“Well, that’s good. Anyway, I heard from my new friend that this is the school to be at,” Kate continued brightly.
“Well, yes.” The woman’s voice filled with pride. “George Washington Elementary has always had the highest standards. In fact, we’re the number one choice school in all of Hillsborough County.”
Kate and Rone shared a look. “George Washington Elementary?” Kate sent through their link.
“Looks like your dream was right,” Rone sent back.
“Is that right?” he rumbled aloud, daring to join the conversation. “But the sign outside says ‘The Center for Academic Excellence.”
“Oh, I keep forgetting!” The woman put a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry—we were GWE for years and years. The name change is really recent—our principal pushed it through because she thought it sounded better.”
“It does sound nice,” Kate said earnestly, carefully concealing the excitement Rone could feel bubbling inside her. “My friend said you have the highest quality of education, the best teachers—in fact, she mentioned one teacher in particular—Ms. Brooks I think? She said her son had Ms. Brooks and she really helped him achieve his academic potential.”
The woman behind the desk frowned. “Well, we do have a teacher by that name here—or we did. She’s not here right now and hasn’t been for a few days.”
“Oh? I hope she’s not sick,” Kate said anxiously. “I was really hoping to meet her. She sounded perfect for Bella. She has ADHD just like my friend’s little boy and I was hoping to find someone really patient and caring.”
“Well, Ms. Brooks teaches kindergarten so your daughter wouldn’t be in her class anyway,” the woman said. “But I think you’ll find all our teachers are patient and caring.”
“Oh, that’s disappointing—about Ms. Brooks, I mean.” Kate sighed. “But since we’re here anyway, do you think we could take a quick tour?”
“Well…” The woman frowned uncertainly. “We generally like to schedule that kind of thing—”
“We really have to make up our mind about schools quickly though,” Kate said, widening her big green eyes earnestly. “It’s between this one and Colbert Academy, down the road. They’ve already sent an acceptance letter for Bella and we only have until today to tell them if we want the spot or not.”
The woman behind the desk bristled. “Colbert Academy might be private but they have nothing on GWE—I mean, CFAE,” she corrected herself hastily. “I’ll tell you what, school is out right now so you can’t really see things in action, so to speak, but you can at least get a tour of the grounds. Come on through.” She nodded at the open end of the countertop.
Kate went through and Rone followed, making sure to keep his mate between himself and the school official in case the human female was a Sensitive. Luckily, she was leading the way so it was easy to keep distance between them.
“Now, I can’t stay out of the office long because I’m the only one here,” she was saying to Kate, who was nodding attentively. “But I’ll give you the general layout and you can wander around for five or ten minutes to see what you think. I’m sure you’ll find we have a beautiful campus. Now the media center is in that direction…and over there is the cafeteria…”
She went on, pointing out various buildings and structures but Rone was only half listening. He lifted his head again and scented the air. He caught a smell that seemed strange and out of place. It was faint and several days old but still detectable to his incredibly sensitive Wulven nose. Could that be…Beast Kindred? He sniffed again. It is—it has to be. But what the hell would a Beast Kindred be doing here?
Well, possibly the same thing he was pretending to do. There were more Kindred living topside on Earth now so it was possible that one of them might be the father to a child going to this school. But the woman from the front desk had mentioned that she didn’t think they had any other Kindred children attending here. So if that was the case, why was there a Kindred scent in the air?
Up ahead, the woman seemed to be winding down her talk.
“…and that over there is the kindergarten and first grade wing,” she was telling Kate. “Of course, that’s not where your daughter…”
“Bella,” Kate supplied quickly.
“Oh, right—such a pretty name! Anyway, that’s not where she’d be but they have some really cute artwork up if you look at the bulletin boards on the outside of each classroom.”
“Thank you!” Kate smiled at her. “It’s so sweet of you to let us have a look around so we can make up our minds.”
“I’m sure you’ll find that GWE—sorry—CFAE is the best school around.” The woman smiled back but just then the phone started ringing from inside the office. “Oh, excuse me—I have to get that!”
“Go right ahead,” Kate told her. “We’re just going to have a quick look around and we’ll be back in a minute.”
“All right then, have fun!” With a final wave, the woman disappeared back into the office, finally leaving them alone.
“Whew,” Kate said under her breath when the office door was safely closed. “I thought she’d never leave!” Then she took a closer look at Rone, who was still sniffing the air. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” He frowned. “A scent that doesn’t belong but I can’t figure out why it would be here.”
“You think you should follow it?”
He shook his head. “Maybe in a minute. Right now, let’s go down to the kippergarden classrooms and see if I can get a scent for the girl.”
“That’s kindergarten,” Kate said, smiling.
Rone shrugged. “Whatever it is, if we can get into her classroom to catch her scent, I’ll have a much easier time finding her.”
“All right, let’s go.” Kate led the way and he followed, still bothered by the faint whiff of Beast Kindred in the air.
The school was a series of long, beige, brick buildings all connected by covered walkways. Each classroom door had the name of the teacher and many had large rectangular bulletin boards covered in artwork or essays in childish script. “How I spent my Summer” and “My plans for the future” and similar themes.
At last they came to a classroom with the name “E Brooks” on the plate. The bulletin board outside it was hung with colorful self-portraits of children holding books. “Miss Brook’s Reading Rainbows” was written at the top of the board in letters cut from multicolored paper.
“Aww, look at that,” Kate said, smiling. “She had them all draw a picture of themselves holding their favorite book! How cute!”
“Adorable,” Rone muttered, trying the door handle, which was locked. “But not terribly helpful from a scent perspective. All I can smell is wax, ink, and paper.”
He was about to force the door open as quietly as possible—he was easily strong enough to break the lock—when a voice behind them startled him.
“Hi, can I help you with something?”
Rone and Kate whirled around to see a slender blonde female with blue eyes and an uncertain look on her face.
“Oh, hi!” Kate slipped into character at once. “Our little girl goes to Miss Brook’s class and we think she left her lunchbox in the classroom.”
“She does, does she?” The woman narrowed her eyes. “What’s her name?”
“Bella,” Kate said.
“I don’t remember Emily—ah, Miss Brooks—having a Bella in her classroom.”
“Well, that’s because she just started here yesterday,” Kate said quickly. “We’re new in town—just moved here. Only the second day of school and she’s already losing things—kids, right?”
“Yeah, they do that.” The woman seemed to relax a little and returned Kate’s rueful smile with one of her own. “Well, Emily isn’t here right now but I have a spare key to her classroom. I can let you in to look around but only for a minute.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Miss…” Kate held out her hand, her eyebrows raised.
“Oh, I’m sorry—I’m Miss Lane
—Julia Lane. I teach the class right beside Emily’s and she’s my friend.” She took Kate’s offered hand and Rone could tell his mate was “reading” her as she always did when she made deliberate physical contact with a new person. He wondered what she was seeing.
“We heard lots of good things about Miss Brooks but Bella says she’s been absent the past two days,” Kate said, still keeping a firm grip on the other woman’s hand.
“Well, yes. Emily has been…absent for personal reasons.” The woman’s voice faltered and Rone smelled a change in her scent—she was worried and uncertain suddenly.
“Oh dear, I hope she’s all right!” Kate said, releasing the other woman’s hand at last so she could unlock the classroom.
“I’m sure she’ll be just fine,” the human female said a little too brightly. “Okay, there you go. I can only give you a minute to look, though, and then I have to lock up.”
“Of course, thank you so much!” Kate smiled at her and then nodded at Rone. “Come on, honey—you look in the front and I’ll look in the back.” She nodded him in the direction of the large desk in the back which was clearly the teacher’s.
“I can help too, if you like,” Julia Lane said, stepping in. “Do you know where she sits?”
“I’m not sure, exactly,” Kate said, frowning. “But the lunchbox is one of those Frozen ones. You know—with Elsa and Anna?”
“Oh, of course!” The teacher laughed. “I swear over half my class has the same thing—even some of the boys. They all just love that movie.”
“Tell me about it!” Kate exclaimed. “We’ve had it playing in our house twenty-four seven for months now. I swear if I have to hear that one song again…”
“Let it Go!” Miss Lane was nodding. “Oh my God, yes! They sing it at the drop of a hat—and they’ll drop the hat themselves!”
Grateful for his mate’s masterful distraction, Rone left them giggling like a couple of little girls and made his way over to the teacher’s desk in the back corner. The papers and folders weren’t much help but hanging on the back of the chair he found a light piece of clothing he thought the humans called a “sweater.” Picking it up, he brought it as unobtrusively as he could to his nose.
There were two different scents on the sweater but one was much stronger. Rone thought the stronger scent probably belonged to the owner and the weaker one was probably just from someone who had been sitting in the chair without bothering to move it. Could the stronger scent belong to Emily Brooks? Inside the pocket of the sweater was a small scrap of stretchy fabric with a few strands of blondish-brown hair clinging to it.
“Hey, what are you doing with Emily’s sweater?” Julia Lane’s voice caught him by surprise.
“Forgive me.” Rone turned to see she was right behind him. Hastily, he put it down, pocketing the fabric scrap he’d found as unobtrusively as he could. “I was just looking at it because my mate, er, wife has one just like it.”
“Oh my God, I do—just like it!” Kate exclaimed, coming to stand by him. “Or I did before it got ruined in the dryer. Do you know where Miss Brooks got it?”
“Oh, uh, actually no.” The suspicious look faded from the teacher’s face. “Well, I really have to get going,” she said, giving them an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry you couldn’t find your daughter’s lunchbox.”
“That’s okay.” Kate sighed dramatically. “She’ll just have to use her old Tangled lunchbox until she can remember where she left it. She won’t like it, but maybe it will teach her a lesson.”
“Well, good luck with that,” Julia Lane said, laughing as she ushered them out of the classroom and locked the door securely behind them. “You should see the lost and found boxes by the end of the year—they’re just overflowing!”
“Yes, we checked there first.” Kate shook her head. “No luck. It’s probably under the couch cushions or something.”
“Could be.” The teacher smiled politely and Rone had the feeling she was ready to be gone.
“Well, thank you for everything. And I do hope Miss Brooks will be back soon,” Kate said. “Do you know when that might be?”
“No, I…I’m afraid I don’t.” A strained and troubled look passed over the human female’s pretty face. “But I hope so too.” She nodded at them and turned away, still looking worried.
“Emily Brooks is the one—she’s missing and her friend is worried about her,” Rone sent through the mental link he shared with his mate as the other woman left, her footsteps fading on the concrete walkway.
“Yes, very worried. I saw it when I shook her hand. Did you get what you needed?” Kate sent back.
Rone nodded and brought the stretchy piece of elastic carefully out of his pocket. Lifting it to his nose, he inhaled. It had the same scent as the sweater—it must have belonged to Emily Brooks.
“A hair scrunchy!” Kate exclaimed in a low voice. “Perfect! And I got enough from Emily’s friend to have a general idea of where she lives—let’s go!”
They left the school and it only took a few minutes of circling around the neighborhood for Kate to point to a little house mostly hidden by dense tropical growth. “There!”
They parked out front but found their way blocked by yellow police tape.
“What’s this?” Rone frowned, looking at it. It crossed the front porch and stretched across the doorway.
“Crime scene.” Kate sounded grim. “Could be a murder was committed here.” She put a hand to her head. “Are we too late? But if Emily Brooks was killed, I’m sure her friend would have said something instead of covering for her like she did.”
Rone lifted his head and inhaled deeply.
“There is the scent of old blood coming from behind the house but it doesn’t smell of Emily—it’s a human male. Her scent is very strong here, though. And there’s something else…” He sniffed again and frowned.
“What is it?” Kate asked eagerly. “Who is it?”
“A Beast Kindred,” Rone said. “It’s the same scent I picked up at the school—the one that didn’t belong.”
“But how can that be? Do you think she was claimed as a bride?”
“I don’t think so—there would be no need for the crime scene tape in that case. Let me mark it out.” He turned and sniffed around the driveway and the front yard area which was beginning to get overgrown, as though no one had trimmed it for awhile. For that, Rone was glad. The scent of freshly cut grass would have masked the old scents he was trying to follow. This way he was able to track and get an idea of who had been here.
Kate was quiet for a while, letting him work. She knew he needed to concentrate. At last he looked up, frowning.
“There were a great many people trampling through here—not just Emily and the Beast Kindred.”
“Maybe the police?” Kate suggested. “Looking for her?”
“Possibly. Many of the strange scents have the smells of metal and leather mixed in with them.”
“From guns and holsters maybe,” Kate said thoughtfully. “Definitely police.”
“Yes, but none of them is mixed with Emily’s scent. In fact, there’s only one other that mixes with hers other than the Beast Kindred.” Rone took another deep whiff. “It’s a human male and his blood was spilled too. Not as much as the scent coming from the back of the house, but enough that he might have been badly wounded.”
“Can you follow it?” Kate asked eagerly.
Rone nodded. “I might be able to. It’s several days old but it’s strong.”
“Let’s go then! Maybe whoever it was can tell us what happened to Emily.”
* * * * *
Kate drove this time, letting Rone stick his head out the window like an oversized bloodhound to follow the scent. No one but a Wulven would have been able to follow an old scent trail like this, she was sure. But Rone had an incredibly sensitive nose—a hundred times more sensitive than the bloodhound she’d been comparing him too—and he was able to lead them to the source of the smell.
They
parked outside a large house a few miles away from Emily’s place, located in a much nicer and more expensive neighborhood. A luxury car was parked outside but it didn’t look like it had been used in the past few days—there was a light covering of pollen on the outer windshield.
Rone pulled his head back in and rolled up the car window.
“This is the place—I’m pretty sure the scent is a human male. You’d better let me go first.”
Kate sighed at his over-protectiveness.
“Come on now, honey, you know I can take care of myself. I’ve got my brand new Glock right here.” She patted her jacket which concealed her gun. It was much nicer than the old one she’d left at her mother’s old house in Mississippi when she and Rone were joined. “Just let me go up first. If you go you’ll scare the bejesus out of him and he’ll clam up.”
“You can go first but I’ll follow close behind,” Rone decided. “I don’t fully trust these human males.”
Kate stifled a laugh at this. As if any human guy—no matter how powerful or built—could be as scary and dangerous as a Wulven Kindred! Her man had a ravenous Beast living inside him—something like a wolf but about three times bigger and much, much more ferocious. Until she had become better acquainted with it, just being near him had been like defusing a bomb—an angry bomb that wanted to rip her head off. It was one reason the other Kindred were reluctant to make a trade with the Wulven people. Only the Beast Kindred didn’t seem to mind, probably because they had a wild side themselves.
She went up the steps to the front porch and rang the bell with Rone a few steps behind her. It took a moment but finally she heard the shuffling sound of footsteps and the door was opened by a tall blond man with drug hazy eyes.
“Yeah? What c’n I do for you?” His speech was slightly slurred, as if he was on something. When the door opened a little more, Kate could see why. His right hand was attached to some kind of metal plate with all kinds of wires and bars sticking out of it. It looked like it had been thoroughly pulped and some orthopedic surgeon had tried to put him back together without much success.
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