, unless you have a boat.

“Girl,” the monster says.

“Christ, learn a new word.” The van’s the only car out on the road. People don’t drive this stretch of Highway 316 that often, since it takes you past the power plant where the monsters have made their home. Instead everybody takes Comal Road around the bayou, even though it adds about thirty minutes to the trip. “Is this some new trick?” she asks, glancing over at the monster’s cage. “Learning one word so that you qualify for sentience and I have to waste time hauling you back to the power plant?”

“Girl,” the monster says.

Julie sighs. Honestly, she still hasn’t bothered to learn all the rules and bylaws governing the relationship between the good people of Indianola and the monsters who made this spot of Texas their home; no one else in town seems to care, and Julie has big plans to get the hell out of Indianola as soon as she graduates. What do you need to know about monsters once you leave the county limits? Nothing, that’s what, because nothing is exactly what you’ll remember about the stupid things anyway.

The monster turns around in the cage and settles its head down on its paws. Weird that it had gotten so far away from the power plant—the ones who can’t talk usually stay close, since they’re considered vermin and can be exterminated. A threat to the human population, that’s what the official documents say. Julie doesn’t like the idea of killing them, even though it was the monsters themselves who said it was okay, that it’s like killing rats or deer. It almost never happens, and she’s never had to, but still.

They drive on. The edges of Indianola disappear into the fields of pale grass, already turning yellow in the summer heat. The radio station crackles and then disappears, the way it always does—once you pass the power plant it’ll kick up again, as strong as ever. Julie switches it off, though, because she knows from experience that sometimes you hear voices in the static.

The power plant materializes on the horizon.

Julie has seen it dozens of times, but it’s always a surprise, and it always leaves her with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It looks like a painting on the poster for a science fiction movie, a convoluted tangle of gray pipes, twisting and winding on top of one another. At night the pipes twinkle with amber lights. Julie’s only seen that once. She knows you don’t come out here at night.

There’s smoke today, a thin trickle of it seeping out of the plant and flattening against the pale sky.

“So what do y’all got cooking in there?” Julie asks, trying to deflect her nervousness.

“Girl.”

Julie shivers, her chest tightening. “Jesus, I hope not.” She pulls up to the entrance gate. The KEEP OUT sign’s still there, dotted with rust. It’s not the sign that keeps people away. Not even dumbass football players try breaking in here. Everyone in town knows it’s bad news.

And yet her father won’t give her a job at the video store like she keeps asking, and so here she is, punching in the access code.

The gate screeches open. Julie eases in. The monster shuffles in its cage, trying to sit up.

“Almost got you home,” she says, cruising down the narrow main road. The power plant rises up on both sides, hemming her in. Julie clenches the steering wheel tighter. The van and the smoke are the only things moving in the entire plant.

Finally, she makes it to the main building, where Aldraa spends his days. She parks in the usual spot, climbs out, heaves the monster’s cage out with a grunt. It’s hotter here than in town, the sun reflecting off all these acres of asphalt. When it catches the metal in the pipes, it throws off broken shards of white light.

Julie takes a deep breath, puts in her earplugs, tells herself nothing’s going to happen, and then goes inside.

Being inside is even worse than being outside. The monsters have the buildings fixed up the way they like, warm and humid and crawling with strange dark green plants that look sort of like moss. Julie does her best not to look at those plants, because when you do, you see that they twitch and pulse like they’re breathing.

“Julie Alvarez.” Aldraa’s voice booms through the room, rattling like thunder, reverberating across her eardrums. It hurts even with the earplugs. “You are here.”

He always knows who it is. “Yes, I’m here.” Julie sets the cage on a clear patch of floor, where she can see the speckled tile from when this used to be a place for humans, and peers into the thick, dingy dark. “One of your boys got out.”

A pause. Julie’s heart thuds. She wants to drop off the monster and leave, the way she’s supposed to. Except today she’s got some questions for Aldraa.

“I’d like to speak to you.” Her blood rushes in her ears. “I need to ask you something.”

Another pause. Aldraa’s breathing somewhere in the recesses of the lobby. The monster rattles against its cage, and Julie kneels down and opens the latch. The monster shoots out, scurrying into a tangle of plants.

The floor shakes. Once, twice. Footsteps.

Julie straightens up. She braces herself.

Aldraa appears.

He’s enormous, almost as tall as the high lobby roof, and shaped like a person but not quite. His proportions are off, his arms and torso too long and twisting, his head too small. Julie tries not to look straight at him, but still she feels the beginning throb of a migraine in her right temple.

“What do you want?” he says.

“You’re in violation of the agreement,” Julie says, keeping her eyes on a spot just above his left shoulder. There’s something about him that makes her dizzy, like he’s much more solid, much more there, than the things around him. And that includes her.

“I haven’t left the power plant in forty-nine years.”

The headache surges in time with the beat of his voice.

“I realize that. But the monster I just brought in was at an Indianola citizen’s house. In town.” She points off at the undulating vines, her hand shaking. “The only thing he could say was ‘girl,’ so he could have been exterminated.”

“But you didn’t exterminate him.” Aldraa kneels down, the floor shuddering beneath him. He opens his mouth and reveals the rows of sharp gleaming teeth through which he makes a rattling noise that bores deep into Julie’s brain. She cries out, digs the palm of her hand into her temple.

The monster from Mrs. Sudek’s house slinks out of the plants and scurries up Aldraa’s arm.

“Why did he say ‘girl’?” Julie asks, drawing herself up, trying to eke out her bravery. She tells herself that she’s protected, that no harm can come to her.

“Why do you assume there’s a reason?” Aldraa does something with his mouth that’s meant to be a smile; it’s something he learned from humans but doesn’t work with the muscles of his face. Seeing it sends a wave of nausea rushing through Julie’s stomach and she has to take a deep breath to stop from throwing up.

“Because,” Julie starts. The nausea worsens; her thoughts are becoming gummy and loose like melting candy, turning to slime in the room’s humidity. He’s doing this to her. Aldraa. “Because there’s a girl there, a new girl—you aren’t going to hurt her, are you?” She can’t remember much about the new girl. Only a flash of green eyes, a gleam of pale skin. The phone call—Brittany saying Got a monster down at Mrs. Sudek’s.

“Stop,” she says. “Please, whatever you’re doing with my head, just stop screwing around with me.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes you do.” Julie takes a deep breath and concentrates.

“Are you certain Lezir was in the town?” Aldraa strokes the monster’s back with his long vine-like fingers. Gray fur ripples through them.

“Yes. Dammit, Aldraa, stop. Answer my question.” Her voice sounds far away and muted. “You know you have to. It’s part of the treaty, if I think something’s wrong, or that someone’s going to be hurt—”

“We are going to hurt no one!”

His voice lashes out like a thunderstorm, and Julie stumbles backward, clamping her hands over her ears. The monster from Mrs. Sudek’s house dives off Aldraa’s arm and disappears into the green darkness, and the plants rustle and sway around her, despite the absolute stillness of the air.

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Aldraa says, softer this time, even though she can still feel his voice inside her bones.

“I’ll go to the mayor,” Julie spits out.

“We’ve done nothing wrong,” he says again, and Julie knows she can’t be in the building with him much longer, that if she keeps hearing him and seeing him, her mind’s going to shatter.

“You better not hurt her!” Julie says before she turns and bolts out of the power plant.

Outside, the air is as hot as it was inside, but the sea breeze is up, whistling forlornly through the pipes and smokestacks of the power plant. Julie collapses on the asphalt, sucking in deep breaths of air, trying to calm her racing heart. With trembling fingers she takes out the earplugs. Her eardrums ache, but being out in the bright sun, away from Aldraa, is already starting to soothe her migraine.

Her van’s still in its parking place, the cockroach bobbing in the wind.

The power plant looks empty, but Julie knows she’s not alone. The monsters are in the shadows; they’re hiding up in the windows. Watching. Planning, maybe. She doesn’t know what.

Julie climbs in the van and turns on the engine. The air-conditioning blasts across her sweaty skin. Girl, the monster had said, in the yard of a house where a new girl lives. They’re interested in her.

Aldraa may not have answered her questions, but Julie is determined to find answers anyway.

The sheriff’s office is at the edge of town, a brown building emerging out of an empty field. Julie pulls into the lot and shuts off the van engine. She’s still sticky from the power plant, and the smell of the place clings to her skin, that smoky burning-metal scent. But at least she’s not there now.

Julie climbs out of the van and goes inside, the arctic air chilling her as she walks through the door. It’s like crossing a force field. Inside, the office is as shabby and worn-out as always. The yellow fluorescent lights make everything look brown.

Lawrence is sitting at the front desk, scribbling notes in the margins of a textbook. He sighs when he sees her.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“Hey, cuz, that’s no way to treat me.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m on duty.”

Julie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but it’s from Shakespeare. It’s in Romeo and Juliet, cuz.”

“I don’t care. I’m on duty and the only way you’re supposed to address me is ‘officer.’ Or ‘deputy.’”

“I’m not doing that.” Julie grabs a chair from the waiting area and drags it over the floor so that she can sit across the counter from Lawrence. He sets his pen down and watches her, his brow drawn tight, the way it gets whenever he’s angry. Lawrence never shows his anger in the usual ways. He doesn’t yell or stomp around, just lets the anger seep through his skin and manifest as weird tics in his face. Julie knows it’s because he’s trying his hardest not to be like his father.

She arranges the chair to face him and sits down.

“I see you’ve got the van out there,” Lawrence says. “I take it you’re supposed to be working.”

Julie shrugs. The truth is she doesn’t want to go back to the exterminators, doesn’t want to risk getting called out to trap another monster.

“So maybe camping out at the sheriff’s office isn’t the best way to spend your time right now? Uncle Victor isn’t paying you to distract me.”

“Distract you?” Julie asks. “You’re reading a freaking book! I bet the sheriff’s not paying you to do that.”

Lawrence scowls at her, an expression that makes him look pouty, like a child. It’s hard to take him seriously. “I’m studying,” he says. “Something you don’t know anything about.”

“Hey, I passed all my classes last year. Even got an A in history.”

Lawrence folds up the book and sets it under the counter. Then he leans forward, steepling his fingers together like a villain in an old Bond movie.

“Do you have a crime to report?” he asks.

“Nope. But I do have a question for you—a real one,” she adds, when he looks like he’s about to start in on some first-class Lawrence nagging. “Related to you being sheriff’s deputy.” She pauses, trying to figure out the best way to ask it. Lawrence’s obsession with rules makes him annoying sometimes, but it can come in handy too. She thinks now is one of those times. “I just picked up a monster at Mrs. Sudek’s house…”

Lawrence rubs his forehead at the mention of Mrs. Sudek’s name.

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t actually have to talk to her, though, it was great. She’s got her granddaughter staying there.”

“So what’s your question?” Lawrence asks.

“Didn’t you hear me? I picked up at a monster! At Mrs. Sudek’s house!” Julie sighs. “In town.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Usually I’m driving out to those empty beach houses in hurricane alley to pick ’em up.”

“Right.” Lawrence frowns. “This still seems more like a matter for Uncle Victor.”

Julie slouches down in her chair. “Dad’ll just tell me not to get involved. You know how he is.”

“He’s trying to protect you.” Lawrence sighs. “Everyone in town keeps our distance from them. It’s the safest thing to do.”

Julie rolls her eyes. It’s true that most of the people in town do their best to pretend the monsters don’t exist. Julie knows why: Because everyone’s scared of them. Scared of the memory lapses, the eerie power plant, the possibility of what they might do to Indianola. But as an exterminator, she has to interact with them. It just sucks that no one will let her find out more about them.

“This town’s full of rednecks. I don’t know why you’d listen to them.”

“They pay my salary.”

“Whatever. Look.” Julie leans onto the counter. “The whole thing was weird. I thought it might be related to Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter.”

“Why? What would she have to do with it?”

“Because she’s new!” Julie sighs. “You know how this town is. She didn’t even know about the monsters. No one had told her! And then one shows up at her house—” Julie stops, startled by a new possibility. “Oh my God, is that why everybody wants to keep it a secret? Because otherwise the monsters will hurt strangers—”

“Stop right there.” Lawrence lifts up the counter and joins Julie on the other side. He puts his hands on his hips and manages to fake a pretty convincing Stern Adult expression. “The treaties cover all humans within the boundaries of the town. They aren’t coming after Mrs. Sudek’s granddaughter. New or not, she’s protected.”

Julie glares at him. Figures he’d say that. He’s nineteen now, and that makes him officially grown up. And the adults in this town are always doing this—saying you just shouldn’t worry about the monsters, setting up treaties and exterminators to handle them and acting like it’s all so normal.

“Larry, you are not being very helpful.”

Lawrence scowls. “Don’t call me Larry.”

She knows he hates Larry; that’s why she only uses it whenever he’s pissing her off.

“I’m just worried about her, is all,” Julie says, looking away from Lawrence, toward the door behind the counter that leads to the holding cells.

“You don’t even know her.” Lawrence puts a hand on Julie’s shoulder, and she looks over at him. He’s got that concerned expression because he knows her secret, knows the way she is. The two of them have been friends since she was four and he was six, running around together in Aunt Rosa’s big backyard and looking for monsters hiding in the canna lilies. When they were older he found the girlie mags she stashed under her mattress. He didn’t tell her parents. That’s how she knows she can trust him completely.

And she hates that now he’s dismissing her like some little kid.

“Yeah, do you know all the people you help?” she demands. “Isn’t that why you decided to become a cop in the first place?”

“I’m a sheriff’s deputy. And you’re right, I don’t know them. But nothing’s going to happen to this girl, as long as she keeps her distance like everyone else.” He smiles. “We have the treaties. Do you really think your dad would have you working at the exterminator’s if he thought the monsters would break them?”

Yes, Julie thinks, but she doesn’t say anything out loud.