by Laura Taylor
Baron didn’t react at all to the torrent of abuse. His gaze was dark and melancholy as he looked at her. “We lose the bloodlines,” he said slowly, “and we lose the Den. We have no women from the line of Harkans, and the Council is still threatening to shut us down over it. And you already know that I care too much about this place to let that happen.”
Caroline was lost for words. He was right. If she’d learned nothing else in the past three years, she at least knew that Baron’s interests always, always lay with the good of the Den. The amount of effort he’d put into holding them together after the massacre three and a half years ago was far beyond what anyone could have asked of him, and despite their tendency to butt heads at every turn, Caroline was beginning to find that she had a genuine respect for him. Even if she didn’t always agree with his decisions.
“I’ll find someone,” she said again. But this time, rather than a threat, it was a promise.
October 5th
“Oh, you can’t be serious.”
Caroline paused in the doorway of the IT office, listening to Simon apparently talking to himself. He was seated in front of one of the computers, hunched over the screen and concentrating intently.
“You can’t do that. There’s no way you’ll get in.”
She wandered closer, peering over his shoulder to see if he was watching a video, perhaps… but she didn’t understand anything that was on the screen.
“Who won’t get in where?” she asked, as she took a seat next to him.
“Some kid hacker,” Simon replied, not taking his eyes off the screen. “He claims he can hack into a county council’s system and delete parking tickets for one of the guys on the hacking forum. But he’s just a kid! He’s only been on the forum for a couple of years, and yeah, he’s a fast learner, but he’s… Oh my fucking God, he’s done it,” Simon said, sitting back with a look of both disbelief and admiration. “The little shit actually did it. I have never seen anyone learn to hack that fast. The kid’s a genius!”
Caroline snorted out a laugh. “Sounds like we could do with him working for us,” she said. She’d meant it as a joke, but Simon nodded.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on him,” he said, as he typed a short message to the boy, then logged out of the screen. “In a couple of years, depending on how things go, I might suggest to Baron that we look at recruiting him. God knows, with technology developing the way it is, I’ll need some help with all this at some point in the future.”
“Who is he?” Caroline asked, more curious now.
“Don’t know. He goes by the name ‘Skip’ online, but I’ve no idea what his real name is. He’s sixteen, lives somewhere in England, but that’s all I’ve managed to find out. The kid’s good at covering his tracks, I’ll give him that. But he doesn’t have a whole lot of experience yet, so I’ll find a way to track him down, sooner or later. So, what have we got?” he asked, turning his attention to Caroline.
“Jack shit,” she said grimly. “Baron tossed the lot of them. We don’t recruit drug addicts, apparently.” A trace of irritation slipped through. “I thought you’d recruited people before,” she couldn’t help complaining. “Didn’t they give you some guidelines about how to do it?”
Simon cringed. “Sorry. I’ve only ever recruited one person: Mark, when he was dying of leukaemia. All I was told was to find someone with a terminal illness who could be converted in a hurry. I’m not exactly a pro at this.”
Caroline sighed. “Sorry,” she apologised, reminding herself not to take this out on Simon. He was trying to help her, after all. “But it looks like ex-jailbirds aren’t going to cut it. Can we try terminally ill patients instead? That’s worked well enough in the past.”
“No problem,” Simon replied, and a few minutes later, he’d worked his way into the system of one of the main hospitals in London. “Female, terminal illness… No children,” he added, muttering to himself as he glanced at the list of conditions Caroline had written down. “A lot of these patients are on regular doses of morphine for pain relief. Does that count as a drug addiction?”
“I’m guessing not,” Caroline said uncertainly. “The rules of the Den only forbid recreational drug use, not medicinal. Even we use opium as a pain reliever. If it came to it, I could argue the point with Baron.”
“Okay… Any particular age range you’d like to focus on?”
“No one too old. We want someone who’ll be physically fit enough to learn to fight, and someone who’ll hang around for a good few years. So no one over fifty. Ideally I’d go for the twenty to thirty-five age bracket.”
Simon worked for a few more minutes, narrowing down the list of patients. “Two likely candidates,” he said finally. “A woman with pancreatic cancer and another with leukaemia. I’ll do some digging into their backgrounds. Give me a couple of days, and I’ll let you know what I find.”
October 7th
“What’s happening?” Caroline asked Simon, as he came into the library. He’d asked her to have a meeting with him, and Caroline was a little surprised to see Baron walking in the door behind him, and then Heron as well, and she frowned at the grim look on Simon’s face.
“No luck on either of the women in the hospital,” he said, cutting to the chase as he sat down, a file in his hand. “One of them has a large, extended family who are sitting with her twenty-four seven, so the chances of us being able to talk to her privately are pretty much zero, and the other passed away this morning.”
“Fuck,” Caroline swore. Another dead end…
“But I do have some other news, that’s turned out to be rather more interesting than I had expected. You remember Skip, the hacker I was telling you about the other day? Turns out he’s not a boy. He’s a girl.”
Caroline sat up straighter at that. It wasn’t often they came across a female hacker. The girl’s age could be a problem though, and she frowned as Simon opened the file. He pulled out several copies of a report, handing one to each of them. “Tansy Woodburn. I wanted to get Baron in on this, and Heron, since Anna’s still away, because if we’re going to do anything, I’d like to do it sooner, rather than later.” In Anna’s absence, Heron was the highest ranking female in the Den, and also a source of considerable wisdom and experience.
“You originally said you’d think of recruiting her in a few years,” Caroline said, glancing over the report.
“Interesting developments on that front,” he replied enigmatically. “Just have a look at her stats first of all.”
Caroline did. Sixteen years old. Still in high school. Mother deceased. Living with her father. Reclusive, teachers described her as a ‘loner’, few social contacts outside her immediate family. “How did you find all this stuff?”
Simon shrugged. “Like I said before; she’s damn good with computers, but she’s still young, and relatively new at all this. I got her to accept a chat with me, and then traced the connection back to her home. Once I had an address, the rest was easy. Did a bit of research, and this is what I came up with. Her father is on the county council,” he went on, shuffling a few other papers in the file, “so that does make things a little more complicated. But just out of curiosity, I did a little digging into his business files, and then his home PC. And I found some rather remarkable things.”
He handed each of them another sheet, and Caroline recoiled. Beside her, Heron hissed in a sharp gasp. “What the fuck?” Caroline asked.
“He’s a paedophile,” Simon said flatly. He nodded to the sheet of printed photographs he’d given them. “That’s just a small selection of the filth on his computer. And the interesting, but not surprising part… He’s got his daughter involved.”
Baron swore under his breath, then took the rest of the file from Simon and looked quickly through the contents. “This is horrific,” he said, stating the obvious, while Caroline just gritted her teeth and tried not to look at the images.
“So you see why I’m not inclined to wait a few more years before we do something,”
Simon said.
“Absolutely,” Heron said, sounding shaken. “The sooner we get her out of there, the better.”
“As much as I’d like to agree,” Baron said, face grim, “her father’s position in the community does make this a lot more high profile than I like to do things. You’re right on some counts,” he conceded to Simon. “She seems to be quite the computer genius, and goodness knows, we’re going to need more of that around here. She’s a loner, she has more than enough reason to want to leave her father, she has no other immediate relatives to complicate things… but you can’t just make the daughter of a council member disappear without someone asking some hefty questions.”
“What if we don’t make her disappear?” Simon said, an unusual sort of determination in his voice. “What if she does it herself?”
“How do you mean?”
“She’s sixteen. So she can legally leave home and the courts would almost certainly not make her go back. So she runs away, tells the cops she’s staying with a friend, and no one can do anything about it. There’s enough evidence on her father’s computer to get him arrested without needing to involve Tansy in the court case, which immediately discredits him in the public eye, and as far as the police are concerned, it gives Tansy a very plausible reason for not wanting to go home, so they’re even less likely to pursue the matter. There are no aunts or uncles waiting in the wings, so we’re not going to be fending off questions from concerned relatives. So long as Tansy is amenable to the whole scheme, and willing to play her part, there’s no reason why any of it should arouse suspicion.”
“Okay, not a bad plan,” Baron conceded. “But there’s still the significant question of whether or not she would want to become a shape shifter. Or whether she would be willing to run away from her father at all. Children in these situations can have a tendency for unreasonable loyalty to their abusers. So as much as you’re keen to get her out of there, don’t go rushing things. I want a proper investigation into the girl. Have Silas tail her for a while. See where she hangs out, whether she has any particular friends at school, whether there are any other loose ends that we haven’t picked up on. And then,” he said, turning to Caroline, “if everything checks out, we can talk about how you’re going to contact her directly.”
CHAPTER THREE
October 23rd
Tansy deliberately dawdled as she wandered down the road. She was on her way home from school, and her father had announced this morning that he was having ‘friends’ over for dinner again. He’d sent her on her way this morning with a kiss and a sharp instruction not to be late, and Tansy had spent the rest of the day moping, unable to summon even the most rudimentary enthusiasm for school. Even though she had a double maths class today, and that was usually her favourite.
When she reached the park at the corner of her street, she paused. She often stopped here on the way home, taking a little time to herself before stepping into that dreaded house again, and after a moment’s thought, she headed for the swings, despite the warning to be home on time.
Halfway there, she stopped in her tracks. In the shade of one of the tall trees, there was an old lady sitting on a picnic rug. Odd. There was usually no one else here. She hesitated, not sure whether she should stay or not. The woman was reading a book, and she looked like she hadn’t even noticed Tansy arrive. And as Tansy stood there, wondering what to do, she noticed what else was on the rug. The woman had a small picnic spread out around her, a bag of crisps, a leftover half of a bread roll, a plastic box with a few strawberries in it.
Tansy headed for the swings, curious, but cautious. The woman had food, and hunger was gnawing at Tansy’s stomach in a way that made her feel sick. But walking up to a complete stranger was a nerve-wracking prospect. Adults, she had learned from hard experience, could be dangerous. Besides which, she didn’t really know how to start up a sensible conversation. She didn’t have friends of her own, didn’t get to talk to many people besides her teachers and her father’s ‘friends’. Her father never let her socialise with kids her own age in her free time, never let her go to another girl’s house after school, never let her attend birthday parties or weekend events. And as a result, the kids at school had decided to shun her, not inclined to put effort into a relationship when Tansy never had the opportunity to reciprocate. She chatted with a few people online, of course, but it wasn’t the same as having a real conversation, face to face. So she loitered in the park, rocking idly on the swings, casting tentative glances at the woman. She was concentrating on her book, and as Tansy watched, she picked up another strawberry and put it in her mouth.
Tansy abandoned the swings and wandered closer to the woman, her mouth watering at the sight of that leftover food. She reached the roundabout and indulged in a single turn of the circle. Then she sidled closer, up to the edge of the tree’s shade. The woman looked up as she noticed her presence, gave her an unconcerned smile, and turned back to her book.
Tansy waited, not sure if she should interrupt or not… and slid a fraction closer.
The woman slipped a finger into her book to keep the page and looked up. “Hello,” she said simply.
“Hello,” Tansy said, glancing at the bag of crisps.
“You look like you’re on your way home from school,” the woman said with a smile. Then she noticed the direction of Tansy’s gaze. “Would you like some?” she offered, picking up the bag and holding it out.
“Yes, please,” Tansy replied in a whisper, darting forward to take the bag. She retreated a few steps and set about devouring the crisps… and then glanced down the road towards her house. Snacking before dinner was forbidden. She would get in such trouble if her father found out, and with a wave of guilt, she went to put the bag down again-
“Would you like to sit down?” the woman asked, patting the rug beside herself.
Refusing would be rude, Tansy thought to herself, suddenly caught between two of her father’s rules. She wasn’t supposed to be eating this food, but she must also always behave politely to adults. “Thank you,” she muttered, taking a seat, telling herself she would only stay for a few minutes.
“You can have some strawberries as well, if you’d like,” the woman said, placing the box within Tansy’s reach. “My name’s Heron.”
“I’m Tansy.” She glanced around. Her house wasn’t visible from here, another few hundred metres down the road. There was no one around to see her breaking the rules, so she picked up a few of the strawberries and ate them quickly.
She thought about leaving, but was surprised to find that she didn’t really want to. Despite her automatic caution when it came to adults, there was something soothing about this woman. Something peaceful and safe… and a sudden, unexpected memory told her why she felt so comfortable in this woman’s presence. Heron reminded her of her aunt. Not so much in looks – Tansy’s aunt had been younger, with bright red hair – but in the way she spoke. Calm, patient, and with an odd, lilting quality that Heron somehow mimicked perfectly. Tansy had spent weekends with her aunt when she was younger, blissful miniature holidays that had been filled with fun and adventure, and none of the dark memories of life in her father’s house. But then when she was eight or nine, her aunt had married a foreigner and moved to Australia, and then been killed a few years later in a tragic skiing accident. Memories of the woman still brought up a strong sense of nostalgia.
After another moment or two, Tansy’s attention was drawn to the book Heron had. “What are you reading?”
“It’s a fantasy story,” Heron replied. “It’s called ‘My Mother’s People’. It’s about a girl who’s lost her mother, but she finds out years later that her mother was part Fairy, and so the girl goes off on an adventure into the forest to find the Fairy people and live with them.” Heron sighed. “Sometimes I’d like to do that. Just run away into the forest and live with the fairies.”
Tansy snorted, not meaning to be rude, but finding it a funny idea anyway. “That wouldn’t work,” she said frankl
y. “Fairies are all delicate and fragile. If I ran away, I’d want to live with the lions.” Fierce, angry beasts who would rip apart anyone who tried to come near her.
“Lions would be wonderful. But fairies are magic. I don’t know of any magic lions roaming around.”
“Yeah,” Tansy agreed, seeing the flaw in her plan. “It would be hard to teach them who to eat, and who not to.”
Heron broke into laughter at that. “You have someone you want them to eat, then?” Tansy couldn’t quite manage to laugh back, though she knew it probably seemed an odd thing to say, and Heron’s laughter faded out.
“Can fairies make you invisible?” she asked instead.
“Not in this book,” Heron replied. “But I’ve never met a real fairy, so you never know.”
The conversation continued for a while. Heron was a lot of fun to talk to. She wanted to know all sorts of things about Tansy, like what her favourite breed of cat was, or what sort of books she liked to read. They talked about the songs on the radio, and Tansy’s fascination with computer programs, and then finally, Heron sighed.
“It’s later than I thought it was,” she said, glancing around. “I’d better get going.” Tansy looked around as well, and realised it was starting to get dark. She glanced at her watch, dismayed to see it was five o’clock. She was late. Her father was going to be so mad…
“Is it time for you to go home now?” Heron asked… and in an odd moment, one that she would never be able to explain, Tansy felt something inside of her break.
She glanced down the road towards her house. “I’m not going home,” she said, not sure where the sudden decision had come from. She couldn’t go home. She just couldn’t do it any more. Not walking into that house, and having her father pretend to be so proud of her. Not being polite to his friends. Not sitting there, still and compliant, while the men around her created living nightmares that never seemed to end.