She sighed. “More bad guys?”

“And a doomsday device.”

“What?” Fred nearly screamed.

“Yeah, you heard me, an actual doomsday device. What’s that black stuff all over your shoes? Toner from office garbage?” he asked Betsy.

“What?” she nearly screamed.

“Yeah, you heard me.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Skittles Boys marched them silently and efficiently back to the NEA, not answering their questions or rising to their taunts. Since Jonas and Betsy were gold-medal taunters, that was something Fred found most ominous of all. Despite the balls-up at Faneuil Hall, it bespoke of the men’s (and where were the Skittles Girls?) professionalism.

As it was late, the area was nearly deserted. There were a few—a very few—people on the street, mostly coming late to the nearby hotel. Fred considered, and rejected, screaming for help. Doomsday device? Mermaids, vampires? Polo Shirts? Bad guys dressed like Skittles? If someone heard their cries and if someone took them seriously and called a cop and if Dispatch sent a unit, they’d all still be inside the NEA by then, and nobody would be able to stop the bad guys, or save the good guys, in time.

Besides, Fred suspected what was happening inside was private Folk business. And possibly private vampire business.

Betsy’s thoughts (such as they were) must have been along the same lines, as she suddenly piped up, “Wow, it’s like a buddy movie crammed with the supernatural.”

“This is not. For one thing, we have no lawful authority. For another, we live half a country apart (for which I will always be thankful). Also, I loathe you. Not buddy-movie loathing. I loathe you like famine. I loathe you like war.”

“No, you don’t,” the vampire replied with grating cheer. “Your bitchiness is purely surface bitchiness. Inside you’re like a big old gooey . . . I dunno . . . jellyfish? Help me out, marine biologist. A big old gooey glop of caviar? A big old—Where’d you get that?”

Betsy’s sharp digression startled everyone, but Other Red Shirt slid the key card through the lock without pause, and opened the door.

Jonas turned to Madison, who’d been silently (thank God) crying during the last of the walk. Orange Shirt (Betsy also referred to him as Sunkist) had impersonally collected their phones, and Madison, frightened at the thought of losing the line between her mother and herself, had clutched it for a few panicky seconds. Jonas had gently coaxed her into giving it up and had been holding her hand and murmuring comforting things like, “As fast as tech moves, it’s actually gotten outdated since suppertime and you need to get a new one.” Betsy had surrendered hers with a bit more grace: “But how will I know what the weather is in Istanbul? Or when my FB stats get updated? Or which restaurants deliver after midnight? Or how much Plymouth Rock weighs? Also, I occasionally use it as a telephone.”

Now, watching the bad guys deftly get through the electric lock, Jonas cocked his head, puzzled. “I thought you got your purse back.”

“I did.” Madison sniffed. “Just the money was gone.”

“Let’s see.” Betsy started counting off on her long fingers. “Bad guy conspiracy, check. Henchmen, check. Funding—obvious from the uniforms and your cute matching phones—check. Doomsday device, whatever the fuck that is—check. Plan to steal NEA employee’s key card without her knowing that’s what you’re doing—check. Tech to copy keycard and return purse to further confuse said employee—check. Plan to keep said employee and anyone she might call away from the fish warehouse—check.”

All night. We were sitting around all night making a list, for God’s sake, when we could have been here, maybe putting a stop to this shit well before the bad guys expected us to show up.

“I like you better when you’re ditzy,” Fred muttered, following her into the building.

“You’re the only one,” she admitted.

“You mean they didn’t want to kill me? They just rilly, rilly needed my ID and stuff to get in?”

“Check,” a new voice said, and they all looked around, and then down. “As if we could mistake the Fehr heir for a talking sardine.”

A white man in his midsixties, sitting painfully straight in his wheelchair, rolled quietly toward them. He had long gray hair pulled back in a ponytail that, if free, would have reached down his back; his beard was short and carefully shaped, covering his upper lip and chin but none of his neck. He was wearing a crisp white dress shirt, black slacks rolled to show both legs were missing below the knee, and a navy blue tie embroidered with bright red peace signs. On the left armrest of his chair was a shiny green sticker: “Whales are people, too!”

“Oh, good God,” Betsy groaned. “Save me from aging hippies.”

Fred, whose mother was one, said nothing, but smiled a little.

“My name is Hedley Ran and I don’t know you,” he told Betsy, and Fred noticed his back never touched the back of the wheelchair. “Or you, sir.” Dismissing Jonas with barely a glance. “I know you, miss, through your insipid letters and lies. And I know your friend.”

I’m not Madison’s . . . grrrr.

“I will not speak with the fish,” the old man said. “So you tell her for me, girl, tell her she and her school of friends are done. Because of me.”

Jonas cleared his throat politely. “Sorry, just to clarify here so Madison can correctly pass on your message, did you mean school friends or school of—”

“It’s a fish insult,” Fred explained. She rolled her eyes at Hedley Ran. “He probably thinks he’s being subtle. And so he is, compared to any of us. Which is still pretty unsubtle.”

“Tell the fish I’ll use her coworkers and her research and her beloved NEA to destroy her ‘people.’”

“The fish can hear you fine, and is fluent in English,” Fred informed him. “You really think you’re special, huh? You are not. You’re just another bigot. There’s a zillion of you: blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Folk, you’ve always got somebody to fear and then to hate.” She turned to her friends. “I’ve actually run into this before. Some of the idiots we’re stuck sharing the planet with think that because the Folk have tails and scales, we’re not human and, ergo, can be treated like pets instead of citizens. There’s been talk of rounding us up and dumping us into concentration lakes.”

Madison’s eyes went wide and Jonas said, shocked, “You never told me that.”

“Why would I? It’s awful enough that I know it; I’d never bring you guys down with it.”

“This isn’t about bigotry,” Ran insisted. “It’s about the survival of our species.”

“Um, technically that could be construed as bigotry, depending on how you define survival and species,” Betsy began, but he cut her off.

“Before they flaunted themselves before the world, I knew her kind of old. They were smarter to stay hidden, to be the monsters in our nightmares, the kind we think aren’t real in the light.”

Fred very carefully did not look at Betsy, who was a monster of nightmares people thought weren’t real in the light.

“I was born with two legs and when I married my wife I had two legs. Now I have none and my wife is dead and my unborn son with her.”

“Oh my God!” She stared at the man, horror-struck.

“Truly,” he agreed, allowing himself a small grim smile. “You didn’t know what kind of monster you took to friend, did you?”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing! Fred, you bitch, what have you done?”

“Huh?” Fred asked, having no idea where Betsy was going with this.

Betsy shook a finger beneath Fred’s nose and asked, as stern as a spinster schoolmarm, “Did you kill his wife and unborn son?”

“No.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Look, Fred, we’re in kind of a bad situation here.” Betsy slung an arm around her shoulders and led her a couple of steps away from the group. “Listen, this is serious. This poor guy’s got a real problem. We owe him the truth, so just tell it straight, okay? I promise, whatever you did, we’ll deal with it. So. One last time: did you kill this man’s wife and unborn son?”

“I did not. I’ve never seen him before tonight.”

She sighed in evident relief and turned back to Hedley Ran, whose smile had dropped off like it had been slapped away. The Skittles Boys were helpless in the face of severe vampire sarcasm. “There, see? It’s okay. Everything’s gonna—We can absolutely work through this. You don’t have to worry: she’s not the one who killed your wife and unborn son. Thank God, right? Total relief! Because that would have made for a super awkward work environment.”

Fred was trying to lock the laughter in her throat, which was why she sounded like a water buffalo. Drowning.

“Is that supposed to be your idea of a jest, young lady?”

Quick as thought, Betsy dropped her bantering tone, and when she spoke, there was so much ice in her voice it made Fred shiver.

“Of course it’s not a jest, you bitter pathetic asshat. Fred’s right, you’re not special. You’re just another bigot sitting around chanting about race wars and revenge because your life is shit and you don’t know why so the plan you came up with was to hate people you’ve never met. I don’t know what’s more amazing—that you can fool yourself in the face of simple common sense or that you can infect other people with your insanity.” She flapped a hand at the Skittles Boys, disgusted. “Boston sucks.”

“Don’t blame the town!” Jonas yelped.

“She’s right, though, it’s stupid to blame an entire race for something one person did.” Fred spoke quickly, the better to get Ran’s attention back on her and off Betsy (and so as not to dwell on the irony of Betsy doing what she denounced Ran for). She didn’t know what the vampire was going to do, but assumed her rant was part of a plan. “If one of my people was even responsible.”