Page 25 of A Malicious Menagerie (Fangs & Fables #1)

The Bananas

T he gala took place on the first of my two usual nights off, so I have to wait over thirty-six hours before I can confront the werewolf who has been lying to me for the past several weeks.

And sure, he didn’t outright lie to me about being a werewolf.

He didn’t lie to my face. But not revealing that he could change forms is the biggest lie of omission I could ever imagine.

And when I think about the things that I confided in him—the embarrassing, heart-wrenching, very personal things that I never would have told him had I known what he is—I just want to crawl into a dumpster and live there with the raccoons.

At least the little masked critters don’t lie about being able to turn into men.

Or do they? Are there wereraccoons? My entire worldview has been turned upside down. It seems that things I’ve been told and had known to be true my whole life are as flimsy and deceitful as a street magician’s card trick.

But more than anything, I just feel… betrayed.

Hurt. I thought there was some kind of trust and understanding between us.

Had thought we were friends . Obviously, I was mistaken.

Not that I’ve had a close friend in a long time, but I know that friends aren’t supposed to keep secrets that big from one another.

And when I’m not obsessing over that particular revelation, I’m haunted by the memory of the vampire and her victim.

Edward Jefferson. His friends called him Eddie, and he was only thirty-six.

I looked him up once my hands stopped shaking enough to type.

It was easy to find Rutherford Williams and then to expand my search to news anchors from other networks.

Eddie had recently been offered a regular gig on Comedy Central, where he used satire to relay recent political events.

While watching clips, I find more than one of him poking fun at Rutherford Williams, and I wince every time the older man’s name comes up.

More than once, Eddie called Williams a coward for softening facts to stay in a particular politician’s good graces.

He would comment that Williams would rather pad his pockets than be an honest journalist.

Guess Rutherford Williams didn’t like that.

By Sunday night, twenty-four hours after he was murdered, the news breaks that Edward Jefferson is missing.

He was an avid runner, and he had gone for a jog in the woods near his mountain vacation home and never came back.

His tearful wife makes a plea for any information about his whereabouts, but she fears he might have fallen down a ravine or been attacked by a wild animal.

My stomach lurches at those words.

Because he was attacked by a wild animal… and he wasn’t. I can’t reconcile the woman who treated her victim’s body with such care and respect with the beast who threw herself bodily against iron bars to try to reach me and took a full-grown man to the ground so she could flay him open.

The next morning, feeling hung over even though I didn’t consume a single drop of alcohol, I make my way to Sunny Shores in a daze. I don’t even know that I made a conscious decision to come here so much as I just wanted comfort, and my internal compass pointed to Nan.

One of the caretakers points me to her bedroom, and I knock twice before listening for her curious, “Come in?”

When I push the door open, Nan perks up where she’s lounging in bed. “Anna! What a surprise. It’s early for a visit. Didn’t you work last night?”

“Sorry,” I say by way of greeting, feeling guilty that I disrupted her morning routine. I recognize the swooning actress on the TV screen as one of Nan’s favorites from a soap opera she follows religiously. “I had kind of a weird night, and I just thought… ”

Nan doesn’t need more explanation than that. She only pats the mattress, her expression inviting. “Come here, darling. Tell me all about the party. That’s why you said you were working an extra night this week, right?”

“Yes, the party,” I agree with a sigh, sinking onto the bed in the slim space beside her. “It was… fancy.”

“Hmm,” Nan says, her eyes still on the TV but her attention on me. Coaxing me out, as she’s always done. “‘Fancy’ is an unoffensive way to put it.”

“I just…” I sigh. “Remember what I told you before? About some of the animals I’m taking care of?”

“Yes,” she says slowly, obviously trying to feel out my odd mood. “You said they’re too smart for captivity, but your boss won’t let them go.”

“Yes, and you told me to try to make their lives better however I could. But, Nan… I don’t know that I can make anything better for them. I don’t know that I have that kind of power. It’s just so… much.”

Nan shoots me a lopsided frown, which is endearing from inside the collar of her puffy housecoat. “Do you need to quit? You know your happiness comes first. How can you take care of anyone else if you’re not taking care of yourself?”

Such a Nan thing to say, but she doesn’t understand.

If I’m not able to take care of her, I’m nothing.

Just a failure. She wouldn’t agree, but I can feel the threat of it like a fishhook tugging at my soul.

Besides, even with the raise, I might still have quit even a few days ago.

But knowing what I know now about the vampire, and the wolf—the werewolf …

I just can’t. I can’t leave them in that extravagant hellhole to face the whims of that madman all alone.

Plus, Mathis’s words keep echoing around my skull. “ Do not interfere in my affairs again. Those who do tend to disappear.”

Disappear.

Disappear.

So, where does that leave me?

“I can’t quit,” I tell her, the certainty of it solidifying in the marrow of my bones. I don’t even know if Mathis will let me anymore. Besides, I’m in this now. I’m with them now. All of them. “So, what next? What do I do to help the… elephants? Or the parrots? The monkeys?”

“Maybe there’s something they need that he’s not giving them. Exercise? Attention, maybe? Or a treat?”

It’s not a bad thought. What changed between the beginning and the end of the vampire’s attack?

The only possible explanation I can come up with is the blood.

John told me they only feed the vampire every few weeks, and in my ignorance, I believed that was because she only needed to eat that infrequently.

But if Mathis is using her as an assassin to fund his philanthropy, it makes sense that he would want her hungry.

If she were fed, would she be more like the vampires in the movies?

Coherent, at least, and maybe even intelligent and powerful?

“Bananas,” I murmur at last, my mind whirling.

While I’m contemplating bad decisions, Nan regards me seriously. “But really, Anna, are you okay? Are you in trouble? These animals…”

Oh God, so much trouble. But I can’t tell her that, and I need to cut her off before she starts asking the right questions. I give her a smile I hope doesn’t look more like a grimace. “No, not at all! Everything is fine. I’m just being sensitive.”

Nan doesn’t look convinced. “You’ve never been a very ‘sensitive’ girl. More the suffer-in-silence type.”

“I’m not suffering!”

“I’m just putting it out there. If you’re only doing all this for me…”

“It’s for me, too,” I promise, but I wonder if that’s really true.

I’m doing it for Nan, sure. But I’m also doing it for Fionn and Ciara.

For the vampire. And especially for the werewolf, even if I’m not sure where we stand after he hid the truth from me.

I pat Nan’s hand, hiding my unease behind a smile.

“The job is stressful, but it’s rewarding. It’s worth it.”

Nan still seems skeptical, but she lets it go. For now. “Well, then. Bananas. That seems easy enough.”

Sure. Easy enough… if you used to work at a hospital.

These thoughts are how I find myself sneaking into the hospital on Sunday night in my old cleaning uniform that no one bothered to collect from me.

Even though I quit weeks ago, it’s scarily easy to slip in through the open garage door to the loading docks behind the hospital.

I have to duck down a side hallway to avoid some old coworkers who might recognize me, but I breeze unnoticed past that same doctor who bumped into me the night before Rebecca called about the job at the menagerie.

It’s incredible how much has changed since then.

Even in such a short time, it almost feels like someone else’s life.

As I ponder every bittersweet moment of my time at the menagerie so far, I continue through the hallways until I reach the blood bank.

I may not be a doctor or nurse, but I know enough not to take the blood that’s carefully labeled and organized in the refrigerated units. Those will be missed. The expired bags waiting to go for incineration, however…

I only take a few, not sure how much the vampire needs or what the expired blood might do to her.

It would have been suspicious if I brought a bag up here when the cleaning staff usually leave their things in lockers in the basement.

Instead, I pulled an old fanny pack from a trip to Disney about fifteen years ago from my closet and snapped it on beneath my shirt.

Once I’ve filled the little banana-shaped bag and tugged my shirt down over it, I just look like I’m carrying a few extra pounds, or that I’ve got a bun in the oven.

Much more plausible explanations than that I’ve got stolen blood sloshing around in there.

Once I get home, I stack the blood on the top shelf of my fridge.

I pause to take in the sight of those bags with their official-looking labels and their cherry-red, viscous fluid next to a wilting head of lettuce and a small carton of coffee creamer.

And I can’t help but wonder: how the fuck did I end up here?