Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 28

WITHOUT YOUR FRIENDS, well, what are you?

Willy, Joe, Emma, and Dana were only too happy to help me clean up after the crazy cat attack. Dana seemed a little distant, like maybe she knew about Phoebe Cook. She didn’t say much, though, as she tended to the bloody patch of raw flesh on my face.

I looked at myself in the mirror. “Great. I look like I just stepped out of a B horror movie with a very bad makeup job.”

“Why should you care what you look like?” Dana said without smiling, not expecting an answer. That was my first sign that she wasn’t too pleased about Phoebe.

Afterward I treated everyone to pizza, but I made the mistake of letting Joe order.

“No, not one with everything,” I heard him tell the phone person at Domino’s. “One of everything. I’d like the entire menu. In fact, make it two entire menus.”

“Domino’s?” Emma said in shock. “If you want to kill yourself, fine, but I don’t do processed flour. Hello? This is California. There has to be a Whole Foods around here somewhere.”

She was already searching the Yellow Pages when the phone rang. I figured it was the pizza place, confirming Joe’s insane order.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello, indeed,” a cultured voice said.

It was Seth. Don’t ask me how I knew for sure, I just did. Just like I knew he was the one who’d trashed my place with his crazy felines.

“Who’s this?” I said, playing dumb.

“Who’s this?” the voice repeated almost sorrowfully. “Now is that remotely proper etiquette? Wouldn’t ‘May I help you?’ be a tad more polite? Bad enough they send a boy for me, but a crude American one with no manners? Nonetheless, to answer your impolite question, I think you know who I am. Though I daresay, if you don’t follow my advice very, very soon, you’re going to wish you did not.”

“Um, sorry?” I said, still stunned. I’d never spoken to a gas before, let alone one that sounded like it had trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company. “I really think you have the wrong number.”

“Better the wrong number,” the confident British voice said, “than the wrong city, Daniel. By the way, I heard you had a little problem today-with kitty cats. Or should I say kitty litter?”

Panic rose at the mention of my name. And the cats.

Ergent Seth not only knew where I was, he knew who I was!