I scooted my butt to the edge of the seat and sank back, getting as comfortable as possible in the folding chair. “Better than those platform shoes you wore the other day. You could have broken an ankle.”
A blob of green whirred past us, accompanied by shouts, whoops and giggles. A second, lighter green blob blew past, more tiny voices shouting in the wind. Kam did a comical double-take. “What the...Aliens late for dinner?”
Despite the fear threatening to choke me moments before, I laughed. “Brownie kids racing dragons.” One of the beautiful things about my little family was that, no matter how dark and terrifying things got, there was always joy to be found.
Kam stood so fast her chair fell over backward. Her bare feet made little puffs of dirt as she jumped up and down, pumping her fist in the air. “Come on, Simone! Go, go, go!”
Not to be outdone, I leaped to my feet and waved my arms in the air. “Woo! Bruce! You can do it!”
The green blurs whipped past again, slowing enough for me to see Molly’s kids clinging to the dragons’ backs. The oldest kid, Fred, rode Bruce, while Aaron and a giggling Abby held tight to a galloping Simone.
They came around a third time. Apparently, the finish line was directly in front of us, because Aaron, Abby and Simone crossed some invisible line to victory and halted, panting. A second later, Bruce and Fred pulled in behind, breathing hard and smiling.
The dragon grins were especially delightful, since they looked so much like happy collies.
Aaron whooped and slid to the ground. “Fred does the dishes for a week!” He helped little Abby down and patted Simone’s neck. “That was crazy fast, Simone. Are you thirsty?”
Simone snorted, and tiny sparks blew out her nostrils.
Fred hopped off Bruce, laughing. “Fair and square. You guys won.” He scratched Bruce behind the ear. “You did your best, buddy. We just couldn’t beat them this time. Next time, though.”
From where I was sitting, I was at the right angle to see Bruce and Fred wink at each other. I suppressed a smile.
When I first met Abby, she’d been a sweetly shy thumb-sucker clinging to her mother’s skirt. She was still every bit as sweet, but her shyness had been on the decline ever since her little sister Susannah had been born. Abby was no longer the baby now, and that made all the difference.
“In your face, Fweddy!” She danced in a circle like a tiny cavorting nymph.
Kam and I exchanged squishy aww faces. The kid had been cute when she was little, but now that she’d begun to grow into her own little person, she was absolutely adorable.
From the far side of the yard, Molly’s voice caught on the wind, calling her small tribe home for dinner. Abby’s smile faded. The end of playtime was the most tragic moment of the day for someone her age.
Fred got a wicked gleam in his eye. “I’ll race you guys home,” he said.
Bruce snorted sparks, and both dog-sized dragons belly-flopped in the grass to make it easier for their young charges to climb them. All three kids scrambled up, then waved goodbye as the dragon couple galumphed out of sight at top speed.
Kam sighed. The sound seemed to come from somewhere deep within her, someplace sad and a little lonely. “You ever thought about having kids someday?”
“How can I not with all the cuties running around here lately?” As if to emphasize my words, a flash of yeti-white wove through the trees to the left, then vanished. “Next thing you know, we’ll have baby dragons running around, I bet.”
“I bet you won’t be far behind.” She scratched her bare shoulder.
“We haven’t even set a wedding date yet,” I said. “Kids are a someday thing. A lot of other things have to happen first.”
“I wonder if I’ll ever get a someday.” She rubbed her fingers across the scar on her wrist, where one of her three magic gems had been ripped from her. Without all three, she’d never be able to charge enough magic to open a portal home to the djinn people.
Her sorrow squeezed at my chest and made it hard for me to breathe. Or maybe it was my own sorrow. Sometimes it was hard to tell which emotion belonged to which person when that person was someone I loved. I reached over and put my hand over hers. “I bet there are plenty of djinn around. We’ll find them. And somebody will get you home.” I squeezed. “It’ll be all right.”
She gave me a half smile and shrugged. “Unless the world ends. That’s a different problem.”
I cringed. “One problem at a time.”
She nodded. “One problem at a time.”
* * *
The rest of the team wandered in for dinner, having found nothing more than that single site of cricket-infested footprints by the cliff.
Maurice’s pot roast wasn’t ruined. In fact, the meat was tender and delicious, smothered in thick, rich gravy and accompanied by carrots, potatoes and homemade biscuits that melted in the mouth. Maurice’s cooking never failed to achieve perfection, whether it was a gourmet feast or simple comfort foods.
It was exactly what we all needed.
My phone chirped as we were clearing the table. I glanced at the display and nearly dropped it. Brad.
Brad and I had been a huge mistake—a mistake that had only lasted less than a year, legally, but had dogged me for years after. One of the last times I’d seen him, he’d been pounding on the restaurant window where Riley and I had been having one of our disastrous first dates.
Having my ex-husband peering at us through the window while we ate was one of the most mortifying experiences I’d ever had. That was before someone dropped dead a few tables over, leading to a huge misunderstanding about Riley’s job as a reaper and my storming out in a huff. So, Brad probably hadn’t been the worst part of that date, as it turned out.
He wasn’t a bad guy. Annoying, clingy and always in need of a loan to cover his rent, but not a bad person. During the biggest wedding Sara and I had ever done, Riley, Andrew and I had been too busy saving Sara from an incubus to keep the wedding running smoothly. The Press had been there, the mother of the bride had been head of the city council and the venue coordinator already hated me.
Without knowing exactly what was going on, Brad had stepped in and saved the wedding and Happily Ever After’s reputation.
After that, he’d decided he wanted to work for us permanently—which we definitely did not want—and he’d gone off to take some hospitality courses.
Happy to have him gone, I’d loaned him the money for school, though I knew I’d never see it again. Loaning money to Brad was like loaning tuna casserole wrapped in gym socks to a swamp bogey. It’s not coming back, and that’s okay.
And now he was calling me. I groaned and tapped the phone to answer.
“Zoey girl! How’s tricks?”
I took a deep breath and tried to be civil. “Hey, Brad. How’s school going?”
“I’m done! That’s why I called. I’m ready for work. Just say when and where.”
A spike of guilt stabbed through me. “I’m really sorry, but we’re not really doing that anymore.”
He was silent so long, I thought he’d hung up.
“Brad? Hello?”
“I’m here.” He sounded deflated. “What do you mean? What happened? I was only gone a few semesters.”
“Things have been crazy here. It’s hard to explain. We just don’t have time for the business anymore.”
“You can’t close it down. What are you doing instead? Zoey, are you okay? What’s going on? You can tell me anything. I hope you know that.”
Honestly, I probably could tell him what was going on. The law said the Hidden had to remain hidden. That’s why they were called that. But I’d told Sara and Andrew. And Andrew had brought Daniel into it. Those were all people who needed to know, though. They were part of this whole thing. Brad? Well, I preferred Brad not to be
a part of anything I was involved in. It was easier that way.
“Everything’s fine. We’ve decided to go a different direction is all. Sara’s going to travel.” I glanced at my left hand at the diamond nestled against my finger. “And I’m engaged.”
He made a sound like the wind had been knocked out of him. “I see.” He paused. “Are you happy?”
“I am.”
His voice was soft. “All right then. That’s all that matters, I guess.”
“Thank you.” I mentally crossed my fingers that this was a closure kind of conversation and Sheila’s prediction of unresolved man-past had just wrapped itself up.
“Well, I have some news of my own, and if you’re closing the business, I have something else I’d like to propose.”
Mom shouted something I missed from the living room, and Kam and Maurice ran out of the kitchen to join her. I craned my neck around the corner and saw everyone crowding around the television.
“Brad, I’m sorry. Can we talk about this later? I have to go.”
“Wait. Hear me out.”
“I can’t right now. My mom’s calling me.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I’ll call you soon.”
“Wait! What do you mean your mom’s calling you? I thought your mom was dead.”
“Seriously, I have an emergency. I’ll catch you up on everything later. I promise.”
“Wait!”
“Talk to you soon!”
I hung up and raced for the television.
The same newscaster who’d broken the story of the missing kids on the beach stared at the camera now with her dark eyes, telling us about a new case of missing children.
This time, the kidnapping was closer. Two kids were missing from our own tiny town of Bolinas. In fact, Ashley Perkins and Miles Montgomery lived next door to each other, two streets over from where we were standing. My knees buckled, and I dropped into the chair behind me, wrapping my arms around myself for comfort. I’d seen those kids in the neighborhood. I bought candy bars from them once when they were doing a school fundraiser.
“Maybe they’re not lost.” Mom’s voice shook and was a higher pitch than usual. She was grasping for another answer, but it was obvious she didn’t believe her own solution. “Maybe they’re just playing in a field somewhere. Remember when you did that, Zoey? You were five when you got it into your head to dig a hole to China. You went into the woods with a stick to dig. I searched for you for hours. I was frantic.”
I didn’t remember what she was talking about, though I suspected it was something I would have done when I was little. Moving closer, I gave her a hug. “I hope you’re right, but I doubt it.”
She flinched, as if I’d stepped on her toe. “Why couldn’t it be that way?”
Darius wrapped her in his arms. “Because you saw him first, the same as Zoey saw him before he kidnapped the school kids.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Oh.” Her voice was quiet.
I’d been so absorbed by the news, I didn’t hear a car pull into the driveway or footsteps climb the porch steps. I froze at the knock on the door.
Maurice and Sara moved down the hall, out of sight. I glanced at the clock on the mantel—nearly sunset. Darius nodded and let go of my mother so he could join them in the hallway. He still appeared human, but in a few minutes, that would change.
With our non-human members out of eyesight, I opened the door.
A police officer—the human kind, not the O.G.R.E. kind—stood on the porch. “Good evening, ma’am. We’re canvassing the area, looking for a couple of missing children.” He held out a pair of photographs. “Have you seen either of these kids?”
I examined the photos, although I knew they’d be the same ones we’d seen on the news. Two kids, a boy and a girl, smiled from their school pictures. They looked to be around fifth or sixth grade, the boy blond and the girl brunette. My breath caught in my throat. Seeing their pictures in person made it so much worse. More real.
“I recognize them, but I haven’t seen them lately. I’m sorry.” I passed the photos to Riley, who examined them and passed them to Kam.
Mom held them last and shook her head. “Their parents must be so worried.” Her voice shook. “We were watching the news about this when you got here.” She handed the pictures back to him. “We’ll keep an eye out for them.”
“I appreciate it.” He gave Mom a card. “Please call that number if you see anything at all.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
We watched him walk down the driveway to the street to go to the next house.
A thought filled me with dread and worry. “What do we do if they want to search the property? How do we explain the sea of tents out back? Or the giant mushroom filled with furniture and a brownie family?” My breath caught as panic hit. “How do we hide a yeti? Or the fact that everything they’ll see in the backyard was invisible until they crossed through the bubble?”
Hiding a demon, closet monster and mothman were a piece of cake compared to all the stuff on my property I simply could not explain.
I’d turned my house into a sanctuary for the Hidden, and that bastard Shadow Man was threatening to expose the whole thing. But none of that really mattered if two kids who weren’t even involved in the Hidden world got hurt or killed.
“We’ve got to find those kids,” I said. “Before he does something worse than leaving them in a hole.”
Chapter Eight
We already knew the area around the house, including the woods, was clear. My friends hadn’t found Shadow Man, but they hadn’t found any wayward kids, either. Therefore, we’d have to go farther out in our search.
We split into teams as we had before. Mom stayed home with Maurice and Sara, poring over maps of the area, scouring the Internet for possible clues and keeping an eye on the news for any new information. Darius and Kam took the same ground/sky formation they’d used on the beach, careful to keep Darius out of sight. Riley and I went out together, ostensibly as a couple in love going for an after-dinner walk.
My thought was the neighbors—also having been presented with pictures of the missing kids—would likely be outside gossiping. Sometimes gossip was more valuable than facts.
Kam and Darius went out the back door to wait for sunset and Darius’s mothman change, and Riley and I went out the front. As I’d suspected, the street was lined with my neighbors, gossiping in clusters by mailboxes. We waved and walked past them. They were all likely to have the same information we already had.
New information awaited a few streets over where the kids actually lived. I was sure of it. Anything on my street would be too watered down from getting passed person-to-person. I needed first-hand anecdotes.
As we reached Brenner Road, the amount of milling neighbors increased, as did the amount of police cars lining the street. We crossed to avoid walking directly in front of the Perkins and Montgomery houses, which were crawling with reporters and detectives.
Had this happened a few weeks ago, the police probably would have sent a single officer over to check it out. In light of the recent kidnapping, everyone was going apeshit.
An older couple stood in the yard next to us, watching the chaos.
I gave them a polite smile, making sure it wasn’t too chipper for the circumstances. “Any news?”
The husband scratched his head. “Nothing yet. Probably a lot of fuss for nothing.”
The wife folded her arms and stared across the street with cold eyes. “Those two are always up to something. Too curious by half, if you ask me. I bet they’ll find them stuck up a tree or in a ditch somewhere, snooping around after Blackbeard’s treasure.”
The husband gave a vigorous nod of agreement, his jowls jiggling with the motion. “They dug up my marigolds last year looking for a dead body. Those
kids read too damn much.”
I glanced at Riley from the corner of my eye. Would we grow old and grumpy together? I wanted to believe that if two kids appeared in my yard, digging for a dead body, I’d get a shovel and help. Unless, of course, I thought there really was a dead body there. Then I’d direct them to another part of the yard. The way my life was going, I couldn’t rule out bodies buried in the garden.
No. We would never end up like these two. For one thing, they were the type to think an emergency was finding a gopher hole in their pristine lawn. Riley and I knew what really lay beneath the grass. We knew what dark things lurked in the corners of the gardening shed. And we knew those kids weren’t stuck up a tree somewhere unless something terrifying and so much worse than a gopher had put them there.
“Kids these days,” Riley said. “Why can’t they just smoke cigarettes and steal their parents’ beer like we did?”
The sarcasm seemed to be lost on the older couple. If I hadn’t been so worried about the kids, I might have made plans to ask Bruce and Simone to breathe on a few marigolds.
“Next thing you know, they’re reading Treasure Island and getting ideas.” I flung my arm in the air for emphasis. “Whatever are they teaching in school?”
We walked off, arm in arm, extolling the virtues of staying inside and playing video games until we were out of earshot.
“Well, that was uncomfortable,” Riley said. “Some people just don’t like kids, I guess.”
“Some people don’t like people.” I hadn’t completely dismissed the idea of dragonfire taking out their flowerbed once this was all over.
We found ourselves on a quieter end of the street, fewer people milling around and more parked, empty cars. Down the street, people continued to come and go from Miles’s and Ashley’s houses.
I wanted to barge into the kids’ homes and ask the parents questions. What books were they reading? Were they obsessed with a particular game or television show? Where did they usually go after school?
Phoenix in My Fortune (A Monster Haven Story Book 6) Page 8