by E.J. Stevens
It was hard to locate missing children while buried in a pine box.
Damn, why did it have to be children? I pounded my fist on the desk, knocking over a coffee mug filled with pens, pencils, and scissors. I flicked a glance at my reflection in a large pair of scissors that landed on my desk blotter. My skin was no longer glowing, thank Mab. It was time to get to work and bring these kids home.
I opened a drawer and pushed in the messy contents of my desk. I could sort through the detritus later. For now, I had a job to do. I lifted my chin and turned to Jinx.
“Let them in,” I said.
Chapter 9
I met with crying gnomes, limping henkies, growling goblins, wailing banshees, and fluttering sprites—to name a few. Every faerie who approached my desk had lost a loved one—a child, sibling, or grandchild—in the night.
Though some of the fae races who visited had unsavory reputations, they all seemed genuinely distressed. Ceff was quick to remind me that all fae have difficulty conceiving. Faerie children therefore are a rare gift, treasured by their families. The raw pain on his face drove the point home. The loss of Ceff’s sons had nearly destroyed him.
I didn’t turn a single client away—no matter who, or what, came to us for help.
The last client walked out our door with a loud shriek, and I sighed. I rubbed my face with shaking hands. I needed a shower and a toothbrush. Too bad I didn’t have the time, or the energy, for a trip upstairs.
Jinx hurried to the door, turned the lock, and flipped the sign from open to closed. She’d cancelled our regular clients for the day, rescheduling our appointments until later in the week. That meant we were double-booked, but I had bigger things to worry about than scheduling issues.
If I didn’t get some sleep soon, I’d be no good to any of my clients. I’d have to ask Jinx to pencil me in for a nap. I leaned back in my chair, blowing strands of hair from my face. I rubbed gritty eyes and ran a tongue over teeth tasting of coffee and old pizza. I must look like something the cat sidhe dragged in. I pictured Sir Torn dropping me on the stoop and snorted, a giggle trying to escape.
I smoothed a gloved hand over wrinkled clothes, avoiding the looks of Ceff and Jinx. The last few hours had been a blur. Jinx and I had interviewed dozens of worried families, but the worst was yet to come.
Ceff had brought us food and coffee while we worked, a kelpie king turned office errand boy. After we ate, he cleared pizza boxes from the conference table—a flea market purchase that Jinx had insisted on for our growing business, which thankfully had no visions imprinted into the shiny pressboard and metal—and began setting up rows of plastic bags. Each bag contained a small item and was labeled with the name of the family and the missing child the item belonged to. Every bag represented a child who was missing.
The table was buried beneath them.
I’ve never attempted to retrieve visions from so many items, but I was about to try. I flicked my eyes away from the table, letting my gaze land on my gloved hands now fidgeting with a paper cup. Ceff had kept the coffee flowing, as if by magic. Perhaps it had been.
I drank the last sips of coffee in one gulp and tossed the cup in my overfull wastebasket. Jinx had discarded her own wastebasket in the back alley, beside the dumpster we shared with the bar that backed onto our building. We hadn’t wanted to offend our clients, many of whom had a heightened sense of smell, with her fouled bin, so now we were sharing mine. The coffee cups and broken pencils spilled out onto the floor at my feet.
After hearing about a toddler, no more than twenty-four months old, stolen from his crib, I’d started waging war on office supplies. My desk was littered with fragments of wood and graphite. And pencils weren’t the only casualty of the morning.
Jinx, in a fit of pique, had smashed the receiver of her retro-styled phone back into the cradle so hard, it was now held together with duct tape and nail glue. The front of our office also showed signs of abuse. It looked as if we’d corralled a herd of angry cattle into our waiting area.
It’s amazing the amount of damage a mob of desperate faeries can cause. I didn’t blame them, they’d lost their children and it’s not like they could go to the human police for help, but we’d have to make repairs. Jinx, always the pragmatist, was adding a fee for physical damages to our bill. Of course, we’d never collect a penny if I didn’t find those kids.
I swallowed hard and dragged myself from my chair. My knees creaked and my legs trembled as I walked with heavy steps to the conference table. I’d missed my morning run. That meant more laps around the Old Port and along the harbor tomorrow, if I survived the day. I tried to distract myself with plans for my altered workout schedule, but my eyes were drawn to the bags that held so much hope for the parents of the missing children.
I lowered myself onto the floor beside the table, back against a row of filing cabinets. Sitting on the floor meant I had less distance to fall, a lesson I’d learned after cracking my head more than once. I pulled my knees to my chest and looked up into Jinx’s worried face.
“Hand me the first bag,” I said.
I reached out, hand shaking. Too much caffeine? Maybe it was time to lay off the coffee.
Jinx bit her lip, but nodded and grabbed a plastic bag off the table. Before she could pass it to me, Ceff stepped between us. He knelt in front of me, knees almost touching my booted feet. Lines creased his brow and pinched the corners of his eyes. I wanted to reach out and wipe the lines from his face, but instead I hugged my legs closer to my chest.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Yes, I do,” I said. I looked him in the eye to let him know I was serious. “It’s the job.”
But this was about more than my career, he knew it and I knew it.
“You don’t have to be a hero,” he said.
A cold chill ran up my spine, but I held myself still. I was good at hiding my fear, had been doing it for a long time. I’d made up my mind last summer and I wouldn’t back down. This city, with all its ley lines and supernatural beasties, needed a hero.
“Galliel would disagree,” I said.
I lifted my lips in a grin, though my voice lacked the humor I’d intended. Galliel, a beautiful unicorn seeking sanctuary at St. Mary’s church, adored me as much as I adored him. Father Michael claimed that Galliel’s affection was due to two things. Unicorns are attracted to virgins and heroes. I knew that I was the former, but Father Michael had insisted that I was also the latter.
I’d never thought of myself that way until my city had been threatened by vicious each uisge. Since then I’d been trying my best to fill the void against evil. I hadn’t known what being a hero really entailed, but I was a quick learner.
Today I was ready to live up to the priest’s expectations. If it took a hero to help rescue these kids, then that’s exactly what I would become.
“Ivy, I…,” he said.
“I know,” I said. I reached out with gloved fingers and gripped his hand, holding it for a moment. No flesh touched, but the simple act of holding Ceff’s hand was intensely intimate. I was amazed that my gloves didn’t burst into flame. “Me too.”
The touch was a rare stolen moment. I just hoped it wasn’t our last.
“You will not be swayed?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then what can I do to help?”
Most guys would stomp off or pout when their girlfriend did something stupid or reckless, but not Ceff. I glanced up at Jinx, standing over Ceff’s shoulder. She looked at my hand on Ceff’s, waggled penciled eyebrows, and winked. I pulled my hand away from Ceff and gestured to my roommate and business partner.
“Jinx is in charge,” I said. “Follow her lead and do what she says, without hesitation. She knows the drill.”
Jinx nodded and held out her hand to Ceff, two pieces of rubber resting on her palm.
“If you’re staying, you’ll need these,” she said.
The brightly colored piece
s of rubber were earplugs—to block out my screams.
Jinx slung a crossbow over her shoulder and set a handful of iron and silver bolts onto the table. Ceff raised an eyebrow and she poked a finger at his chest.
“Weapon up, big guy,” she said. “Ivy will be completely defenseless while caught in a vision. If the person who stole these children shows up, I have her back. So should you.”
It was strange having Jinx talk about me like I wasn’t sitting here, just inches away. But if this was to be Ceff’s first time witnessing my psychometry in action, he deserved a few pointers. And Jinx was the closest thing to an expert.
Ceff lifted his pant leg to reveal a three pronged weapon—a trident?—strapped to his ankle.
“I will protect her, no matter what comes,” he said.
Ceff stared at Jinx and it seemed like they were talking about more than weapons.
“Guys?” I asked. “Can we hurry it up?”
My eyelids were heavy and the floor was beginning to feel comfortable, even with the handles of filing cabinets jabbing into my back. Jinx and Ceff ended their staring contest and Jinx stepped forward.
“Sure thing,” she said.
Jinx handed me the bag. A small, stuffed animal stared out at me through the clear plastic, its smile stitched in place.
I slid my boots forward and let the bag sit on my lap. I inhaled slowly though my nose and out through my mouth. I bit my lip and stared at the pastel blue and yellow monkey smiling out at me. I had a bad feeling about this.
I unzipped the bag and pulled the child’s toy onto my lap, tossing the bag aside. My hands shook, but I focused on my anger. The child who played with this toy was missing, taken from his bed. I yanked hard on my glove, pulling the leather from my skin one finger at a time.
I didn’t look at Ceff, but I could feel him kneeling before me. He hadn’t left my side, not yet. But I knew that what was to happen next would not be pretty. I just hoped he’d still be here when I came to, though I wouldn’t blame him if he left.
My hand began to glow and I shook my head. Now was not the time to worry about Ceff. If he couldn’t handle being with me, then I’d go back to being on my own. What mattered now was finding the missing children.
I reached out and touched the toy. The fabric was soft against my bare fingers, but I didn’t have long to appreciate the sensation. I gasped as my skin began to tingle, as if pricked my hundreds of electrified needles. There was definitely a memory imprinted here, but it was weak. It takes strong emotion to leave a psychic imprint on an object. Either the child had not been frightened at the time of his abduction, or children leave behind weaker imprints than adults. Since this was my first case involving such young children, I had no way of knowing.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath. I began tensing and releasing muscles, beginning at my toes and working my way up my legs toward my head. As I performed the relaxation exercises, I cleared my mind and focused on the object in my hand. I ran my fingers over the rough stitches of the toy’s smile and the room tilted as if the earth suddenly shifted on its axis.
I slid painlessly into the vision, but the perspective was disorienting. A child’s mind had formed the memory which made the vision disjointed. I was in a nursery painted in pastel shades of blue and yellow similar to the toy my hand still held in the real world.
The child had recently been sleeping, the bed still warm where blankets had hastily been thrown back. The toddler’s heart was racing and something—wings?—thrummed, stirring the downy curls at the back of his head.
I held my mind separate from the child mind of the vision and braced myself for what was to come next. The child swung his legs over the side of the bed, which I could now see was fashioned from a hollow tree, and reached toward something shining above him. The child toddled forward, using his wings for balance. A twinkling light beckoned from a few yards away. The glowing orb looked suspiciously familiar.
The child was being led from his home by a wisp.
The wisp ducked out through the child’s bedroom door and into a hallway. The light bobbed and weaved, dancing in the air, but no matter how fast the child ran to catch it, the wisp always remained the same distance ahead. Pudgy hands reached for the pretty glowing orb, one hand clutching the toy monkey, as the light bounced and wiggled down a long hallway. At a large wooden door, the wisp shot through the keyhole. The child ran to the door and fumbled with the latch.
As the child’s toy fell from his hand, the vision faded. The last image I had was of a young faerie in his pajamas, wandering off into the night.
I tried to focus on the fading image, but black smudges filled my vision. My awareness was yanked painfully upward and, with a gasping breath, I broke the surface of the vision. The last of the vision trickled away, returning me to my own body.
I ran my tongue around my mouth, tasting blood, but there didn’t seem to be any lasting damage. I was even sitting upright. Go me.
I opened my eyes to see Jinx zipping the blue and yellow monkey into a plastic bag. She set the bag aside and grabbed a notepad and pen. I stole a glance at Ceff. He cleared his throat and caught my gaze.
“We are delighted at your return,” he said.
“Yeah, glad to have you back,” Jinx said. “Smooth ride?”
“Minimal turbulence,” I said voice scratchy.
My mouth was dry and the copper taste of blood caught in my throat. But I didn’t feel too bad, actually. For a vision, this one was mild.
I pulled on my glove and sagged against the metal file cabinet at my back. Jinx handed me a paper cup of water and I gulped it down. It was holy water from our water cooler, not that it tasted any different than regular water, but at that moment it seemed to come straight from Heaven. I let out a satisfied breath and Jinx held up her notepad and pen.
“Any leads?” she asked.
Mab’s bones. A dancing, glowing orb had rousted the child from his bed and led him away from his home. Kaye’s books were filled with stories of wisps leading men to their doom. Could wisps, my own brethren, be responsible for the missing faerie children?
“Something woke the kid, some kind of dancing light,” I said. “Kid left of his own volition, but whatever that glowing orb was, it seemed to be leading him out of the house.”
“Did you see where the child went to?” Ceff asked, leaning forward.
“No, sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “He dropped the toy while fumbling with the latch on his front door. I just know that he followed the light outside.”
I remembered wrinkled pajamas disappearing into the darkness. I squeezed the paper cup, crushing it into a tiny ball, and tossed it across the room. It dropped short of the wastebasket, another thing to worry about later.
“At least he wasn’t hurt or anything, right?” Jinx asked.
“Yeah, the kid was fine last night,” I said. It had been dark outside during the vision, but now daylight was streaming in through our office windows. “But that was hours ago.”
Ceff rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the floor. This had to be hard on him after losing his sons.
“What do you think the lights were?” she asked. “Some kind of spell?”
I hoped it was a spell, because if my suspicions were correct, then wisps were involved. If my own people were behind this, where did that leave me?
I’d been flinching away from the prospect of coming out as a faerie princess. But if wisps committed this crime, then I was partly responsible. My father, king of the wisps, had left our people leaderless. I had known this for months and done nothing.
I stared at the table covered in plastic bags—so many missing children. Had the same lights lured the other children from their beds? There was only one way to find out.
“I’ll know more when we’re done,” I said. I pointed to the table. “Keep ‘em coming.”
Jinx gave me an understanding nod and handed me a plastic bag. Ceff’s brow wrinkled and he cleared his throat.
“Are you certain?” he asked. “Couldn’t we search the homes for clues? The families may have missed something.”
The chances of that many families all missing something was a long shot. In the case of the winged child, he had walked out the front door himself. There had been no forced entry and the only physical intruders were the lights which floated in the air, never touching any surfaces. No, my gut told me that the answers were here in these objects, not back in the victims’ homes.
“I have to do this, now,” I said. “I can’t put this part of the job off until later. The first few hours are the most important in any missing person case. If I don’t learn anything new, then we’ll try other methods, but this is our best chance of finding out what happened last night.”
“She’s right,” Jinx said. She placed a hand on Ceff’s shoulder. “This is the best way to save these kids.”
“If you are both in agreement, then I acquiesce,” he said. Jinx put her hand on a curvy hip and raised an eyebrow. Ceff raised his hands, palm out, and smiled. “You are the professionals. I surrender.”
Professionals? I didn’t feel like a professional in my wrinkled, sweat stained clothes, but we had worked missing person cases before. I focused on the few facts we knew so far and what information we were missing.
“We need to know if the cases are connected,” I said. “Maybe, just maybe, one of the kids saw something that will lead us to where they’re being kept. And if we find the children, we’ll need backup to get them out.”
I was assuming that the children were still alive. We all were. To think that these children may already be dead was too horrible to imagine.
“I’ll call Jenna,” Jinx said.
The Hunters Guild wouldn’t sanction a raid to extract faerie children—they only fought to protect humans—but Jenna didn’t mind working a side-job, even if it was to save non-humans. For a Hunter, she was remarkably open-minded.