“We noticed,” Kade said, sliding a plate of eggs, hash browns and bacon in front of the hysterical child. “We need to call the police.”
“I already handled that,” Nellie offered, his pink summer dress catching the morning light in just the right manner to give the impression that he was imitating a sunrise. “I got transferred to three different departments and I told them all what happened. I’m not sure they believed me, but they said they were dispatching a car.”
“I guess that’s something … although not much.” I worked overtime to shift Joshua on my lap so he could focus on the food. He fought the effort. “Joshua, you need to eat. We have plenty of food. You can stay on my lap. I just need you to turn a bit.”
Joshua broke out in a fresh bout of tears, causing me to cease my efforts to control him and merely rock back and forth. Kade nodded in an effort to encourage me as he turned his attention to the field.
“He came from that direction,” Kade noted. “I don’t think there’s anything out there but trees. We should check it out once the cops come and go, though.”
“I’m sure they’ll do that,” I said. “We need to prepare ourselves, because we’re going to be suspects. Someone needs to run through the booths and make sure there’s nothing in plain sight that could make us look guilty.”
“I’ll do that,” Raven offered, beaming at Kade. “I want to help.”
“That’s great,” Kade said dryly. “I’ll stay here with Poet and Joshua. I want to talk to the cops when they come.”
Raven kept her smile in place even as her eyes flashed. “Oh, well, I guess that’s up to you. If you feel you need to remain with Poet, I clearly can’t stop you.”
Kade didn’t miss the underlying tension associated with the statement, but he refused to engage. “We need to work together as a unit. Poet is right. We’ll be suspects. I’ll bet we were suspects before this. It doesn’t matter now, though. The important thing is getting Joshua back to his family.”
“He’s really cold,” I said, rubbing my hands up and down his back as his small body quaked. “He’s really pale, too.”
“You were really pale all day yesterday,” Luke pointed out. “Maybe some sort of draining entity is out there. You know, it sucks the life essence out of people to sustain itself.”
“You just described a vampire,” Raven argued. “If it was a vampire the dreamcatcher would’ve alerted.”
“Shh.” I shot Raven a quelling look. Joshua wasn’t speaking, but that didn’t mean he’d lost the ability to hear. “Be careful what you say.”
“Oh, please,” Raven snorted, rolling her eyes. “The little rugrat is in shock. He has no idea where he is or what’s happening. He won’t remember any of this. You can already tell. Look how vacant his eyes are.”
I wasn’t convinced that was true. “Can you please hit the booths and make sure everything is clean? They’re going to search the grounds. You know that.”
“Fine.” Raven’s eyes lit with a momentary burst of anger. “This isn’t over, though.”
“It never is,” I muttered, turning to Kade. “How do you want to handle this?”
“I’m not sure,” Kade replied honestly. “I guess we’ll play it by ear.”
“Well, prepare yourselves,” Luke interjected, resting his foot on the picnic table bench and leaning forward as he inclined his chin toward the parking lot. A pair of police officers exited a cruiser, exchanged a few words, and then turned toward us. “We’re about to go under the microscope.”
“Again,” I muttered, rubbing Joshua’s back. “Here we go, guys. Everyone needs to be on their best behavior.”
Nellie snorted as he shoved an egg in his mouth with his fingers, the yellow yolk bursting and overflowing at the corners before running down his chin. “Whatever that means.”
12
Twelve
“Who is in charge here?”
Kade and I exchanged a look and I gave him the silent go ahead to claim the title. This was Utah, after all. Men were given deference when it came to matters of authority. Kade demanded deference just by being, his aura commanding. I preferred playing this one out from the sidelines … for now.
“I’m Kade Denton.” Kade swaggered forward. “I’m head of security.”
“Detective Kirk Ashburn.” The older officer extended his hand in greeting. “We got a call that you believe you found Joshua Gilmore.” He shifted his unreadable eyes to me, running them over the angular planes of my face before focusing on the boy on my lap. Joshua had ceased crying and merely rested his chin on my shoulder. “Is that him?”
“No, we just pick up random children whenever we come to a town and proceed to rock them out of boredom,” Luke replied, making a face when I darted a glare in his direction. “I mean … yeah, that’s him.”
Ashburn moved closer to me and hunkered down. “Hey, son. Can you look at me?”
Joshua didn’t respond, instead keeping his eyes trained on something over my shoulder that apparently only he could see.
“He hasn’t spoken since we found him,” I offered. “He … um … is kind of attached to me.”
“I can see that.” Ashburn straightened and glanced around. “How did you find him?”
“He found us,” Kade answered. “We were setting up for breakfast when we saw him in the field over there. Poet and I approached and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t answer. He started crying and wouldn’t let go of Poet, so we carried him back here and called you.”
“And you haven’t seen him before?” Ashburn’s expression was standoffish as he glanced between faces. “You guys have been here for several days, right?”
“We have,” Kade confirmed, bobbing his head. “We did not see him before this morning, though. We’re not open to the public until tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the billboards.” Ashburn rested his hands on his hips as he studied the setup. “I’m sure you understand that Joshua’s disappearance upset the entire community. Things like this don’t happen around here. This isn’t the big city. People aren’t going to respond well to the fact that he was found here.”
“He wasn’t found here,” Kade shot back. “He walked away – or perhaps he ran, for all we know – from wherever he was and stumbled across us. We immediately called you. Should we have done something else?”
“Of course not. You acted in the proper manner.”
“So what do you want us to do now?” I asked, momentarily forgetting my plan to be demure and mysterious.
“Well, for starters, we need to take the boy,” Ashburn replied.
“I figured.”
“We also need to search the grounds,” Ashburn added. “I understand you have animals here. Do we need a warrant to search the entire area?”
I exchanged another brief look with Kade before shaking my head. “You can search anywhere you wish. You’ll need one of the animal wranglers with you when you go into those areas, though. Our insurance requires it.”
And we needed twenty minutes to get our shifters in place if we expected to pull this off, but I wisely didn’t voice that concern. I noticed Luke gesturing to a few of his brethren out of the corner of my eye, obviously reading my mind as he pointed toward the back corner of the fairgrounds. We had tents in the area designated as closed off to visitors. The cages inside those tents were merely for show. They sat empty unless we needed to put on another sort of show. It seemed today we’d need that particular performance.
“I understand,” Ashburn said. “Who is in charge of the animals?”
“I’m second in command for the operation,” I offered. “I can take you as soon as … well … .” I cast a pointed look in Joshua’s direction.
“Yeah, we need to get him to the hospital and have him checked out.” Ashburn’s expression shifted from business to worry. “He looks extremely pale.”
“And cold,” I added. “We tried to feed him, but … .”
“Well take it from here.” Ashburn moved his h
ands to Joshua’s back, intent on removing the boy from my lap.
The boy began screaming and digging his fingers into my neck, thrashing his head back and forth and fighting Ashburn’s efforts. The sound of his terror caused my heart to squeeze, as if in a vise, and I couldn’t stop myself from gripping the boy tighter.
“You’re traumatizing him,” I barked.
Ashburn shot me a weighted look and grabbed Joshua’s wriggling waist. “He’s not yours.”
“I’m not trying to keep him,” I protested. “I … he’s upset.”
“And he’ll be better when he’s reunited with his parents,” Ashburn argued, wrenching the boy away from me. Joshua’s final effort to remain with me caused him to drag his ragged fingernails across my skin. I didn’t give Ashburn the satisfaction of crying out, even though I slapped my hand over the affected area and glared at him.
“No!” It was the first word Joshua had spoken since we found him, and it broke my heart.
Ashburn pressed Joshua’s flailing body against his chest as he took a step back. “I’ll arrange for transportation for the boy, and then I’ll be back for my tour.”
I fought the urge to cry, biting my lip to remain strong, and nodded my head as Kade rested his hand on my shoulder in a sign of solidarity. “I’m looking forward to it.”
THREE HOURS later the cops were gone. Whether they were satisfied with their tour was another story. They combed through every inch of the fairgrounds, searching each tent and asking the appropriate questions. Heck, sometimes the questions were quite inappropriate – like whether or not we took kids from the street and put them in sideshows for the general populace to ridicule – and by the time it was all said and done they had twenty officers crawling through our business.
They didn’t find a thing. I knew they wouldn’t. That didn’t mean the search wasn’t invasive.
“They went through every single trailer, too,” Luke complained after lunch, following Kade and me into the field where we had found Joshua. “They looked under beds and in closets. Nellie says they found a huge box of sex toys under Raven’s bed and that some of them were big enough to choke a giant.”
Kade’s eyebrows flew up his forehead, and even though we were all in poor moods, he couldn’t stop himself from chuckling. “I wouldn’t repeat that in front of her. She won’t find it funny.”
“I’m not afraid of her.” Luke sounded brave, but I had my doubts if his bravado would stick in front of Raven. “You’ve been in her bedroom. Have you seen what she has under her bed? Are we talking cobwebs or disco lights?”
Kade cast Luke a sidelong look. “I have not been in her bedroom, so I can’t answer that question for you.”
The news took me by surprise. “You haven’t?”
“I’m not interested in a relationship,” Kade answered pointedly, although I didn’t miss the way his lips twitched. “Raven is well aware of my feelings. I can promise you that.”
“I wasn’t casting aspersions on your … interaction … with Raven,” Luke said, choosing his words carefully. “I naturally assumed she feigned some repair issue to get you into her bedroom … like the mattress broke or something and she needed help to fix it. That sounds right up her alley.”
He wasn’t wrong. I glanced at Kade, curious. “You’ve really never been in her bedroom?”
Kade made a face as he shook his head. “I thought we were going to put personal issues aside until we dealt with this?”
“I’m a good multi-tasker.”
“Good grief,” Kade muttered, focusing on Luke. “I blame you for this. Everything was going great until you opened your big mouth.”
“Yes, well, I’m considering having a T-shirt made up with that saying,” Luke said. “It’s kind of the tagline to my life.”
I pursed my lips to keep from laughing as I stooped low in the spot where we found Joshua. “This is where we met up with him. He was coming from that direction.” I indicated the tree line about five hundred feet away with a tilt of my head. “He had to come from that direction.”
“Then let’s see what we’ve got,” Kade said, ushering me forward with a hand at the small of my back. The contact gave me a little thrill, but I pretended I didn’t notice that it was out of the ordinary.
We marched in silence until we hit the trees, splitting up so we could study the dense underbrush at the edge of the field. After a few minutes, Luke called for us to join him and pointed at a disturbed area near a large pine tree.
“He came through here.”
“How can you be certain?” Kade asked, furrowing his brow.
“I can smell him.”
“Oh, well, that would explain it.” Kade slipped behind me as I followed Luke through the foliage. The area was lush and green, and my eyes were busy as I scanned for signs of life.
We walked for almost ten minutes, the silence companionable even as our personal issues bubbled under the surface of the current catastrophe. Luke led the way, occasionally backtracking and picking a slightly different route. Finally the trees gave way to a small clearing, a shack centered in the middle.
“Well, this is interesting,” Kade muttered, his eyes flashing in a variety of different directions as he moved toward the ramshackle building. “Why would this be out in the middle of nowhere like this?”
I shrugged as I turned my attention to the ground. While the trees were thick around the clearing, absolutely nothing grew between the foliage line and the shack. The ground was empty dirt and scattered pine needles, the only underbrush in the area coming from the wind as it ripped through the strange corridor.
“This is weird,” I said, kneeling. I ran the dirt through my fingers before lifting my hand to my nose and inhaling.
“What do you smell?” Kade asked.
“It’s like a mixture of salt and sulfur,” I replied. “It’s … weird.”
“Why would the ground smell like salt?”
“Maybe it’s because of the Great Salt Lake,” Luke suggested. “Maybe the entire area has a high salt content. That could be naturally occurring.”
I strode back to the tree line and grabbed a handful of dirt from beneath a pine to test his theory. “No. This is normal dirt. The dirt around the shack is different. They have different textures and scents.”
“Are you trying to explain something?” Kade rubbed the back of his neck as he stared at me. “What does a mixture of salt and sulfur mean?”
“It could mean nothing.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Salt is supposed to serve as a barrier for spirits and a few other paranormal entities,” I explained. “When you’re trying to fight off a malevolent spirit you draw a circle around yourself to keep it out.”
“Okay.” Kade glanced at the shack. “The shack is in the center of the circle. Does that mean someone was trying to keep a spirit out of the shack?”
“Maybe. Or maybe there’s something in the shack that someone is trying to keep trapped inside.”
Kade swallowed hard. “That doesn’t make me want to go into the shack.”
“I’m not keen on it either,” I admitted. “But I think we have to look.”
“I know you’re right, but that doesn’t make me like the situation any more than I presently do.” Kade dusted his hand over his jeans and took a determined step forward. “Let me be the first through the door.”
“I don’t want to start an argument, but why should you be the first to go through the door?”
“Because I’m head of security,” Kade replied. “It’s my job.”
“Yes, but … .” I broke off, unsure how to proceed. Pointing out that he wasn’t magical probably wasn’t the right way to go, but I couldn’t think of a pleasant way to make my point on a limited timetable.
“I may not be magic, but I know what I’m doing,” Kade stressed.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about being magic,” I said, offering him a small smile. “If you want to be first, though, be my guest.”
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“I volunteer to be last,” Luke announced. “I’m too pretty to go first.”
“I think that’s a good idea, too,” Kade said dryly, taking me by surprise as he grabbed my hand. “Everyone hold onto one another so we don’t get separated in case things go hairy on the other side of that door.”
“Are you sure this isn’t an elaborate plan to hold my hand?” I was going for levity despite the heavy air hanging over our little group.
Instead of reacting out of anger – or releasing my hand – Kade merely shrugged. “When I want to hold your hand for a reason other than safety, you’ll be the first to know.”
My stomach flipped at his words. He said “when,” not “if.” That was hopeful, right? Ugh. When did I turn into such a sap?
Kade remained focused as we walked up the rickety steps that led to the front door. He knocked, even though it was obvious the shack was empty. He waited a beat before pushing open the door, running his free hand up and down the interior wall searching for a light switch.
It turned out we didn’t need a light. The illumination from the structure’s lone window was more than enough to see everything inside. There wasn’t much to see, after all. It was a square room with a metal rack on one wall. I moved closer to the rack, releasing Luke’s hand when it became apparent we weren’t going to be attacked by a malevolent supernatural force. Kade kept his grip tight on my other hand. I didn’t fight the effort.
“What is this?” I asked, running my fingers over the rusted metal. “I’d think it’s a bed frame, but it doesn’t look quite right.”
“I think it was part of a bed frame at some time,” Kade said, moving closer to me. “I don’t think that’s been its purpose for quite some time, though. Look.” He pointed toward the floor, to where a tarnished set of restraints – what looked to be an old set of handcuffs – rested. “I’ll bet that Joshua was held here.”
Freaky Hearts Page 11