He might as well have waved a red flag in front of me. What exactly did he not want me to do? Did he not want me to get too attached, get the wrong idea, or be disappointed at being rejected? Did he not want me to take it personally that he didn’t sleep with his coworkers? Whatever he didn’t want me to do, it was way too early in the morning for this male-ego-centered bullshit. I washed down my cinnamon roll with some frosty Mountain Dew and reapplied my go-to look: resting bitch face.
“You don’t want me to what?”
His expression was caught somewhere between confused and concerned. I noticed whenever he had that look, he got a little furrow in his brow and his bottom lip puckered just the tiniest bit. God, it was cute.
“I don’t want you to be some kind of rebound,” he clarified. “I’m glad we’re getting more comfortable with each other, but . . . I was with my fiancé for years. We literally broke up the day before Chief Harris called me into his office.”
Ohhhhhhh. Wow. I stood corrected. That wasn’t anything like what I was expecting him to say.
“Damn, Logan. I didn’t realize it was that recent. What happened?” The moment I blurted out that dumbass question, my hand flew up to cover my face. And because I was eating with my hands like a baboon, I got a big glob of frosting on my forehead. “Sorry. That’s none of my business.”
Ever the gentleman, Logan reached over and handed me his napkin.
“Yeah, well, you told me a bunch of private stuff about your life, so I guess I can tell you more about mine. We broke up after I caught her sleeping with her dad’s business partner. Motherfucker’s like, over seventy years old.”
My jaw dropped enough that my half-chewed up cinnamon roll almost fell out of my mouth . . . while I was cleaning frosting off my face.
I don’t get out much.
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.” Logan shook his head. “Found him hiding under the bed, buck naked. I pulled my gun on him.”
“Shit! Are you serious?”
“Yeah. So anyway . . . that happened.” He lifted his fork and went back to eating.
Meanwhile, I had so many questions. Mostly wondering why the hell someone would choose an old, crusty geezer over the hot, smart, sexy hunk sitting across from me. I also wondered how it made Logan feel to be cast aside for someone closer to Sylvia’s age than our own. No matter what her side of the story was, it was Bridget’s loss. And even if Logan didn’t want me to be some kind of rebound, he’d made a point of saying that he wasn’t upset about seeing my boobs or snuggling in the same bed. He probably needed time to process his breakup, and he didn’t want any distractions from this case while he did that. It made sense. The families of Yarbrough deserved our full attention.
“Let’s make a deal,” I said after gnawing through three-quarters of the cinnamon roll. “I won’t tell Chief Harris about the mushrooms if you don’t tell him about the drool.”
With a boyish grin, Logan raised his cup of coffee and dipped his chin.
“Deal.”
22
Logan
“Where in the hell have y’all been?” McKinney hollered as we walked through the doors of the station. “I haven’t heard anything since you went to visit Old Mrs. Bonkers Mc Catface.”
The sheriff was planted in his chair with his feet on his desk eating a Danish, oblivious to the crumbs in his beard.
“Have neither of you heard of a damn phone? I’ve been worried about you.”
“I left a message with Davis,” Elena said, sitting on the corner of his desk. “I can’t help it if that moron forgot to tell you.”
“Why, that son of a bitch!” McKinney growled. “He’s been nothing but a pain in the ass ever since he joined the department. Causes more problems than he solves.”
“It’s been a long night,” I said approaching the desk. “Looks like it’s been one here, too.”
Peering into the reception area, I saw a rag-tag team of officers in various stages of sleep deprivation. Two were leaning wearily against the counter as the coffee maker brewed a fresh pot. A few others were walking up and down the hall like caffeinated zombies.
“Any changes?” asked Elena.
“If by changes you mean have any other kids gone missing? Then no. Thankfully the numbers are staying the same.”
He bit into his Danish and a dollop of jam spurted out onto his hand.
“Not that it makes things easier,” he said, licking the jam off the palm of his hand. “We still got no leads. And to make matters worse, another news truck showed up this morning.”
“Shit,” said Elena. “Did you talk to them?”
“Yep,” McKinney said, puffing out his chest. “I told the nice young reporter that he could go right ahead and suck a dick.”
I tried to disguise my laugh with a cough and failed miserably.
“Yeah . . . ‘Fraid I’m not as camera-friendly as Hawthorne here,” he said, eyeing me. “Anyway, what have y’all got for me? Tell me you at least got something useful from the old bat last night.”
Elena and I shared a nervous glance.
“Um . . . ”
“Sort of . . . ”
“I mean . . . ”
“Sylvia was great, just . . . ”
“It was difficult to get anything useful, you know.”
We both fell silent. What exactly could we have told him? That we made a telepathic phone call to the underworld? That we watched her face melt into a black hole and shoot out a whirlwind of terror? That I mistook psilocybin mushroom tincture for apple pie moonshine and saw monsters and a cat that called me a dumbass?
I did not want to be the one to write that report.
“So basically,” said McKinney, cramming the last of his Danish into his mouth. “You’ve found nothing and Sylvia was a great big waste of time.”
“Not exactly,” said Elena. “We’ve got a picture I want you to look at.”
Fishing for her phone, she swiped to open the picture of our newly discovered rock and its corresponding symbol.
“What the hell is that?” asked McKinney.
“It’s a boulder. But it’s onyx. It’s not from around here.”
The sheriff frowned as Elena zoomed in on the photo.
“What’s that graffiti on it? A gang sign?”
“We think it might have something to do with what’s going on here.”
He raised his eyebrows at her skeptically.
“Hear me out,” she said, pinching the screen to zoom out a little. “It was buried in the woods in a place where there have been sightings of . . . ” She hesitated for a second and looked up to me.
“Sightings of what?” McKinney asked. “And don’t you dare say Bigfoot.”
“Sightings of humanoid creatures,” I said.
“Humanoid creatures,” McKinney repeated. “Like that faerie lady that little Haley Brown described?”
“No, but I think they’re connected,” Elena said. “It’s hard to explain, but I really think this rock has something to do with what’s happening. And I think we’ll find out more if we discover what this symbol means.”
I didn’t know if McKinney was entirely convinced, but I could see in his eyes that he trusted Elena.
“You found this at Sylvia’s?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“And you really think it means something?”
“I do.”
“Okay well, Agent Rivera, you’re the expert here in all things weird. If you think it matters then we can assign an officer to check out this weird thingmabob squiggle here.”
“We don’t need an officer,” said Elena. “We need a library. One with an occult section.”
McKinney scoffed at the idea.
“In this town? You ain’t gonna find anything like that in little old Yarbrough. These are god-fearing people here, and they don’t—”
“Wait!” I cut in. “You’ve got a bunch of those types of books in your office, don’t you?”
�
��Sure, but nothing occult,” he said, scratching his head. “Just books on folklore and whatnot.”
“Perfect!” Elena jumped to her feet. “Let’s start there.”
Across the station, officers from around the county bustled back and forth between juggling the media crews, processing evidence, and interviewing relatives of the missing children. Meanwhile, Elena and I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of McKinney who was perusing his bookshelf. I felt like a kid waiting to hear a Christmas story from their grandpa.
“Hmmm . . . Let me think,” he said, running his hands over the books lining the middle shelf. His fingers stopped at one and dug it out. “There we go. ‘Folklore of the Great Smoky Mountains.’ This would probably be the best place to start looking. Anyway, here you go. Knock yourself out. If you need me I’ll be wrangling the rookies. Pretty sure they’re about to go postal any minute.”
Right on cue, an explosion of yelling came from out in the hall.
“For fuck’s sake! What do I have to do around here just to get two fucking minutes to myself?”
We looked out the glass partition just as one of the detectives flung his file at a young rookie officer, pages raining down on him before hitting the floor.
“You got that under control?” I asked, raising a concerned brow.
“It’s fine,” said McKinney as he departed. “Sanchez is always a bit of a hothead.”
As McKinney pushed the door shut and left us alone in his office, Elena looked down at the book.
I looked down at Elena.
“Did you see that huge red flag about Officer Davis?” I murmured under my breath. “McKinney said he’s been a pain in the ass ever since he joined the department. He said the guy causes more problems than he solves. And given that McKinney’s been here for decades, and Davis is relatively new, the timing of the abductions lines up.”
Elena crossed her arms over her chest.
“The guy’s a prick, but I didn’t get serial-child-abductor vibes off of him.”
I tilted my head to the side, putting my hands on my hips.
“Me either, but remember what Sylvia told us when we found that boulder? She said nobody’s been on her property except local law enforcement.”
“What do you wanna do? Interrogate Davis?”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t think we have enough probable cause for that. But I can probably get a judge to grant us a warrant for wiretapping the station.”
Elena’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“They’re the ones who called us!” she hissed. I gave a nonchalant shrug.
“McKinney’s the one who called us. Not Davis. Anyway, isn’t it better to be able to rule him out?”
“I suppose,” she grumbled. “Do you wanna call Harris about that wiretap?”
I took in the sight of her skin-tight black jeans, her messy pink bun, and her surly, pouting mouth. Her arms were still crossed, squeezing her shimmering tan breasts together just enough that it took me an extra second to look away. I still hadn’t gotten over the fact that they’d been pressed up against me less than two hours ago. Elena’s body had smelled like warm, soft vanilla cupcakes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she tasted that way, too.
Down boy.
I cleared my throat and swallowed hard.
“Actually, I think it’ll be better if you call it in. All the guys here are either terrified of you or wrapped around your finger.”
“Fine. I’ll take care of it,” she said, standing up and stretching her legs. “Be right back. You make a start on that book.”
I settled into one of the extra chairs in McKinney’s office and turned to the table of contents. There were stories of Spearfinger, the Wampus Cat, and the Road to Nowhere. Skimming the paragraphs of text, it became obvious that none of these tales were going to be of any use. I pinched the bridge of my nose and groaned. What would I have done if this was a research paper for college?
I got out my phone and went straight to Google.
The first thing that came to mind was rock, but that seemed too simple of a starting point, so I changed my mind to onyx. I ended up with a ton of results, but they were all centered on the metaphysical and magical properties. Even the dry, analytical geography sites didn’t have any useful information.
Next, I looked up goblins. That brought shit tons of results, but most of them were about monsters from roleplaying games. Rolling dice wasn’t going to solve my missing persons case.
I searched for elves, faeries, and magic. What I learned was interesting, but completely non-applicable.
“Magical creatures, not always benevolent, frequently found near ash trees, have healing capabilities, not all of them have wings . . . blah blah blah. What about this damn symbol?”
There was more ruckus out in the hallway. I glanced up, making sure I was still alone in the office. It wouldn’t help if the yahoos from Yarbrough caught me talking to myself.
Running out of ideas on what to search for, I sat back in the chair and stared blankly at the acoustic tile ceiling. There had to be something I was missing. Something that was staring me right in the face that I wasn’t taking notice of. My brain filtered through all the events of the previous evening.
I thought about Sylvia and her remote viewing and her deafening scream. I thought of all her cats and her filthy house and the moonshine she’d given me that made me think Lafayette could actually talk.
“Come on . . . What am I missing here? The boulder was buried on Sylvia’s property. It has to be linked with her.”
My mind traveled back to the image of her sitting on the living room floor, pen in hand as she scribbled frantically across the page. She knew something we didn’t. She’d seen something that scared the shit out of her. There had to be something she saw in that other dimension. Something that was the key to all of this.
And that god-awful scream . . . She wasn’t putting on a show. She’d seen something evil. Something she said she hadn’t seen since she last saw hell.
What the hell. Let’s give that a shot.
At first, the only articles that popped up were all about fallen angels and fire and brimstone. There were endless pages about sinning and torture and living purely so as not to suffer an agonizing afterlife. Some interesting articles about Dante’s Inferno. But my patience was dwindling, and so was my hope that I would find anything.
Just then, the door opened and Elena sauntered in holding an armful of chocolate-covered snacks from the vending machine and a can of Mountain Dew. Pinned to her chest with her chin was a bag of Skittles.
“What’s all that for?” I asked, eyeing the Skittles on her chest. “You giving out treats to the deputies?”
“Hell no. I was hungry,” she said with a little shrug and dropped the armful of little packages onto McKinney’s desk. There were cookies, candy bars, peanut butter cups, and a little bag of powdered donuts. “Thought I’d grab a snack.”
I didn’t even bother to hide my incredulous expression.
“That’s a snack?”
“I like having options.”
“How can you still be hungry? Seriously! That cinnamon roll was the size of a watermelon! Have you ever been checked for tapeworm?”
Her eyes flashed as she drew in a sharp breath.
“You know, I was going to share this with you, but you can forget it!”
“Thanks, but I had a balanced breakfast an hour ago. I don’t need a snack.” I could see Elena’s body trembling, either with frustration or sugar withdrawal. As much as I wanted to keep pushing her buttons—if only to see that adorable outraged look she constantly had—I decided against it. Tempers were already flaring in the station and I didn’t want to see her go full-napalm.
I mean, actually, I kinda did want to see it . . . just not in front of an audience.
“Did you get ahold of Harris about the you-know-what?”
“Yep,” she said through tightly drawn lips as she tore open the bag of Skittles. “Said he�
�ll give me a call once a judge approves it.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“Have you made any progress with that book?” She stomped over to me and glared at the phone nestled inside the book McKinney had given me. More of that vanilla cupcake scent filled the space between us. “Ah. Fucking around on your phone, I see. Were you just waiting for me to leave so you could see what’s new on Pornhub today?”
“No . . . ” I picked up my phone and began scrolling through the latest article I’d come across, trying to ignore the sound of her chomping candy. “I’m researching Hell. So far all I’m finding is stuff about angels and fire and brimstone. Lots about sinning. Satan apparently has horns and a pointy tail, blah, blah, blah, and . . . wait a minute. Child sacrifice?”
I stopped dead, my heart beating a little quicker as the subject grabbed my attention. My focus went straight to my phone, where I saw words jump out of the screen at me.
“Countless children have been sacrificed to create a doorway to hell. This is a practice dating back thousands of years by primitive people who believed a portal to the underworld could be opened if the pure souls of young children were given to a demon as a form of . . . ”
Elena shoved another handful of candy into her mouth, but her chewing had slowed down considerably.
“Hey, I think I’m onto something! It’s about fucking time.” I read even faster, growing desperate to absorb the words as I read out loud to my partner. “One dweller of the underworld, a king of the demons named Moloch, is said to be the one who they made the sacrifices to. His presence could be invoked in certain rituals using his sigil that . . . ”
My heart began beating so fast I was scared it might burst. The hand holding my phone began to sweat and tremble. Right in front of me, the sigil of Moloch was displayed on the screen. It was the exact same symbol engraved on the boulder we’d dug up in Sylvia’s yard.
“Hey, Elena? Have you heard about this demon Moloch?”
When she didn’t respond, I looked up at her. She’d completely stopped chewing. For a minute it looked like she’d completely stopped breathing. Even her characteristically shimmering skin had gone dull. The fear on her face put me on edge. Elena wasn’t the type of person to be afraid of anything, but here she was looking like she’d just been faced with Satan himself.
Wiretaps & Whiskers (The Faerie Files Book 1) Page 21