by R. L. Naquin
“Will do. Discreet is my middle name.”
“No it’s not. I know your middle name.”
“But you’re discreet and don’t tell anybody, so discreet might as well be my middle name.”
True. Anyone who knew her full name could capture her. I’d already rescued her once from a bad master. I kept her name to myself.
“I’m too tired for this conversation, Kam. I’ll call when we get there.”
* * *
I made it about three-and-a-half hours before I and the gas tank decided we needed a rest.
Riley slept the whole time and woke as if he’d spent all night in a comfy bed, ready to take on a new day. Because it was day. I’d driven through dawn and managed to make it through Toledo, Ohio, before rush hour traffic hit. The thing that probably did the most to keep me awake through those hours was the fact that I was driving directly into the sun.
We didn’t stop long. Filled the tank, grabbed breakfast at a drive-through, and I caught him up on the conversation I’d had with Kam and Darius.
“So, they’re about seven hours behind us?” he asked, biting into a breakfast sandwich and steering with one hand.
“Yeah. They want us to wait, but I didn’t promise anything.”
“We’ll have to play it by ear.”
I finished my greasy breakfast and tossed the papers into the empty bag. My eyes were so tired. I closed them and let my neck tilt toward the headrest.
I snapped my eyes open. “Riley, you can’t go in there with me. I can’t risk her controlling you again.”
He sipped his coffee. “She caught me unaware. I’ve got my ring. I can protect myself. It’ll be fine. Besides, you’re powerful, too. You can block me off from her. I know you can. As long as we’re ready for her, we won’t have a repeat of what happened before.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Between us, we’ve got a lot of juice. Together, we’re unstoppable. Now get some rest.”
He was probably right. We could both block out Darius’s fear-inducing mojo, as long as we were prepared. We could do this. We could beat her.
I drifted off, half smiling. In a few hours, if everything went really well, I might finally be with my mom again.
Twenty years was a long time to be without a mom.
* * *
Mom’s cottage was not exactly on a main thoroughfare. In fact, for the last half mile or so, we were actually off-road. If Riley hadn’t been there recently to look for clues to Mom’s disappearance, we never would have found it at all. I was sure the Board had planned it that way—isolation in the woods where only the Hidden were likely to find her. I’d have gone crazy.
I pulled the car as close as I could without ruining the overgrown gardens. I smiled, getting out. Mom had loved gardening. This garden made me happy, knowing she’d been doing what she loved all those years. She’d been ripped away from her family. At least she’d had her flowers.
Gris stayed behind in the car to keep watch. Having an extra set of eyes outside might come in handy, and it made me more comfortable to know he had our backs. I left him my cellphone. If he saw anything suspicious, he would call Riley’s phone to alert us.
We walked across the grass to the front steps of the storybook cottage in the woods. Riley brushed his fingers over the stone in his ring, and I went inside myself and expanded my protective barrier to include him.
I felt my walls brush against his reaper-induced protection, then encompass him. He must have felt it too, because he glanced at me when it happened and nodded. I double-checked the whole thing for cracks and weak spots. We were safe. I gave him a silent thumbs-up, and we stepped through the front door, covering each other like a couple of cops making a drug bust in a buddy flick.
The cottage was small—a main room with a small kitchen off to the side, a bedroom, and a bathroom. We could see almost everything from the front door. I dragged a finger over the fireplace’s stone mantel and frowned, holding the finger up to Riley. The place had been empty for well over a year, yet it was spotless.
Riley gestured to the left where the bedroom door stood open, his head tilted in a question. I closed my eyes and reached out empathically, then shook my head. I couldn’t feel the presence of anyone in there. We both knew that didn’t mean Katy wasn’t in there—only that I didn’t feel her.
Riley went first. I didn’t like it, but I understood why he did it. His job was to protect me. I kept my walls around him thick and sturdy. I was a strong believer in the Pretty Woman philosophy on fairy tales: When the handsome prince rescues the princess, she rescues him right back.
From two steps behind him, I couldn’t see much in the darkened room. A double bed. A dresser. A few squat shadows that were most likely end tables. A door to the right led to the bathroom. Another was a closet door.
I flicked the light switch, but nothing happened—not surprising, considering how long the place had been vacant. The Board maintained the house, but there was no reason to keep the electricity going.
Riley reached the far wall and yanked the heavy drapes to the side, letting in light. My throat locked, and my eyes filled with tears. The dresser was covered in framed pictures of me. And not only pictures of me when I was small, before Mom went away. No, there were photos of me all through school. A wedding picture with my ex-husband, Brad. Sara and I smiling, standing in front of our brand-new office the day we officially opened.
I touched the wooden frame on a photo from about six years ago, back when I chopped my hair, thinking I might look good with it short, only to have to live with helmet head until it grew out again. I laughed, a tear splattering on the glass.
Mom had been watching over me all along. Not in person, but she’d had people watching and sharing my life with her. She’d never deserted me. She’d never forgotten me or stopped caring.
She wasn’t just an Aegis. She was also my mom.
I replaced the picture on the dresser. Riley had moved into the bathroom, found no one in there and returned to check the closet. It was the last place anyone could hide in the tiny cottage. He turned the knob and peered inside. After a moment, he let the door drift open. All of Mom’s clothes were in there. Shoes. Boxes of junk. It wasn’t an enormous closet, but it was packed. No one hid inside.
Riley shrugged. “No reason to be quiet, I guess. There’s nobody here.”
“Maybe we got here first.” I wandered out of the bedroom into the main room. “Or maybe it’s not a person we’re here for, it’s a thing.”
“I will seriously maim someone if we’re here to find a clue that takes us on another twelve-hour drive.” He scrubbed at his face with his palms. His eyes were bloodshot. I imagined mine were likely as bad, if not worse.
I tossed a mournful look at the bed in the next room. My eyelids felt puffy and raw.
When was the last time we were in one of those comfy-looking things? What must it be like to actually stretch out in a prone position to sleep? When was the last time I peed in a clean, private place?
“Nobody’s here,” I said. “I assume the perimeter is secure, general. I’m using the bathroom.”
He smiled. “Don’t fall asleep in there.”
“You sound like we’re in a horror movie.”
“The last place you want Freddy Krueger to get you is from inside the toilet.”
I grimaced. “Thanks for that.”
Once I opened the window and let in some light, I could see. The bathroom was small and decorated in shades of green and blue. Peaceful. Riley had been right. I’d have to be careful not to doze off. I checked the medicine cabinet, mostly out of nosiness and curiosity, but also because lack of real sleep and a crick in my neck meant I was working on a headache.
Face creams and sunscreen lined the tallest shelf. Toothpaste. A toothbrush, left behin
d with her clothes. The standard contents of a medicine cabinet. I found a bottle of aspirin and downed a few with a mouthful of tap water.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, everything was different. It all looked the same, but the air felt heavy, like a storm had rolled in. Puzzled, I poked my head through the door to see if Riley felt it, too.
Riley sat in the middle of the floor, his back to me.
“Did you find something?” I asked, walking around to see. My stomach tightened before I made it around to face him. Terrible pictures flashed behind my eyes. Every horror movie I’d ever seen came to mind. I didn’t want to look and see him playing with some demonic box that would release something terrifying into the world. Or see him mutilating a baby rabbit. Or himself. Or have his beautiful face contorted into some beast from an ancient religion.
Yeah. My imagination was way too active. I had no reason to believe Katy was here or that she’d set a trap. So far, there’d been nothing.
I took a deep breath, smiled and looked at my boyfriend.
Such a simple thing, coloring. We grow up with coloring books and crayons, filling in pictures of cartoon characters or storybook princesses when we’re sick or when it’s raining outside. Usually, coloring is comfort. It has nothing but good associations.
Not so when you find your reaper boyfriend on the floor, coloring, when a psychotic, empathic child is after you. I broke out in beads of cold sweat, and my heart rate went from pack mule to cheetah.
I checked my barriers, but they seemed to hold strong, including the portion I’d wrapped around Riley. Yet there he sat, his face peaceful and oblivious, bent over Pikachu, a yellow crayon gripped in his hand.
“Riley,” I whispered. “What are you doing?”
He ignored me and stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth while he outlined in yellow.
I bent and tried to take the crayon away, and he jerked it from my grasp. Without changing expression, he went back to outlining. “Gotta catch ’em all!”
I straightened, hands on my hips. “Katy! You stop this right now!” I said.
Childish giggles drifted in from the bedroom. I followed the sound, and it came again, this time from the bathroom. When I entered the bathroom, I realized the noise had come through the open window.
I ran past Riley and out the front door, chasing after a sound drifting on the wind. I had no hope of actually catching her. In my heart, I knew she was teasing me again, leading me away as part of her game.
My heart was wrong. I came around the corner to the back of the house and found her under an apple tree.
But she wasn’t alone. Katy and five other kids sat in a circle in my mother’s back yard. Each one of them was silent.
And each one had their vacant eyes locked on me.
Chapter Twenty
Nothing in this world is as creepy as a bunch of silent, staring children. Unless it’s chanting, staring children.
They rose and joined hands as a single unit, then formed a line facing me. I knew Katy when I saw her. I’d been right. We’d seen her several times throughout the trip. The bitch had been taunting us in person the whole time.
She gave no cue I could see, yet they started chanting in a whisper at the same moment.
Red Rover
Red Rover
Let Riley come over!
The whispers were slow and careful, then repeated—a little louder, a little faster.
Red Rover
Red Rover
Let Riley come over!
Goosebumps rose on my arm. “Katy, stop it. Let them all go. I don’t want to play anymore. I want to talk.”
Louder, now, the childish voices strong and taunting, the pace of the chant more insistent.
Red Rover
Red Rover
Let Riley come over!
I startled when Riley appeared next to me, a grin pasted across his face. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. Those were empty and dull.
I grabbed his arms and poured myself into him emotionally, searching for a breach in my protective walls. I found nothing. It was as if she’d ignored the barrier and gone right through it without leaving so much as a wisp of herself behind. I prodded deeper and found her there in his emotional center. A spark of angry madness holding him captive within himself.
I had no experience with anything like this. Could I give her an emotional punch in the face? Mentally pull her pigtails? Force love and understanding into her?
Somehow, I doubted this would be a case of curing her with kindness.
No matter how I came at the problem, I accomplished nothing. I tried to push her out of him, fill him with me instead of her. She was far more powerful and experienced at this than I was. She had nearly a century on me. I couldn’t budge her.
The chanting had reached a fever pitch. Riley broke free from my grip and took off toward the children at a run. Like a fool, I stood there and watched, unable to think what to do.
I knew the rules of Red Rover. I’d played it as a kid. Two teams lined up and chanted, calling on one person from the opposing team. That person had to charge the crowd and try to break through. If he succeeded in breaking the chain, one of their people went back with him to his team. If he failed, he joined the other team.
Riley, a grown man running at top speed across the grass, was unable to break through the linked hands of small children. He smacked into the chained arms, then fell to the ground.
They let go of each other immediately and swarmed him.
I heard glass break behind me, but didn’t stop to investigate. I ran toward the dog pile of kids beating the crap out of my boyfriend. I tugged one child after another, feral beasts who snarled and grabbed sticks before jumping back in to do more damage.
Something cracked. It might have been bone or it might have been a stick. I couldn’t know. They kept moving in front of me so I couldn’t see. There were too many of them, and they were under Katy’s control as much as Riley was. If I hurt them, I was as bad as she was.
I reached inside myself and pushed at them as hard as I could with my mind. A few stopped for a second, glanced around, then resumed. I tried again, threading my mind through the pile, emotionally grabbing at each small person. But they were slippery, as if she’d coated them in emotional slime, filthy and slick.
And then I could. Something changed. I was stronger, somehow. My emotional grip was steel, and the children were easier to catch hold of. They stopped, dropped their bloody sticks, and walked away in a daze.
Riley lay in the grass, one eye swollen shut, cuts on his face and forearms, and one foot at an awkward angle.
I fell to my knees, my hands fluttering over him. I didn’t know where I could touch him without causing further pain. His eyelid blinked over his one good eye, and he groaned. When he passed out I was grateful that he had a temporary reprieve from all that pain.
I choked back tears of panic. He was too big for me to move. My brain, normally at its best, most efficient in an emergency, fritzed out. I had no idea what to do.
Something soft brushed my cheek. “Boys are icky.”
I jerked my head, and Katy moved away before I could grab her. She smiled at me, angelic and golden. “I don’t want to play with boys. I’m going home now. You can come when you get rid of the boy cooties.”
A tapping against my leg brought me back to full awareness. Katy had gone, but I hadn’t seen her leave. Even I wasn’t totally immune to getting zapped by her, it seemed.
“Zoey, come on. Please.”
I glanced down to find Gris slapping my leg. “Where did she go?”
“She left. You went still and stared straight at her when she walked away.” Gris’s distress swirled in the air between us.
My head felt like it was full of mashed potatoes. “
We have to get Riley to the hospital.”
“I already called an ambulance while you were out of it.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
I had no idea what had happened. Where did my extra juice come from? I wasn’t sure if I’d leveled up in my power, or if Katy had let them go. But she’d still made me freeze when it came down to it.
“It was me,” Gris said, as if he heard my thoughts. “My emotions originated from you. When I saw what was going on, I came running and gave you a signal boost.”
I frowned. “Did you break my car window to get out?”
He ducked his head. “Sorry about that. She locked me inside and dropped your phone in the grass.”
“No. Don’t be sorry. You saved Riley’s life.” I smoothed Riley’s sleeve against his shoulder, and brushed his hair away from a gash in his forehead. “We can always get a window fixed. Though you’ll have to be the one to explain it to Maurice. And next time, you might honk the horn if you need to warn me.”
He looked surprised. “Ah. The horn. I read about that in the owner’s manual.”
“You saved us, Gris.” I looked him directly in his tiny, turquoise-chip eyes. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
* * *
To my surprise, the paramedics accepted my pathetic explanation that Riley’s injuries had occurred when he stepped off a cliff during a hike, and that I’d managed to get him all the way to the cottage before calling for help.
I followed them to the hospital, and as soon as the medical team had set Riley’s ankle and cleaned and dressed his wounds, I claimed the chair next to his bed and sat to wait.
He was in good hands, and he wasn’t injured nearly as badly as he looked. I relaxed enough to doze while I waited for him to wake up.
Kam woke me after what seemed like five minutes, but had actually been a couple of hours. “Hey. You doing okay?”
I nodded and sat up. Riley grinned at me from the bed. He looked better, but his eye looked wonky. I rubbed my eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
“You needed some rest,” he said.
I gave him the stink-eye. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you, for once, not the other way around.”