The Lost of New Bristol (Lila Randolph Book 2)

by Wren Weston

  “Can I go to the party?” the younger girl asked.

  “It’s going to be a boring grownup party, Valerie,” Jake replied, squatting down in front of them, blocking their cartoons. “You both have to be quiet here, remember?”

  The girls nodded.

  “If you aren’t quiet, I’m going to turn off the cartoons for half an hour.”

  “Noooo,” Valerie said.

  “Then no more stampeding around the house with those tiny, tiny feet.” Jake tickled her soles.

  Valerie’s protests turned into giggles.

  “Vivian?”

  The older girl nodded.

  “Good. It’s just for another week. I know it’s hard, but we have to try, okay?”

  Solemn nods answered him.

  Jake led Lila back into the kitchen. She’d rarely been in a workborn dwelling, and the warmness and wornness of the spaces always surprised her. The counter had been scratched and dented as if it had been the casualty of many family dinners. Children’s drawings had been framed and tacked to the walls, rather than art. Instead of a footman, someone had hung a little coat rack, all pegs full. The girls’ brightly colored schoolbooks had been piled underneath.

  Jake stood in front of the stove himself, rather than a workborn.

  It all seemed so very odd and messy.

  “I’m making extra for you and your friends.”

  Tristan cocked his head. “You’re cooking us breakfast?”

  “I figured it would confuse you, and I knew your confusion would amuse me.” Jake stirred a mash of eggs and vegetables in a skillet. The spatula scraped against the pot.

  “Can I have ice cream?” came a tiny voice behind them.

  Jake didn’t even turn around. “What did I say yesterday?”

  “That I won’t get tall if I eat ice cream. I don’t want to be tall. I want ice cream.”

  Vivian strolled in behind Valerie and gave a long eye roll. “You can’t eat ice cream for breakfast. You have to eat normal things, like eggs and waffles and stuff.” Both girls had the same accent as Jake, the same rolling Rs and short vowels.

  “My mother let me—”

  “No, she didn’t—”

  “Did too—”

  Jake winced at their raised voices. “Cartoons. Living room. Now. Unless you want me to turn them off? I need to talk with our new friends. Remember?”

  Vivian’s eyes flashed, and she looked the group up and down, her senses on alert. Lila knew she’d been prepped for their arrival.

  Lila didn’t like it one bit.

  Valerie demanded a hug from Jake before she’d go, then left to watch cartoons once more, ice cream tantrum averted.

  As soon as the girls moved out of the room, Jake held his hands behind his back as though preparing to be arrested. “You’re still suspicious. I’ll let you cuff me if you’d feel safer. Just don’t let the girls see—”

  Lila pulled out a DNA pen from her pocket and jabbed him in the neck. He cursed and whipped around. The needle jerked. A little trickle of blood ran down his neck.

  “If you hadn’t moved, you wouldn’t have bled.”

  Jake rubbed his wound, frowning. “It’s probably better you surprised me. I loathe needles. What’s it for?”

  Lila pulled up his file on her palm, watching as the pen broke down his DNA information bit by bit and transmitted it wirelessly. In less than one minute, it had already reported her subject as male. “Sit down. This will take a few moments.”

  “You could have just asked me for my full name. I would have told you.” He kept hold of his neck and turned back to his skillets and pots. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to finish cooking breakfast. I’d protest you trying to break into my home, but I know that would get me nowhere. Your family’s influence goes far, Chief Randolph.”

  “You know my face?”

  “I knew who you were before you even knocked.”

  Lila’s gaze cut to Tristan, but he seemed equally confused by Jake’s words. “You’re going to bring those girls in here so I can test them, too.”

  “Do you have to?” Jake moved to the refrigerator. He took out some apple slices and dropped them into a pot, then sprinkled in a bit of cinnamon before closing the lid. “The girls have been through a lot recently. They’re my sister’s kids. She—”

  “You expect me to believe those girls are related?”

  “Not everyone looks it.”

  “No, they don’t. How do you know Finn Nottingham?”

  Jake raised a brow, concern in his eyes. “You know Finn?”

  “How do you know him?” Lila watched as more information popped up on her palm. Probable hair and skin color, race, and body type. His name and picture would pop up as soon as the device matched his blood against the DNA records.

  “Finn is my husband.”

  “I didn’t see that in the database. Do you have the license?”

  Jake pointed over his shoulder to the dining room wall. A marriage license had been framed and hung beside several pictures of them in tuxes on their wedding day, with large grins and even larger cravats. “Finn insisted we hang it. I think it throws off the entire room. I suppose your all-important database hasn’t been updated since last January.”

  “I suppose it hasn’t been. It’s bad with marriages. It’s great with arrest reports, though. You do know about the suspicions surrounding him?”

  “The kidnapping thing? I’m aware of the reports, but it’s all completely unfounded, just like I told Chief Quinn at the time. Finn would never hurt anyone, much less a child. You should see how great he is with my nieces.”

  “I’m not convinced they are your nieces.” Lila left the DNA pen to do its work and opened up her snoop programs. Pulling his full name from the marriage license, she dug for Jake’s biographical data. He had one sister, deceased. When Lila dug into the woman’s records, she found that Jake’s sister had not given birth.

  Flipping back to the DNA results, she let out a grunt, surprised that Jake hadn’t lied about his name. “Care to come up with a better story, Jake?”

  He took the eggs off the stove. “You’re fast with that thing.”

  “Stop fussing about with breakfast and sit.”

  Tristan turned off the burners and ushered Jake to the table. He and Dixon loomed behind him.

  “Breakfast will get cold. Oatmeal has a short half-life.”

  Lila inserted a fresh needle into her DNA pen, then started toward the den. The two little girls stared at the screen like owls, watching a pair of animated figures chase one another across the desert.

  “Don’t,” Jake said softly after she set a foot into the den. “Please.”

  Lila stopped and turned around, her hands on her hips.

  “Please, they really have been through a lot. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know—just let them be, will you? All anyone wants is for them to be safe.”

  Lila put down the pen and sat next to him at the table. “Safe from what?”

  “From their destiny.”

  “Wow. Could you be any more melodramatic?”

  “I could, actually,” he said, playing with the silverware in front of him.

  “Okay. I’ll bite. What destiny?”

  “Their destinies as determined by man. Is that better?”

  “Not really. You said you knew who I was before I knocked. How?”

  “The oracle called me thirty minutes ago.”

  Tristan and Dixon exchanged a confused glance.

  “She said Chief Randolph would be along this morning with a couple of friends. She said you’d be suspicious of us at first, but I was to tell you what I could, since you had enough information to dig it all up anyway. I don’t trust you, though, and I don’t feel comfortable telling you a thing.”

  “But you’ll talk?�
��

  “Only because the oracle wills it. You’re a highborn. You don’t give a damn about the rest of us unless it affects your family’s bottom line. You only serve yourself, your family, and your kind. If the news I saw this morning is true, then you just had your best friend arrested last night. So what does that mean for me and mine?”

  Tristan studied her, questioning her with every blink.

  “I have your husband in a holding cell right now,” she said. “I can make his stay far more unpleasant with one call. Tell me what that means for you and yours.”

  “That really doesn’t inspire me to talk.”

  “It should. As the oracle said, I’ll just figure it all out anyway. You don’t want me pissed off when I do.”

  Jake pursed his lips. “Fine. The little one is called Valerie. The older girl is Vivian. Finn and I changed their names, of course. It’s why I’m tutoring them at home instead of enrolling them in school. They’re struggling to remember their new names and identities. They’re struggling with lying about who they are. It’s all very hard for them. They don’t understand yet.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “According to the official records, Vivian was pronounced dead in a La Verde hospital several months ago. A car accident, from the original report. Valerie died from seizures.”

  “You took them.”

  “No, they were given to us. They have the sickness.” Jake fiddled with the silverware in front of him once more.

  “Seizures? The girls are future oracles?”

  “Their mothers didn’t want that future forced upon them. They wanted the girls to have a proper childhood, to have a choice when they came of age.”

  “If they have the seizures, they need to see a—”

  “They have a doctor. One who is sympathetic to the New Bristol oracle. He’s treating them, though you’ll never see a record of it. Luckily, he’s been able to control the girls’ seizures with medication. They couldn’t have been smuggled out otherwise.”

  “Smuggled?” Lila pinched the bridge of her nose. “So the oracles are responsible for the kidnappings and deaths of their own children?”

  “That’s alleged kidnappings and alleged deaths.”

  “Why did the women choose you and your husband to take care of the girls?”

  “Finn and I wanted children. We both have fertility issues.”

  “You can’t adopt?”

  “Of course we can adopt. Chief Quinn had to drop those stupid charges on lack of evidence, but the adoption agency said we’d still be okay for a placement. We decided to move for a change of scenery and to get away from Quinn, though. About a month after we moved, we read through the adoption papers again, just to make sure we were on the same page about what we could deal with and what we couldn’t. We were both fine with taking in a few older strays,” he said, the corners of his mouth quirking. “The New Bristol oracle called us the next day. She said that she had a vision of us, asked us to come see her.”

  He put down the silverware. “You see, they were already laying the groundwork to smuggle Valerie and Vivian out of La Verde. In her vision, the oracle saw us taking care of them. The girls were from La Verde. I had the right accent to make the ruse work. My sister died recently, giving us a plausible backstory.”

  “So they just handed the girls to you even though they barely knew you?”

  “Finn wasn’t unknown to the oracles or the ruse. He had helped them in Bordeaux, which is why he’s a kidnapping suspect in the first place. He was the girl’s driver, just some stranger driving an unmarked car, a show for the neighbors. I guess the neighbors got too good of a look this time, rather than a glimpse. He nearly got caught before he got the girl to the safe house. She’s happy now, though, from what the oracle tells me.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Quinn tried to tie Finn to another disappearance a few months later. That’s why we decided to leave. Chief Quinn would have arrested him for something eventually.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe this, do you?” Lila asked. “If what you’re saying is true, then one of these girls somewhere would have been found out by now. All it would take is one prick from a DNA stick to reveal who they really are.”

  Jake shook his head. “The oracles took care of the DNA database, or I should say, one of their faithful has been doing it. If you took a sample of the girls’ blood right now, they’d come up as Valerie and Vivian Vince, just as I claimed. I’ll need to remind the oracle to fix my sister’s data, though. That could be a problem in the future.”

  “Give me their mothers’ names.”

  Jake handed over his palm reluctantly, and Lila retreated into the girls’ bedroom for privacy, leaving Tristan and Dixon to watch the suspect. Or to help him finish breakfast, from the looks of things. They both believed him already, not a suspicious bone in their bodies.

  Sloppy.

  Lila moved past the pale pink beds, cringing at the green pastel walls, stenciled with overly happy bears and tigers. She had to admit, the men had dedicated a great deal of time and energy to build the girls a paradise. A full-length mirror stood in the corner surrounded by movie star lights. Costumes and boas spilled out of a trunk beside it. She counted at least a dozen stuffed animals piled on each girl’s bed. A dollhouse stood in the corner, made far too well to be from a factory. Lila peeked in, amazed at the dolls and tiny furniture inside.

  Had one of their adopted fathers built it himself?

  Lila sat down on one of the beds and scrolled through Jake’s palm, finding an entry marked taxi. A harried woman answered the palm on the first ring. She was an older copy of the little blackcoat in the living room.

  “Where’s Jake?” she asked in alarm.

  “I thought you were an oracle. You should have seen this coming.”

  “My sister’s the oracle, not me, thank the gods. Why are you calling?”

  “You know why.”

  The woman licked her lips. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. I wanted to make sure that your daughter isn’t really missing, that she was only given away.”

  “She’s not missing. Please, I’m begging you. My husband and I have given up a great deal to make sure she has a future.”

  “A future you chose for her?”

  “A future she’ll choose for herself when she’s old enough. I saw what my sister went through, what she still goes through. I’ll not put my daughter through it unless she wants it. The predictions will still come even if she decides to take a different path. The meds might stop the seizures, but they don’t stop the visions. They just make them gentler. She’s already called upon the New Bristol oracle a dozen times. She understands her duty.”

  Lila raised a brow. That explained the vision paradox. If the missing girls relayed their visions to the oracles and the oracles claimed them, it stood to reason their counts would increase.

  Lila flicked her thumb, ready to disconnect when the woman faltered. “Please, you’ve seen her? Does she look well? Is she—”

  “They won’t let you see her?”

  “We all thought it would be for the best if we don’t, at least not until she’s a little older, not until she learns her name better, not until she’s—”

  “Old enough to lie well?”

  “Don’t you dare judge me. You have no idea what it’s like. I’d have taken her away myself, but my face is too well known to those who follow the oracles.”

  “And her father?”

  “His mother is a matron. He couldn’t take her either. This was the only way.”

  Lila hung up on the woman a few moments later, too tired to talk further.

  Vivian’s mother was worse, for she hardly stopped crying. Same story, different women. She took her child to her cousin, shortly after Vivian had fallen ill with her first seizure. T
he oracle had given Vivian’s mother a choice, and the woman had made it.

  Lila didn’t go back to the kitchen right away. She dug through clothes and toys and schoolbooks, not sure what she was looking for until she opened Vivian’s dresser. Underneath a pile of cartoon-themed pajamas, she found a little notebook with a lock.

  Vivian kept a diary.

  Lila picked the lock and read through the girl’s scribbles. Vivian had been anxious before she met the men, worried they might not be nice. She’d been happy when she finally met them, relieved that Jake could cook better than her mother, relieved that Valerie wasn’t such an annoying little sister after all. She’d written whole pages about how much she missed her mother and how she didn’t understand why she had to leave.

  Her mother had kept her older brother. Why not keep her?

  Had she been sent away because she had the same sickness as the oracles?

  Did it make her bad? Didn’t her mother want her anymore?

  In the last few pages, she’d begun to muse on what she should call the men. Should she call Finn her uncle? She wasn’t sure if it was a slight against her real uncles or if either of them even wanted it.

  Lila closed the lock with a sharp little click and slipped it back into the girl’s drawer.

  Sneaking back into the den, she stood behind the two girls and watched their cartoon for a few minutes. “Do you like it here with your uncle?”

  Valerie nodded shyly, then looked to her new big sister for help. Since she didn’t know what she could say, she didn’t say anything.

  “It’s okay,” Vivian said. “I mean, Valerie doesn’t like eating vegetables, and Finn and my uncle don’t let her leave the table until she finishes them. They don’t let her have ice cream all the time or candy every five seconds, but she still likes them. We both do. They’re nice. They read to us. They let us make messes. Mother never let us do that. They said we can run and scream and shout until we make ourselves sick once we move into the new house, we just have to be quiet until then. That’s the only bad part.”

  “Uncle Jake and Finn are nice.” Valerie nodded.

  “You call Finn by his first name?” When Vivian shrugged, Lila saw an opening. “I’d probably just start calling them both uncle. You know, if he was as nice as you claim.”