Those eyes widened alarmingly, until the whites seemed to eat up her entire face, and then to Catherine's horror, the woman began to sob. Not quiet, hitching gasps, either, the way people did when they were trying to be discreet. No, this was a full-out bawl.
Catherine glanced nervously over her shoulder. The street was empty but that would quickly change. She started to reach out but couldn't quite bring herself to touch and comfort the woman. Physical contact among shifters was rare and Mrs. Tran would likely perceive it as aggressive.
“Mrs. Tran—” she tried, keeping her voice soft and nonthreatening.
The woman didn't seem to hear her.
Catherine cleared her throat. “Mrs. Tran, what's wrong?”
“David's missing.”
Chapter Three
Missing.
The word, and its implications, spun through Catherine's head in a vortex of apprehension.
David was missing?
Mrs. Tran's eyes darted to the street, and then back to Catherine's face for a moment, before swinging back to a car that had started to pull out of a garage down the lane. She looked like a cornered animal, and Catherine knew full well how quickly such an animal could turn to the offensive.
Her finger's wrapped around Catherine's arm, tightly enough to make her flinch, and when the older woman began to drag her inside the dark doorway saying, “Come inside…we shouldn't talk…not on the porch. Not where they might be listening…” she began to feel terrified.
Who were they? Did they even exist outside Mrs. Tran's head? Had the older woman gone crazy? Had David never made it home last night? The questions were coming nonstop.
She had to struggle to keep up with Mrs. Tran's paisley-covered form as the woman jerked her down the foyer like a child with a pull-toy. Catherine stubbed her toe on a box that looked as if it were full of cookware. There were a lot of boxes lying around, all of them filled with toys, clothes, and various other household implements that were often taken for granted. All of them boxed up.
It's like something out of a Stephen King novel, she thought, biting her lip.
What horrors lurked in the recesses of the Trans' house?
Mrs. Tran halted in the kitchen. Beige granite counters. An elm table handmade by David's great-great-grandfather in Vietnam. She knew this room well. Sudden movement caused her to shift her attention. As if Catherine had been the only thing keeping Mrs. Tran upright, she fell back into one of the upholstered dining chairs and didn't move. Like a rundown wind-up doll.
“David's missing,” she repeated, in a weak voice. There was a cup of tea on the table. She started to drink out of it, frowned, and set it down. Catherine could see a froth of green mold floating in the porcelain cup, and felt her stomach rise.
“Missing?”
Catherine picked up the cup from the table and emptied the moldy tea in the sink. It gave her a polite excuse to turn her back on Mrs. Tran and compose herself. “Since when?” She'd seen him hours ago. His parting words to her had been so sweet….
Mrs. Tran lifted her head a little to look at Catherine with bleary, unfocused eyes.
“His bed was empty, his car was gone. I thought perhaps he'd gone to school early, but his backpack—his backpack was still by the door.” She broke off then, reaching out for where the teacup had been. Catherine was glad she'd had the foresight to remove it. But then, the woman looked up at her and said, absently, “Did you see where I put my tea?”
It was with great effort that Catherine cleared her throat. A lump had formed there, a tumor of guilt swelling, making it difficult to breathe.
He never made it home?
“You don't know where he is, do you?” She reached out beseechingly. So beseechingly that Catherine found herself taking a step back, much to her disgust. “You were so close as children. Did he tell you where he went?”
“I just came by to deliver his homework.” Catherine set it down carefully, wondering how she could escape from his mother's kitchen. Mrs. Tran stared at the homework fixedly, as though wondering how it came to be on her kitchen table. “I'm going now,” Catherine added.
“Wait.” The claw-like grip around her wrist was back, tighter than before. So tight, in fact, that it felt as if she was trying to leach something vital right out of Catherine's skin. “He must have told you something. He must have—”
“You're hurting me.” Catherine took a large step backwards, nearly yanking Mrs. Tran out of her chair. “I don't know where he is. His disappearance is news to me. I'm sorry.”
She was sorry. Sincerity and loss seeped through every word, straight from the heart.
Something must have happened to him on the way home. There's no way he'd make his parents worry like this on purpose. Which begged the question—where was David's father? Working? How could he have left his wife all alone when she was clearly a nervous wreck?
And what about David? Had he been in an accident…?
No.
No, that was too horrible to think about. And impossible! David was a good driver.
Mrs. Tran flinched. “He loved you,” she whispered, choking.
Catherine looked up sharply. “What did you say?”
“When he was younger, he used to say that he was going to marry you. The very idea—”
Mrs. Tran broke off, as though realizing “the very idea” was standing in the middle of her kitchen. But she didn't apologize. Even in the midst of her grief, even when she was trying to drink out of teacups filled with mold, Mrs. Tran would not debase herself.
“I was so afraid…so afraid something like this might happen.”
“Something like what?” Catherine wasn't angry yet, but she was getting there. Fast. “What the fuck's happened?” The expletive just slipped out. But Mrs. Tran didn't even notice.
“We're relocating,” Mrs. Tran said, somehow managing to answer and ignore Catherine's question simultaneously, making her even more worried than before. “As soon as Tom gets back from work.” Well, that answered the question of David's father. “I suggest you and your family do the same.
“What's happened?” Catherine stepped closer. “Why are you relocating?”
Mrs. Tran shook her head. “You were always too wild. Too reckless.”
Catherine blinked, staring down at her in shock.
“Thomas and I worried about David. About what might happen to him for getting mixed up with you and your … peculiarity.” She made some kind of warding-off sign with her hands. “None of it was good. You were trouble from the start. Time only made us more certain.”
“So you made me the scapegoat?” Catherine asked. “You thought suffocating him—smothering him—would make him safe?” Clearly, she didn't know David, or anything about how life worked.
“We wanted him to be normal,” Mrs. Tran said, in a flat voice that was somehow worse than anger. “He wouldn't go out with Bonnie Sung, even though she had a nice family. Even though she was the perfect girl for him, and could have given him a future that posed him no risk. And it was all because of you.” She pointed a finger at Catherine. “You did this to him!”
Catherine's anger snuffed itself out as she realized just how accurate Mrs. Tran's accusations were. If David had never made it home last night, which was looking to be the case, that meant something had happened to him after he'd left Barton Academy.
Which would make his disappearance my fault. The only reason he'd been there was because of me.
All the warmth in her body seemed to seep out at once, leaving her feeling chilled. She shivered and buttoned her coat up the rest of the way.
What have I done?
“I've got to go.” Catherine stepped in the direction of the door. “My parents … they'll be worried.” She kept all her movements slow, her voice soft. Prey had the reins. Catherine focused on the door, and only the door, as she took care not to do anything to upset the nervous woman.
“Go,” Mrs. Tran said.
Catherine no longer trusted herself to look
at Mrs. Tran's face. She was afraid of what the older woman might see in hers. Guilt seemed to sear her skin like a brand, marking her like stigmata.
Almost there.
A dark-haired boy raced into the kitchen, to clutch at his catatonic mother's legs. He was wearing Oshkosh overalls over a yellow t-shirt that seemed far too bright in the middle of this sad, emptied-out room. A solitary ray of sunshine. The boy glanced at Catherine curiously.
He looked, Catherine thought, with a sour taste in her mouth, exactly like David.
Gods, he's even younger than I thought he would be.
As she watched, her eyes brimming with tears that she would not—could not—let fall, he shot her a toothy 'I-can-do-anything' grin. “My name's Samuel. I'm seven and three quarters.”
Catherine stared at him in horror.
Then, like a coward, she ran.
The moment he'd gotten the text from her—“it's too cold”—he knew. That was the phrase that they had agreed to use if one of them ever became compromised. If Karen wasn't dead already, she would be soon. The Slayers had gotten her.
Finn wasn't sure how he felt about that. Regret, yes, and perhaps even a bit of remorse. But there was relief there as well—Karen had been the only one to guess his secret, and with her out of the picture his reputation was secure once more.
Not that he could have saved her, even if he'd wanted to. That option was not viable. He needed the Slayers to relax enough to let down their guard, to the point where he could infiltrate their ranks and find out where their base of operations was situated.
If they found out that they were being hunted by a member of the esteemed Council, they would break ranks like frightened ants, to burrow back into their man-made hell-holes from whence they came. And he was close—so close—to finding them out.
Them, and their leader with his ridiculous name. Emilio Bordello.
He glanced up at the Pierce's household, shadowed now in the gloaming.
It's almost time.
Mrs. Pierce was on the computer when Catherine arrived home. She was in the middle of the perfectly ordinary task of checking her stocks portfolio. Her hair was tied back in a chignon and she was wearing an old gingham house dress.
It's amazing how well she plays the part.
“Catherine Diana Pierce—do you know what time it is?”
Catherine groped for her watch, but her mother beat her to it.
“Almost five! I called the school—they paged your name and said you weren't there. Or weren't responding.” You did what? thought Catherine. Fuck. “I was this close—this close—to calling the police. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times.”
“Mom,” Catherine said, “Chill. The human police don't do a thing unless you've been missing for more than forty-eight hours at least.”
“That's not the point—”
“Mr. Hauberk was just having me deliver David's…David's homework to his house. I should have called.” She lowered her head a little, showing submission. “I'm sorry.”
Towards the end she began to gasp, like a suffocating fish. The air in her lungs felt so tightly compressed it was almost solid. She kept choking on the lump it made.
Catherine's mother relaxed. “That certainly doesn't excuse your behavior but I'm happy to hear that you're taking on some personal responsibilities.”
Keeping her lips tightly closed, Catherine nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak. There was a sob welling up in her throat, accompanied by a desperate, childish urge to bury her face in her mother's dress. To be held and petted while she sobbed out her problems as her mother comforted her, the way she had when Catherine was younger.
At Catherine's silence, her mother went on, “And how are the Trans?”
Catherine nearly told her everything.
The words rose up to her lips, threatening to bubble over like tea left on the stove for too long, but she clamped her jaws down, swallowing back the truth like the bitter medicine it was. Too much, too late. The witch—the truck with the red-eyed goons—Karen's threats—David asking her out again—David's disappearance—the book—
If she talked now, she wouldn't be able to stop.
What if she freaked? In spite of that 'you must be careful speech', her mother was just as susceptible to error as the rest of them. She doubted that her mother would be able to sit as quietly as she'd suggested Catherine had. Not when her children were involved.
The last thing Catherine wanted was for her mother to do something drastic, like pulling Lucas and her out of school, or interrogating Mrs. Tran even more conspicuously than Catherine already had. She saw her mother bursting into a Sterling Rep meeting, with her fierce golden eyes. She saw her mother getting hit by a silver bullet.
She'd gotten into this alone. Now she had to get out of it…alone. She wasn't going to put anyone else at risk. Not after David.
So she laughed, gods have mercy on her, and said the first 'safe' thought that came to mind. “Mrs. Tran is really letting herself go.”
She felt terrible the instant the words were out of her mouth. But it turned out to be the right thing to say. Her mother's hazel eyes lit up with malicious glee. “Really!” Her tone adding “tell me more.” And so, Catherine obliged.
For fifteen minutes—she counted every horrible minute of her betrayal, the seconds denoting her penance—she was peppered with questions fueled by a vitriolic blend of jealousy and resentment. Had she gained weight? Had Catherine seen David's father? Did they still have the gauche gazebo? The hideous gnomes? (A bizarre sense of loyalty kept Catherine from mentioning the missing purple-hatted gnome to her mother.)
“I'm going upstairs,” she said at last, dodging the last slew of questions. She was unable to stand anymore. “I don't feel so good. I think…I think I might throw up.”
Her mother's face creased in concern. “Well, it is flu season,” she admitted, reaching out to lay her hand on Catherine's forehead. Catherine flinched back from her touch, and her mother frowned. “You're cold. Why don't you lie down for a while in the dark. See if that helps. You probably aren't sleeping enough.”
Catherine turned to go upstairs with gratitude. Her mother's love was suffocating, smothering. She needed to escape to somewhere silent and empty, where she could beg the Goddess, in all her divine wisdom and infinite mercy, not to damn her for her hypocrisy.
“Your boss called, by the way. I told her that you were out and that she should try calling your cell phone. She didn't seem too happy. Something about a club called Sterling Rep?”
“I'll take care of it,” Catherine mumbled, as she walked away.
“Anything I should know about, Catherine?” her mother pressed.
Catherine cringed at the thought. “No,” she said quickly. “It's nothing. Just school stuff. Human drama.”
“You're not in trouble again, are you?”
Under the current circumstances, Catherine nearly dissolved into crazed giggles at the question. She was residing in her own personal circle of hell—whatever ring was reserved for liars, hypocrites, and traitors—and her mother thought she might be in trouble?
Predator reluctantly imbued Catherine with some of her cockiness. Enough to toss out a flippant, “No more so than usual.”
Catherine's mother groaned. “Go take a nap. Maybe your attitude will improve with your health.”
Catherine shut the door to her bedroom, hard, digging into her book bag for her cell phone. With her hearing, she couldn't believe that she hadn't heard it vibrate. The voice mail icon was flashing, a little pixel envelope with a tiny V on the flap.
She punched in her pass code with shaking fingers and listened to the female automated voice say, “You have…two new messages.”
“Hurry up,” Catherine hissed, drumming her fingers on the canvas anxiously.
“First new message at…Thursday, three o' seven…P.M.”
“This is Myrna Malinowski, your supervisor. I'm calling in regards to your absence at the Sterling Rep
meeting the other night. A nice, young gentleman informed me today that you failed to show up. He seemed very disappointed in you and so am I, Catherine. You are not reflecting well upon this business, and I have decided to dock the missing hour from this month's paycheck—” Catherine cursed aloud “—there is another meeting next week, which the boy suggested you might go to instead, but don't bother. I've decided I'm going to send Sharon.”
Catherine called Chase a very rude name.
“Catherine!” Her mother's voice floated up from downstairs. “What are you doing up there? Napping is supposed to be a silent activity!”
“Killing a spider.”
A mean, rotten, cowardly little spider whose name happened to be Chase. She couldn't believe he'd actually had the nerve to rat on her. What happened to thinking she was scary?
“Second new message at …Thursday, two thirty-four…A.M.”
“Catherine—”
Catherine jumped, staring at the cell phone with wide eyes.
“—it's David. I don't have much time. They found me, and they found Karen, as well as several Others. I checked, but I didn't see your name on the list, so you've still got time. Maybe. I just found out they're here. In this town. You and your family have got to get out as soon as possible.”
He paused, sounding breathless with fear. Where was he? Why did his voice sound so broken?
“Catherine, I lo—”
There was a loud sound, like metal on metal. Breaking glass. Catherine sat, open-mouthed, listening as the individual sounds slowly gave way to general chaos. David was shouting something unintelligible; it was hard to tell if he was frightened, angry, or in pain. Eventually, he fell silent—which was worse than the yelling—and she heard a man in the background say, quite clearly, “Take him out.”
The message ended.
Chapter Four
It was as if someone had taken a gun loaded with silver bullets and opened fire on her heart.
Catherine, I lo—
Take him out.
Touched with Sight (Shadow Thane) Page 4