by Bella Falls
“We’re going to have to ask you some very personal questions and maybe do some searching around his room. Charli has a very particular talent for finding things,” he added.
Fear gripped my gut, adding to the already overwhelming sense of dread churning it. Zach’s parents and Max all frowned at me.
“So, she was trained in her pack for tracking?” James asked.
Max’s eyes shot to Dash. “Not exactly.”
“Charli’s a witch,” the alpha explained.
Lucille’s face soured even more. “She’s not even like us? She’s like those filthy, scheming twins who almost ruined our pack when your brother ran it by adding magic to the drugs, as if they weren’t bad enough. And you dare to let her step foot into my house?” Her eyes flashed yellow, and she pulled her lips back to show her teeth.
Dash held up his hands. “Please calm down and let me explain. Not all witches are like the two we had to take care of. In fact, most aren’t.”
“Let’s not forget that there were a few who were instrumental in us taking back control in the long run,” Max added in support of his leader. “If it weren’t for the help we got from the sisters and their friends from Mystic Mountain, we might not have been able to survive.”
All of the muscles in my body stood rigid and ready to bolt at any second. Between the emotional firestorm in the room plus my magical instincts pinging over and over, it took a lot of effort to stay put.
James placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’s still a lot to ask for us to overlook,” he uttered.
A young girl with pigtails pressed her nose up against the window in the dining room behind the parents. An idea occurred to me that might help alleviate the situation and allow Dash to do his job.
I raised my hand. “I’d like to offer both of you my sincere condolences. And if it would be better, I can go outside on your patio and wait.”
My offer brought an expression of relief to the father. “Thank you. If you go through to the kitchen, you’ll find the door that will lead you outside.”
His wife continued to glare at me with a deep hatred, and I forced myself to remember that she was grieving for a child and was unable to be rational right then to know I wasn’t the enemy.
Once I stepped outside, some of the pressure that had been building inside of me released. I drew in a cleansing breath and looked around.
The little girl who had spied through the window was nowhere to be seen once I stepped onto the patio, but I’d once been her age. I surveyed the backyard and spotted a ladder leaning against a tree with a tree house in it. If I were a child trying to hide from the angry adults, that would be the spot I’d pick.
After striding over to the tree, I paused at the bottom of the ladder. “Knock, knock,” I called out. “Anybody there?”
A head popped out over the square entrance to the tree house. The girl’s pigtails hung down. “Are you here because of my brother, too?”
I smiled at her. “Sort of. Mr. Channing brought me with him, and he’s here visiting with your parents right now.”
She disappeared from view, and I debated climbing up but decided I didn’t want to risk freaking her out over stranger danger. “My name’s Charli,” I called out to her.
Her head appeared again in the opening. “That’s a boy’s name.”
“It’s short for Charlotte,” I explained.
She grinned down at me. “I have a boy’s name, too. I’m really Samantha, but Zach used to call me Sam or Sammy.” At the mention of her brother, her grin faded. “I miss him.”
“Did you and your brother build this tree house?” I patted the ladder. “Seems pretty sturdy to me.”
Her smile returned. “No, silly, I was too little. My daddy and my brother built it, although I was their little helper getting them something to drink or sometimes going and getting them things from the garage. They called me some sort of animal that I guess is really good at fetching.”
I thought about what she could be talking about. “You mean, a gopher?”
“That’s it! I was their gopher.” With a giggle, she disappeared from view again.
I stood at the bottom of the structure, trying to decide what course of action to take next when her voice called down to me. “You can come on up if you want.”
With relief, I gripped the homemade ladder and climbed until I reached the top. “Permission to enter your fortress, Captain.” Keeping ahold of the ladder with one hand, I saluted with the other.
Sammy tittered with glee. “Okay,” she granted.
A quick survey of the floor assured me it was sturdy enough to handle the addition of my weight. In fact, as soon as I hoisted myself into the tree house, I admired its construction. “Your dad and brother did a really good job with this place.”
“They let me do some of the decorations.” She pointed at some rudimentary paintings on the wooden wall. “I was really young when I did that. I’m much better at drawing and stuff now. But not as good as Zachy.” Her face fell again.
I scooted so that my back rested against one of the walls and drew my knees up to my chest. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
“When he was around and getting into all sorts of trouble, Mom and Dad used to fight a lot. And then they stopped fighting for a while when Zach felt better. Now they fight again.” She chose a spot opposite of me and mimicked how I was sitting.
I chose the direction to take us in with great care. “Did Zach fight with you a lot?”
Sammy’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. Never with me. He tried to be good when he was with me.”
I felt relieved to hear that whatever Zach had gotten himself into, he’d made an effort to keep the dirt of his life from soiling his sister’s.
“Here, you wanna see something?” She crawled on all fours until she got to a wooden box in the corner. “This was our treasure chest, where we kept our most prized possessions.” After pulling something out, she dragged the object with her as she crawled over and scooted up next to me.
Sammy handed me a large artist’s spiral sketchbook. At her insistence, I opened it up and flipped through the pencil-drawn images.
“Who drew these?” I asked, fascinated by the talent of the artist.
“Zach. He’s always been good at drawing.” She reached over my arm and flipped through the pages faster than I wished she would. “Sometimes he would draw outlines of things I liked so that I could color them in. Like there. I really like butterflies.”
I was far more interested in the change of the images from someone mimicking others’ works to original pieces of darker material. The angry demons looked like they’d crawled up from the underworld and placed themselves on the pages of Zach’s sketchbook.
“Your brother was…really talented.” Whatever had been going on in his life, it hadn’t been good.
But towards the end of the sketches, the images changed from nightmares back to more wholesome subjects. He had a couple of realistic drawings of his family members. I paused and admired the one of Sammy.
“Who’s this?” I teased.
The little girl giggled and bit her lower lip with her one front tooth. “That’s me! See, he even wrote a note to me.” She pointed at some scrawled words that read, “To Peanut, I’ll make sure you’re always safe.”
Zach’s note to his sister cut to the core. What did he mean by keeping her safe? Someone only said that if there was a threat involved, didn’t they?
“Samantha, are you out here?” her father’s voice called out across the yard.
The little girl gasped and grabbed the sketchbook from me, hugging it to her chest. “Zach told me never to let anyone find this.”
All of his drawings told a hidden story about her brother that I’m not sure we’d find any other place. But even if I could convince Zach’s sister to let me borrow it, I had no place where I could hide the large notebook and not have it be seen and confiscated.
“Sammy, when you asked me whether or not I was here b
ecause of your brother, I didn’t tell you the whole truth.” Maybe trusting a young girl was a bad idea, but my newfound instincts and inner alarm system weren’t going off, so I went with it. “I am here with Mr. Channing, but he brought me so that I could help him figure out what happened to your brother.”
“Like a detective?” She grinned and bounced with enthusiasm. “My mommy and I went to the library and borrowed a Nancy Drew book last week. I’m almost finished with it.”
“Yes, like Nancy Drew. I try to find clues so that I can piece together the mystery. And right now, we think your brother might have been involved in a big one,” I said.
She nodded like she understood. “One time when he came home, I hid in his closet because we used to do things like hide from each other as a big joke. I was gonna jump out and scare him, but I heard him talking on the phone with somebody about how he would do anything to make sure they wouldn’t hurt our family. And then he cried.”
I swallowed hard and kept my composure as calm as possible in total opposite of my nerves jumping on edge inside of me. “Sammy, this could be important. Do you have any idea who he was talking to?”
She shook her head. “No, but I heard him call them boss. But that’s silly because a boss is who’s in charge of you at work. And Zach had quit his job.”
“Samantha,” her father called again.
“I should go. My daddy’s gonna get mad if I don’t answer.” She moved to put the sketchbook back.
Taking a risk, I touched her arm. “Would it be okay if I took a drawing from there? I think if I had one, it might help me in my investigation.”
She held it out to me. “Like a clue?”
“Yes, exactly.”
I didn’t have much time to choose which image would be the best, nor did I know for sure if my tracking skills would connect with one of Zach’s drawings. I needed one that held a lot of emotion in it. I leafed through the pages as fast as possible until I found the sketch of Sammy.
I paused for a moment to consider ripping this one out. But since Zach’s sister loved it so much, I just couldn’t risk losing it. Instead, I turned to some of his darker renderings and picked one with lots of bold pencil scratches into the paper surface.
I tore it out from the large notebook and folded it up, placing it in my purse for safe keeping. “I promise I will take really good care of this.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s okay. I don’t like the scarier drawings.” After crawling back to her box, she set it inside where it was hidden before.
“Samantha Beatrice Owens, you better get your behind down from there,” her dad called up from the bottom of the tree.
I swung a leg over. “Sorry about that. This tree house was too inviting not to check it out.” I climbed down the ladder until I hit solid ground. “Your daughter is very sweet.”
James gave me a curious glance. “She can be. But it’s been really tough on her ever since…” he trailed off.
“I’m sure y’all are doing your best to support each other through all of this,” I reassured him. “I’m sorry if my presence made things tougher.”
He dropped his gaze, guilt filling his face. “You’ll have to forgive my wife. Losing Zach after we had just gained him back has been a huge blow to her.”
Sammy jumped onto the ground from halfway down. Even after losing her brother, the girl still held no fear. She bounced over to her father and threw her arms around his middle.
“Here I am, Daddy. Did you know Charli has a boy name just like me?” She blinked up at him like a little innocent angel.
He tugged on one of her pigtails. “That’s cool.”
“And she says she’s just like Nancy Drew. That she’s going to try and help solve what happened to Zachy,” Sammy continued.
I withheld a cringe at the little girl’s honesty. With trepidation, I risked looking at her father.
“Dash explained why he brought you here. If you can use your…abilities…to help give us some answers, then you’re welcome in our home anytime,” he said.
I nodded my head out of respect, figuring his acceptance came at a high cost. “I will do everything I can.”
Zach’s father picked up Sammy and held her in his arms. He tilted his head at the house. “They’re waiting for you inside.”
I walked away, hoping his daughter would not be so precocious as to share that I had taken one of Zach’s drawings. But since she wanted to keep the sketchbook all to herself, I hoped that would keep her from saying anything else.
Dash met me as soon as I stepped into the kitchen. “I’ve negotiated to let you come with me upstairs to look at Zach’s room,” he uttered in a low voice. “But I don’t know how long either of us will be welcome.”
“Then we better make it quick,” I agreed, not wanting to run into the angered mother again.
For some reason, as we made our way up the stairs, my internal warning system went off again. Dash led me down the hallway until he turned into a room on the left. Max stood at the foot of a double bed.
“I thought I’d get a head start, but so far, I haven’t found anything that’s suspicious,” he said, moving back as if to let Dash take control.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“Not sure.” Dash rubbed the back of his neck, and I felt his exhaustion underneath his authoritative surface. “Maybe he hid a stash of drugs somewhere in here.”
“I’ll go search through the bathroom he would have used,” Max offered.
I gave him a wide berth to exit Zach’s room, still unsure how he felt about my presence. Once he was gone, I retrieved the folded drawing from my purse and held it in my hand.
“What’s that?” Dash asked.
“Something of Zach’s,” I said. “I’m gonna try to see if I can use it as an anchor to my magic. Can you think of anything for me to find? The more specific the request, the better I can focus.”
The alpha shifter shrugged. “Honestly, I’d like to bag it all up and go through it piece by piece. But I think Lucille would truly cut off my head before allowing that to happen.”
I sighed and thought about what Sammy had told me. “He had a phone of some sort that he was talking to someone on. Has anybody found that?”
Dash narrowed his eyes at me. “How do you know that?”
We didn’t have time for me to fill him in on everything. “He was a teenager. He had a phone.”
“I can pull the records from his parents’ account to see who he texted or talked to,” he said.
I needed to hustle before Zach’s mother got angry enough to kick us out. Gripping the drawing in one hand, I closed my eyes and concentrated to cast a spell. “Help us find whatever’s here that belonged to Zach that he held dear. Something that came at too high a cost and caused his life to now be lost.”
A little magical energy raced through me, but I felt no immediate connection to anything. Just to make sure, I moved about the room.
Dash hovered over me the entire time, and the weight of his anticipation grew with every second. “Do you sense anything?”
I pushed on his chest. “Not yet but having you right there next to me might be messing things up.”
“Do you need me to step outside?” he asked.
“No,” I huffed. “Just…give me a little space.”
I held onto the folded drawing tighter and crouched down to check under the bed. A tiny sliver of a golden thread stretched out from me, and I contorted my body to reach underneath.
My hand felt around the carpeted area but found nothing except a lone sock and an old torn candy wrapper. The connection threatened to fade away, and I panicked.
“I wish I could levitate the bed so I could do a more thorough search,” I groused.
Dash nudged me with the toe of his shoe. “Scoot over.” As soon as I moved out of his way, he picked up the edge of the box spring and lifted it, messing up the bedding.
I saw the area where the golden thread led and reached up to retrieve t
he item. “Got it.” I scrambled off the floor and held up a small plastic flip phone, waving it at Dash. “You can put the bed down now, Superman.”
The strong shifter did as I said. I did my best to straighten the bedding back into place to keep the dead boy’s mother from freaking out.
“That’s it? Just a phone?” Dash asked.
“It’s something he wanted hidden, so it must be important,” I replied.
Max interrupted us, gripping the doorway and panting with excitement. “I found what we were looking for.” He held up a clear bag with a white powdered substance dusting the insides. “It was hidden at the bottom of one of the drawers in the bathroom.”
Dash frowned. “That sounds pretty reckless. If I was trying to hide drugs, the last place I would do it is in the hallway bathroom where anybody could stumble upon it.”
“Especially his little sister,” I added. Something about it felt off to me, but I couldn’t figure out what. While Max was so busy staring at his prize, I slipped the flip phone into my pocket.
Max scowled at the two of us. “Well, we were looking for proof and here it is. Did the two of you find anything?”
From the angle where he stood, the second in command couldn’t see me touch Dash’s back in a silent plea for him not to share anything.
“Nothing but dust bunnies,” Dash replied. “Unless Lucille is willing for us to take it all, I don’t know what we’d be looking for anyway. Since we’ve more than overstayed our welcome, we should get going.”
I followed behind the big alpha shifter, passing Max as we exited. He offered me a weak nod. “I guess your talents didn’t work, huh?”
“Not at this point, but it was worth a try.” Trusting my gut, I didn’t divulge what I’d found even though I didn’t quite know why.
I let myself out the front door and waited in the driveway between the truck and the Impala for the other two men to return. The second they left the house, they argued with each other.
“We should turn the bag over to the authorities,” Max said. “We’ve got definitive proof that Zach was using again.”