To Catch a Stolen Soul

by R. L. Naquin

  “What?” I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

  “You’re so...normal.” Grace let out a nervous laugh. “I was beginning to think you were always dressed like a genie.”

  “No. Sometimes I dress like a geisha.” I smiled. “You just never know with me.”

  Tires screeched, and several horns honked from the street in front of the parking lot. We all turned together to see Lisa nearly get hit by a blue sedan. She stumbled on the sidewalk and raced to the group, craning her neck to see behind her.

  Aaron ran to meet her and grabbed her by the elbows before she could trip over her own feet. “What’s wrong. Are you okay?” He kept a strong grip on her while he scanned her for injuries.

  Lisa stood still for a moment, eyes closed, trying to regain control of her breathing. When she opened them, she looked surprised to find Aaron there, still gripping her elbows. She smiled. “I’m okay now, thanks.” She waited a few seconds for him to let go.

  Lucas strode toward her, staring over her head to the street. “What happened?”

  Lisa swallowed. “I went across the street to the bank to make the deposit.”

  He scowled. “What happened to sticking together? You were supposed to take someone with you.”

  She glared at him. She may have had a scare, but she wasn’t willing to let him boss her around. “It was just across the street, Lucas.”

  Aaron stepped in between the two of them. “What scared you?”

  “I don’t know. I came out of the bank and stood there for a second trying to decide whether to walk to the corner for the crosswalk or dash straight across. My back was to the alley.” Her voice shook. “Something...something touched me. And it made like a gurgling sound or almost a groan. It scared the shit out of me. I didn’t think. I just ran.”

  Aaron turned and looked at the rest of the group, his brow wrinkled in worry.

  Lucas ran his hand through his hair. “Look, if you guys insist on staying here to do business, we have to stick together.”

  We all nodded agreement, though I didn’t mean it in the slightest. As soon as everyone took off, I was going out by myself.

  Once Lisa was calm, I turned to go back to my truck. Ash was spending far too much time cooped up alone. There was lying low, and there was isolation. I needed to spend time with her before going off on a hunt for clues.

  Behind me, Lisa shrieked.

  I spun around, ready to tackle whoever had infiltrated the group. I stopped, feeling adrenaline rushing through me, making me sweat. Lisa wasn’t being attacked. She stood by her truck with her hands over her face. Grace stood at the other end of the Doodlebug Cookies with a similar look of shock on her face.

  Both tires I could see were flat. I tore around to the other side of the truck and found the other two tires similarly flat. Rough gashes ran outward from the rim. I walked back around to where everyone stood in shock.

  Lisa’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Why would someone do this? I can’t afford four new tires.”

  Lucas scanned the area, his face pinched in concentration. “A better question is, how someone could do this.”

  I watched Lucas’s intensity. He couldn’t have slashed the tires. He was too convincing in his anger. And he was right. The question was how.

  How could someone have slashed all four of Lisa’s tires when we were all standing right there the whole time? Unless they’d done it while we were all focused on Lisa screaming and running across the street.

  Even more troubling—what was the point? No one was hurt other than Lisa’s truck. Even Lisa didn’t seem to have been in any danger. Was someone trying to scare us?

  More than one person had already been killed. Whoever was doing this was just as likely to cut one of us as another set of tires.

  If we wanted to stay alive, we’d all have to pay more attention to our surroundings.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I climbed into the truck, I found Ash curled up on the floor reading a book.

  She glanced up. “Did I hear somebody scream?”

  “It was more of a shriek.” I sat sideways in the driver’s seat and leaned my forearms on my legs. “Somebody slashed all the tires on Doodlebug Cookies.”

  Her eyes grew wide, and she scrambled to her feet to look out the window. “How the hell did that happen in broad daylight?”

  “Good question. You didn’t see anything, either?”

  She shook her head. “After I cleaned up, I sat down to read.” She leaned forward, peering through the closed window. “I thought I saw somebody while I was wiping off the counter, but it might have been my imagination.”

  I straightened in my seat. “What did he look like? When was this?”

  “I don’t know. It was like, you know, a shadow out of the corner of my eye. I might have imagined it.”

  I sighed. This was a dead end. “You’ve been alone too much. You’re either cooped up in the truck doing all the work, or you’re cooped up in the motel while I’m out hunting for clues.”

  She shrugged. “It’s cool. I like working in the truck. I think I found something I’m good at. And the motel gives me time with my thoughts.”

  “But you need to get out. I’ve been wondering about that café across the street. You want to get some lunch?”

  Ash made a face. “Yeah. Well. About that. I may be good at this food truck thing, but I’m not perfect.” She looked at me, then away. “Mistakes were made.”

  “Mistakes?”

  “Sometimes I got orders wrong. So... I ate the evidence.”

  I let out a burst of laughter. “How many evidences?”

  “I lost count at four. Six? Seven? I’m not sure.”

  Now that I looked more closely, she looked a little green. “So, no lunch?” I smirked.

  “Please, no.”

  “Honey, it’s just bread and cheese. You can toss it if there’s a problem. Or set it aside. You don’t have to eat it.”

  She blushed. “I know. It was stupid.”

  What kind of people had Ash been living with that she felt she had to hide her mistakes so thoroughly?

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small handful of bottle tops I’d collected. “Not stupid. Just unnecessary. You’re allowed to make mistakes. You’re only human.”

  She glanced at her bandaged wrist. “Half.”

  “What?”

  “Half human.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I smiled. “Well, djinn are allowed to make mistakes, too.” I held my hand toward her with the bottle caps wresting in the palm. “Do you want these?”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Have you been collecting them for me?”

  “Well, I saw you pick up a few, so I’ve kept my eyes open.”

  “That’s so... Thank you, Kam.” She scooped the bottle caps from my hand and shoved them into her own pocket. “Very cool. Thanks.” A soft smile tugged at her lips, and for some reason, her eyes looked shiny, like she was trying not to cry.

  “Are you okay?” I wasn’t sure if I should get up and hug her or leave her be, but there was something more going on with her.

  She nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “Do you want to go to the café for dinner tonight?”

  “I think I’d rather stay in the room.” She turned away and wiped the already clean grill.

  “A little air and maybe some people around you might make you feel better.”

  “I feel fine. Really.” She didn’t sound fine. She sounded distracted and maybe a bit depressed. “How about lunch tomorrow?” She dropped the rag she was using in the sink and turned to face me. “You don’t have to worry about me. Honest.”

  I made a face. “Sorry. Not true. We’re in this together. Therefore, I worry. It’s par
t of my job description.” I stood and stretched. “But if you’re good for now, I need to do a daylight run through that alley to look for clues. Will you be okay here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Lock the door behind me. Don’t open up for anyone but me, okay? I have no idea who’s doing this, and it could be someone we’ve met.”

  “What if someone’s messing with the truck?”

  I took out my hair tie and reworked my ponytail while I thought about it. “You’re right. I can’t leave you and the truck here. Let’s drive it back to the motel and you can go inside. No reason for you to wait here. I’ll walk back.”

  She looked like she was going to object, then glanced out the window to where Lisa and Aaron stood talking while they waited for roadside assistance. “Okay. Yeah.” She climbed into the passenger seat and put on her seat belt. “It’s more comfortable in the room anyway.”

  * * *

  Once I got the truck parked and Ash settled, I walked back to the office park. Neil, the guy who’d traded trucks with me, was helping Lisa with her tire situation. Rather than get drawn in, I skirted the area and crossed the street toward the bank and café.

  Even in daylight, the alley had an ominous feel to it—most likely because I’d found someone dying there the night before. It was probably in my head. Still, I shuddered as I stepped into the shadows.

  I wasn’t afraid, exactly. Cautious. Alert. Ready to flip someone to the ground and put a boot on his chest if he was stupid enough to come up behind me without clearing his throat first to let me know he was there. But not afraid. Much.

  My palms were clammy, and I wiped them on my jeans as I walked. The side door to the café was closed. It was unmarked and painted the same sea-foam green as the rest of the building. The garbage bin was half-full, with plastic bags piled up against the outside. Flies buzzed around it in the warmth of the afternoon. I stopped and crossed to the wall of the bank. The splatters I’d seen by the light of my phone were more reddish than brown in the sunlight, though it was impossible to say even with this much light what it was.

  I took out the pad of paper I’d stashed in my back pocket and made a note. If the OGREs hadn’t run tests on it, I’d ask them to do so. Truman might have already done it, though.

  Of course, even if it was blood, it didn’t mean it had anything to do with the murders. It was a back alley heavily trafficked by homeless folks. Anything could have happened here.

  I moved on until I came to the pile of trash where I’d found Sandra. My heart pounded in my chest, and I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. The dark, dried puddle on the ground here was definitely blood. No question. I’d been there when it had dripped.

  The body had been removed last night by the OGRE squad, but I could still see Sandra’s face looking up at me, her blue eyes desperate to tell me what had happened, her lips moving without making any words except for my name. I drew in a long, shaky breath.

  “Okay, Kam.” I wiped my hands on my jeans again. “Pull it together.”

  I kneeled near the piles of trash, careful to avoid the blood spill, and lifted the black plastic bags out of the way, one at a time. With each one, I took care to shake it out, then set it out of the way so I could look underneath where it had been.

  Normally, I’d be disturbing a crime scene, having crossed a line of yellow tape telling me not to. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d done that. Sometimes a girl needed to retrieve an earring before someone else found it.

  People could be quick to jump to conclusions.

  But this crime scene didn’t come under the jurisdiction of the human police. And even though things had changed and all the Hidden could pass as human, we still handled our problems privately. For one thing, Sandra’s human form had vanished with her last breath. We couldn’t have an elf showing up in a human morgue. That was why the OGRE squads still existed, and why Hidden still mostly stuck together the way the Food Truck Posse did. They shared a culture and a past, and there was a sense of safety in staying in groups in a world where they’d previously been unable to participate.

  I moved another trash bag and sighed. That safety hadn’t helped Sandra last night.

  My search efforts were rewarded when I shook the next bag. A mirror shard slipped out and landed on a pile of newspapers. The jagged piece of glass was about four inches long, and one side was dark with dried blood.

  I wanted to be thrilled. I’d found a major clue. This was most likely the murder weapon. Instead, I felt a rock in the pit of my stomach. Such a small thing—a chunk of broken mirror. But last night, someone had held it in their hand and used it to slice open the neck of a sweet woman who’d been nice to me.

  Since I wasn’t on the police force, I didn’t have any special equipment. But I was as prepared as I could be and grabbed a plastic bag from my coat pocket. It slipped in easily without my touching more than a tiny edge—Truman would want to take fingerprints, most likely—and I wrapped the bag in newspaper before placing it in my pocket. The last thing I needed was to cut myself on the murder weapon.

  The rest of the pile yielded no other clues, so I straightened and brushed off my knees. Had I been better prepared, I’d have brought some hand sanitizer or wet wipes, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be digging through garbage. If it had, I’d have also brought rubber gloves.

  I moved on through the alley, watching for anything strange I’d missed the night before, but my own knowledge of what had happened was the only thing that made the trip ominous. Sometimes an alley was just an alley.

  I came out the other side and had no trouble spotting Homer’s. A large yellow sign with red letters hung on the building across the street. It read Homer’s Hope Community Shelter. But more than that, I recognized some of the faces of the people out front.

  The sidewalk in front of Homer’s was set up almost like a bistro, with plastic tables and chairs for people to sit together and enjoy the sun.

  Bonnie’s cart was parked against the wall, and she sat on a white, molded-plastic chair next to Maizy, who sat in a similar chair. I didn’t see Verne with them, but a younger guy with a tattoo of an owl on his forearm sat with them.

  Bonnie’s face lit up when she saw me. “Kam! My goodness, Kam’s here!” She turned to the man sitting with them. “Curtis, get Kam a chair, will you?”

  He flashed me a shy smile. “Yes, ma’am.” He slid out of his chair and snagged another from a nearby table. “Welcome to Homer’s.” He spun his chair around and sat straddling the back of it. “Miss Bonnie’s been saying a lot of nice things about you.”

  I grinned. “I say a lot of nice things about Miss Bonnie.” I patted her hand softly.

  Maizy’s hands fluttered in her lap, twisting a handkerchief. “I’m so sorry we can’t offer you anything. You were so kind to us when we visited you.”

  “Don’t be silly. I don’t need anything.” I glanced around at the small crowd. “Where’s Verne?”

  She waved her hand at the building behind us. “He’s inside cleaning. We all take shifts to keep the place running.”

  I craned my neck to look through the windows. There was a desk and a few chairs, but the rest of the place was farther back in the building where we couldn’t see anything. “So, he’s helping Homer?”

  Curtis laughed. “There’s nobody named Homer. It’s just the name of the place. A lot of people run it—a board of directors.” He shrugged. “Mostly, we all share the jobs and keep it going. The board leaves us be. It works for us.”

  What a weird setup. I sat back in my chair and watched as people came and went and others clustered together to socialize. I didn’t know what it was like on the inside, but I had a feeling it was a decent place to stay.

  I wished I’d found a place like that the times when I’d been on my own and had no place to go.

  * * *

&
nbsp; I stayed for over an hour in front of Homer’s. At first, I asked questions, trying to see if any of them knew anything about the murders. Since I wasn’t a police officer or real detective, I had to be at least a little subtle, which has never been something I was particularly good at. The task was made all the harder by the fact that I wasn’t really sure what information I was after. Questions about whether they felt safe in the area or whether they’d seen or experienced anything strange were met with quizzical looks and shrugged shoulders. Nobody appeared to know what I was talking about.

  Not long after I arrived, I came to the same conclusion I’d come to before—Truman’s team was really good about cleaning up before anyone outside the Hidden community could become aware of it.

  I gave up and spent the rest of my time here getting to know the people around me. If anything odd or suspicious did happen, maybe they’d feel comfortable telling me about it if they already knew me.

  The people here didn’t have much—otherwise they wouldn’t have been here—but they were generous with what they did have. They shared stories, cigarettes, hair clips and sweaters. They shared information about job openings and whom to talk to at the housing office.

  And they shared a lot of hugs.

  These were good people in tough situations, and every single one I met was doing whatever he or she could to pull out of it. Humanity at its best, despite appearances.

  In fact, I didn’t spot a single Hidden in the area. These people were all humans. There may have been a similar place set up for Hidden. Who knew? But the population of Hidden was a lot smaller than humans, so places like Homer’s were far more necessary for humans than Hidden.

  Not for the first time, I wished I had better self-control and hadn’t used up all my magic. I could have done something for them if I hadn’t squandered it.

  Curtis turned out to be a real estate agent, which seemed to me to be one of the most ironic stories I’d heard.

  I sat forward in my seat, surprised. “Can’t you find an agency to work for?”

  He shook his head. “I’m only licensed in Indiana. I can’t go back there.”