Oak & Thorns

by Yasmine Galenorn

  Ten minutes later, he was finished. My room and Herne’s room had been the only ones with bugs in them. Herne’s hadn’t even had a camera. Secure in the knowledge that we had our privacy back, we once again bid good night, and headed to bed.

  NEXT MORNING, WE decided to go as a team to the library. Before we did anything else regarding Jona’s case, we wanted to see if it was the tip of an iceberg like Rosetta had suggested.

  The Seacrest Cove library was an extension of the larger Sno-Isle library system. But it had a computer system, and an impressive number of books. We asked the librarian where we could find the back issues of the paper for the past twenty years or so.

  “Oh, we don’t keep those in print. They’re being scanned into the computer system right now, but you can still find all of them on microfiche.” She looked almost apologetic.

  Yutani blinked. I had the feeling he was almost offended by the ancient technology.

  “There are four microfiche readers in room 2A. Which paper did you want? I can get you the film cassettes.”

  “The Whidbey Island Gazette, please.” Talia glanced at Herne. “What do you think? Go back thirty years?”

  “That should be good, or at least I hope it will be. We need the issues for April through July and October through November for each year.”

  The librarian jotted down the information, then motioned for us to wait in the microfiche room for her. As we entered the room, I had a flashback to my childhood. There had been microfiche readers in the school library for the first few years, before things were transferred over to a computer system.

  “Remind you of anything?” I asked Angel.

  She laughed. “I have flashbacks of writing reports using microfiche. It was a pain in the ass.”

  “Well, at least you did yours. I skipped out on as many as I could.”

  “Since you and Angel seem to be familiar with these machines, why don’t the two of you take those over there. Talia, you and Yutani take the other two. Meanwhile, Viktor and I will poke around the rest of the library. I’m thinking we need to find out what we can about the vampire who talked to Rhiannon as well. She said his name was Rayne. I’ll see what I can find out on him.”

  Herne fell silent as the librarian returned, tapes in hand. She handed them to us, and Angel and I sat down, starting to feed the film through the reader. I began punching the fast-forward button, wishing to hell that it had a search feature on it. Luckily, the paper was small, given the surrounding area, so it wouldn’t be too much trouble to look through each issue.

  As we got down to work, Herne and Viktor exited the room. I stuck my tongue out at their departing backs, given they were missing out on all the fun of wading through hundreds of yards of film.

  About ten minutes later, I paused, staring at a small article on page three of the June issue from 1977. I zoomed in, scanning the story.

  The body of Ivan Hinkleman was found last week, on the Cold Step trail in South Whidbey State Park. He was found near the beach, after having gone missing over a week ago. Police suspect foul play, but say they have no leads. Lena Hinkleman, his wife stated her husband went out to buy ice cream at the local Dairy Freeze, but never returned home. A thorough search turned up no signs of Mr. Hinkleman until a jogger found his body.

  There was a picture of an elderly gentleman there, looking almost stately in a three-piece suit. I jotted down notes, then printed out a copy of the story. I looked through the next few issues, searching for any mention of the murder, but saw nothing.

  “I found one, I think,” I said.

  “So did I,” Talia said. She was busy printing out a second article. “Two, actually.”

  Two hours later, we had gathered seventy-two stories, spanning from 1977 through to the present day. Fifty-two were missing persons, while twenty were odd murders that had gotten very little coverage. When we finished, we took our microfiche back to the librarian and then headed over to a table where Herne and Victor were waiting.

  “Next step: find out which of the missing persons reports have been closed out. As far as the murders, we need to find out everything we can about the victims. Were any of the cases solved?” Talia placed the sheath of papers in the center of the table. “Notice that every murder and missing-persons article is short—a paragraph or two at best. Very little is said about the murder itself. In every case, we scanned forward through the next few weeks and saw nothing else mentioned about each of the unexplained deaths. For any other murders or deaths during those times, there were follow-up stories. But these twenty or so? It’s almost as though they were a blur on the highway.”

  Yutani pulled out his laptop and begin typing in names, searching through the Net. A few moments later, he paused, then slowly turned the laptop so that all of us could see the screen. He clicked over to an images search, and there was another picture of Mr. Hinkleman. Only Mr. Hinkleman wasn’t wearing his three-piece suit. He was naked, on a morgue table, his skin covered with deep puncture wounds. They looked exactly like those on Jona’s body.

  “Somebody got a hold of one of the morgue pictures and posted it. Let me follow this back…” Yutani tapped away at the keyboard. A moment later he frowned, shaking his head. “All right, the image is part of a private file system, but I can’t seem to bring up the webpage it’s attached to. I think somebody forgot to set this picture to private. It’s part of a locked-down, unlisted website as far as I can tell.”

  “What do you mean ‘unlisted’?”

  “Somebody has taken pains to hide a website from view. I’m not sure how they’re doing it, I’d have to look into it more, but they forgot to set the privacy settings on the picture. I was able to find it because I did a search on Hinkleman’s name.”

  “What about the others?” I asked.

  We waited while Yutani went back to work. Half an hour later, he came up for air. He glanced around, looking to see if anybody was nearby. But apparently the library annex wasn’t extensively used on Friday mornings.

  “I have the names and addresses of four of the murder victims’ families. It appears the other sixteen all moved away shortly after the murders. I also searched on all the missing persons’ names. Twelve were reported found—most were just lost or forgot to tell their families they were going out of town. But the other forty? Crickets. Nothing. No reports of them being seen anywhere. I hacked into the nationwide database and none of them were ever listed with the FBI or any other missing persons database.”

  Herne let out a low whistle. “So, we have twenty murder victims and forty missing people, and all the cases during the months of May and June, and October and November.”

  “That sort of pattern can’t have gone unnoticed by the cops. There’s no chance they didn’t pick up on it. And yet…nothing has ever been said or done.” I leaned back in my chair.

  “Serial killer?” Talia asked.

  “It seems like it. One with a definite pattern,” Herne said. “But if forty people went missing and were never found, then what happened to them? Are we prematurely lumping them into the same case? We can’t assume they’re part of the pattern, and yet, that’s a lot of missing people who were swept under the rug.”

  “What kind of serial killer has the self-control to keep at it on a steady pattern like this? Don’t most of them start to escalate, or spiral out of control?” Angel rested her elbows on the table, leaning her chin on her hands.

  “Not all of them. The more organized ones don’t.” Herne motioned to Yutani. “Anything else you picked up on?”

  Yutani scanned his notes. “Each of the murder victims was found in the state park, usually near the water, and most of the missing went missing near the state park. While I’ve only been able to find references to two of the bodies besides Hinkleman, it seems that they too were indicated as having multiple puncture wounds. Those were two of the early murders. There’s very little about any of the ones later on. And I can only find references to the victims onlin
e before their murders. There’s very little mention of them afterward, except in a couple ancestry sites. One person mentions their dead uncle.”

  “What about the missing persons? Are there any mentions of them?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not as far as I can see. It’s as though once they disappeared—or were killed, in the case of the murder victims—they were promptly forgotten.”

  “So, four of the murder victims’ families still live on the island? I suggest we pay a visit to them. We can do that after lunch.” Herne glanced around. “This case makes me uneasy. We have evidence of a serial killer, but nothing’s being done about it. Twenty people are dead and forty gone missing, but again, nothing is being done and it’s as though they were all just wiped out of existence. We have evidence of a possible land wight, but the doctor denies the possibility. Tell me again, how long has Astrana been sheriff here?”

  Talia was quick on the job with that one. “Rhiannon said about thirty-five years. Remember, all that crap went down with her around forty years ago, so she must have left the court of Navane shortly after that.”

  “So, she started here five years after the first murder. Who was sheriff before her?”

  Yutani did a quick search. “An older human—Jack Bingham. He died of a heart attack and Astrana was elected. From what I can see, people thought he wasn’t doing his job very well by the end and Astrana promised the community she’d step up and keep a tighter rein on crime.”

  I could practically see the wheels turning in Herne’s head. “Are you thinking she has something to do with this?”

  “Not necessarily with the murders themselves, but she’s definitely covering them up. She’s narcissistic, but she’s not stupid. She has to see the pattern here. And that tells me that she probably has something to lose if word about this gets out.” He glanced over at Talia. “Why don’t you get to work digging up her background? Find anything you can on her—every piece of dirt. I don’t care if it’s gossip or not, we want to sift through everything that we can.”

  “I found out something else,” Yutani said.

  “There’s another piece to the puzzle?” Viktor asked.

  “Yeah. I’ve been doing some more sleuthing while we’ve been talking. Each of these four families who are still here? Received a sizable stroke of financial luck a few weeks after their loved one was killed. The sixteen who moved away? Not so much.”

  “Marilyn’s moving, and she doesn’t seem to have had any big stroke of luck.” I straightened in my chair. “I don’t think she feels safe here. I wonder if there’s something she hasn’t told us.”

  “I think there are a lot of things that a lot of people haven’t told us,” Herne said, standing. “Let’s go back to the hotel and eat lunch, then we’ll split up and go talk to the various families. We need to figure out our line of questioning first, though. And if there’s any chance they were paid to keep their mouths shut, we’re going to have to figure out a way to break through their reserves. Be careful, though. We don’t dare run the risk of being accused of harassing them or we could be chased off the island. And when the sun sets, we need to find Rayne—the vampire Rhiannon talked to. I want his take on this.”

  At that moment, his phone rang. He grimaced as the librarian shot us a dirty look from across the room. “Yes, okay. Really?… Yeah, I can be there. Really? You want me to bring her too? All right. We were going to grab some lunch first—okay, no problem. Be there in a bit.” As he slid his phone back into his pocket, he glanced at me. “Cernunnos wants to see me right away. And he said he wanted to meet you too, Ember. You ready to meet my father?”

  My mouth went dry as I stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding. You want me to meet your father today?”

  Herne laughed, winking at me. “Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite. Much.”

  And with that, he ushered us out of the library, refusing to say anything more.

  Chapter 9

  MY FIRST THOUGHT was that this had to be an elaborate practical joke. My second thought was that I was scared spitless.

  My family pretty much consisted of Angel and Mr. Rumblebutt. I seldom gave any thought to family gatherings, reunions, or the proverbial “meeting the parents” situation.

  I tried to remind myself that I had already met Morgana, but even then, I had met her in the context of being swept into her service, not as her son’s girlfriend. We had only briefly talked about Herne, and the only warning I got from her was to mind my oath and stick to it. Given my mother had been pledged to Morgana, I wasn’t really sweating it. I wasn’t sure what Morgana had planned for me, and until I found out, I wasn’t going to borrow trouble.

  But meeting Cernunnos seemed more fraught with danger. Granted, I’d recently found out my father had been pledged to him, but that didn’t necessarily make it any easier.

  “Just where are we going to meet your father? Is he coming here? To the hotel?” It seemed like a ridiculous question, but given Herne talked to his parents on a cell phone, it seemed just as likely as anything else.

  “You’ll see.” He turned to the others. “This shouldn’t take long. I’d rather you didn’t start interviewing the families until Ember and I return. Why don’t you head back to the hotel, eat lunch, and we’ll be back as soon as we finish talking to Cernunnos.”

  They just mumbled and waved and I handed Angel my keys. Herne escorted me to his car, opening the door for me. I meekly slid into the passenger seat, fastening my seatbelt. What the hell had I gotten myself into? I wondered if I still had time to back out, but given the fact that Cernunnos had asked to meet me, it didn’t feel prudent to refuse.

  I wasn’t sure where we were going, but Herne seemed to know the way. We headed toward the other side of Seacrest Cove until we came to a one-story rambler. It stood on a bluff, overlooking the water, with two gigantic oak trees in the front yard. I blinked. Oaks weren’t all that common around the area. Then the thought fluttered past that Cernunnos might own the house, but that was ridiculous. The Lord of the Hunt owning a rambler? Somehow, it just didn’t compute.

  Herne shifted into park, then turned off the ignition.

  “So, does your father live here? On Whidbey Island?” With a glance at the house, I added, “In a rambler?”

  He laughed. “No, my father does not live on Whidbey Island, nor is his palace a rambler built in the 1970s. However, the man who lives here is an agent of his. And those two oaks? They guard the portal we’re crossing through in order to meet him.”

  I blinked. “Agent? As in, like we’re agents of the Wild Hunt?”

  “Not exactly. Most of the gods have an intricate network of spies and agents throughout the world. My father is no different. Come on, let’s go.”

  As I opened the door, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, burning them away. It was still cool, in the low sixties, with a stiff breeze, but the sun felt good on my face as I stepped out of the car. I shaded my eyes as the light splashed across the ground with a dizzying array of color.

  At that moment, the door to the rambler opened and a short but sturdy man stepped through. He was muscular, with dark wavy hair that trailed down his back. He was wearing a muscle shirt, and a pair of blue jeans that curved around his butt nicely. A hunting knife was clipped to his belt, and by the look of him, I pegged him as either partial or full Native American. His eyes lit up when he saw Herne.

  As we approached, Herne held up his hand and the other man clasped it, in one of those solidarity-type handshakes that men seemed to favor.

  “Herne, my man. It’s been awhile.” The man’s gaze flickered over me. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Ember Kearney. She works for the Wild Hunt.” Then, to my surprise, Herne added with just a touch of possessiveness in his voice, “She’s also my girlfriend. No poaching.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, giving him a what the fuck look. “In the first place, I may be your girlfriend, but I’m not a fish or a
game animal. Nobody can poach me. And second, I make up my own mind. Just remember that, dude.”

  Herne snorted. “Yes, ma’am.” He said it so obsequiously that I smacked him on the arm.

  “Behave and introduce your friend to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” His eyes twinkled, and I realized he was just baiting me. “Ember, let me introduce John Shelton.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” John inhaled softly. “They were right about you.” As if realizing he had just spoken out loud, his cheeks colored, and he dropped his gaze. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  I suddenly realized what he was referring to. “Yes, I’m half Dark and half Light.”

  He gave me a short nod. “Scuttlebutt gets around the island quickly, I can tell you that. As I said, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just didn’t realize that it was actually possible.”

  “The Fae Courts prefer to bandy the rumors that the two sides can’t interbreed. It goes against all of their sensibilities. But as you can see, I’m living proof. And you are…a shifter?” It was rude of me to ask, but given my own heritage had just been dissected, I wasn’t feeling particularly diplomatic.

  John seemed to understand. “I’m part of the Puget Sound Orca Pod.”

  I was surprised. It was unusual to meet water shifters on land, and given we were working with the hippocampi, it seemed a little startling to meet a whale shifter. Though technically, he was actually part of the porpoise family. Orcas weren’t true whales.

  “What can I do for you today?” he asked, returning his attention to Herne.

  “Need to use the portal. My father wants to talk to me about something. He also wants to meet Ember.”

  “Of course. I was just getting ready to go into town to pick up some groceries. Do you need me to stay here and guard your back?”

  Herne shook his head. “We’ll be fine. I’ll make sure to close the portal when we leave.”