Page 108 of Bad Seed
“Are you alone?”
Her soft question turns my arm to ice.
Yes. I’m alone. I’ve always been alone.
And I always will be.
“What?” I ask instead.
Sadie licks her lips, then she rests against the dresser. “Is there anyone else that can turn into a…vegetable?”
“More than you think. Not everyone in a family can do it, but it’s only passed through the blood.”
“Did your parents send you away because you become an eggplant?” She shakes her head as if she’s taken a shot.
I know, it sounds absurd. If I’d told anyone when I was a kid, they’d have washed my mouth out with soap for lying. It didn’t take me long to realize that my nature wasn’t something to brag about. It was a shame.
“No.” I swallow hard, refusing to think about them. “They were in trouble, not that they’d tell me how much trouble. With another mob. The Squash.”
“The Squash? Do they—?”
“Yes. Summer’s the leader now, but it was Butternut then. There’s a lot of hierarchy bullshit in the community. On the East Coast, the Squash rule and keep a tight grip on anyone who’s not. Out here it’s—”
“The Nightshades?”
Ato would love to hear that. “The Brassicas. Though they have both the West coast and the Midwest. Also most of the plains and outright own Wyoming.”
She nods like any of it makes sense. I’d never thought twice about the system. You answered to whoever had his boot on your neck. Seemed simple. But away from all the bickering and posturing, it sounds nuts. At the end of the day, we all turn into vegetables. We all have seeds, and stems, and nightmares about being boiled alive or diced up onto a party tray.
“I think my parents sent me to live with my Lolo to escape all of this,” I confess. I have no proof whatsoever beyond the need to believe that they loved me and were trying to protect me. Not just that an eggplant shifter deep in Squash territory was a ticking time bomb.
“How?” she asks.
Rather than answer her, I watch her fingers dance through Astin’s fur. He’s purring in delight, doing all he can to get one more scratch. When he bonks his head into her hips, she picks him up and cuddles him to her chest. I swear my cat sticks out his tongue at me.
It’s easy to get in good with her when you’re furry and cute.
“Aubry?” Her voice rings with a hint of tears.
I turn away like I’m staring out the window even though the blinds are shut. “Life on Cebu wasn’t easy.”
“Cause you didn’t speak the language.”
“Because they clocked me for what I was. My Lolo was a shifter too. A proud one who didn’t hide the way we’re supposed to. The locals didn’t like that. Didn’t like me.”
“Who wouldn’t like you?” she asks after I nearly got her killed twice over tonight. The list is long.
“I can understand their fear, even their hatred to some extent. We’re different. We have our own ways. And we can be anywhere.”
Sadie scrunches her brow in confusion.
I gaze at her beautiful face, knowing it’ll be the last time she doesn’t look at me with disgust or derision. “When you were kidnapped, did you happen to sign for a box, a package?”
“Yeah. I got a delivery from a client… I really hope they weren’t expecting me to do it tonight.”
I shake my head. “That was them. Probably the Bells. Bell peppers.”
“They were bell peppers. How did you…?” Realization sinks in. Her lips droop as she weighs what I’m telling her. Mr. Ato didn’t recruit me into this life because I’m passable at soccer, I love old movies from the eighties, and I make a damn good lumpia. He needed spies, he needed muscle. He needed both. And that’s what we are. We can infiltrate without anyone the wiser. We can overhear conversations no one’s supposed to hear. And then we can eliminate any problems leaving no trace we were ever there.
