by Rain Oxford
I expected everything to suddenly stop like when I temporarily gave them peace. If anything, the storm increased.
Then, after nearly five minutes, the ground inside the ward rumbled. Suddenly, glowing red things emerged from the ground under the sigils, and out of the walls of the buildings for those that weren’t on the ground. All of these red objects levitated to Ahz and stopped on the other side of the ward. They were small crystals, none more than an inch across. However, they weren’t shaped like crystals; they were shaped like anatomical hearts, and they were red like blood.
Ahz removed his hands from the ward and pressed them together as if he were crushing something between his palms. The crystals converged as well, with enough force that they cracked and turned to dust. As they did, they dripped blood onto the grass.
Once no crystal was intact, he dropped his hand and the bloody crystal-dust dispersed across the ground. The glowing sigils caught fire, but they burned out quickly, leaving only charred grass behind as a reminder of what they did.
Seconds later, the ward was struck with bursts of multi-colored light and with a terrible crack, it broke apart and vanished.
“That was a lot easier than I had been expecting,” Henry said. “The entire school working together couldn’t do that.”
“That’s my son,” Rita said proudly.
Chapter 16
We were greeted by Remington and Hunt, who realized we weren’t ready to celebrate. “Before we do anything else, we have to save Darwin,” I said.
Henry tried to open the shadow pass so that we could get to Darwin, but the shadows didn’t obey him. After a few minutes, Henry shook his head with a miserable expression. “I can’t. I think I’m too tired.”
“It’s not Veronica stopping you?”
“No. I’m not blocked; I just can’t quite get there. It’s rare for me to be exhausted like this. I suspect it is as much emotional as it is an absence of energy. I apologize for my failure.”
He’s regressing. I was torn, because although being emotionally stunted wasn’t good for him, neither was guilt because he couldn’t get us to Darwin. “That’s okay. You rest; you’ve done a lot today. Vincent, can you get us there?”
Vincent nodded and darkness reached for us. Instantly, my intuition screamed of danger. “Stop!” He did.
Henry wanted to question me, but he stayed quiet.
“He might be more in danger if we appear in Ace’s pack lands unexpectedly.” I called Rocky and she immediately appeared. “I need you to watch over Darwin. He’s being held captive.” She didn’t ask any questions before disappearing. I mentally reached across the great distance and opened a link to Darwin’s mind. He was calm. “Are you safe?”
“Yeah. My back hurts, but they haven’t hurt me aside from a little manhandling.”
“Did they touch your skin?”
“A little. It wasn’t so bad. I think the dude who touched me will die a peaceful death in his sleep. Once I told them I was half fae, they believed me that it hurt me to be touched. Ace hates my guts, but she’s honorable. I’m safe for now, so don’t come after me. Stop Veronica.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“That I can’t help you with. I can tell you facts, but you’re the investigator.”
“I sent Rocky to stand guard over you.”
“Yeah, I can see that. I’ll let you know if things go south. Just focus on taking down the bitch.”
I pulled out of his mind. “He’s okay. We need to focus on stopping Veronica.”
“He would be helpful in stopping Veronica, and we can focus on her better if he’s safe with us,” Henry said.
“I know. Go check on your son.”
After a moment of hesitation, he turned and walked away. Hunt stayed with Vincent, so I caught Remy up as we followed Henry. Rita carried Ahz, who fell asleep in seconds.
When we reached Henry’s room, he was hugging Scott. “Where will Ahz and I sleep?” Rita asked.
“We have a few extra---” Remington started.
“Here,” Henry interrupted.
Remy gaped.
“I can sleep on the floor in my jaguar form and you can take the bed. You and Ahz shouldn’t be alone with Veronica after us. She’ll probably be angry that he could so easily break her curse.”
Rita looked shy for a moment before nodding. “Thank you.”
Ahz woke and fussed, so she set him down. His gaze wandered over Remy and Scott, and then settled on Scott’s artwork all over Henry’s walls.
“Scott, this is Rita, and her son Asgard. Rita, this is my son, Scott.” Henry set his son down, expecting him to go to Rita. Scott was amazing with mothers.
Instead, Scott approached Ahz confidently before Rita could warn him not to. “Hello,” Scott said, taking his hand. “I’m Scott.” To our surprise, Ahz didn’t pull his hand away. Instead, he raised his eyes to meet Scott’s. Scott smiled. “Do you want to draw with me?”
Ahz broke eye contact and looked up at the wall. “Yes,” he said. Scott slid his hand up Ahz’s arm to hold him stable and then started guiding him away.
Rita gaped after them. “Did my son just make his first friend?”
I didn’t share her shock; Scott could make friends with a rock.
* * *
Thursday, December 1
I slept uneasily that night. While I needed sleep to think, too much depended on me. Twice in the night, I decided to get up, only to be stopped by Remy. She was unusually snuggly, and I figured that would increase as the temperature dropped.
By the time I got up, I had a plan. Well, a rough draft of one. Remy and I got breakfast, coffee for me, and tea for her, and returned to my room for privacy. “Why do we always end up in my room?” I asked.
“We get more peace. We don’t get people knocking at your door at four in the morning for the next disaster.”
“Everyone is going to catch on and start knocking on my door.”
“Then we’ll move to Darwin’s room.”
“We can’t both fit in there; it’s too messy.”
A knock on the door caused us to groan. As Remington got up to answer, I sensed his magic. “It’s your father.”
“Of course it is.” She slipped on the first article of clothing she saw— my shirt. Although there was no hiding the fact that I wasn’t wearing pants, I covered up anyway. Hunt may have approved of me dating his daughter, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see proof of our relationship.
Remington wasn’t bothered; she opened the door. “Good morning.” Her lack of rage made me suspect that she had reached a détente with her father.
“Good morning. I got a message this morning that I thought Devon should hear.” She stepped aside and gestured to me. His expression made my heart sink. “Another wizard child has been reported missing.”
* * *
I wanted to save Darwin, but my siblings were under attack by Veronica. Whatever reason she wanted them couldn’t be good. The ones who joined her had to be stopped, but she was doing something to the others. She wasn’t the kind of person to take “no” for an answer.
Remy kissed me and left to get some work done. I asked Hunt to give me a few minutes and promised to meet him in my office. When I was alone, I dressed quickly and wondered what I would tell Amelia. There was so much confusion when Ahz broke the curse that Henry and I managed to slip past her, but it wouldn’t take her long to figure out that he hadn’t returned with us.
Henry knocked and entered. “I want to try to get Darwin again.”
“I know, but we shouldn’t. Two more of my siblings are missing. Veronica did, or is currently doing, something to them. We need to help them. If we save them, maybe we can knock Veronica down a peg.”
“You want to leave Darwin at the mercy of Ace and her pack?”
“I don’t want to, but he chose to go with them and Rocky is watching him. I’m not concerned with Veronica’s victims because they’re my siblings; I’m concerned because they’re c
hildren. Think of the love and protectiveness you feel for Scott. How would you feel if she took him from you because she wanted his power? Veronica took children from their homes. Those parents and family members are terrified.”
“It’s our responsibility to protect Darwin.”
“And I want to, but Veronica can get to us from anywhere. She probably used the wolves to find him because she couldn’t find us. With Rocky protecting him, he’s safer there than with me.”
“How do you know this?”
“I don’t. It’s just intuition.”
After a moment, Henry nodded. “Very well. I will help you save John’s children.”
“She could come after you next.”
“That would not surprise me.”
We found Hunt in my office, glancing over the ridiculously overflowing pile of disciplinary forms on my desk. I knew why the school never employed any janitors or maintenance crews; there were plenty of kids in detention to keep the school spotless and running perfectly.
“Perhaps my daughter should hire more counselors for the students,” Hunt mused.
“I highly suggest you don’t say that to your daughter unless you want to drive her away again.”
“I am not that foolish.”
“We’re going to save my siblings and hope we’ll find out how to stop Veronica along the way.” I caught him up on Veronica and my siblings, in case Vincent hadn’t. From his thoughtful expression, I couldn’t tell if Vincent had kept this from him or not. “Can you send us to Chris Williams, or her daughter, Tazmyn? We’ll use something of hers to induce a vision to track her with.”
“Is Henry having trouble with the shadow pass?”
“It wears me out,” he said calmly, although I could sense his jaguar bristling inside him.
“Perfectly understandable. I prefer other modes of transportation myself, whenever possible. Make sure you only use it in the dark.”
Henry nodded.
“How will you contact me when you want to return?” he asked.
“It would be much simpler if you had a phone.” I decided it wouldn’t be appropriate to ask him to lower his mental guard, because we didn’t have that trust between us. “I’ll tell Remington, and she could tell you.”
“Very well.” Hunt pulled three photos out of the pocket of his robe. On the back of each one was the name of a child. He handed one to me. “This is Tazmyn Williams and her mother, Christina.”
Tazmyn and her mother were at a park, eating lunch at a picnic table. He handed me the others. One was of a teenage girl sitting on a black Dodge Charger with a Golden Retriever. Emerson Pearcy was written on the back. The other was of a teenage boy and a woman cooking. The boy was Ashton Carson.
“Emerson went missing on Halloween,” Hunt explained. “Ashton Carson went missing on the twelfth of November. Ashton’s father finally contacted me after the council did nothing with his initial reports.”
“Do you think they ignored the report or that they couldn’t find the kid?”
“They sounded quite disinterested and threatened Ashton’s parents repeatedly not to take this public.”
“If Ashton has a father already, does that mean that he is not your brother?” Henry asked.
“He could have been adopted,” I said. I studied the picture again. There were only three kids reported, but with the council being negligent and the fact that John was mostly interested in human women, I wouldn’t expect more reports. In fact, I only knew about Tazmyn because she had told me her name in the vision. “There are at least five more.”
“Five more children that are missing?” Hunt asked.
“They may not have been taken, but I’ve seen more than this in the… Tower of Babel, as Darwin calls it. They’re calling for help, or possibly they’ve just been dragged into it like I was.”
“Then I would suggest you make haste.” The shadows enveloped us. A moment later, it dropped us off in an ordinary living room.
We searched the house. It was a two-bedroom house without a lot of personal things. However, the smaller bedroom was full of things I imagined a young girl would have, like dolls and clothes. The walls were covered in sports and motivational posters, and there was sports gear in the closet. “Look for whatever is most personal to her,” I said.
She was into baseball, skating, and gymnastics, but none of the equipment we found felt personal. They were scuffed up because they were second-hand, not because she had developed memories with them. Instead, I found a stuffed bear on her bed that was worn and old, and clearly loved. “This will do well.”
I sat on the bed, slipped on my ring, and focused on the girl in the picture. Magic filled the bear and my mind fell into a vision…
But it was just darkness. I didn’t see or hear anything.
After a few minutes, I pulled off my ring and returned to reality. Either Veronica was blocking me from seeing her, or she was kept in absolute darkness.
“Did you find her?” Henry asked.
“No. She doesn’t know where she is, and neither does anyone around her. She’s somewhere dark. Look for her hairbrush. We can use that to do an old-fashioned tracking spell.”
He nodded and left to do as I said. I found a black school bag in the closet and put the bear in it, because I figured it would be a comfort to her when we found her.
I pulled out my tracking spell kit. There were many tracking spells and the best one to use depended on the material linking to the person or object as well as the wizard’s preference. I preferred discreet spells that were easy to pack up, as opposed to flashy ones.
My kit consisted of a road map and a potion in a spritz bottle. I uncapped the bottle, put a few strands of hair in it, closed it, and shook it up. Then I spritzed it onto the map of the United States. A fine layer of thick silver liquid settled over the map for a moment, before the substance condensed into droplets. Then the droplets rolled across the page like it was tilted.
Considering Tazmyn and her mother lived in Arkansas, it was surprising that all of the beads of liquid were rolling towards the east coast. When they finally settled on the northeast, I wiped off the liquid with a paper towel and found another map. This one covered most of New England.
When I sprayed it again, I wasn’t surprised where it pooled.
“That’s weird. Isn’t that where the children’s school is?” Henry asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“Why would Veronica keep them there?”
“There are several possibilities off the top of my head. First, she could be at the school. Second, she might not have a safer place to keep them. Mandy, Benny, Leesa, and Nancy could have been guarding them. Or third, it’s to throw us off. In fact, it could be all three.”
“How did she get them into the school under the spell?”
“They could have been taken beforehand.”
“Where could she have hidden them?”
I considered it for a few minutes. Where would I hide someone? The answer immediately sprang to mind. Under the library. “I went to the underground tunnel and found it full of water. Assuming it was either an illusion or a roadblock, that meant they knew about it being there.”
“Why are you assuming?”
“Solving cases doesn’t mean stumbling upon the answer. You need to ask questions, make theories, and search for clues. It can involve high-danger bullet-dodging or watching surveillance for fifteen hours.”
“So while you have no proof, you’re throwing out a suggestion that might help solve the case?”
“Yes. Plus, if we prove it wrong, that’s another answer. I was in the library when Cy distracted me. If she hid her victims under the library it would make sense to keep us out.”
“Do you want to induce a vision on the other children first?”
“No. We can do that if we don’t find all of them. If Veronica catches on that we know before we can save them, there’s a chance they won’t be alive when we do.”
I reached across the distanc
e and felt Remy’s mind. She was welcoming, but not like Darwin was. I couldn’t blame her; I doubted she would ever fully trust my mind control because of what John did to her, even though she trusted me. Darwin could push me out if he wanted to.
“Please tell your father to get us,” I told her. A moment later, Hunt appeared out of the darkness. “You need a phone.”
“You could send Rocky as Vincent sends Ghost.”
“Are you suggesting that Rocky is a messenger? She’ll bite your head off.”
“You realize she was my gargoyle for decades and my father’s before me until you claimed her, right?”
“I didn’t, actually. I saw her in a memory of Vincent’s, but I’ve never really had a conversation with her about her past.”
“Now is not the time to do that,” Henry insisted.
“Where do you need to go?” Hunt asked.
“Back to the school. What can you tell us about the passages under the library?”
“My father had it built in secret and the East was built on top as my home. He was so manipulative that he wanted me to live the life he did. The underground floor is half shelter, half secret magic lair.”
“It’s a shelter? Like a bomb shelter or like some kind of magic shelter?”
“Both.”
“Could Veronica have been operating from the school and protecting herself from the curse in the underground floor?”
“It does shield magic, but I would not make such assumptions without knowing more.”
“We have no time for that,” Henry said. A moment later, the shadows reached for us.
* * *
Remy and Amelia were in the library when we arrived, and Amelia was uncharacteristically upset. “Where is he?” she asked the second we entered the room.
“He’s safe. Rocky is protecting him.” Since Amelia Bell was the sweetest, friendliest, and most innocent woman I had ever met in my life, I was not prepared when she stomped over to me and slapped me.