“Well, he’s a believer now I take it.”
“I think so. I hope so. He’s not a jumpy kind of guy. Like, nothing rattles him. But what he saw tonight really scared the shit out of him.”
“It scared the hell out of me, too.”
“I can see that.”
The humor in her eyes vanished, and she was once again disappearing inside herself. I kept quiet for a bit to give her some space, worried that she might start sobbing again.
“I’ve only ever seen something like that once before,” she said. “Years ago. A long time before I learned to control my ability. I never thought I’d see anything like that again. Never wanted to.”
“What did you see?” I asked, leaning in closer to her. “I don’t want to upset you or pressure you, but the whole point of me being here is to investigate. I really need your help, Sylvia. I know it’s scary, but I need you to tell me what you saw downstairs. For the sake of finding those children.”
She closed her eyes and winced as though she was in pain. Her fingers dug into her robe so tight that her knuckles were turning white.
“I saw the children,” she said. “I saw them—”
Her words were cut off by the sound of a ferocious scream coming from outside. We both looked out the window just in time to see Logan running at full speed back towards the house like his ass was on fire.
“Elena!” he yelled. “Elena, where the fuck are you?”
20
Logan
In a panic, I climbed back into the nearest entrance of the house, the kitchen window, once again slipping in the sink as I scattered my limbs over the counter.
“Hawthorne!” came Elena’s concerned voice as she bolted down the stairs. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I heard her footsteps rush towards the front door as her voice grew shrill.
“I’m in here!” I called out.
She emerged in the kitchen doorway just in time to see me fall onto the kitchen floor.
“What the—why did you climb through the fucking window? The door’s right there!”
I looked up and saw her standing above me, pointing about three feet to the left of where I was lying. My cheeks flushed deep red with embarrassment. I went running every morning. I was supposed to be an athletic agent, a guy who could chase down the bad guys, but here I was, oblivious to the concept of doors and being conquered by a kitchen sink.
“Oh my god—did you break the window?”
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “My brain’s just melting.”
Elena blew a strand of hair out of her face, then offered me a hand.
“I suppose another busted window isn’t going to make much difference in this place,” she said, helping me onto my feet. “That’s what I get for not handcuffing you to the chair.”
“Sprites!”
“What?”
“Goblins! There’s dozens of them out there! I saw them with my own eyes! Lafayette saw them too!”
Elena looked deep into my eyes for a second, then screwed up her nose.
“Are you fucking with me?”
“No! I’m serious. Really fucking serious.”
“Dude, you’re tripping balls right now,” she said, still eyeing me suspiciously. “I’m sure you’re seeing all kinds of shit.”
“Elena! I saw them! Ask Lafayette! He was there.”
Her green eyes darted over to my new feline friend, who’d leapt up onto the counter and was rubbing his head into the side of my arm.
“C’mon, Lafayette. Tell her what we saw.” I scratched his chin, trying to coax him into speaking. He continued pressing his head against me, keeping his tail low as it swished from side to side. “It’s okay to talk in front of Elena,” I said, trying to assure him that it was alright. “She’s fae. If anyone’s going to be fine with a talking cat, it’s her.”
Elena wasn’t amused in the slightest. She was back to wearing that annoyed, pissed-off expression that had been on her face since the moment we’d met.
“He’s just scared,” I explained and gathered the black cat into my arms. “Believe me, Elena. Those freaky little spider goblins are all over the place.”
I could see she wanted to believe me, but at the same time, something was holding her back.
“Tell me exactly what they looked like.”
“Well, they weren’t animals, and they weren’t people. They moved slow and jerky at the same time. Little blackish-green fuckers with giant bug eyes. They were bigger than cats, but they weren’t . . . I have no idea what they were.”
“They were what Sylvia saw when she entered the other side,” said Elena, speed walking around the side of the house. “The hall monitors to whatever hellish underworld she saw.”
“And they’re here now?” I said, following close behind. “How can that be?”
Elena closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“I don’t know, Logan. Just promise me you’re not joking.”
“I swear I’m telling the truth!” I practically yelled, holding Lafayette closer against my chest. “I saw them. They’re as real as you standing right in front of me.”
She glanced out the kitchen window towards the trees and narrowed her eyes.
“Show me.”
“No way. I’m not going back out there.”
“Yes, you are. Show me where you saw them.”
“Why would I go back out there when there’s demons or goblins out there?”
“Because it could lead us to wherever the kids are. We’re here to find them, remember? If you’re that worried about the sprites, I’ve got two guns and a taser. Let’s go!”
I set Lafayette down and started to climb back out the window, but as I brought my knee onto the counter, I felt Elena’s hand grab hold of my ankle.
“Through the door, Hawthorne!”
“Right.”
I heard a shuffling behind me and turned around to see Sylvia standing in the doorway. Since the kitchen was the only room with electricity, it was also the brightest. I could tell that she’d been crying.
“You saw them too, huh?” she asked me. Shivers ran up my spine and down my legs as I nodded my head.
“There were so many of them.”
“Too many,” she replied, and stepped back into the darkness.
“Hawthorne!” shouted Elena from the back porch. “Where are you?”
“I’m coming!”
With my gun confiscated, I looked around frantically, searching for anything I could use as a weapon. All I saw were a bunch of hand tools that Sylvia used for the garden on her back patio. I grabbed a trowel and a hand rake and sprinted over to where Elena stood. She was staring impatiently out towards the trees.
“Over there,” I told her, pointing in the direction I’d gone earlier. She didn’t reply, just stormed off away from me faster than her legs should have been able to carry her. As she reached the edge of the yard where I’d come running out of, she hesitated, peering into the shadows.
“In this area?”
“Yeah. Just a few yards in.”
She ran a hand through her pink hair and squinted into the darkness. Despite the panic and whatever influence I suspected I was under, having her close helped me calm down. The purple beams had stopped shooting out of her ears. The moonlight was covering her bare arms, illuminating the side of her face. I didn’t think she was a makeup junkie, but it looked like she’d taken a bath in highlighter fluid. Her skin shimmered with a golden pearly glow, and combined with her bright green eyes and brilliant rose-colored hair, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. There wasn’t anything ordinary about her beauty. It was otherworldly, a little devastating, and left her completely unapproachable. Sensing the way I was watching her, she twisted around and glared at me.
“What the hell are you looking at? We’re supposed to be hunting goblins. Now show me exactly where you saw them.”
I pointed again. She didn’t hesitate for a second, just put one foot in front of th
e other and charged into the blackened forest that, for all she knew, was full of monsters sent from the bowels of hell.
“Are you coming?” she hissed, frustration pulling at her voice.
“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”
But I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be running right back into the safety of the house. The last thing I wanted to see were those freaky little fuckers again. They’d sprouted a fear inside me that was so intense it was surreal. I didn’t know it was even possible to feel a fear so strong. It didn’t help that my only weapons were garden tools. I think what bothered me the most was the fact that these things weren’t human. At least when I’d come across drug cartel members or serial killers, I had an idea what to expect.
But these things?
My past experience was nothing compared to the feeling of terror I felt when I’d seen those little green sprites in front of me. I couldn’t move a single inch. It was like my feet were being tangled up in the grass.
“Logan, I know this is freaking you out, but I really need your help right now,” Elena said with a firmness that was impossible to argue with. “We need to find Rylee and all the other missing kids.”
She was right. This wasn’t the time to think about my own fear. I was here to find the kids, and if that meant coming face to face with the stuff of nightmares, so be it.
“I’m coming,” I said, making a conscious effort to take a step forward. “Give me a second.” My heart beat faster as I walked alongside of her and led the way through the darkness. “There’s the tree Lafayette was scratching at and . . . I walked over here and then . . . They were suddenly behind me. Just . . . right there where you are now.”
I pointed to the space that surrounded her. A bitter sense of uneasiness washed over me.
“Right here?”
“Yeah.”
She glanced about as though hoping to see them, but to my relief, they were gone. Then she started sniffing the air.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Sprites smell nasty. Like the inside of a dumpster on a hot summer day. Didn’t you notice?”
“Honestly, I was too busy trying not to shit myself to notice what they smelled like.”
She knelt down into the grass, shining the light on her phone, looking for clues.
“There’s gotta be something about this place,” she thought out loud, brushing clumps of grass to one side. “Something significant. Maybe it’s the rocks under the soil.”
“Don’t tell me you’re into crystals and all that woo-woo shit.”
“What are you, stupid? Of course I’m into crystals! Different types of rocks give off different frequencies. Some attract phenomena.”
“Like sprites?”
“Like a lot of things. They can open portals, too, in the right circumstances.”
She got down on all fours, propped up the light on her phone, and began feeling her fingers through the soil.
“Why here?” she asked. “Why would the sprites be here?”
“Uhh . . . because Sylvia’s face turned into a black hole and everything unholy came flying out of it?”
“No, I mean right here. Why would the sprites have shown up at this particular spot?” She went on digging her fingers into the dirt.
“I’m confused,” I said, handing her the trowel. She turned and looked up at me in sheer wonder before putting it to use. I think it meant I’d finally done something right. “If these things are inter-dimensional, they’re not going to be found by digging, are they?”
“Shhh . . . ”
She began digging wildly through the dirt like a dog searching for a bone. Instead of standing there like a dumbass, I knelt down and started clawing at the ground with my little hand rake.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
“I’ll know it when I see it. It could be a sign or a symbol. Even a feeling, an energy, a splash of light that shows there’s something strange going on here.”
“Oh, there’s definitely something strange going on here.”
“I just don’t get it,” she said, ignoring my jab. “The trees around here aren’t magic. Neither is the ground. So why were they here?”
“Fuck if I know. You’re the expert in all this stuff.”
The more we dug, the more desperate and irritable she became. When one patch of soft soil brought up no results, she moved on quickly to the next, then the next, ordering me around until there were little piles of soil surrounding us. As I overturned patch after patch of soil, I became aware of how the light had changed. Hints of indigo and cobalt were staining the sky, and some of the stars had disappeared. The darkness was lifting its hold on the Smoky Mountains, and also my mind.
I was finally sobering up. Thank god for that.
I stopped digging and looked up. A blanket of purple lay on the horizon, waiting for the sun to rise.
“We’ve been here all night,” I said.
“And what a fucking night it’s been,” Elena huffed, tossing aside another trowel-full of dirt. “Keep digging.”
Plodding on, I poked and prodded at the ground with still no idea as to quite what I was looking for. The ground was soft and damp from the recent rain. Occasionally I found worms or beetle larvae, but nothing out of the ordinary. That was until I jabbed my garden fork into the ground and hit something so hard it almost shattered.
“I hit a really big rock or something. But it feels strange.”
Elena shuffled over to me and knelt by my side.
“Where?” she asked.
“Here. It’s probably nothing,” I said, getting out of her way. “Just a rock.”
“There’s no such thing as just a rock.”
Pressing her finger into the hole, she poked her tongue out in concentration.
“Hmm . . . ”
“What is it?”
“It feels weird. I don’t think it’s from around here. Feels like it’s carved or something.”
Pushing her hand into the ground and scooping out the soil, she lifted the corner of the rock with a little grunt.
“Ugh. Got it. Just . . . One more second. Just . . . Ugh! Got it!”
It took all her strength and another grunt, but eventually, she popped the rock out the mud with a thud. It landed in front of us, the first of the morning sunlight falling across the stone.
I was expecting it to glitter or shine, or even just be an interesting color, but all I saw was a small boulder covered in dirt. An orange centipede was crawling across the top, desperate to escape.
“Um, wow,” I said with a sarcastic sigh. “That’s what the key to a portal looks like, huh?”
Not sharing my lack of enthusiasm, she pulled her sleeve down over her hand and began brushing the soil away.
“Look at it,” she said. “It’s been polished. It looks like . . . Shit, is that onyx?”
The more she cleaned it, the more obvious it was that the boulder didn’t get that way naturally. You could see where it had been polished around the edges and cut with expert precision.
“Okay. This is weird,” I admitted. “Someone clearly buried this thing out here on purpose.”
“I think so too.”
With a final sweep of her hand, the last of the dirt fell away to reveal the reason why. It was some kind of engraving.
Elena was ominously silent, staring at it with anxiety creeping into her eyes.
“Elena? You okay? What is it?”
Fear crept even deeper into her already worried face.
“Elena?”
Touching her delicate fingertips to the stone, she brushed her hand over the engraving and shivered.
“It’s a sigil,” she said. “It’s a kind of magic symbol.”
I took in its peculiar shape and crisscrossed lines, absorbing the look and texture of the mark. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.
“Do you think Sylvia stuck it out here?”
“No, but there’s only one way to find out.” She grabbed her phone and to
ok a few pictures before slipping it into the pocket of her ripped up black jeans. “Let’s get back to the house and see if she’s awake.”
“What in the hell happened to y’all?” asked Sylvia as we came into the kitchen. She was still in her nightgown and bathrobe and was in the middle of feeding her cats breakfast. The pungent scent of kitty kibble filled the air, covering up the undertones of cat piss and mold. Outside was fresh and clean and almost sweet. Now it was . . . a little soul-crushing.
“Why, look at you, all covered in dirt.” She looked up from the bag of food she was pouring into a large mixing bowl and shook her head in disapproval. “You’re making a mess all over my kitchen floor!”
Given the condition of the house, my jaw almost fell in surprise. I only kept it shut to keep out the cat hair that was floating through the air as dozens of kitties were scrambling for their food.
“Listen, Sylvia,” said Elena, placing one hand on her hip as she took out her phone. “Dirt don’t hurt. We need to know what this is.”
Sylvia, bewildered, walked closer and peered at the image on the screen.
“Do you know anything about a big onyx boulder out in the woods on your property? It’s gotta be two feet across.”
Sylvia scrunched up her face in confusion.
“What’s that doing on my land?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” I said.
“Well, I’ve never seen it before,” said Sylvia with a shake of her head.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“Has anybody else been staying here? Have you had any visitors or people on your property? Like hunters, maybe?”
Sylvia shook her head.
“Only people that’s been on my property is the sheriff’s department searching for those kids.”
Elena studied her eyes for a sign of a lie, but even I could see the old lady was just as baffled as we were.
“What about this symbol?” she asked, swiping over to the next photo. “Does this look familiar to you at all?”
Sylvia froze and took a step back in horror.
“Someone’s been doing black magic on my property?”
I wasn’t sure what she was shocked about the most, that someone was practicing black magic, or that it was done on her property without her permission.
Wiretaps & Whiskers (The Faerie Files Book 1) Page 19