Sandy hesitated for a moment. “Maybe. I wish I could remember the names of those kids. Maybe Lara knows. I know I’m asking a lot, but could you go with me to Neverfall? I don’t want to go alone. Somebody needs to be here in case she shows up, so Max is staying home.”
Saying no never even crossed my mind. “Of course I’ll come with you. Aegis can drive me over and he can hang with Max while you and I go out to the school.”
“Thanks, Maddy.” She sniffled. “I don’t know what I’d do if something’s happened to her.”
I set my phone on the table and turned to Aegis. “Jenna’s missing. Sandy wants me to go with her to Neverfall and of course I said I would. Do you mind hanging out with Max?”
Aegis immediately jumped out of his seat. “I’ll get our coats. Kelson, can you hold down the fort here?”
“Of course. You just do whatever you need to do,” she said.
“If Jenna shows up here, lock her up. Don’t let her get away. And call me.” I accepted my jacket from Aegis, letting him help me on with it, snugging the front closed.
“I’ll keep her here if she shows up,” Kelson said.
I kicked off my slippers and carefully zipped up my boots, ignoring the twinges. “Come on, let’s hit the road,” I said, handing my purse to Aegis.
He led the way to the car. I glanced up into the night sky. The sky had cleared and the temperature was down to thirty-four already. The stars glimmered as the smell of woodsmoke filled the air. As I stared at the sky, I breathed a quick prayer to Arianrhod that Jenna would show up safely.
Chapter Seven
By the time we got to Sandy’s, she was in a state. She was pacing in the spacious kitchen of her mansion, her boots beating out a steady rhythm on the polished tile floor. Max sat on one of the bar stools at the counter. As we entered the room, Sandy ran over to me and threw her arms around my shoulders, crying. I let out a shriek as my rib protested. With a chagrined look on her face, she immediately pulled back.
“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” By the look on her face, she felt worse than I did.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be all right. Aegis is going to stay with Max while you and I go up to the school. Are you sure you can drive?”
She nodded. “No problems there.” She turned back to Max. “We’ll be back pretty soon. Call me if she shows up. Call me if anybody sees her. Call me—”
“I’ll call you if anything happens. Don’t you worry about that.” Max Davenport was a big bear of a man. Or rather—tiger. A tiger-shifter, he was tall and muscled, with hair the color of wheat, and dark brown eyes. He was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, and a cable knit sweater.
With Sandy carrying my purse, we headed out to her sedan. She tucked me in the passenger seat and we were on the way.
“This isn’t like her, Maddy. This isn’t like Jenna at all. Even though she’s been running around with the crowd I don’t approve of, she always returns my calls. And she never cuts class. She loves school too much.”
I didn’t want to add to her worries, but Jenna was reaching that rebellious age, and kids didn’t always act like themselves. While Jenna had a good head on her shoulders and a lot of common sense, she was still subject to peer pressure. But I couldn’t say that—not right at this moment.
“Did you let the headmaster know were coming?”
“I did. Leroy is waiting for us.”
Leroy Jerome was a tall, handsome man with skin as dark as the night. He was the headmaster of the Neverfall Academy for Gifted Students, a school for magically gifted students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The academy sat on over a thousand acres on the northeastern side of the island. It was set out on a cliff, overlooking the water, and it was founded when the island was first settled by the Pretcom, around two hundred years ago.
Sandy fell silent as we drove through the darkening evening. We followed the curving shoreline, the road ascending as we headed northeast. Within fifteen minutes, we were well above the water and the guard rail was covered with reflectors as we entered a series of S-curves.
The academy was on a spit overlooking the ocean, the turnoff on the left, or inland side of the island. The drive leading to the school was spacious, and the campus was covered with trees. We slowed as we approached the main gates.
Rather than drive into one of the parking lots, Sandy parked in one of the visitors’ spaces near the main campus. I had brought my temporarily disabled placard and hung on the rearview mirror. Walking any distance with my injuries hurt like hell. As we stepped out of the car, a fresh flurry of snow came tumbling down. I prayed that they had shoveled the walkway. The last thing I needed was to fall.
As we made our way to the administrative offices, Sandy glanced over at me. “I’m so sorry, Maddy. I should have thought about your injuries before I asked you to come with me. Are you okay?”
While the cold and exertion was making me ache, I didn’t want to tell her that. I shook my head. “It’s not too bad. Don’t worry about it. Just don’t walk too fast and I’ll be okay.”
The buildings of Neverfall were old stone. The entire campus echoed with magic, and the stones themselves sang out, low and humming, almost out of earshot. It was the song of energy, the music of the spheres. It was comforting, and enveloped us like a shroud of mist.
We entered the main admin building and about one hundred yards before the double doors that led to the cafeteria, we took a left. A moment later we entered the headmaster’s office. The secretary took one look at us and waved us back toward his office.
“He’s waiting for you. Go on in,” she said.
The headmaster was studying a file folder. As we entered the room, he tossed the file folder to one side and stood, leaning forward to shake hands. He nodded for us to take a seat in the leather wingback chairs opposite his desk.
Leroy Jerome was a shadow witch. While most witches worked with one particular element, shadow witches worked out on the astral. They were very powerful and also very rare. Sandy and I had speculated that Jenna might end up a shadow witch once she found her affinity, but there was no way of knowing until she was tested. And the school couldn’t do that until she was fifteen. It simply wasn’t safe to put her through the tests before then.
“I understand that you’re concerned about Jenna,” Leroy said. “I’ll cut right to the chase. I’ve had security out looking for her. The last time she was seen was right before lunch. She told her roommate Lara that she wouldn’t be in the cafeteria. She said she was going out for a walk to try and solve some sort of problems she was having. Then she didn’t show up for any of her afternoon classes.”
“I hate to bring this up, because I was hoping it would resolve itself,” Sandy said. “But Jenna’s been running with a crowd I don’t approve of. I’ve tried not to interfere too much because I’ve been afraid that my objections might push her toward them. I’m not sure what the group’s name is, but it’s some sort of underground group here at Neverfall.”
“I know the group,” Leroy said. “They call themselves the Makers, and while they seem unsavory, when you get down to the core, they’re pretty much just a bunch of kids trying to rebel in the ways they can think of. They’ve never caused any real harm—mostly they’re emo and angsty—and they feel like they don’t belong in the system. But who among us never felt that way? We all thought we were invincible at one time, and we all felt that nobody listened to us. I wouldn’t worry too much about her friends unless you catch her doing something that you really don’t approve of.” He leaned back in his chair, frowning.
“What do they do?” I asked.
“Oh, they try a bit of spell work that’s above their level, usually nothing dangerous. They act like they’re too good for studying, but none of them have failing grades. If I thought any of them was bullying a student, I’d put an end to it. But you have to give teens some leeway, and you have to let them burn their fingers now and then.”
Sandy looked stricken. “So she’s b
een missing since lunch? Have you got anyone searching the grounds? Maybe she fell and hurt herself.”
“I have every available security officer out looking for her, as well as a group of volunteers from our search and rescue class. If she’s on the grounds of Neverfall, we will find her. But Jenna’s pretty resourceful. I wouldn’t worry just yet. Chances are she’ll come home before midnight, with some plausible excuse.”
Sandy slowly stood. “Please call if you hear anything. And if she shows up, keep her here till I can pick her up.”
I followed her out the door, suddenly remembering that Leroy had once asked me if I was serious with Aegis. I liked the man, and if I wasn’t with my hot vampire, I would have probably gone out with him. I paused, suddenly wondering if he could be behind the letters. But his energy was clear, and he was too smart to approach me that way. I glanced back at him, but he just shot me a smile and went back to his work.
On the way out the front door, Sandy burst into tears. “What if she’s…”
“Shut up. She’s fine. We’ll find her and bring her home. Trust me.” And with that, we headed back to the car.
On the way back to Sandy’s house, I asked her, “Have you called Delia yet?”
She shook her head. “I was going to call as soon as we got home. I wanted to make sure that Leroy had done everything he could to find her first.”
“Why don’t I give her a call while we’re on the way? She can meet us at your house.” I placed the call.
As I got off the phone, Sandy said, “This makes it real.”
“What do you mean?”
“Calling the cops is always the final step. It’s that moment when you acknowledge that something is desperately wrong, and that it’s not going to fix itself. I was hoping Jenna would be there waiting in Leroy’s office. I kept thinking they’d find her, and she would be sitting there, waiting for me. I know it’s stupid. They would have called if they had found her. But you know how the mind can work.”
“Yeah, I understand.”
When I had been married to Craig, my ex, I kept hoping that he would wake up one day and realize how poorly he was treating me. But that day had never come, and when I finally screwed up the courage to leave him, I realized that I had been staying out of humiliation.
“What are you thinking of?” Sandy asked.
“Craig. How I spent ten years with a man who stopped loving me after the first six months. I spent ten years taking his bullshit and never speaking up because I was afraid to admit that our marriage was a failure. I wanted him to change. I wanted him to be the good guy I first thought he was. And that was never going to happen. You tried to tell me, but I was in too deep to listen.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” she said. “I don’t care whether you’re a witch or a shifter or human, when somebody constantly tells you that you’re worthless, after a while you believe them. When you pulled away from me I wanted to beat Craig into a pulp, but I knew that you had to be ready to leave. I’m glad he’s dead, Maddy. You don’t know how much I hated that man for what he did to you.”
A rush of warmth flooded through me. Sandy had been there for me from the beginning. We had gone to hell and back together, along with Fata Morgana. Only somewhere along the way we had lost her. And even though we had reunited recently, she would never be ours again, not the way she was in the beginning.
“I want Fata at our wedding. I want her there because she belongs there. Do you think Auntie Tautau might be able to find her for us?”
“I don’t know, but we can ask her. I wish we could go ask her about Jenna, but I have a feeling she’ll tell us it was too soon.” Sandy’s voice was trembling and she clutched the steering wheel like it was a lifeline.
“Does Jenna have a boyfriend?”
She shook her head. “I know she dates a little, because she always asks my permission if she can go out with a boy. But no one boy in particular. She’s dated three boys in the past two months. There was Ryan, and Kenneth, and a boy named Dexter. They all seemed nice. I insisted on meeting them before I allowed her to go out with them. I didn’t get any bad feelings about any of them.”
None of the names rang alarm bells for me either. As I eased into her driveway, parking as close to the house as I could, Delia pulled in next to us.
“Well, let’s get this over with,” Sandy said. “I suppose the next step is to call out search and rescue island-wide.” And with that, she stepped out of the car, her expression as bleak as her words.
Chapter Eight
We gathered in Sandy’s parlor, where Max had built a huge fire in the massive stone fireplace. Double-sided, the fireplace divided the dining room from the parlor. Aegis handed out wine, except for Delia, who shook her head. As the smooth flavors of raspberry and cinnamon trickled down my throat, I leaned back, trying to relax.
Sandy told Delia everything that had happened, and what Leroy had said. “I know the cops always say that kids just wander off, but Jenna’s not that kind of girl.”
Delia held up her hand. “Don’t protest. I’m not going to blow this off. I know what kind of girl Jenna is, and I can’t see her running away, or just ditching school and not checking in later with friends. Do you know what was on her mind?”
“No.” Sandy shook her head. “Jenna’s been a little rebellious lately, that I will say. She’s entering that stage that all teenagers go through where they don’t want their parents to know everything. I think if I were still just her guardian and not her adoptive mother now, she might have talked to me more. But that dynamic has changed.”
“I’ll put out an APB on her. Derek can call out the Majestic Mountain Squad. He’ll scramble everyone and get them looking for her. I’ll also send someone down to the ferry landing to see if she took the ferry. They usually don’t let kids go alone without a permission slip from their parents.”
She paused and cleared her throat. “I have to tell you, something is happening in this town. The past couple days have been incredibly violent.”
“Was there another fight?” I asked.
Delia nodded. “Not only was there a fight, but this time someone died.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding. Anybody we know?”
“I don’t know if you knew him. His name was Forrest and he was a member of the Summer Fae. He didn’t hang around downtown much, mostly near Cliffside Park.”
I shook my head. The name didn’t ring a bell. “What happened? I don’t think I’ve met him.”
“What happened is old man Tucker, who runs a stall at the Winter Carnival, beat him to death with a tire iron when Forrest tried to steal one of his handmade recorders.” Delia looked shell-shocked.
Aegis let out a slow whistle. “He beat him to death over a recorder? Was it made of gold?”
Delia shook her head. “I know. It seems insane, doesn’t it? To kill someone over a twenty-dollar musical instrument? That’s ridiculous.”
“Did he say why he did it? And even more important, have you caught him yet?” I asked.
“Oh, he admitted to it. Tucker also says he doesn’t know why he did it. He said when Forrest picked one of his recorders and started to walk away with it, he saw red and just went postal on him. The closest thing he could grab as a weapon was a tire iron that he’d been meaning to lend to a friend who needed to pry open a trunk. We’ve grilled him, but he’s sticking to his story. In fact, he turned himself into the police when he realized what he’d done. He said that it was like this pressure inside that boiled over, and he lost it.”
“That’s a freaking scary thing,” Max said. “Suppose that had been a child. Would he have done the same thing?”
Sandy met out a little cry, raising her hand to her lips. “Do you think he found Jenna? Do you think he found her and killed her for some reason?”
“No, I do not. But I’d like to know what the hell is going on. There’s something happening to this town. We’ve had a rash of incidents lately, like the brawling Santas and s
o forth. I really want to know what Auntie Tautau thinks about it.”
“I called her and left a message, but she hasn’t called me back yet.” Which wasn’t surprising, given the Aunties worked on their own timelines, and would not be pressured.
While Delia called Derek to activate the search and rescue, Aegis disappeared into the kitchen and began to make sandwiches. I suspected that Sandy hadn’t eaten anything for several hours. And she wouldn’t eat unless we ate with her, so when Aegis brought out the platter and a bowl of chips, I took half of a roast beef sandwich and started to eat it. Sandy reluctantly accepted a sandwich, but her mind clearly was elsewhere. Still, she needed something in her stomach.
“Well, Derek’s calling in everyone,” Delia said, returning to the living room and sitting down. She leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes for a moment.
“Can you stay for a while?” Sandy asked.
Delia let out a long sigh. “For a few minutes.” She held up her phone, reluctantly staring at the screen. “And here comes another call.” She punched the button and held the phone to her ear. A few seconds later, she jumped to her feet. “Where? Keep them till we get there.”
“Is it something about Jenna?” Sandy asked, her shoulders stiffening.
“Yes,” Delia said, stuffing her phone back in her pocket. “Derek found Jenna and a group of kids in the graveyard, getting drunk.”
“Come on,” Sandy said, grabbing her coat.
“Do you want Aegis and me to come with you?” I asked.
She nodded. “Max, will you drive?”
“Text us the location,” Aegis said to Delia. He turned to me. “I’ll drive, you rest.”
The seedier side of Bedlam was on the northwest side of the island, and it was called the Balefrost district. There wasn’t a whole lot of violent crime on the island, and what there was, was met with swift and unflinching punishment, but the Balefrost district was home to some of the more questionable members of the Otherkin community.
Demon's Delight: A Bewitching Bedlam Novella Page 5