by E. A. Copen
I smiled and nodded. Whatever negative opinion I'd formed of Tindall on our first day together was gone. He wasn't a burnt-out cop who didn't care anymore. His problem was that he had cared too much. He was me in twenty years if I wasn't careful.
“I'm sure as hell going to try. You stay out of it, though, unless I need you. Understand?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. I hadn't figured Tindall would be a touchy-feely kind of person, so the contact probably meant I should pay attention.
I turned back to him before I opened the door.
“The Summers are fae, but even for fae, they're peculiar. You want I should tag along? Maybe I rub werewolves the wrong way, but I can deal with fae.”
I cracked a small smile. “Thanks, but this isn't my first rodeo, detective. Go and get your special at the diner. I'll go talk to the Summers. Your badge is safer that way.”
Donald and Teagan Summers lived on Fae Boulevard with most of the other fae. Their house was a pleasant, well-kept, two-story place, probably left over from Paint Rock's days as a public town where anyone could live. It had gray-green shutters, a rock garden, and a little fountain with kissing mermaids in the front. I heard them shuffling around inside when I rang the doorbell and hoped they weren't concealing evidence.
The door cracked open, and a middle-aged man with a streak of silver in his hair peered out at me. He had a look about him that said he was in professional work. You know, the doctor or lawyer look, though he wasn't wearing the clothes that went along with either. He was in a battered and sweat-stained white t-shirt and a pair of cut-offs. “Help ya, lass?”
Now, I had been a linguistics major in college, and my favorite thing to study was accents and regionalisms. I prided myself in being able to identify accents that most people mix up like Scottish, Irish, and Welsh. The one he spoke in rested comfortably somewhere between all three.
I showed him by BSI badge, and his eyes got as wide as teacups. “I'm Special Agent Judah Black with BSI. I was wondering if you had a minute to talk.”
“I've naught to say about it,” he said and started to shut the door on me.
I wedged my foot into the opening, and it took the full brunt of his hurry to get away. Nothing broke, but it definitely hurt.
I gritted my teeth and forced myself through the pain. “I know Marian is missing.”
He hesitated.
It wasn’t long, just long enough for me to choke out one or two things that might convince him to talk to me. “I just want to find her. I'll keep it off the record. You have my word.”
He opened the door a little wider and gave me a skeptical look up and down. “You know what it means to give your word to my kind? Don't do it lightly, lass.”
“I'm a mother,” I told him. “I don't treat any crime involving children lightly.”
Finally, he opened the door the rest of the way and stood off to the side. “Come in, then, but be quick about it. Don't let no one see you.”
The inside décor matched the outside: pleasant and eclectic but still inexpensively betraying a watered-down sense of old, country style. The man, who I'd gathered must be Donald Summers, ushered me to a sofa and offered me a beer that I turned down. I might be willing to give him my word and risk the wrath of a fae, but I wasn't willing to go into debt against one.
After I'd turned him down three times, he sank down into the easy chair next to the sofa. “She's dead. What took her asked no ransom, so either she's dead, or I wish she were.”
I frowned. “Mr. Summers, Marian doesn't have a file with BSI, is that correct?”
“I had identity documents pending. See, she was an illegal baby. I know she was, but Teagan and I were trying to do the right thing, pay our fine and move on with life. We were so happy and then this...” He started to sob dry tears into his hand.
“Sorry, lass,” he offered after a few minutes. “It was BSI, wasn't it? This is what we get for trying to go straight. I should have known that wouldn't be enough.”
He went on sobbing, but something clicked in my brain. Neither the Garcias nor the Greenlees had been in the process of legitimizing their childrens' parentage. The process was long, hard, and expensive. If Donald was telling the truth, there was plenty of paperwork to prove that Marian existed, even if it was pending in a federal database. That meant one of two things: either the kidnapper-killer had made a grave mistake and changed his M.O. or he'd panicked and gotten sloppy.
“How long has Marian been missing, Mr. Summers?”
“Six days.” Donald stopped sobbing and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Are you here to...to kill me?”
“Why should anyone want to kill you?”
He set stormy gray eyes on me and answered in a dark tone, “Why should anyone want to kill my little girl? My beautiful, perfect Marian... Why not me? If you're here to do it, then get on with it. My wife will be back soon. I don't want her to see.” There was a sort of dry courage to the way he said it, even though his voice wavered.
Still, he acted relieved when I announced, “I'm not here to kill you. I'm looking into the disappearances, discreetly, of course. Do you have any dealings with the local werewolf pack, Mr. Summers?”
He wrinkled his nose at that. “Not if I can help it. It's them and the fanged ones that got us into this mess, making the world aware of us like that to save their skins. And for what? To avoid prosecution for some high-profile murder case? We'd still be living the good life if not for them. I used to be a professor, you know. I lost everything coming public. No. I avoid them.”
So much for easy connections, I thought and moved on to the next line of questioning. If there wasn't an obvious connection between Elias and the missing kids, maybe there was something else. “What'd you teach?”
“Folklore of the Americas. Specifically, my research focused on the fantastical beasts of the Native American tribes.” As he spoke, he shifted from the broken father to a professional educator, confident in his work.
“Like skin walkers and wendigos and stuff?”
“Aye. Specifically, the wendigo. A real monster, that one. Eats his prey, gorges himself on the flesh of his victims. Worst part is, he doesn't eat them right away. No, he only comes above ground every thirty years or so and gathers his crop of flesh, drags them back to his lair where he fattens them up over the course of three decades, feeding on them slowly, bit by bit.” Donald sounded almost excited, talking about his work, as unsavory as it was.
I grimaced. “Don't think I'd want to meet one of those in a dark alley.”
“Oh,” Donald chuckled and wiped at his nose. “They prefer the cold climate and the dark of caves. You're not likely to meet one about these parts. Though they say you shouldn't even speak the beast’s name because it draws its attention. I've been lecturing on the wendigo for near three decades now in all parts of North America and not seen a one. I'm sure they're a story, lass. Still, BSI seized all my research when I came public.” He'd lost all his confidence in that speech and gone back to being sad. “But you're not interested in my research, lass, are you?”
I shook my head. No, that wasn't any sort of connection, at least, not so far as I knew. “Are you religious, Mr. Summers?”
He frowned. I could tell he was considering not answering me, and I didn't blame him. It was a personal question. “My wife is. A good Catholic, she is. Teagan insisted that Marian be baptized. I still have that little white dress. God help me, I don't have a birth certificate, but I have her fecking dress.” He collapsed back into tears.
Catholic. That hit a button in my brain. Sal had mentioned that Elias may have confided in a priest.
“Just one more question. Who knew you had a daughter? Were you secretive at all about her?”
Donald Summers stared straight through me, sorrow working at the corners of his eyes. “We even had the baptism in secret. Hardly anybody knew. Me, Teagan, the priest, the pretty young thing from BSI that interviewed us...”
“Wait, someone from BSI int
erviewed you?” Donald nodded hesitantly. “Why?”
He blinked. “Marian’s registration paperwork. She was the one assigned to our case.”
“What did she look like?”
He thought for a minute, rifling his fingers through his hair. “Um... Tall. Dark hair, very impeccably dressed. I don't remember many details about her, now that you mention it. I do remember that she had this beautiful white Jag.”
I narrowed my eyes. I'd seen a white Jaguar in Sal's driveway the day before. This couldn't possibly be the same car, could it? If it was, how did that even make sense? That woman couldn't even stand up to Sal. She was practically a twig. She couldn't have killed Elias, not some little thing like that. Besides, the voice I'd heard in my vision was decidedly male. Still, I made a mental note to get more information about the woman and match her name to the registration of said white Jaguar.
“You wouldn't happen to remember the plates on the car? Even a partial would help?”
Donald shook his head. “Sorry.” He hesitated and then added. “You're not going to start pulling our files? Agent Black, there are other missing kids that haven't come home. They don't even have bodies to bury. If you go asking about...”
I smiled. “I gave you my word. No one will know I was here.”
It took some doing, but I finally convinced him to let me have a look at the nursery, which he insisted no one had touched since Marian went missing. There was a white bassinet with a pink blanket and a mobile of spinning pixies. A changing station stood next to that and piled in the corner were more toys than any kid could play with. Everything was neat and tidy as if Marian and her mother had just stepped out for a few hours to do the shopping.
“What are you going to do?” Donald asked from the doorway as I stepped into the center of the room.
I didn't answer him at first. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate. Maybe there would still be some residual energy left that I could track. Maybe Marian had been scared enough to leave a faint Impression like I'd found at Elias' murder scene. That would be gold for the investigation, right there. I couldn't be that lucky. The only thing I could feel was the Summers' distress. It had seeped into the walls, dark and black and desperate.
I lowered my hands and let out a breath. “Mr. Summers, do you have any idea who might have taken your daughter? Did anyone have a key?”
“We're fae, lass,” he said solemnly. “We guard our threshold something fierce. If something had come across it at night, we would have known. No. Nothing came and nothing went through the doors or through the windows.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked, turning to him. Donald walked over to the window behind the bassinet and waved a hand in front of it. A nauseating wave of power flowed through the room as little white sigils appeared on the glass.
“The windows and doors are warded,” I noted. “And no one but you two knows how to get through the wards?”
“Aye. Any fool who tried would be in for the shock of a lifetime. That and we'd know. My Marian just disappeared.”
Tindall's theory that the parents had each harmed their own children was possible, though I doubted it. The evidence was there to support such a case if someone wanted to make it, though. A decade ago, that was exactly how something like this would have been handled. I didn't buy it, especially given how distraught Donald was. Still, I couldn't rule it out as a possibility, however grim a possibility it was.
“Mr. Summers,” I said after a sigh. “Statistically, most children are kidnapped by people they know. In fact, most violent crimes are committed by relatives. That's why the police always interview family members first.”
He didn't answer me. He stayed by the bassinet, staring down at it sadly.
“Is there any chance that your wife...”
Donald Summers turned on me, his eyes gleaming with supernatural rage. He pointed toward the door and snarled, “Out!”
“It's a standard question,” I protested. “I'm just covering bases.”
“I said, get out!”
I made a beeline for the door, stumbling out into the afternoon heat. When he slammed it closed it behind me, I heard no less than three locks click shut and felt a nauseating wave of power, probably as he warded the door on top of everything else. Donald Summers wasn't cooking with any serious magick, but he wanted to make it clear that he could take me out in a dark alley if he needed to.
Message received, I thought and trudged back to my car.
Chapter Eleven
I drove over to the address I had for the Garcias and knocked on their door, but no one answered. There were two cars in the driveway, but their tires were off and one was jacked up, so I assumed no one was home. After scribbling a note on some scrap paper I had and sticking it inside the storm door, I got back in my car and drove over to Paint Rock's only church at the edge of town.
The pristine white siding of the small church gave it away as one of the reservation's newest buildings. It had a steeple, a cross, and all the other fixings of a church, including a small, fenced-in graveyard with a few stones. I parked the truck in the parking lot next to a white VW Passat and gathered myself for what I knew was going to be a taxing trip.
Churches, mosques, temples, and the like all had their own special energy. The ground they stand on was blessed, better known as Holy Ground. That didn’t necessarily mean that dark things like vampires and sorcerers would burst into flame on the premises. That silliness is reserved for the movies. What it did mean was that it was much more difficult for them to cause trouble and use their own magick inside the bounds of Holy Ground.
When I was much younger, I got dragged to church with my family. I never liked the way the place made me feel, even though the pastor and the congregation were all friendly and decent folk. It made my skin crawl. It wasn't until later, when I learned I could use magick, that I knew why. That uneasy feeling was my energy rubbing up against the energy of the church, creating a kind of magick static. If you've ever rubbed a balloon on your head, you know the feeling. It's uncomfortable, but not unbearable.
Not that I liked going to church. I hadn't been back since I turned eighteen. I had nothing against it. There were some fine people of faith in the world. The problem arises when people fail to make that distinction between religion and faith. I didn't feel I needed either. As long as the church kept its distance, I kept mine.
I opened my door and stepped out. The energy of the church swirled up around my ankles and enveloped me in a nice, static cocoon as I walked up to the front door. It was open, and I could hear music inside, so I let myself in.
The sanctuary was a humble place with rows of pews and little hymnals tucked into the back of them. I slipped into one of the pews in the back and crossed one leg over the other, listening as the local priest on the stage pounded out a song on a beat-up piano. He was a capable pianist, but I didn't think he had the concert flare in him. His baritone vocals were decent, though I couldn't hear him too well from the back of the church. It took me nearly a full verse to realize what he was playing and smiled to myself.
When he’d finished and I clapped, he looked up, startled. Then, he gave a slight smile that almost masked the flush in his face before standing. He was a good-looking man, although not the kind the Vatican put on their recruiting posters. They've always preferred a gentler, more innocent looking and even boyish kind. Father Reed wasn't any of those things.
I'd pulled his file that morning. It contained about what I expected to find: absolutely nothing of consequence, not even a speeding ticket. No one was that perfect. This man of God, despite his perfect hair, perfect smile, broad shoulders, and perfectly proportioned nose, may have been the most dangerous person on the entire reservation.
“I didn't realize you were sitting there,” he said and rose. “I apologize.”
“Not at all,” I said, standing and walking casually down the aisle to meet him. “Though a church is the last place I'd expect to hear something by Kansas.”
I noted that he left off my title and emphasized his, his way of letting me know that I was in his territory and that he intended to hold on to the upper hand. Or, maybe it was an honest mistake, but I doubted it. This guy was a minister to supernaturals. In his time, he'd have acquired some of the same tricks I was learning, such as establishing dominance from the get-go. The way he'd gripped my hand, putting his fully around mine, spoke volumes, but it didn't have to mute me.
His smile faded when I let a little jolt of power slip through my hand and into his. He smirked and let me go. We didn't talk about it, but the look on his face said he was pleased.
“News travels fast,” I noted. “Seems everyone knows who I am before I get there these days.”
“Well, in a town the size of Paint Rock, a new presence is difficult to keep secret. Add the fact that this is a reservation full of supernaturals, and you can see how things get around quickly.” He gestured to the front pew. “Actually, I was hoping you'd come and speak to me.”