Taken

by Jennifer Blackstream

  My jaw dropped. “You know the two courts?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched up in the ghost of a smirk. “Research. The internet is a wonderful thing.”

  “Don’t get cocky, Agent Bradford,” I chided him. “There’s a thousand different tales that claim to be the truth about the sidhe.”

  “So the Seelie Court isn’t the light court and the Unseelie the dark?”

  “In a basic sense, yes. The Seelie Court is the light court. That’s where you’ll find the fey with a better reputation, the brownies and summer sidhe. And the Unseelie Court keeps most of the nightmares, the red caps and the winter sidhe. But I’ll tell you right now, an angry fairy is an angry fairy, and light court or dark, they will kill you.”

  “After torturing you,” Peasblossom added. “You’ll beg for death for centuries before they give it to you. Their appreciation for creativity isn’t limited to art.”

  “The real difference,” I said, “from my observations, is that the Seelie value the purity of their bloodlines more than their Unseelie counterparts. The high court is all Seelie sidhe, down to the last lord and lady. But the Unseelie Court celebrates strength and skill. They appreciate differences, even celebrate them. Most of their high court is still Unseelie sidhe, but there are a fair number with mixed blood. Those who gained something special from a non-sidhe parent.”

  “Sidhe,” Andy repeated. “That’s familiar.” He glanced at me. “The man with the gun at the hotel. He was sidhe, wasn’t he?”

  I tensed, an image of Flint rising with abrupt sharpness in my mind. A hundred guilty pleasures poured into snug-but-not-too-snug denim jeans, topped by a broad, muscular chest and thick biceps. Dark chocolate eyes that coaxed you to lean closer, stare deeper. A chiseled jaw covered in a five o’clock shadow that begged you to run your palm over the side of his face, pull him closer. Tousled brown hair that hinted he’d just gotten out of bed, and a sinful smile that promised he was ready and willing to climb right back in…

  I shuffled the papers in the file, tapping them to straighten them out. “Yes, he is sidhe.”

  “Seelie or Unseelie?”

  “Unseelie,” Peasblossom and I said in unison.

  “Leannan sidhe are Seelie, but I think Flint has mixed blood,” I said. “His ears aren’t pointed enough for him to be pure.”

  Andy raised his eyebrows. “All right. How about the sketch in the file, the one of Michael Keegan. How can we tell if he took the kids?”

  “We can show this picture around. I might find a few people. If he’s high court, someone will recognize him.”

  “And if he’s not high court?”

  “Then it will be like showing people in North Dakota your picture and asking if they know you.”

  He gritted his teeth. “That doesn’t sound like a strong lead.”

  “It’s not.” I sighed. “I can’t even tell what court he is. We need to ask around.”

  Andy fell silent for a long minute. He stared at the road lined with orange construction cones, but I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. “Are the kids safe?” he asked.

  “No,” I said quietly. “No, I can’t in good conscience say they’re safe. Fey don’t value human life the same way they value their own. There are many ways for a human to get hurt in the faerie world, intentional or not.”

  Andy rolled his shoulders again. “Explain.”

  Peasblossom was silent, curling up in my palm as if she could make herself disappear. I felt bad for her. It couldn’t be easy being the only fey in this conversation.

  “Well, best-case scenario, they get someone who treats them like a beloved pet. Someone who will take them out to show them off, and then spend quiet evenings enjoying their art, or exciting evenings out at parties where their human performs. But if they grow tired of them, they might release the kids into the human world, or leave them on their own in the fey world, or…”

  “Or?”

  “Or give them to someone else,” I finished. “Or sold. Someone who may want them for their talents or for a slave, or…”

  “Or for food,” Peasblossom said, her tone subdued.

  “Andy knows you’re not like that,” I said, cuddling her to my chest. She snuggled against me, but tilted her face up to Andy, waiting him for to confirm what I’d said.

  Unfortunately, Andy wasn’t paying attention. He was staring out the windshield with a level of intensity that nearly prompted me to make him pull over before he caused an accident.

  “So we need to proceed as if the kids are alive, but in danger.” He pressed his foot down heavier on the gas.

  “That would be best.”

  I waited, but he still didn’t respond to what I’d said about Peasblossom. I didn’t think he was deliberately ignoring it; his focus was probably all on the kids. I debated saying something but dismissed it. Any reassurance I had to prompt would feel fake to Peasblossom, and do more harm than good.

  Andy’s phone rang. He hit a button on the dash. “Bradford.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the button. The idea that a hands-free system was safer than holding a phone was an ogre’s throw from the truth. Talking on the phone while driving was dangerous because it took your focus off your driving, not because you were holding something. Which meant that discussing the case while driving had been irresponsible. I stopped before I felt the need to give myself a lecture.

  A man’s voice barked over the speakers. “Did you take out the file on the missing kids from Constellation House? Happened last year, around April? Three kids didn’t show up for some kind of art show?”

  The vein in Andy’s temple bulged. “Yeah, why?”

  A burst of noise covered what the man said next—all but the swear word he ended his sentence with. A door slammed shut. “Get down to the coroner’s as soon as you can. Dannon wants to see you.”

  I bit my lip, not wanting to interrupt a conversation I hadn’t been invited into. Andy didn’t rush to respond, taking his time as if preparing himself for bad news. “New evidence?”

  “You could say that.” The voice lost some of its bluster, and he sounded tired.

  Peasblossom buried her face in my shirt. I rubbed her back between her wings even as my stomach rolled and unease coiled at the base of my spine like a sleeping serpent.

  “What happened?” Andy asked.

  “Those three missing kids? One of them turned up dead.”

  Chapter 4

  “Who the hell is she?”

  I jerked to a halt before passing through the door to the morgue that Andy held open for me. The long canopy that stretched out from the front door of the medical examiner’s building provided a tunnel to the small employee parking lot. I had a perfect view of a man in his late sixties launching himself from his resting place leaning against a dark SUV. He had hair the color of cold iron, wide-set eyes, and a body that said he’d once been a specimen of physical fitness, but time behind a desk had softened him up while his biological clock had put the brakes on his metabolism. Still, I’d wager he could put his weight behind a solid punch if he had to. Judging from the sour look on his face, he’d probably welcome the opportunity.

  Andy let go of the door he’d held open for me and walked a few paces to meet the older man as he stalked toward me. “This is the consultant I mentioned. Shade Renard, meet Agent Tom Carlson.”

  “I’m his boss,” Tom butted in. He took a step inside my personal space, close enough that I could see one blue eye was lighter than the other, but continued speaking to Andy. “And I don’t recall approving a consultant. What’s her area of expertise?”

  Andy didn’t try to get between us, but he shifted so Tom could see his face then slipped off his sunglasses, pinning his boss with a hard stare. “She helps find missing kids before they turn up dead.”

  The cigarette squeezed between Tom’s fingers continued to burn as the wind robbed him of his last few puffs, and he hissed as the burning paper reached his fingers. Tom swore and glared at th
e butt of the cigarette on the pavement before grinding it out under his heel.

  When he faced Andy, there was resignation in the way his shoulders deflated. “It’s not on me to burst your bubble. Find the other two. If she can help, so be it.”

  “We’ll find them.” Andy turned his head from side to side. “Anything you can tell us before we go in?”

  The question sucked the rest of the air from Tom’s sails,. He pawed around in his pocket for another cigarette. He was too close to the building’s entrance to be smoking legally, and it was a nasty habit. But his haunted expression made me hold my tongue.

  “If you’re asking if it’s bad,” he started, holding the flame of his lighter to the cigarette’s tip. He drew in a deep breath, exhaling as he continued. “It is. It’s always bad when it’s a kid, but…” His stare grew harder, the lines around his mouth deeper as he took a drag on the cigarette. His ghosts flitted across his face, his eyes displaying the misery of a hundred memories as bad as this one.

  “Wherever he was this past year, it wasn’t a nice place,” he finished, staring at the glowing tip of his cigarette.

  Andy grasped the door handle. “Thanks.”

  Tom meandered to his car and hunkered down on the hood, resuming his smoking while staring into space.

  “Is he always like this, or should I be worried about what we’ll find in there?” I asked.

  “The latter.”

  I walked inside, reaching behind my neck to where Peasblossom hid under my hair and giving her a reassuring pat. She tucked herself deeper into the neckline of my thigh-length red coat. I opened my pocket wide enough to glimpse the ceramic skull. I wanted to ask Echo if she was all right, but there were people waiting in front of the elevator, so I didn’t. The eye lights of the skull flickered as if Echo had heard me anyway.

  I expected to head down to the building’s basement, my mind feeding me images of a cold, sterile room with buzzing fluorescent lights and forbidding metal drawers. Surprise lifted my eyebrows as Andy led me to the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

  “Cuyahoga County has one of the most advanced medical examiner’s offices in the world,” Andy said, apparently noticing my piqued interest. “One of the medical examiners had a hand in choosing the building and the layout, and she wanted the autopsy rooms to have natural light.”

  “That’s an excellent idea.” The elevator doors opened, and this time when I stepped into the hallway, I paid more attention to my surroundings.

  There wasn’t a lot of art hanging on the walls, not a lot of thought given to the decoration at all. Instead, the walls were smooth, plain beige with a white panel protruding to function as a railing. At the end of the hall, a sliding glass door offered a peek at large windows flooding the room ahead and half the hallway with April sunlight. It was almost enough to chase away the thought of what had brought us here. What we were about to see.

  Almost.

  The glass door slid open, and the chemical scent of a sterile environment slapped me in the face, reminding me where I was. The sunlight didn’t seem as bright, and I didn’t know if my eyes had adjusted, or if the sudden shadows had more to do with the body lying on the table to my left.

  A black man in a white lab coat who looked to be in his fifties stood beside the autopsy table, frowning at the clipboard he was holding. A thin Van Dyke beard circled the lower half of his face, and a crease I would bet was permanent pinched the skin between his eyebrows.

  “Good morning, Dr. Dannon.”

  The medical examiner looked up. “Agent Bradford. Agent Carlson told me you’d be coming to see Matthew.” He gestured to the body on the table, covered in a white sheet. “Early days, so I won’t have many test results for you.”

  My heart dipped. “Matthew. He’s the one who… He’s the one they found?”

  Sympathy softened Dr. Dannon’s stern features, and he set the clipboard on a short counter next to the table. “Did you know him?”

  “No. But I read his missing-persons file today.” I stared at the white sheet. “I know it’s silly, but I’d hoped…”

  Dr. Dannon circled the table to stand at Matthew’s head. “Reading his file makes this feel more personal.” He smoothed the sheet like a parent tucking his child in for the night. “An examination can be the same way. The more you see, the more conclusions you can draw about their life. When you’re done, you don’t see them as a body anymore.” He paused with the top of the sheet pinched between his fingers. “I have to warn you, it’s not pleasant.”

  “Tom warned us.” Andy straightened his spine and pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket, flipping it open as he clicked the pen. “Ready.”

  Without another word, Dr. Dannon drew back the sheet. It was a cruel illusion of death that dead people looked younger than they had when they were alive. As if life weighed heavily on their bodies, and it was only in death that they truly released all tension, all worry.

  No wrinkles marred Matthew’s face, and his complexion was as near perfection as a human could get. His skin was pale, but a trick of the sunlight streaming through the windows lining the opposite wall gave him a warm glow that made him look as if he were sleeping. I could almost believe he wasn’t dead. Pretend we’d found him in time to save his life.

  Pretend I’d found him before he bled to death from the myriad cuts that started at his cheekbones and continued down his body. All the way down. Neck, shoulders, arms, torso, stomach, thighs, calves, the top of his feet. No part of his body had been spared, not more than a six-inch patch of skin unmarked. Most of them an inch or two long, but some as short as two millimeters and three as long as eight inches.

  Andy frowned and leaned down, squinting at the injuries. “The cuts are different sizes. Multiple weapons?”

  “Perhaps,” Dr. Dannon said, his voice hushed to a respectful volume. “That would be supported by the different sizes, the sheer variety. But there’s something strange about these cuts.” He straightened, and the crease between his brows deepened. “There was no debris in the wounds, no trace amounts of metal or wood, nothing to indicate the type of weapon. Except one.”

  He pointed to a cut on Matthew’s abdomen. It was an inch long, and darker than the others. “This is the blow that killed him, and I found trace amounts of stone in the wound.”

  “Stone?” Andy repeated.

  Dr. Dannon straightened. “Yes. Obsidian, to be precise.”

  My mouth went dry, and suddenly I couldn’t swallow.

  Andy zeroed in on my expression, and the notebook and pen sagged in his grasp. “What? What is it?”

  I stared at him, hyperaware of the fact that the human medical examiner was watching me too. There was something about his eyes, the intensity in his gaze that gave me the uncomfortable sensation he was reading my mind.

  “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?” I asked Dr. Dannon.

  He frowned. “I have bottled water in my office, but you can’t drink it in here.” He gestured at the air around us. “We keep a clean lab, but this is still an autopsy room. You don’t want to know what microscopic contaminants are all around us right now.”

  I wrinkled my nose and made a mental note to use my Cinderella spells as soon as we left.

  “Never mind. You were saying about the cuts?” I pointed to the wound he’d indicated. “You’re sure this one was the cause of death?”

  The suspicion melted away from his face, and he followed my gesture. “Yes. That injury is the only one that resulted from a stabbing. The other wounds are cuts; the attacker applied force parallel to the skin, but this one was perpendicular. It perforated the abdominal aorta, so he would have bled out in minutes.”

  “So the other cuts were all superficial?” I asked.

  “Yes, though most of them are deep enough they would have bled considerably. Some are shallower than others, but they all bled.”

  “But only the death blow had the traces of obsidian.”

  “Correct.”
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br />   Obsidian was a favorite weapon of the fey. No iron, and, when fashioned correctly, sharper than a surgical scalpel. I stared at the wounds. But if Matthew’s attacker favored an obsidian weapon, why use something else to torture him? Why use one thing to make all those tiny cuts, then a separate weapon to kill him?

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, wishing I could talk to Peasblossom. The obsidian weapon could have been a ritual dagger. That would explain why it had delivered only one blow. No, no—that didn’t make sense. If this had been a sacrifice, the body wouldn’t have been dumped in an alley. I knew of no ritual that didn’t have a specific method of dealing with the remains.

  There was nothing else for it. I needed to examine the body. Magically.

  Most of the time, spells required a verbal component, a word I needed to say to activate the spell. The word served as a focus point, a channel for the magic. But there were some spells I cast so often they became second nature, the magical equivalent of muscle memory. Seeing magical residue was such a spell for me.

  I took a deep breath, simultaneously drawing magic from the well inside me. For the span of a few heartbeats, I held it in my mouth, letting the energy build and coalesce. When I exhaled, I breathed over Matthew’s body, spilling the power out in a shroud of glittering silver.

  The cuts burst to life, flaring like liquid mercury. I blinked, the glow near-blinding, even with the sunlight streaming through the windows.

  “Are you all right?” Dr. Dannon asked.

  I didn’t take my attention off the body. “I’m fine, yes.” I blinked to clear my vision of the dark spots. One cut didn’t react to my spell. The death blow. Matthew had been tortured by magical means, but he’d been killed with a mundane weapon. “Is there any possibility that Matthew took his own life?”

  “It’s possible. But statistically unlikely. In suicide, the individual usually cuts a major vein, most commonly the wrist. It’s rare for someone to stab themselves in the stomach like this.”

  “Matthew suffered from bipolar disorder,” Andy said. “I called the health center on the way here and they said no one’s been by to pick up his medication.”