Syl stalked along the counter to give herself a better view of the street. *Was that Rosie that just went into the pub?*
I nodded. Rosie was a single mum again, having split with Cody’s stepdad a couple of years ago. She had a job as a doctor’s receptionist in the next town, and if surgery ran late, as it often did, Cody looked after himself until she got home.
Often that involved dropping into the bookshop and talking my ear off about his latest craze. He’d been in last week, looking for some information on owls, and I’d helped him find a book on birds. Let him have it for half-price, too. There wasn’t much money to spare in that family, even with the little bit of support that Joe contributed. And with Holly losing her job, and the new baby on the way, that contribution would soon be even less. Damn that prat Johnson.
Damn all shapers. There were so few of them, compared to the number of humans in the world, yet they held the balance of power. Sure, in some of the bigger human-controlled areas, like Brittania, a human might pass their whole life without ever seeing a shaper. Not so here in New Holland, unfortunately. Hell, I’d heard that in some places they didn’t even have shifters, but that seemed too weird to be true. Shifters were far more numerous than the element-wielding shapers, though humans still outnumbered them.
“I should go help.” Had Cody been taken? Surely not. Things like that just didn’t happen in sleepy Berkley’s Bay. Wandered off, then? That seemed almost as unlikely. Cody knew the drill: straight home after school, or to Joe and Holly’s place if it was their night to have him. Apart from his visits to the bookshop, he wasn’t the type to wander. But, either way, I could help.
*The wolves will sniff him out,* Syl said, watching another couple of cars pull up outside the pub.
Had Joe heard yet? He had a soft spot bigger than the great outdoors for that boy. “On a night like this? If there was a trail, it will have washed away by now.”
She didn’t reply. Syl never admitted I was right if she could possibly help it—but I was right. Not even Joe’s nose could follow a trail in this weather.
*That Steele jerk is there,* she pointed out after a long pause.
“What’s he going to do? Set fire to something?” Fat lot of help that would be. “Come on. It’s Cody. I’ve got to go over there.”
Syl followed me out into the rain, though she scooted into the doorway to our apartment so fast her paws barely touched the wet pavement. She waited there while I locked the shop, then led the way up the stairs to the landing, her tail waving above her back like a black flag.
Two doors faced each other across the landing. Number 1 belonged to Joe and Holly, but they wouldn’t be home with Cody missing.
I unlocked the door of Number 2 and followed Syl inside, flicking lights on as I went. It wasn’t a very big apartment; though Alberto had called it “two bedrooms”, the second bedroom had been designed for a dwarf. It was just as well Syl preferred her cat form for now, or it might have made her claustrophobic. The larger bedroom was mine, and we shared the cramped bathroom, which also housed the washing machine and dryer. The kitchen was small but adequate, but the best thing about the apartment was the view from the living room, which looked back across a row of single-storey houses to a view of the bay. At the moment that view was dark and shrouded with rain, but I was looking forward to spending summer evenings on the balcony enjoying the breeze and watching the colours of the sea and sky change.
I put on hiking boots and a waterproof jacket and grabbed the flashlight from under the kitchen sink.
“Back as soon as I can.”
*Let me know how it goes.*
I hurried down the stairs and out into the rain, pulling my jacket tighter around me as I dashed across the road to the pub. Alberto arrived at the same time, wearing a black polo shirt and black trousers. In three months, I’d never seen him wear anything else. The only variation was in the thickness of the fabric. In winter he’d worn wool; now that spring was here he’d switched to a lighter cotton. He always looked immaculate, and kept his bar the same way.
He held the door open for me and we entered the “airlock”, a small dark space before another door opened into the noise and light of the pub itself. The double doors helped keep out the hated sunlight, though Alberto spent most of the day sleeping in the extensive cellars beneath the pub.
“After you,” he murmured.
I pushed open the inner door and found a hive of industry. The pub was one of the oldest buildings in town, and was furnished in old-fashioned style, its warm wooden tables lit by low-hanging pendant lights that shed a rosy glow over the scene. The main bar still had some of the original features. The long wooden bar had decorative carving along the front: wattle blossom and sprays of eucalyptus leaves, oiled and polished over the years to a dark glowing brown. The tables and chairs were all new, and apparently much more comfortable than the originals, according to the regulars. Alberto had removed all the windows, but some of the original wallpaper still survived. It was green and gold and not all that attractive, but I guess it had historic value.
Someone had found a huge map of the area, and had it spread out over two tables pushed together. Jake Steele stood with a group of men around the map, the light catching blue highlights in his dark hair as he bent over it. He looked up as we entered.
“Jake!” Alberto said. “I wondered whose limo that was outside.”
Steele crossed the floor and shook the vampire’s hand. “I’ve only just arrived in town. I stopped by to see you, and then this happened …” He waved a hand at the chaos around us.
I left the two men and headed over to where Rosie sat on a barstool next to Tegan.
“Is it Cody?” I said under my breath to Tegan. She was a weretiger; she had excellent hearing.
She nodded. Outwardly her face was as calm as ever, but her tawny eyes were worried. “And Jamie Hernandez. It’s not like Cody,” she muttered. “Any other kid and nobody would bat an eyelid, but Cody …”
My thoughts exactly. And apparently half the town agreed, judging by the numbers that were still arriving. Steele was splitting people into groups and assigning sections of the map to be searched.
“Hi, Rosie.” I gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him. I’m sure he’s fine.”
She gave me a tremulous smile. Rosie looked tired at the best of times, but now she looked exhausted. The skin around her eyes was pink, as if she’d been crying, but there were no tears now.
“He was supposed to be at Jamie’s place,” she said. “I stopped there on my way home from work to pick him up, but Michelle said Jamie had told her they were going to my place. I don’t understand. It’s not like Cody to lie.”
I nodded sympathetically. “But at least that means they’re together, wherever they are.” And probably ruled out that they’d been snatched by someone. One boy, yes, but two boys? Pretty unlikely. “Where’s Joe?”
“He’s gone to see if he can find a trail,” Tegan said. Her shrug added that she thought there was no chance of that, but Joe wasn’t the type to sit still when his son was missing.
I glanced across at Steele again, his tall figure drawing my eye against my will. He and Alberto had their heads together over the map.
“Tegan and I knocked on every door between my place and Michelle’s,” Rosie said. “No one saw them. I’m just worried they might have gone to the beach. With the weather we’ve had today …”
She trailed off. The beach was on the seaward side of the point, not sheltered like our little harbour. It was often closed in poor weather, the waves too high for safe swimming, but when had that ever stopped boys?
“It’s way too cold for swimming today. Even for a kid! I’m sure you don’t need to worry about that.”
The door swung open again, and Joe trotted in, his yellow eyes startling against his dark fur. An expectant hush fell on the crowd, and I gave Rosie’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Between one step and the next, the wolf shimmered and disappeared, transfor
med into a big, solid guy in jeans and a dark T-shirt. Judging by the scowl on his face, the news wasn’t good. Alberto offered him one of the towels he used to wipe the bar to dry his wet hair.
Rosie slid off her barstool, and I went with her, eager to hear what news Joe had.
“No luck.” He ran his hand through his wet hair, sweeping it out of his face. “There’s been too much rain to pick up a trail. It’s all been washed away. But we did find a couple of school bags down the back of Pike Park. I reckon they’ve gone into the bush there.”
“Really?” Rosie said. That seemed to make her happy, though to my mind the bush held plenty of dangers for two inexperienced boys. Still, she could stop worrying that they’d been swept out to sea.
Joe’s report was our signal to move out. Alberto stayed behind to man the phones and send any latecomers to join us at the park. The rest of us headed off, cramming into the vehicles parked outside. Despite my best efforts to avoid Jake Steele, I ended up sandwiched between him and Joe in the back of the limo. He didn’t make any more threats, but I felt his gaze resting on me.
Damned if I knew why he was so hostile. I refused to look at him, spending the whole time staring out the window instead. My mind ranged ahead to the park, flitting from heartbeat to heartbeat through the dripping trees.
Pike Park was a large playing field with a small, brightly coloured playground built off to one side. Once we arrived, Steele stuck close and made sure he was right alongside me when we split up to search, clearly determined not to let me out of his sight.
Beyond the dripping swings and the slippery dip running with water, several paths led off into the bush. This sea of green surrounded the whole town on the landward side. Berkley’s Bay nestled between the sea on one side and the bush on the other. Some of that bush was public land, set aside for the use of the shifters, but a lot of it belonged to the massive estate of a certain shaper, whose magnificent mansion commanded a sweeping view of the whole bay from the top of its private hill. If you walked far enough along some of these trails, you’d end up alongside his fences.
If you left the trails, you could end up anywhere. There was a lot of land out there, a vast ocean of trackless green, enough for two boys to get lost in many times over. If they had strayed from the paths, the chances of us simply stumbling over them in the dark and the rain were small.
We spread out in a line, our flashlights faint pinpricks of light in the darkness, and began to walk, calling out as we went. The bush quickly closed in around us; I could barely see the flashlight of the person two links down the human chain, bobbing weakly through the rain. It was getting heavier. The rain muffled our voices, too, drowning them with its steady patter on the sodden ground.
I called out dutifully just the same, swinging my flashlight at the dripping undergrowth, watching the raindrops streak through its beam, but I wasn’t focused on that. My attention spidered out in all directions, little tendrils creeping through the dripping bush, burrowing into every little dry hidey-hole and up into every tree, seeking out the bright points of life that twinkled in my inner sight like tiny stars.
Here I touched a small rodent, there a bird. Here a fox or feral cat, there a wild deer. There were animals all around us, and I slid into their minds, looked out of their eyes—a hundred different views of the trees stark against the clouds, of the hollows under logs and the dripping spaces underneath the bushes. Everywhere I looked, the bush was alive, but nowhere did I see two cold and frightened little boys.
My mind touched a mob of kangaroos foraging through the wet grass in a small clearing. I sent them bounding through the night, watching the trees swing dizzily past. I found a fox with two half-grown cubs, and sent them in the other direction, along the banks of a small creek that chattered noisily over its stony bed.
I stumbled, my attention only half on what my physical body was doing. Steele cast a sharp glance my way, though I couldn’t imagine why. Stumbles were common in the dark bush. The ground beneath our feet was littered with rocks and sudden dips, and everyone was watching the beam of their flashlight, not looking down at their feet. The man on my left had tripped twice in the last half hour, with no particular attention from Steele.
Time was passing; my watch said nine o’clock already. We’d been out here over an hour, with no sign of the boys. Strands of wet hair straggled in my face; I brushed them back with fingers numb from the rain’s relentless onslaught. The boys would be cold and frightened. We needed to find them soon.
At last, my questing mind found an owl soaring overhead, and I hitched a ride with her straight away. Her night vision was exceptional; back at the bar the men had been lamenting the fact that there were no owl shifters in town. The search might have been over already if we’d had one.
Wind rushed over her feathers as we sailed like a ghost through the weeping sky. Her belly was empty, but I only felt a little guilty about interrupting her hunt with my own—she was young and healthy, and wouldn’t suffer for the delay.
On the ground, we had arrived at the creek that my foxes had passed earlier. The line paused as Steele contemplated the rushing water. Parts of it were deep, and broken branches reached out of the water at odd angles, hinting at hidden snags.
“Do you think they could have gone in?” the man to Steele’s right asked. “It joins the river further down.”
This close to the sea the river was salty, wide and deep, and it ran with a strong current, as if eager to be out at sea. If the boys had fallen in, already cold and wet, and been swept away, perhaps hurt in the fall …
The line contracted, other searchers moving in closer to see why we’d stopped.
“If it comes to that we can search the river,” Steele said, “but let’s not assume the worst. Perhaps they didn’t come this way at all, or turned back at the creek.”
“Might have crossed over,” someone else said, a featureless voice in the dark. “It’s not so deep further along.”
“They might,” Steele conceded, “but how far could they have gone in the time they had? We could be searching in the wrong direction entirely.”
I was starting to think so, too. My animal friends had covered a lot more ground than we had, and none had seen any sign that the boys went this way. Those poor kids must be starving by now, and probably frightened, too. It was getting late, and I was tired of tramping through the wet—and I was equipped for it. The boys must be feeling much worse.
I sent my owl out wider, in great swooping passes through the rainy night. Through her eyes, I saw the lights of Steele’s house below on their cliff overlooking the sea, and, farther back, the lights of the town. Nothing out here but darkness.
Then her sharp eyes spotted the smallest glint below, despite the fact that the moon was hidden behind fat dark clouds. I sent her down lower to investigate. The glint had a faint blue tinge.
She settled on the branch of a tall gum, swivelling her head to show me the scene. Huddled at the base of the tree were two small bodies. Thank goodness! One boy had his back propped against the trunk and one leg stuck straight out in front of him. Was that leg at a funny angle? It was hard to tell using the owl’s sight.
The other boy was Cody. He held a mobile phone; the blue glint was the light of its screen. He sighed and shoved the phone into his back pocket. There was probably no signal; service was a little patchy even in town. He looked fine, though both boys were drenched. The sooner I could get to them the better.
But how was I going to do that without it looking suspicious? The boys were nowhere near us, nowhere near anywhere that was currently being searched. I could hardly say, “Hey, guys, let’s just try this way,” and lead them back to the park and off into a random patch of bush that was nowhere near where we’d found their bags.
The men were still discussing the creek and what we should do. Ideally I didn’t want any of them with me when I found the boys. I wiped rain out of my eyes and sniffed. The cold was making my nose run.
“I’m going to
head back into signal range and ring Rosie,” I said. “See if there’s anywhere else they could have gone.”
Joe eyed me impatiently, his irises golden with the need to turn wolf. His hair, dark with rain, was plastered to his head. In his haste to get out and find his son, he hadn’t bothered to stop for wet weather gear.
“She would have said if there was.”
“Just in case.”
He made a noise of frustration that sounded a lot like a growl. Shifters often took refuge in their animal shape in stressful situations, but Joe was doing his best to stay in the more useful human form. “We don’t want to have to go searching for you, too.”
“I’ll go with her,” Steele said, taking my arm in a firm grip. “Give it another ten minutes and then bring everyone else back to the park. We’ll regroup there.”
Shit. How was I going to do this now, with him watching? Why did he have to be so bloody untrusting? I shook his hand off and strode off into the dripping bush before anyone else could volunteer to come, too. With a bit of luck, I could lose him in the dark.
Sadly, his long legs were more than equal to the task of keeping up with me. We arrived back at the park much faster than the outward journey.
“I’ve got signal here.” Steele stopped, looking at me expectantly. Damn the man. Why hadn’t he pulled shaper rank and stayed at the pub with Alberto? The mayor hadn’t offered to join the search party.
Now I didn’t know what to do. Should I pretend to call Rosie and get some new “information” that would lead me in the right direction? But that would be so easy to check. Someone would be bound to say something to Rosie, and then the whole thing would come unravelled. Just like my life was threatening to.
“I’ve got a hunch. I’ve seen some of the local kids head out this way before. Let’s just give it a shot.”
I glanced sidelong at him as we plunged back into the bush on a different path. That was the vaguest bit of handwavery ever, and he didn’t look at all convinced. If he’d been suspicious of me before, this was only going to make it worse.
Stolen Magic (Shadows of the Immortals Book 1) Page 3