Page 72 of Moody as a Minotaur

“I’ll talk to him,” Tammy promised. “And don’t blame this all on me; Kyle vetted them with me. He agreed.”

“No, he didn’t. You’re lying. Kyle doesn’t like recruiting. And he doesn’t like events like tonight, either. Everybody knows that.”

“Well, he didn’t stop me.”

“Kyle said you’d talked to Professor Boyle about these people before you invited them here. But the professor says you didn’t consult him. We all know Boyle would have said no to the older ones. He’s always going on about how they are harder to control.”

“No, they won’t be.” Tammy’s voice dropped even quieter. “It’s those older ones who have chips on their shoulders. It’s easier to convert people to a cause when the motivation is right. And we can motivate these two. I know it. Their businesses aren’t successful. It’ll be easy to convince them it’s because of the monsters. People love someone to blame for the shit in their lives.”

What the fuck? Okay, my motel might not be a five-star resort that was fully booked each night, but I didokay. I could pay my employees, and I didn’t need to earn much to meet my own needs. I had been alive for a long time. Anyone who got to my age and couldn’t look after their own needs had a problem. My savings account had enough figures that I could take it easy for a while.

But even if it wasn’t so comfortable, not everyone needed to make millions to find their lives fulfilling. But to slam Parker’s business too? No way. He was successful.

“The professor didn’t think your evidence was compelling enough to suggest there were monsters in that town.”

“Okay, fine. But these two don’t know that.”

“How are you going to convince these two their businesses are failing because of monsters when we can’t show them the evidence?”

“Have you not been paying attention to the world? Of course the monsters are at fault. The monsters are always the reason humans can’t succeed. We are fighting against beings who are too cowardly to show themselves. They hide amongst us and undermine everything humans stand for.”

“But what if the businesses are failing because they aren’t viable?”

“It doesn’t matter. Like I said, people like to blame others. Who better to blame than monsters? It isn’t really a lie. The monsters are coming for us and our businesses. Even if they haven’t taken them yet, they will.”

I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t argue with them. No matter how much I wanted to, that would be the wrong thing to do. But, really, were humans so easily swayed by hatred? Did they really shit on strangers forsimply existing and being who they were? If that was true, something was seriously wrong with the human world.

The man must have given up trying to convince Tammy she was wrong, because they quit talking.

We walked for another twenty minutes. I memorized each step, forming a map in my head as we shuffled through a warren of service corridors. Interestingly, we crossed through the spot where we started two times. They were taking us in circles, hoping to confuse us. Thankfully, that wouldn’t work on me.

“Okay,” Tammy said. “Take off your hoods and be prepared to be amazed.”

She sounded like a ringmaster at a circus. And why did I suspect the last thing I was going to feel was amazed?

27

UNEXPECTED REVELATIONS

PARKER

I didn’t want to take off the hood. I knew right down to the brand-new blister on the heel of my left foot that whatever Tammy wanted to show us was going to be awful. I was beginning to regret so many things about tonight, including wearing new shoes. But how was I supposed to have guessed we’d be hiking through tunnels half the night?

I removed my hood anyway.

I blinked into the dimly lit room, surprised at the size of it. After being led through countless underground corridors, I’d thought we’d end up in a long-forgotten storage closet repurposed for the paranormal investigator’s group. I had expected to discover that our worst fears were unfounded and that these people were just some real-life versions of the Scooby Gang with Tammy as Velma, Kyle as Fred, and Fin as Shaggy. I thought there might be a makeshift shelf built fromconcrete blocks and two by fours filled with books about the occult borrowed from the university library. I’d been prepared to find a cork board featuring a map with pins showing where they’d filmed and print outs from questionable websites about paranormal sightings.

This wasn’t that.

My gaze darted around the room. Several of the people we’d started with were no longer with us. That was mildly concerning.

Having been trained by Nana in those summer bootcamps, I immediately searched for the exits. There were three doors. One behind us and two on the other side of the room. Those doors could lead to storage closets for all I knew, but it was good to know where they were.

Next, I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon, although I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Sure, I had the gun in my ankle holster, but guns weren’t always practical, and it was good to have a backup plan.

I was the king of backup plans.

The room was huge with high ceilings and bare walls. There wasn’t a single thing I could use as a weapon. Well, didn’t that just suck?