by CC Dragon
“I’m not sure, but my parents are still together. Here, on our side of things. Growing up with both, I think they felt I’d be loyal,” she replied.
I sighed. “Sucks to be you. Don’t trust them.”
“Wait, the missing child did nothing wrong. It’s a woman and her child in this case. You apparently interviewed the sister of the woman who reported this case, recently.” Lt. Morrow sounded like she needed help.
“She told you to conference me in?” I asked.
“It was more of a side note. The weird kid thing going on is harder and harder to ignore, even for the humans. It’s best if you are involved,” she said.
“Fine, I’ll come down and check it out. Anyone tries to give me crap, and I’m out,” I warned her.
“The police are fine with your consulting at the request of the person who reported,” she said.
“The police I can ignore. But if the Fae start interfering, we’ll have a problem,” I shot back.
“I’m aware of your power levels. I doubt that will be a problem. I’ll see you when you get here. Thanks,” she said and ended the call.
“I really did jinx the day,” Mason chuckled.
“Thanks, now let’s enjoy the pancakes before we have to go to work.” I soaked up the syrup and didn’t really care if I dripped any on my shirt.
I walked into the familiar police department and found Lt. Morrow ready to pounce.
“Hi, I want to show you the house,” she said.
Mason nodded. “We can look over the report on the ride.”
“Standard missing persons. No one has seen or heard from the mom and her son going on three days now. No call to the school about a trip or anything. No notice or call to her job,” she explained.
“We’ll follow you,” I agreed.
The house was only a mile or so from the changeling child we’d just encountered. The front door had police tape on it.
“You forced entry?” I asked.
“No one had a spare key. Too many humans on the force with me that day to try a magical option. They wanted to make sure they weren’t dead or injured inside. We waited until forty-eight hours and no contact, but it’s worse.” She opened the front door.
There was nothing.
Not signs of a struggle or blood.
No sign of furniture either.
“Are you sure you have the right house? This one isn’t up for sale maybe?” I asked.
“I’ll check the bedrooms,” Mason said.
I went for the kitchen. The appliances were there, but when I opened the fridge, it was empty. I yanked a drawer open and nothing. Not a fork or spoon.
I looked at Morrow. “What the hell?” I asked.
“The only stuff we found is in the trash.” She nodded to the can on the side of the cabinet.
I stepped on the pedal, and the trash can lid lifted. There was trash, but nothing smelled. “Mostly wadded up papers, not even kitchen scraps.”
“It’s like they and their stuff just vanished. Disappeared,” Morrow added.
I shook my head. “Trash in the garage?” I asked.
She shook her. “Nothing. Just that.”
Mason joined us in the kitchen. “Nothing. All the furniture, toys, and anything is gone.”
“No trash?” I asked.
“I didn’t see a trash can. I checked the closets too, empty.” Mason shook his head.
“Yeah, what are they trying to hide?” I asked.
“You don’t think they were the victims?” Morrow asked.
“How many missing children’s cases have you gotten in the last week?” I asked.
“Children only?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Let me pull it up on the laptop in the cruiser. Did you want to look anywhere else?” she asked.
“No basement. Mason, can you look up in the attic? I’ll take a walk around the property,” I said.
I took my time and kept an eye out for symbol or oddly placed rocks. Nothing jumped out at me, but there were rocks all over.
I met them back at the car.
“Attic?” I asked.
Mason shook his head. “Nothing.”
Morrow waved us over to her car. “None.”
“None in Bethel? That’s a good week,” Mason said.
“None in the state in the past week. All of Alaska,” Morrow added.
I clicked my tongue. “We’re on to someone or something. But what?”
Chapter Ten
Three days later, we had nothing but more empty houses. “We need to bring in every one of the strange kids and their families.”
Mason frowned. “Can we find a better label for them?”
I shrugged. “I don’t care what we call them. Special, stolen, swapped kids…but I have a really awful feeling about this. One at a time checking isn’t going to cut it. We’ve seen a few homes ghosted and stripped like the first. That’s enough cause to bring them in.”
“In here? With non-magical humans?” he asked.
“People are disappearing. It’s a crime. We can at least pull them all in from Bethel and the surrounding areas. It’ll take most of the PD and maybe more,” I said.
“Let’s get Morrow and compile a list. She can contact the Fae and get any info they have,” I said.
“They said they’d handle it. They won’t help us.” Mason shook his head.
“They handled it all right. They removed them and every bit of evidence. It’s not just the kids that went poof. It’s the parents too. The siblings. This is insane,” I said.
“The Fae would know you’d blame them. This is so obvious. I’d expect them to swap all of the kids back and manipulate memories, but for them to vanish…” Mason trailed off.
“You think the Shadowmen did this? I’d have felt their magic at the scene.” I rubbed my forehead. “We get the PD and volunteers in the villages to go door-to-door with a list. They bring in all of the people they can track down. We can interview and see who we have and who is missing. Only with all of the data, can we start to sort out a pattern.”
“There’s the FBI training.” Mason smiled. “It’s going to piss off the chief here.”
I shrugged. “They’re the ones with this many missing persons in one Alaska town. Does he want me to call in the FBI to take over? Missing persons and kidnapping are bureau jurisdiction. We just need enough probable cause that they were taken out of state. If they were taken to Canada or Russia, that’s an international incident.”
“Green will love you,” Mason said.
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “He might not even answer. He left me the weird message and never called me back. I think the Fae or someone got to him. Put him under a spell.”
Mason kissed the top of my head. “It’s okay. We can go to others in the FBI. They won’t be able to deny the issue is bigger than the Bethel PD. But let’s try to avoid the FBI if we can. It’ll only mess up the magical freedoms.”
“Agreed, that’s our threat to get the Bethel PD to play nice. I just don’t get who could be this powerful. It wasn’t Shadow magic, the Fae—maybe if they had all the hills pull back their own changelings, but you’re saying that’d be too obvious.” I chewed in my lower lip.
“That is tricky. Very few things are as powerful,” he said.
“But something is. Let’s get the list and the manpower organized,” I said.
Two days later, we worked our part of the list. No one was home. None of the adults were at work nor the kids in school.
We joined the group back at the police station.
“We’ve got some,” Morrow sounded hopeful.
“Some? How many? Because we struck out,” I admitted.
“Three families, four kids since one clearly has a set of twins.” Morrow nodded.
“Three out of over a hundred families?” Mason asked.
“It’s what we got. The Fae are denying any knowledge. They blame the Shadowmen.” Morrow looked nervously at me.
�
��It’s not Shadow magic,” I said.
She nodded. “I’m just stuck in the middle here. The Fae are mad at me for working with you. The humans are confused.”
I smiled. “I understand. I used to think I was half human, and that was my safe space. The Fae refused any contact with me, so you’re ahead of the game.”
“I feel like I’m being used,” she said.
“You are. They won’t accept you. Even if they aren’t the bad guys here, don’t risk your life or sanity for them,” Mason advised.
Morrow nodded. “The three families are in the large interrogation room.”
Mason and I headed to the other side of the two-way mirror. The kids were playing quite orderly. Clearly a set of identical twin boys belonged to one family, a very blond couple.
The kids were all dark haired, had dark eyes, and pale skin. The other two families had a girl each, they weren’t identical, but they could easily be fraternal twins. Long, pin straight thin hair that was ink black and big eyes.
“They know they’re in protective custody, but they aren’t sure why. They weren’t combative at all. No sign of magic,” Morrow briefed us.
I nodded. “Okay. Those kids definitely don’t belong to those parents unless there is some genetic quirk at work.”
“Agree, we can run the DNA,” Mason suggested.
“Then they all bail.” Morrow shook her head.
I looked carefully at each kid. Their body types. Their ages seem to be about the same. “The kids are what I’m worried about. They could all be siblings. They’re related to each other.”
Just then, all four children turned to face the mirror.
They stood up from whatever they were doing and walked over to the mirror. They stared right at me with these quiet, angry eyes.
Then all of a sudden, their eyes flashed a set of blue glowing eye. Those kids were far from normal, and they knew it.
“Did you see that?” I asked Mason.
“See what?” He looked up from his phone.
“Their eyes glowed blue. Something is very wrong.”
We’d watched them most of the afternoon, and they didn’t show their glowing eyes again. In addition to human protections, we had a shaman and magical protections cast around the group.
“Are the adults Fae?” I asked Morrow.
She shook her head. “Clueless humans as far as I can tell.”
“We need someone watching them all night,” Mason said.
I nodded.
“What?” Mason asked.
“I need to do something, but I’m not sure what.” I wove some magic around them—that they would be safe and no Fae or anyone could take them from our custody.
The Shadow magic was strong, and it consumed me for a second. I dialed it back to what I needed, but my stomach cramped, and I wanted to puke.
“Are you okay?” Morrow asked.
I nodded. “Just this Shadow side, when I use that magic it wants to consume me.”
“Let’s get you home. Dinner and no more shadow magic.” Mason put his hand on my back.
My stomach seemed to ease a bit, but I still felt the urge to blow things up or just let off some magical steam. The good thing was I controlled it. With a little time, I could manage this. The world just needed to give me a break.
At Mason’s place, he put dinner in the oven and we went over what little evidence we had. I flexed my fingers to try and relieve the weird pressure.
“Is there anything you want to try to alleviate that?” Mason asked.
I frowned. “I think we need to give the case a little more attention first.”
He laughed. “I meant magically. Conjure another thunderbird or blow up a Fae hill.”
“I know you’re joking, but it might make me feel better. But I’m not going to hurt people I don’t have to.” I had to hold onto my human ethics even if I wasn’t a tiny bit human at all.
“You don’t have to hurt people to blow off magic safely,” he said.
I considered my options and focused on Green. Pulling him here, I snapped my fingers and opened my eyes.
“Dot, seriously.” Mason shook his head.
“Dot? Mason?” Green looked around. “Where am I?”
“A Native village outside of Bethel. Don’t worry, you won’t remember a thing. Do you remember leaving me a message about my father?” I asked.
Green adjusted his tie. “I was told to pass on a warning like it was my info. I’m assuming that the Shadowmen are some crime syndicate… They said there were code words for things.”
“They being?” I asked.
Green shook his head. “It was a warning for your good. That’s all. I don’t know who they were exactly, but they said you were getting close to bad stuff. I wanted to help. I saw you going off the rails.”
“Have you been contacted by them since?” Mason asked.
Green shook his head. “I hope they don’t come back.”
“What did they look like?” I pressed.
Green shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Memory meddling already in place,” Mason concluded.
I sighed. “Is Zelda okay?”
“I don’t know why she’s not okay. She does her job and doesn’t make a mess like you two.” Green looked around. “Do you want me to terminate you?”
“I’d probably have to give you more cause. I know I’m getting a big pass because my partner died.”
Mason pulled the food from the oven. “Time to eat.”
“I understand it was traumatic to lose your partner, but if you don’t come back, you will be let go. I don’t think you want to come back,” Green said.
I didn’t, but I wanted to solve crimes and help people.
“I’ll let you know.” I slapped a memory change on him and snapped my fingers to send him home.
Mason put a kettle on the stove. “Feel better?”
I washed my hands for dinner. “Not really. No answers. No fight.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe Zel can help?” he suggested.
I waved at the kettle to get it to boil faster, and it exploded.
Mason flinched. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. You?” I asked.
Mason sighed. “I’m okay. What was that?”
“That was blowing off steam. I couldn’t make it boil faster.”
Mason ran his hands through is hair. “Seriously? You can’t bend the laws of nature in the blink of an eye.”
“I brought Green here that fast,” I argued.
He smiled. “Yes, but you were focused on that. You know it wouldn’t be easy. Change the speed at which water boils—you acted like that was nothing. It’s not nothing to change the laws of nature. Even if you can, it doesn’t mean should or treat it like a joke.”
“It’s not a joke. I wanted the tea done.” I rubbed my neck.
“Okay, let’s try a cold beer instead of tea. Have dinner, and then you can go thin the herd of caribou passing by to feed us for the winter.” He grabbed the beers from the fridge.
“It’s okay?” I asked.
“Magical hunting is hard to enforce,” he teased.
I sat at the table. “That would help the village?”
“Very much. We can preserve and put up a lot of meat for the winter. But no hunting restricted to Natives,” Mason teased.
“I’m sorry, I need to figure out how to control this before I hurt someone,” I said.
Mason took my hand. “You’re trying.”
Chapter Eleven
Since Mason had made dinner, I slipped out of bed early and made breakfast. I heard what sounded like snoring and investigated. It wasn’t the TV or radio. I checked the doors to make sure it wasn’t an odd draft. Then I spotted the slim man in a makeshift bed behind the sofa.
Shaman Joe?
I tapped his with my shoe. “Wake up,” I said.
Joe sat up and looked at me. “Shadow magic.”
“Yeah. You were right there. Why are you here?” I asked.
He stood and rolled up his blanket. “Mason asked me to come and help you. Now that you know what you are, you must learn to control it and trust it.”
“You can help with that? You drop advice bombs and walk away. I’m not sure I can trust you to stick around and actually help.” I went to the kitchen and used my powers to clean up the kettle incident.
“I can help to a point. You’re much more powerful, so you must agree to try what I’m suggesting and give in to it while keeping control and not getting frustrated. I assume that kettle was a victim of your frustration?” he asked.
I nodded. “I want to help these kids, and I feel like some paranormal something is tossing one false lead or distraction after another at me. The longer it takes, the more kids will probably die. I’m just learning the basics of who I am.”
Joe brewed the coffee as I scrambled some eggs.
“You are the same as you were. Simply put, your powers were awakened. That access is the change. You are no more beholden to the Shadowmen than you are controlled by them. You are free to do as you please.” Joe added toast to the toaster.
“And free to figure out these powers without their help. They just wanted me to fall in line. To produce more shadowbabies or something.” I started frying up bacon.
“I agree, the more powerful a creature is, the more selfish. There are fewer consequences for them. You are only half Shadowmen, but you managed to knock out some, Mason told me that much.” Joe pitched in and flipped the eggs.
“Thanks, I did knock them out. I knocked Mason out first, like a human. He got mad. I was trying to protect him.”
Joe put a hand on my shoulder, and I felt calmer.
“I understand. You didn’t know how much power it would take to neutralize the Shadowmen or what they might do to you in retaliation.”
I nodded. “I couldn’t let Mason be a casualty of my weird birth.”
“You love him. I saw that connection between you before. You can deny it all you like, but you needed to find your answers before you could be the partner he needed and deserved. So you didn’t allow yourself to see it,” Joe explained.
I turned the bacon and chuckled. “Why does everyone seem to understand me better than I do?”
