"What prompted you to come see me? I can't remember any outstanding assignments."
"Duncan Koons."
Mr. Harris' lamprey face was impossible to read. Still, she could detect sharpness in his response. "What about him?"
"Do you know what happened?"
"Abigail, this is a matter for the police. As your teacher, as a responsible adult, as anything really, I have to urge you to let them do their jobs."
"That's just it, Mr. Harris. Duncan Koons is innocent. He didn't do it!"
"How do you know something like that?"
Abby faltered. It was difficult telling anyone what she was there for, let alone her teacher. "I just know, okay?"
Harris was silent for a few minutes. Abby shivered in a sudden gust of frigid wind. Finally, he said, "If you cannot explain to me why you are certain, than you cannot really be certain of anything, can you? The police are the experts in this matter. If they believe they have enough evidence to bring this Koons to trial, let them do it. If the man is innocent, it will come out in court."
"But Mr. Harris!"
"I know you want to help, but the best way to do that is to allow the system to do its work."
Abby wanted to shout at him, but she knew it would do no good. Every adult was going to say the same thing. Dealing with killers wasn't something a teenage girl should be doing, anyway.
"May I ask you something, Abigail?"
She looked up, and once again was felt a minor twinge of disgust at the monstrous sea-thing gazing down on her. His voice was so normal and calm that she always half-expected it was a human speaking to her whenever she looked away. "Sure."
"This is difficult, as it's not appropriate, really. Consider it part of our other arrangement."
Abby nodded. She knew he meant her promise not to tell anyone she knew of the croatan.
"Do you take any pills?"
She frowned. "Yeah. Of course. I take an iron supplement."
"An iron supplement? Whatever for?"
"You know, the groundwater in this town. It leeches the iron out of some people, so I have to take a supplement or I get anemic."
Harris was quiet again, and Abby cursed her inability to read his expression. "Can you bring me one of these pills, please?"
"Sure, I guess."
"Thank you, Abby. And the other?"
"I'll stay out of it. I promise," she lied.
The next day, she slipped one of her supplements into an envelope and put it in Mr. Harris's mailbox. She wasn't certain she could face him again so soon.
44
Heir Apparent
sindy Endicott had nothing to do. It was only a few days before Christmas and relentless winter storms were keeping most people inside. She looked forward to the day when even that would not stop her. She'd have a car of her own, and she could decide what did and what did not constitute driving weather.
She fiddled around on Facebook, refreshing her timeline every few minutes. No one was posting because no one was online. She kept hoping the snow would let up long enough to convince her mom to give her a ride to Abby's.
There was a knock at the door. "Yes?" she said, turning in surprise.
"The family has a visitor. You're wanted downstairs, Miss Endicott." It was Abelard, the Endicott family's only full-time servant. Sindy had always found the reedy little man annoying.
"I'll be right down."
Sindy took her time. She fixed her makeup in the mirror, put on shoes, and brushed her hair. The irony was that her mother always advised her to perform this ritual, even though Sindy was only using it now to kill time. When she had pushed it about as far she considered safe, she went downstairs to see who constituted a family visitor.
She was shocked to find Hester Thorndike in the parlor of their home. Faith Endicott, Sindy's mother, fawned over the old woman. "Coffee? Tea? Please, it's no trouble."
Hester made a single sharp gesture with her hand and Faith went silent. Hester turned to look at Sindy. The old woman nodded. "Would you please fix us some tea?"
"I'll have Abelard-"
"I believe I asked you, Faith. Did I not?" Hester said without looking away from Sindy.
Faith quailed. "Of... Of course. Excuse me."
"Hello, Sincere," Hester said. "Would you care to join me?"
Sindy wondered what would happen if she said no. Was it even an option? Probably not. But the fact was, she liked Hester, and it was always fun to watch someone treat her mother the way her mother treated everyone else.
The Endicott family parlor was furnished in a modern style, with fake antiques cluttering up every corner. Real antiques probably would have been cheaper, but that was the opposite of her mother's point. The Endicotts were far from the wealthiest family in Arkham, so they had to try harder.
Sindy took a chair next to Hester's, a small end table between them.
"It is so good to see you, Sincere," Hester said.
Sindy rankled at the sound of her real name, but didn't correct her. "It's good to see you too, Mrs. Thorndike."
"You're turning fifteen soon."
"April 7th."
"Very soon."
It didn't seem soon to Sindy, but then again, she had experienced a lot fewer Aprils than Hester. So had most of Arkham.
"Are you looking forward to joining the Daughters of Arkham?"
"Yeah, I mean, of course. I don't know anyone in town that wouldn't want to do that."
Hester smiled, and if she caught the slightest edge of Sindy's false enthusiasm, she gave no sign. Sindy did want to join, but she didn't quite understand the big deal. She only knew that it was a big deal to the ruling class. For that, it was useful.
"Abigail feels much the same way."
"I'll bet. Especially being your granddaughter."
"Oh, there's no guarantee that Abigail's heritage entitles her to a similar position in the Daughters." Hester put her hand on Sindy's. It felt like a collection of bones directly from the freezer. Sindy fought the urge to flinch. "Merit has much to do with it. Abigail certainly has the connections, but there are so many ways she can fall short. So many ways."
Hester patted Sindy's hand.
She couldn't quite believe what the old woman was saying. The reason Abby had fallen from favor was obvious: the pregnancy. Did that somehow make her next in line? She was shocked at was how willing, even eager, Hester was to set aside blood relations.
"I brought your tea," Faith said, and Hester moved her hand away. Relief filled Sindy.
She felt numb as she considered everything that had just happened. It didn't feel right being pitted against Abby like this, especially after they had just made up.
But...
The power she would wield if she were the leader of the Daughters of Arkham...
45
Mr. Endicott
since his epiphany in the drawing room with Ophelia, Bryce had become obsessed. The truth had been in front of his face for sixteen years and he never realized it. His investigation consumed his every spare moment. It was strange for him take such an interest in anything; passion was something he reserved for girls and cars. He couldn't help it, though; he sensed that he was onto something huge. Without arousing suspicion, he contacted as many students at Arkham Academy as he could and began to collate his data.
What he found was chilling.
The number of single parent households in Arkham were off the charts. Of the first twelve people he contacted, nine were missing a dad and one was missing a mom. The reasons ran the gamut. Death was the most common. Causes of death ranged from car, hunting, and boating accidents to much more exotic accidents that only afflicted the very rich, like his own father's helicopter accident. A few people had even stranger stories. Henry Shayes' dad was supposedly killed and eaten by a bear. They'd found one of his feet out in the woods, and nothing else, not even the shoe.
Then there were the fathers who had just disappeared. Bryce hadn't expected to hear about anything like that in the age of
GPS, Facebook, and the NSA. He might have dismissed one, or even two, as one of those anomalies, but as he kept digging, he found eight people who claimed that their fathers had just up and vanished one day. No forwarding address, no calls, no letters, no emails. Poof. Gone.
The disappearances which were in a perpetual state of limbo bothered Bryce the most. Charity Duckworth told Bryce how her father worked overseas and was never able to come home. She sounded so strangely cool with it that Bryce couldn't even muster a line of questioning. She wasn't the only one. There were three others with similar stories.
Bryce moved on and called Sindy Endicott. He hadn't talked to her since she had dumped Eleazar Grant. He wasn't angry about it; the break-up was their business and Laze must have done something to screw it up. Sindy was pretty cool, and she was hot. Well. Hot enough.
"Bryce?" Sindy said by way of greeting.
"Hey, Sindy. This is going to sound a little weird, but is it cool if I ask you some questions?"
"Weird is my life right now."
He sensed that was a bigger conversation which would be better face-to-face than over the phone. "Okay, well, don't get mad. I'm not trying to offend you, or be a jerk, or anything."
"Okay..." she said in a tone that conjured an image of her twirling her finger at her temple.
"My father died when I was very young."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I was a baby. I don't remember him at all. I bring that up so you know I'm not just being nosy about nothing."
"You're right. This is weird."
"I noticed your mom is single."
"Getting weirder, Bryce. Are you thinking about dating her?"
"I could do a lot worse than Faith."
Sindy laughed. "Ew, don't call her that. You're gross."
"Hey, if things work out, I could be your stepdad."
"This is what you called me for?"
"No, no. I was just wondering what happened to your dad."
"I suppose you could date him, too, if you wanted. I don't really know his type, though. I know it's not my mom, or else they wouldn't have gotten divorced."
"Oh." Bryce was disappointed. "Do you have a relationship with him?"
"Yeah. I mean, sort of. It's tough with all the distance and the time zones."
"What do you mean?"
"My dad runs a security company."
"Yeah, I know. We have an Endicott Solutions system over at my place."
"You, and everyone else in town."
"What does your dad running a security company have to do with anything?"
"They're headquartered in Copenhagen. You know, Denmark. He lives there. I don't even know what time it is there right now. It could be tomorrow. Or yesterday."
"And you see him?"
"No. I haven't seen him... since I was real little, I guess."
"What kind of relationship do you have?"
"He calls me. On my birthday. And Christmas. Sometimes the other holidays, but always those two. We catch up. It's nice."
Bryce was silent as he tried to process this. "Have you ever seen him?"
"I guess so. I mean, I must have."
"How old were you when he moved to Copenhagen?"
"I don't know." He could practically see the angry shrug she was giving him. He knew he was pushing her and she was maybe two seconds shy of losing her temper, but he had to press on.
"Seriously, Sindy? This doesn't seem strange to you?"
"I don't know. I guess. I mean, now that you mention it."
Now that you mention it. Stuff that seemed normal, because it was normal. Normal was defined by the realities of your existence, so if something was the status quo, it was, by definition, normal. Sindy obviously never examined her situation as an outsider might, just like Bryce had never looked at how many single parent households were in Arkham. Even taking into account divorce statistics-the first thing he'd researched-this was too much.
"Do you have his phone number?"
"Of course I do."
"Would you mind giving it to me?"
"Bryce, what's going on?"
He sighed. This was the first time anyone had really asked him what he was up to. She was one of Abby's best friends. In Bryce's mind, he automatically owed her a small bit of consideration, so he told her everything that he had found so far. She was so quiet that for a moment he thought she had hung up.
"And you think..." she said.
"I don't know what I think. All I know is, it's weird."
"Yeah." She was quiet again. "I'll send you the number. But I need to talk to him first. I need to see... I just need to talk to him first. He calls on Christmas. Just wait 'til then, okay?"
Bryce hated waiting, but Christmas wasn't that far away. He could give Sindy a little time. "Okay, thank you. I appreciate it, Sindy."
"One more thing, or no deal." He braced himself for her demands. "Whatever you find, you have to swear to tell me, okay? No matter what."
"No matter what. I promise."
"I don't know what I'm hoping you'll find out."
"Me neither."
Even though Bryce was in his own home, speaking with someone he was finding to be a better friend than he'd first realized, he felt very alone.
46
The Call
sindy was freshly cleaned up and waiting for her phone to ring. Her light breakfast-crepes and fruit-was jostling around in her belly. She felt foolish for letting Bryce's theory get to her, though she couldn't deny that it was compelling. And while she might be willing to accept that all of those other dads had disappeared through sinister means, she didn't believe anything of the sort about hers.
Her phone buzzed not more than forty seconds after two. She could have set her watch by the call; he was always so punctual. Two pm. After the present-opening, but before the Christmas party. Her phone said 'Dad' on the screen, but she had no accompanying picture for him.
"Dad?" she said into the phone.
"Hello, princess."
Their conversation was normal, even boring. He asked her about Arkham Academy and her friends. As usual, he seemed honestly interested in how she was doing. She answered his questions openly, but everything felt tense and awkward. She couldn't keep Bryce's theory out of her head, and she cursed her friend for messing up one of the few times she actually got to talk to her father.
"What's wrong, baby?" he asked.
"Nothing, Daddy."
"Come on. I know you better than that."
"When are you coming home?"
"It's not my home anymore. I thought you understood that. Your mother and I still love you very much, but we can't live together."
"I didn't mean to live. I meant for a vacation."
"I wish I could. I really do. This is a difficult time for the company. A lot of expansion, new business. We have to be competitive on these bids, or it's belly up."
"It's been like that for fourteen years."
"It hasn't been that long."
"Yeah, it has. I'm fourteen and I don't remember you at all. I know a lot of dads who work a lot, but they still see their kids." This was a lie. Between her own friends and Bryce's research, she could think of one dad who worked a lot and was active in his child's life, and that was Elijah Grant. That was a whole other can of worms that she didn't want to open up right now.
"I'm sorry. I really wish I could come home, but I'm stuck here. Listen, I'll do everything I can to get home next year for your birthday, all right?"
"Okay."
"Merry Christmas, princess."
"Merry Christmas, Daddy."
She ended the call and stared at the phone. After a moment, she texted the number to Bryce.
Thx Sin, came the response so quickly that he must have been waiting for it.
47
Christmas
Biking over to Harwich Hall while all of Arkham was smothered under a thick crust of snow was crazy. Veronica said as much to Nate before he left. His mother clucked her tongue about c
atching pneumonia, and his father shot him a knowing smile and raised his cup of eggnog from the couch where he was watching basketball. They all knew Nate was going to go over there. He had been doing it for years, including two years ago when there had been an honest-to-god nor'easter. He spent most of that afternoon shivering in front of a fire at Abby's place while Bertram brought them mug after mug of cocoa.
It wasn't snowing when he set out. The roads were freshly coated but that wasn't deep enough to keep him at home. He put Abby's gift in the basket and stood on his pedals to get enough force to bring him up to speed. The wind was cold on his face and his breath burned, but Nate felt alive.
There had been a time when Nate was terrified of change. He still didn't like it, but he was at least curious about it now. He had become more or less used to the reality of Abby's pregnancy, though because she still wasn't showing quite yet, he could sometimes ignore that part. What he couldn't forget was the church out in the woods and the creature that had hunted them.
In his mind, he called it the Woodsman. It wasn't an accurate name, but all Nate could think of was the Big Bad Wolf. It probably would have been more appropriate to actually call it that, the Big Bad Wolf, but that felt too childish to Nate. More than that, he had the unmistakable sense that the Woodsman, whatever it really was, was protecting that section of the wild from people like him and Abby.
One stray thought about the Woodsman was enough to chill Nate to the bone. He knew it was out there in that ancient stretch of woods. It had to be connected to that church in some way, though he couldn't imagine how. The mystery about why the wealthiest women in Arkham would choose to spend their time out there was a puzzle too complicated for him to unravel just yet.
Christmas let him put those thoughts away, at least for a little while. He could concentrate on family. For him, that included Abby. He selected all his Christmas presents with care, but with Abby's, he took extra time. He was secretly ashamed that he didn't have the money to get her something expensive like she always got him, but he tried to make up the difference with thought and consideration.
Mother of Crows: Daughters of Arkham - Book 2 Page 21