"Who ordered a burger with a side of guacamole? You? Catch. Who ordered Chinese takeout? Catch. Who ordered... a salad? Really? That's a depressing post-escape lunch. Have fun a little." Skye tossed a container of salad to the werewolf woman who had ordered it.
Loch's method of finding the owner of each order was much simpler, as he only had to skim over their thoughts. A few of their escapees had very strange surface thoughts, relating to either his or Skye's appearance, but for the most part they were all focused on the hunger biting at their stomachs. The two draconem unfortunately focused on whether Skye planned on keeping them as prisoners of war. Once he finished passing out his orders, Loch tried to forget the stranger thoughts.
The crunching, the slurping, the smacking, all of the sounds of eating made him wonder why he ever complained about the sound of the city. Loch retreated to his own apartment, but the hundred-year-old wooden door did nothing to protect his ears. The spell for deafness was not worth it. He was laying on the couch with two pillows over his ears when Skye entered. "I'm not collecting thirty different orders again. You need to talk to Trinity about that safe house."
As always, his pain brought amusement to Skye. He tapped one of the red pins on the globe. "Did you scare everyone in this place to a different country with your sparkling personality?" He fell onto the couch and leaned against Loch. "Don't worry, it sparkles more than you think. Trinity is holding a meeting at the café again today, so I'm going to talk to her in about an hour. There's a lot that we can do in an hour." Skye wiggled an eyebrow and laughed at Loch's terror. "Relax, I'm joking. Too many people around for that."
Each day was more frightening than the last. Loch liked Skye, he definitely knew that at this point, but...
A ringing noise interrupted his thoughts before they could go too far. What did that mean? Right, the front door. Loch reluctantly pried himself loose from Skye's hold and went to the intercom. If it was a human, they could be there to retrieve their escaped victims. But if it was an Other, they could be there to investigate him and prove his inhumanity. Loch hoped it was a human; they were easier to fool. He pressed the call button.
"State your name and purpose. Be quick or I'll dump ice water on you." There actually was a window on the top floor from which he could dump objects onto the passerby below.
"You're a rude one. Let me in." Loch recognized the faint Scottish accent. He banged his head against the wall several times before pressing the call button again.
"State your name and purpose. The directions are simple. I can repeat them more slowly if you need help understanding."
He heard a huff of annoyance from the other side before she replied. The smirk lighting Skye's face added frosting to the delicious joy he found in insulting the pixie. "My name is Trinity, and I have been told that you recently came upon a group of people that are of interest to me."
Loch looked back at Skye, who shrugged. "I haven't told her yet. But you do still have that werewolf lurking around." Right, his twenty-four hour guard and trespasser. However, he could not have seen them unless they had gone outside. Loch cursed himself for forgetting the vampires' night-wandering habits.
"The door is unlocked." Nobody ever expected an unlocked door in a city, especially with murderers on the loose.
The pixie was surprisingly fast considering her stature, so Loch only had a minute to find and hide any suspicious items lying around his apartment. Then she was there, in all of her four-foot glory. He squinted to see the shadows that painted her like a child and snickered to himself.
"So what is a human doing with such a large group of my kind?" Skye was silent, and Loch realized he could not rely on him to speak when it came to lying to his own kind. Fortunately, Loch was more than happy to mock Trinity.
"Feeding and housing them. What do you mean 'your kind'? You're a brat, but you're still human. They're just a bunch of people Skye needed housing for. If you have a special place for 'your kind' I'm more than willing to give them up. They're far too loud." The crunching of chips grew louder as a dryad peered through the door at Trinity. A naiad and a vampire joined her, the vampire snapping a picture with her phone. Loch had not tested the ability of phones to see through the shadows, yet. With the photographs of the old days, the shadows only hid their Other's identity when a human observed the picture.
The pixie began to pace the room, her neon eyes crawling over his few belongings until they flicked back to him. "I'll call someone to take them somewhere safe. How many are there?"
"Thirty."
"I brought them here because it was the only place I could think of that was far enough from town to keep them safe." Skye had finally found his voice, but his words slipped out of his mouth quickly as if the lies were poison.
Trinity did not seem to notice, but her pixie eyes never stayed still long enough to hint at emotion. She slid a phone from her pocket and tapped at the screen, asking for what had to be a ride for Loch's guests. This painful conversation would be worth it if she could take the noise-makers away within the next hour. "Thirty. The thirty that went missing from the Hancock city headquarters?"
Skye nodded, staring at a spot on the ground as the pixie began pacing once again. "And how did you accomplish that? I sent my warlock over to inspect the site yesterday, and there were no signs of intrusion."
Skye's mouth opened and closed; he was a fish out of water, gasping for breath where there was none. It was time to change his story. Loch interjected, "It took a lot of technical work. I had one of my old coworkers make an EMP to knock out the cameras and the security system, then it was easy from there. The night shift security guards were asleep the entire time. That's what happens when you don't pay well. Can we go back to the 'your kind' thing?" He turned to Skye. "Are you part of a cult?"
Fortunately, Trinity did not give Skye time to answer. "It's not a cult, but I have a feeling you already know that." Her prying eyes attempted to tear through his innocent expression. The only advantage pixies had over the other species was their ability to see past shadowing when they knew where to look, but Loch shared his uniquely colorless appearance with albino humans and his hieroglyphics had physical clothing and gloves as a magicless form of shadowing.
"I may have told him about the Others. Not much, just what we are and what's going on with the murders and the Hancocks. I know that's against the rules, but with all of his connections he's extremely useful. He can make false identities that the other humans can't see past and his friends in the government will verify them, he can get devices like the EMP from other friends, and there's a lot more, too. He promised not to tell. Please don't wipe him. He's trustworthy, I promise." Once again, the words came out too quickly, but this reason there was a hypothetical motivation behind his guiltiness. Loch mentally applauded him. His goody-two-shoes was becoming more interesting each day.
The 'wiping' was the Other-mandated procedure for humans that discovered Other society. It was a horrible procedure that sometimes completely altered the human's personality, which was why Others only ever told the humans they hated about their unknown world. It was a cruel and efficient way to dispose of enemies. However, given the growth of the Hancocks, it could be irrelevant.
Skye's lie had thrown Trinity completely off guard. Before, Loch could tell that she knew he was an Other, but now she was questioning herself. Before she could respond, a honk interrupted the crunching from the other apartments.
"Ah, yes. The bus. I'll bring everyone down. Skye, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Your uncle returned from Panama, so he'll probably want a say in this, too." Her eyes flicked to the door and her body followed, switching to her next task like a well-oiled machine. Pixies were rigid, horrid creatures. Loch wished he could threaten to burn her or cut off her tongue if she did not speak nicely, but right now he had to be 'human'.
"There's two draconem." Even though he was no longer lying, the presence of the past lies in the air slid the words off Skye's tongue at an unnatural speed.
Trinity paused at the threshold and nodded in thought. "I'll contact Duane so they can use one of their own safe houses." She continued to mumble to herself as she walked down the hall. "This could be good for improving relations..."
While Skye continued to stare at his spot on the floor with his arms wrapped around his knees, Loch peered through the window curtains. The thirty escapees, the draconem trailing behind with their wings pressed to their shoulder blades, piled into a city bus with the logo removed. The bus left as quickly as it had arrived, but Trinity strolled over to Loch's werewolf watcher. Just like before, she asked him if he had seen Loch do anything inhuman, and the answer remained negative. Perhaps he did have a chance at remaining 'human' through this strange double war.
When she finally left, Loch fell onto the couch with relief and basked in the renewed silence. He did not notice the blank spot on the bookshelf where a CD had once been.