Paper Children (Phoebe Harkness Book 3)

by James Fahy

  “Hell, I don’t know. It’s just a scary story. Depends who you talk to. Some say five, some say twenty.” He wiggled his hands at me spookily. “Big scary shadow monster luring them away with balloons. Spooky, huh?” he sniggered. “The pied piper of New Oxford… lame.”

  I didn’t snigger back.

  I turned to leave. “I have to go. Right now,” I said.

  “Go where?” Oscar stared after me in confusion.

  “I have some fact checking to do,” I stalked off. “Don’t mention this ‘urban legend’ to anyone else, Oscar.” I turned back and gave him my most serious face. “I mean it. Not a word. Stay out of it.”

  He looked so confused, his face caught in a half-smile, as though he were trying to figure out if I was messing with him. “Why? Scared the big bad monster will come and get me?” he asked. “I won’t say his name in front of a mirror, don’t worry.”

  I was indeed worried for Oscar’s safety. But not for the reasons he thought. He seemed to know too much. Much more than I did, apparently, about something that clearly neither of us should know. I had to verify for myself.

  “Just… get home safe.” I glanced back at the crowd behind Oscar, where Dove had blended back into the crowd, doing the social round and promoting the festival. “No after-parties,” I added sternly.

  “Yes, mother,” Oscar sulked. As I pushed away into the crowd, he called hopefully after me. “Hey, you’ll be at the Moonrise Screening right? The outdoor cinema tomorrow? It’s a Fangfest highlight. They’re showing everything from Near Dark to Salem’s Lot. It’s going to be fang-tastic!”

  I groaned inwardly. Another Fangfest event? I was fairly certain that, whether I liked it or not, I would be attending.

  Chapter 16

  I drummed my fingers on my desk, beating out a plainly impatient tattoo as I gazed blankly into the sleek glass face of my datascreen. It was almost 3.00 pm. Around me, the oddly comforting and familiar background noises of Blue Lab hummed and whirred. The distant occasional squeak of the test rats in their cages, the humming spin of the centrifuge, whirling around filled with blood samples containing various levels of Epsilon. The melodic plink of the ultraviolet tubes which lined the long blue corridor beyond the spotless glass doors of my pristine private kingdom, and beneath it all, the soft purr of the air conditioners, filtering air down from the surface world to our subterranean workplace.

  Griff was at his own desk, crime scene photos from the various vampire rooftop killings spread around him. He was leaning back in his chair, looking scruffy and unkempt, his glasses pushed up into his unruly mop of tousled hair. He was stirring a coffee cup with a rhythmic clinking spoon and although I wasn’t looking at him, I could sense him in my peripheral vision, watching me like a hawk.

  “What?” I asked, more irritable than I’d intended. I didn’t take my eyes off the screen, across which every piece of information I’d been able to find about the families of the two missing children was constantly scrolling. I realised I hadn’t taken any of it in during the last ten minutes. I was zoned out. My mind what elsewhere.

  “What?” Griff echoed lightly in an innocent tone.

  “Why are you staring at me like a psycho?” I asked, glancing over at him fondly. “Haven’t you got anything to do?”

  Griff set down his coffee cup amongst the many photographs. “Sorry, Doc, I wasn’t staring. It’s just… you seem distracted. And no actually, seeing as you ask, I don’t have anything to do yet. You delegated these vampire murders to me, but until a positive ID comes back from the scrap of latex we found, I’ve not really got much to go on.”

  He stretched, groaning and cracking his knuckles. “Anyway, I’m waiting on some footage to be recovered and sent up to me. Had an idea that might… and at this stage it really is just a might, so don’t get excited… shed some light on your missing kids case.”

  I tore my eyes away from the screen, swivelling around majestically in my chair like Captain Picard to face him across the gleaming laboratory.

  “Footage?” I pressed. “What footage?”

  Griff shrugged, attempting an air of mystery that was both maddening and, on his helplessly geeky frame, unintentionally endearing. “Could be nothing,” he admitted. “But either way, it should be here from archives soon, I’ll tell you then. If there’s anything to tell, that is.” He glanced down at my hand, which was resting on the arm of my office chair. “You are itchy though. You’re still drumming your fingers.”

  I stopped drumming my fingers immediately, curling my hand into a fist.

  “You’re not feeling… Paleish, are you?” he asked, very tentatively. I gave him a small smile. So that’s what was worrying him.

  “No, God no. I’m not in need of sedation, if that’s what you’re twitching about. Don’t worry,” I assured him.

  “It’s just, you’ve been here since midnight last night, Doc,” Griff said, his face still full of concern. “Didn’t you come straight here from that champagne and caviar gig with Cloves last night? And you sent Denison and Lucy out first thing this morning as soon as they showed up. You’ve been distracted ever since.”

  “Distracted? Nonsense.”

  Griff nodded at my desk, raising his eyebrows. I glanced down. There were three Styrofoam cups of coffee lined up amongst my usual workplace detritus. All untouched, in varying degrees of coolness. “You keep making drinks and then ignoring them.”

  “Christ, I’m turning into Coldwater,” I quipped, in mock horror.

  Along one wall of our lab, there is a very large screen embedded in the wall. I glanced over at it thoughtfully. It was connected to a camera up at street level and relayed a high definition live feed image down here into my underground science grotto. It was currently showing the view up above of the cobbled university courtyard beneath which we burrowed. It was a bright and crisp afternoon out there on the surface world. A few late autumn leaves were blowing across the quad. In the arched doorway of the college across the square, someone had left three carved Halloween pumpkins on the steps. The screen was one of my team’s favourite features of the lab. It was almost like having a window. Made Blue Lab feel fractionally more human, gave us the impression at least that we were working at street level like any other regular business.

  “I came here straight from Sanctum, you’re right” I told Griff. “Someone I met at the party last night said something to me that didn’t make sense. I wanted to try and get my head around it, do some DataStream searching before everyone got in, that’s all.”

  “Maleficent wasn’t furious with you for leaving the party without her permission?” Griff asked. “She didn’t lay a curse on all your future offspring, or send any flying monkeys after you?”

  I grinned. “Surprisingly not. Check the morning headlines for yourself. Cloves was happy with my work, for once.” This happened about as regular as a total eclipse and was just as surreal an event. “God forbid, but she might actually cut me half a day’s slack before she invents some new hoops for me to jump through.”

  I had flicked onto the morning papers online myself earlier today, just to see if any news had emerged regarding the missing blueblood children, Melodie Cunningham Bowls and Cora Winterbourne. There wasn’t even a whisper, but what there had been was a large society feature about Fangfest. The events so far, the upcoming parade on Halloween night, two days from now. The carnival spirit in the streets, and alongside the article, by Poppy Merriweather herself no less, there had been a large photo of myself, deep in earnest conversation with both Dove and Oscar at the Sanctum soiree. I hadn’t even known it had been taken. Dove looked immaculate of course, Oscar effortlessly elegant in his tux, like every other paparazzi photograph of him. For someone like Oscar Scott, having paparazzi photos taken of him was as natural as drawing breath. Between them both, myself, holding a tray of nibbles and for once, and quite unintentionally, caught mid smile. By some miracle I didn’t look half bad.

  I’m the kind of person who can take a killer self
ie if the occasion demands. I’m not bad-looking by any account, but for some reason, when other people take photos of me, I always think it looks like someone has drawn a face on a potato.

  I actually looked quite glam in this shot though. The headline read ‘Cabal Ambassador builds strong links between GO helmsmen and influential human interest benefactor in glittering pre-festival talks’.

  I had actually gotten an almost congratulatory text this morning from Cloves. ‘Not bad, Harkness. Decent schmoosing. Such a dark pic even your outfit didn’t manage to ruin it. Try to look a bit taller next time’.

  This was almost certainly the nicest thing Cloves had ever said to me. It may in fact have been the first thing she’d ever said that didn’t involve a swear word or spittle. On a Veronica Cloves scale, it counted as gushing. But she couldn’t complain. The current leader of the New Oxford vampires and media royalty Oscar Scott in one shot? Even Veronica Cloves couldn’t have asked for more. We looked like the three of us were practically holding hands and singing about unity and the colours of the wind. Personally, I was simply grateful that it hadn’t been taken when I had a mouth stuffed with devilled egg. We all looked quite stately and ambassadorial. You’d never have guessed that instead of discussing the joining of two worlds through a delightful and fun festival, we had actually been exploring Dove’s rather harsh and tragic past as a milk-cow for sadistic post-apocalyptic scavengers. Just thinking about it, and his salvation at the hands of Allesandro, made me feel odd. I tried to analyse the feeling. If I was honest with myself, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to be, could it be that I actually genuinely missed that smarmy, dark haired gigolo? And it had taken the thought of him feral in the wilderness to make me realise it?

  I’d been pushing him to the back of my mind for so long, but he did keep popping up again. It was like playing emotional whack-a-mole.

  “You missed him?” Griff asked. I snapped my eyes away from the window-screen, across which a grey squirrel was running, and out of my mental wanderings.

  “What, miss him?” I snorted. “Are you mad? He’s a manipulative letch. My life is much simpler without, thank you very much.” I sniggered, quite convincingly I thought. “Miss him? Like a hole in the head.”

  Griff stared at me with open confusion. “I just meant, well, you two are friends, right?” he said. “You hadn’t seen him in a while. I thought you maybe enjoyed catching up at the party.”

  I blinked at him, derailed. “Who are you talking about?” I whispered.

  “Oscar Scott,” Griff said very slowly, frowning at me.

  Oh.

  “Who are you talking about?” he asked, a quizzical expression on his face as he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

  “No one,” I said very quickly. “What time is it anyway?”

  Griff glanced at his screen, shaking his head. “After three,” he told me. “The footage I ordered should download soon. The grunts over in archives take so long,” he complained. “I keep telling everyone they should just replace them all with drones. Make them more efficient for sure, less arse-scratching.”

  “Why are they not back yet?” I wondered, standing up, trying to get some blood back into my cramping legs.

  “If you mean Denison and Lucy, they are.” Griff nodded at the window screen. I glanced over. The live feed showed Dee’s car had just pulled up in the courtyard above. I watched as both he and Lucy climbed out, wrapped in heavy coats and scarves against the cold.

  “It’s about time,” I said, flicking my screen off. I was eager to hear what they had found out from the expedition I’d sent them on this morning.

  “Everyone gets field trips except me,” Griff complained with mock-serious tone as I walked across the lab to remotely buzz them into the main atrium above.

  “I’m the only one in the team without super powers. It’s lame.”

  “What are you muttering about?” I asked, a little distracted.

  “Well, you know…” He gestured vaguely in the air. “You’ve got all these paranormal contacts, vampires, Tribals, weird agents back from the dead, not to mention apparently nine lives. Cloves is made out of Kevlar and rage. Lucy has this double life as a well-connected Helsing who can get you in anywhere you need to go, and Denison is practically a living ghoul.”

  “A living ghoul?” I questioned.

  “Doc, the man can tell a time of death, within minutes, just from observation. He can deduce a cause of death within thirty seconds of meeting a corpse. Its impressive.”

  “That’s why we call him Dr Dee” I nodded happily.

  “And then… there’s me,” Griff picked up some of the photos on his desk and dropped them again. “Dependable Griff. The wholegrain digestive biscuit in the treat tin of life. What do I do? Sit in the lab running numbers.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being the Oracle, Griff,” I said kindly, giving the loveable geek a smile. He looked confused. “Old superhero comic, never mind. You make a wonderful Barbara Gordon.”

  “You’re not making me feel any better,” he said, but his mouth twitched a little.

  “You do plenty, mister. You do your job, and better than anyone else could. That’s why you’re on my team at all. You know what high standards I have.” I heard the elevator descending, carrying Dee and Lucy down to our level. I thought about the other people I knew. Allesandro, Dove, Kane, Sofia, Oscar. All, in their own special and magical way, complete and utter nutjobs.

  “There are far worse things than being normal,” I said.

  “Well, I’m never going to get anyone to look at me twice surrounded by eight-packed vampire gods,” he muttered. “I bet they don’t even have to go to the gym. I do. I practically live there when I’m not here. I have abs, you know, you should feel my stomach.”

  “My dear darling Griff,” I replied. “I would rather cut off my hand. Stop being insecure about being the weakest link. I need you top of your game and… well… Griffing the shit out of data. We all depend on you. You’re not a digestive, you’re like…” I rolled my hand in the air for inspiration, “an epic hob-nob.”

  The blue lights of the ultraviolet corridor pinged brighter, motion-sensored to come on full power as Lucy and Dee made their way along it.

  “Dependable biscuit at your service,” he grumbled, chuckling despite himself. He turned back to his screen as the glass doors swished open and the rest of my team entered the lab.

  I could tell by their grim expressions that the info I had sent them to find was not good news.

  *

  Five minutes later, the four of us were gathered around the conference table.

  Well, I call it a conference table. We don’t actually have the space for any such thing. What it was in fact was a stainless steel mortuary slab, of which we have two, with a few chairs pulled up around. It didn’t currently hold a corpse, of course. That would have been poor taste. And there would have been no room for our coffee cups.

  “I’m afraid it seems to be true, Doc,” Denison said, his elbows resting on the table, fingers laced in front of his chin. “Strong rumours all over the Slade, and nearly everyone we spoke with agrees.”

  “You guys have been to the Slade?” Griff look at Dee and Lucy. “What for?”

  “I sent them,” I explained. The Slade, once a well to do part of old Oxford, long before the apocalypse and the building of the wall, was a ghetto these days. A large shantytown portion of our great and glorious city, off to the east. It was where a large portion of our population lived and died. Jobless, many homeless, in the ruins and empty shells of old houses and businesses. It was a fairly lawless area, filled with street gangs, all manner of dangerous and illegal fun, and a place where neither the police or Cabal seemed to take much interest.

  “Last night, Oscar Scott told me of rumours going around, that something had been stalking the Slade.” I glanced at Griff. “Something very similar to our recent demon. But that it had been doing so for months. And stealing children.�
��

  “We spoke to a lot of people,” Lucy nodded, warming her cold hands around her cup. “You know, homeless guys, shop owners, anyone on the street who would give us the time of day. Trust me, they are genuinely scared over there. Said this thing has been haunting them for months. Picking people off. Practically everyone is scared to go outside at night. Not that it helps. A lot of these attacks have been happening in broad daylight.”

  Same as the two missing girls we were investigating, I thought.

  “But surely we would have heard about it?” Griff argued. “It would have been on the news. The police-”

  “The police, and the news, don’t care about the people in the Slade,” Denison interjected. “Nobody cares about the people in the Slade. Let’s be real. Cabal barely even acknowledge the district exists. You know how few patrols there are there. They don’t even bother with drones.”

  “To be fair, that’s because the gangs tend to use them for target practise and shoot them out of the sky,” Lucy shrugged.

  “My point is, it’s a black spot as far as surveillance goes, and the so-called citizens who live there, they’re barely regarded as people,” Denison continued, grim lines in his face. “So when something starts Jack-the-Rippering all over the bad side of town? Who cares right? Less of the disenfranchised to worry about for the rest of us.” He glowered. “That’s the way Cabal would think. The way they do think.”

  “We only started hearing about this kidnapping when it suddenly moved to the higher classes. To our side of the river.” I nodded.

  “Naturally,” Denison nodded. “Homeless kids? Urchins? Nameless little match girls? All probably drug addicts and thieves, right? I mean, we’re talking about the children of gang members, prostitutes. They start disappearing off the street, it’s practically a public service,” he sneered, sounding disgusted. “But two little rich girls get swiped, ballet recitals cancelled, and suddenly Cabal are all up in arms about it. It makes me sick.”

  “I sent you to get an idea of numbers,” I pressed. Lucy had put her hand over Denison’s on the table, giving it a gentle pat to calm him down.