Page 4 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Everyone knew how Sally Dixon had died because it had been caught on TV during the Liberty Wolf Massacre. She’d been called the first casualty of the new War on the Supernatural, though that wasn’t really true. Some Secret Service guards had gotten mown down before her.

Jake knew there was a statue of her in Washington, D.C., but he and Dad had never visited. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to see it.

Dad had kept them safe from the asshole Dixons and all the other nosy people in this stupid country ever since. That was why they used fake names everywhere they went.

Except for today, when they’d finally come to Freak Camp.

So he understood hating the monsters, but he didn’t know what Dad was trying so hard to find out from the creatures inside Special Research.

But he didn’t need to know now. One day, Dad would know that Jake was ready, and then Dad would trust him with everything. They would hunt together, and no one would be able to stop the Hawthornes. No one would be able to sneak up on either of them.

Walking out of Freak Camp beside Dad, Jake acknowledged that that day was probably pretty far in the future. But he smiled as they reached the Eldorado and he climbed into the shotgun seat. At least now when he was bored, he could think about Freak Camp and Tobias.

***

T obias could barely contain himself until that evening, when he saw Becca leaving the Workhouse with a group of other monsters. He knew better than to run to her, but he walked quickly, weaving between the monsters until he reached her side.

“Becca!”

She glanced down at him, touching her fingertips to the back of his head.

“I met a real today,” Tobias whispered. “He told me to call him Jake!”

Like all the monsters in Freak Camp, Becca’s face didn’t change much, but Tobias could usually tell what she was thinking. He saw surprise followed by alarm, and his excitement shrank into almost nothing. Meeting Jake hadn’t felt like something dangerous, but Becca knew much more than him.

She stepped out of the line forming into the mess hall, and Tobias moved with her.

There were rules for who went first, and Becca and Tobias were usually near the end.

He was in the back because he was small and unidentified, and Becca was there because she was a witch. That was why she only had one hand.

Becca frowned at him. “Where did you meet him?”

“In the yard. Victor let him in the playpen, and then he talked to me.”

Becca’s frown deepened, but she glanced around them and straightened up. “We’ll talk later.”

After she went inside, Tobias counted to fifteen before following.

He approached the slot in the wall, and a bowl slid across the steel counter.

Tobias took it and found a seat on a bench with the other monster kids.

None of them ever talked much, and Tobias was used to eating in silence, as quickly as possible, before someone else grabbed his food.

Tobias glanced in his bowl for just a moment before bringing it to his mouth. It didn’t taste like anything, which was all right, and there was nothing hard that needed chewing.

As they finished, each monster stood and pushed their empty bowl through a second slot to the monsters on cleaning duty. Then they left the mess hall, most heading to the barracks to rest before curfew, except those that had more work duties. Tobias followed the ones going toward the barracks.

The barracks were two long buildings with aluminum siding and roofs.

Each had only one door, and the locks were on the outside.

Only the guards were allowed to touch those locks.

Inside were two rows of bunk beds, each bolted to a wall, and no other furniture.

At the back were three toilets with barrier walls between them and swinging doors without locks.

New monsters had to sleep in the bunks closest to the toilets.

Monster women and kids were all put in Barracks 1, though sometimes Barracks 2 ran out of space and some of the male monsters were sent over.

Both barracks had a lot of cameras and intercoms installed, along with loud horns and strobe lights and even gas if the monsters were bad enough.

That had only happened once in Toby’s experience.

Becca had pushed him to the floor and against a wall, pulled his shirt over his mouth, and told him not to move or open his eyes.

It had still tasted awful and made him cough and his eyes burn for weeks afterward every night.

Sometimes he thought he could still smell the gas.

Most nights, though, the monsters were quiet. Only when a group of new monsters arrived did it tend to get noisy.

Becca had told Tobias that it was okay for him to come to her bunk after the lights shut off, because that was the last check the guards made to make sure they were all in their beds for the night.

Tobias counted to sixty, then slipped out of his bunk and made his way soundlessly to Becca’s, climbing in with her. She pulled her blanket up to let him in, then tucked him close between her and the wall, smoothing his hair back with her arm that ended in a stump.

In a hush, breathing into the space between the canvas mat and her chin, he whispered, “The real boy told me to call him Jake. He asked me what I can read, and I told him about our library, but he said he wouldn’t take our books away.”

Becca laid a finger over his lips, then asked in her very serious voice, “Did you make him upset? What did he tell you to do?”

“He didn’t ask me to do anything. We just sat down and he asked me my name and what kind of monster I was. He said it was okay that I didn’t know. And he said he would come back!”

“Shh, shh.” Becca touched his mouth again. “Did he say why he was here? How old was he?”

“He was a kid. Maybe Nala’s age. How old’s she?”

“Nala?”

Tobias tried to remember what name the guards used. “Ragdoll?”

“Jake was just a child? Did you hear a last name, Toby? Did anyone mention his last name, like reals have?”

Tobias started to shake his head, then remembered. “After Jake’s dad called— oh , Jake has a dad —one of the guards said, ‘That Hawthorne squirt’s got balls like his dad.’”

Becca’s hand tensed on his shoulder. She didn’t say anything for several moments, then she said quietly, “He won’t come back, Toby. Try not to think about it. Don’t talk about it. Okay?”

“But he said he would!”

“Tobias. Do what I say.”

He shut his mouth and rested his head next to hers.

He knew Becca wasn’t his mom. She had told him so.

She was a witch, and that was why she only had one hand.

But she told him when to stay quiet and when not to look, and he always did what she said.

Bad things happened when he didn’t listen to her, but he didn’t think he could stop thinking about Jake.

***

R ebecca Marlow had once wanted a child of her own more than anything in the world.

That dream had died with the impact of her boyfriend’s fists.

She’d been young and naive, believing that she could trust who a man was when he was sober instead of when he was drunk.

Her sister held her as Rebecca bled and shook with sobs so hard she thought she would die on the bathroom floor before morning.

But she survived. She got to her feet a different woman, one who would not need to be taught the same lesson twice.

That wasn’t all she learned. She returned to her job in the Oklahoma City library, ready to open books that had long caught her eye. She would never again be so helpless, and her former lover would know exactly what her pain felt like.

She soon lost her appetite for vengeance, but she learned she had a knack for witchcraft. In her teens, she had dabbled with the incantations and rituals—just long enough to be frightened and intrigued by what a few words and herbs could offer a person willing to go the distance.

With more knowledge came contacts, and she learned there was a living to be made if you were willing and able to cast basic hexes.

She discovered an endless demand from the bitter and desperate looking to inflict their own pain on whoever they thought deserved it.

People were willing to pay—and pay well—to make others hurt.

Rebecca dealt in jealousy and vengeance, and she cared less and less what she was casting.

She was just a well-paid medium for other people’s malice.

She quit after the Liberty Wolf Massacre and burned all her illicit materials, but it wasn’t so easy to give up for good.

She’d gotten used to the extra income, and so had her family.

She had the steadiest job among them, and they’d made a habit of going to her with money problems. It was hard for her to say no when it came to her nieces and nephews, whom she loved more than anything in the world, each a precious glimpse of the child she’d never had.

Months after Liberty Wolf the first hysteria over werewolves and vampires died down, and people seemed less inclined to turn on their neighbors because of a funny smell in their backyard.

Rebecca built her business back up cautiously, using false names and PO boxes out of town.

She only worked spells in motel rooms, never at home.

The ASC still caught her. She’d just begun calling on the usual names, reaching for the knife with one hand and the flame with the other, when the motel door had burst in. She’d found herself lying on her stomach, handcuffs snapped over her wrists, men shouting about exactly how few rights she had.

Later, replaying all the jobs to see what she had done wrong, she realized that there had been no warning signs, no details that were off. She had just taken one too many jobs, and someone had put the pieces together.

The judicial process went with the usual speed for an accused witch: a closed hearing to consider the evidence, no jury. That same night she found herself trundled into a van headed to Freak Camp.