by Voss Foster
I nodded and had to look away from that particular display of emotion. Luckily, I had a notepad I could pretend to write in. "How old is Selal?"
"Seventeen."
Swift wasn't jumping in, so I guess it was entirely down to me and my rapport. Go me. "Does he still have seals for his magic?"
She nodded. "Not many. He was… He is still a little impulsive, so his control isn't perfect. It's supposed to be something we discuss this year, finishing up his training so he won't have to stay sealed anymore."
The EMTs showed up just then, carrying a stretcher. One of them, at least, was a preet. A sorceress, if the pallid haze of death clinging to her was anything to go on. They never looked well, but they looked as close to human as any preet. Just a human who could drop dead any second.
Finally, Swift broke his apparent vow of silence. "You should go in the ambulance, Chetra. Be with your son. We can contact you for follow-up questions once things are settled."
She nodded to him, but instead of rushing straight for Selal, she turned to me. "Do you think someone did this to my son?"
I absolutely did. I was positive this was connected, and that the other attacks were just that: attacks. We weren't dealing with a virus or a bacteria. This wasn't some happenstance. It wasn't remote transport, but someone was getting in and out of these houses undetected, then either kidnapping or unsealing these elemental kids. And if there'd been any doubt this wasn't a human, the fact Chetra hadn't seen anything pretty much confirmed it. "We'll let you know once we can really make a claim on that. Right now, what's important is being with your son. He needs you, and you need to be over there with him."
She nodded and finally left the room as the paramedics carried Selal, still unconscious, toward the front door.
Swift turned to me. "So what was your extra-long water trip about? I doubt her kitchen is all that complicated."
"Phone call. Three guesses who. Hint: he can bite me."
"About this whole situation?"
I nodded, suppressing one very unprofessional eye roll. "This is officially a case of interest for him and the bureau. Don't you feel lucky?"
Swift made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. "Positively blessed. Just remember not to lie."
"I've been giving him reports for three months. Haven't lied to him yet."
Swift nodded. The sounds of movement in the hallway had disappeared, so he got up and left me in the living room to handle the matter. I was the normal one in the OPA, after all. That's what Eric Svenson had convinced himself of, at any rate. I was a terrible inside man so far, but apparently he just needed to work on me a little harder and I'd tell him all about the secret OPA orgies, and what secret password he could use to get in.
Or something else just as crazy he'd made up in his head about the awful, awful spooks who worked in the OPA.
Good thing I was getting all of that out in my head now instead of on the phone with him.
Back at the police department—Heska had stuck around, so he got us remote transport back from Colchester—Gutt paced back and forth. And when Gutt, all three-hundred some-odd muscular pounds of him, paced, it was slightly scary. If he wasn't paying attention, someone's foot was getting broken. Or maybe someone's desk if it happened to get in his way.
He stopped when we got in and tossed his arms out. "Finally. Kimmy has been trying to get hold of one of you for the past ten minutes."
"I was on the phone with Svenson."
"And I heard nothing." Swift pulled out his phone and checked it over. "That's the second time I've been unavailable. Bancroft got a hold of me, so I don't know what the hell's going on." He sighed and pocketed it again. "What does Kimmy want?"
"She's streaming herself in. Apparently it's important." He gestured to Chief Ballinger's office. "In there."
Swift nodded and went in. I followed, and Gutt took up the rear, closing the door behind him. Chief Ballinger stood against the far wall, clutching a steaming Styrofoam cup in both hands. "There's a young goth girl scowling at me, and every time I try to minimize the window she takes my mouse away from me."
"She's not goth. She just likes the way she looks in black." Swift sat down in front of the computer screen, and Gutt and I slipped in behind him. Well, I slipped. Gutt muscled into a space that was way too small for him.
She didn't wait for any of us to say anything, and she may not have been goth, but she was definitely scowling. "Do you not want my help on this case?"
"Your help is invaluable. Hence why I'm not mentioning you taking control of the Police Chief's computer without his permission." Swift nodded serenely. "Now, what is it?"
"You know, I could tell you about all this over the phone if you would pick up." She huffed and brushed a lock of hair out of her face. "I ran a search to check for previous cases, and there's a ton of them. Just not all in Vermont. They're all over the northeastern US."
Shit. My stomach roiled all over again. Vomiting seemed like the right response, it really did, but social protocol demanded I swallow it back and just let Kimmy get on with what she was doing.
Swift leaned in, his fingers tightening around the arms of the chair. "What is a ton, and what is all over?"
"A ton is over three dozen missing elemental minors, most under the age of thirteen, and two found dead. One in Maine, sixteen, and one off the coast of New Jersey, fifteen."
"And none of these were reported to us?"
"Right. From now on we'll look at every murdered preet and assume it's part of a conspiracy. I'm sure every Podunkville fucking police department will jump on the chance to double their workload on every preet case. Won't breed any enmity at all. Won't ruin the already shitty service they're getting from their local protectors and servers. You're so fucking brilliant, Swift."
Damn. She was in a mood. Normally there was some semblance of respect when King or Swift was talking to her. Not for anyone else, of course, but she tried for them. She hadn't been quite this mean to either of them since…Jörmungandr.
Swift sighed, seemingly unfazed by her riding him. "Okay. So three dozen plus missing elementals. From now on, I do want your programs monitoring missing preets. Since they won't want to report, do the reporting for them."
"Yeah, I set that up as soon as I saw the flaw in the system." She shook her head, frown cutting deeper and harsher into her face. "And all over the northeastern US means they're spread all through New England, New York, and a couple as far down as South Carolina."
Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ. That was…damn it.
Swift started drumming his fingers against the faux leather office chair. Luckily for us, there was minimal padding left, so it made a nice, loud rhythm for all of us to share. "What kind of time frame are we looking at? How long has this been going on?"
"First kidnapping was a month ago today."
"And the time frame on the two who turned up dead?"
"Both turned up within twenty-four hours of being reported missing."
Which matched up with our two teenagers. They weren't whisked off to some far-flung location for a long time. One was assaulted in his own house, and the other within a few hours of a sleepover with his friends. But Niila had been missing for a week before her seal was broken.
"I want all that information in my inbox yesterday, and if anyone has the technical know-how to pull that off, it's you."
She tapped and clicked a few times. "Just sent it to everyone, including Chief Ballinger, since he actually picks up when I try to get in touch with him."
"Good. Did any of the younger kids turn up dead anywhere?"
More typing. "There were four. Two in some Welsh town in Pennsylvania I can't fucking pronounce, and the other two were isolated. Bath, West Virginia and Felton, Delaware. West Virginia was found fifty miles away in some remote part of the forest a week later, and Delaware was in a hunting lodge, also in the forest. But she was only a day from her kidnapping. A day and ten miles."
"Any casualties apart from those?"
"One in Delaware, evidence of some from West Virginia." She squinted up at her screen instead of the webcam. "They found some forensic evidence, but no bodies. Lightning elemental."
Ouch. That had to be a nasty way to go. Maybe? Honestly, none of these deaths were making my top ten wish list.
Swift nodded. "Anything else comes up, keep me updated."
"I always do. Your useless phone on the other hand—"
"Right. Don't open this window back up when I close it. I'm sure Chief Ballinger has plenty he needs to get done." Swift shut her off, then leaned far back in the chair, head lolling over the top of the rest. "We are looking at a lot bigger pile of shit, and a lot smellier, stickier shit than we thought."
"It sure as hell looks like that." Three dozen kidnapped kids, a handful more murders, and we had some flaw in our system that kept us from getting informed? "I'll requisition Svenson for some toilet paper next time he calls."
"You call him now. He wants updates. This is officially update worthy." Swift jumped back to his feet and into action. "Gutt, I want someone making contact with the Kingdoms on this, too."
"Make contact for what reason?"
"This could spread. If whatever group is doing this gets ballsy, they could start hitting up the elementals in the Hidden Kingdoms."
Group. Okay. "We're functioning under the assumption this is more than one person, now?"
"Unless you really have a good reason to believe that a single party could pull off…" He checked his phone, "forty-one separate kidnappings and about a dozen total homicides without tipping their hand once for a month."
"Hey, I'm not doubting it's multiple people." In fact, I was the one who suggested it. The fact that my brain was addled by my own nervous energy was completely irrelevant. "Just want to make sure we're all on the same page."
"We're on the same page. How about we turn that damn page and try to figure out what connects all of these." Swift went back to finger tapping for a few seconds, then slapped his hand down flat on the desk. "Change of plans, Dash. You deliver Svenson the report in person."
Me back in DC. Me in close proximity to the computer vault. Me, the former counterterrorism agent. Yeah, I could see where that was going. "You and King were both organized crime and all that fun stuff."
"Abigail was white collar crimes. It just intersected a lot. Besides, Kimmy has yelled at me once today, and Abigail and I aren't the ones Svenson wants to hear from right now. Which means you're going back to the Bureau, you'll fill him in, and then you and Kimmy are going to try and piece something together. If it turns to organized crime, I'll be here and I'm sure King'll be nearby."
It made sense, objectively. I just wasn't looking forward to a few extra hours locked in the computer vault with Kimmy. But…bucking authority wasn't really worth it when the order made sense, and my rebellion had no chance of working anyway. "All right. I'll call Zar."
Gutt shook his head and opened a portal. "Go on. She can get you back here."
I nodded to Gutt and stepped through. For just one split second, walking through the neons and the pastels and the organic-shaped buildings of the Hidden Kingdoms, I considered breaking the big main rule of remote transport. That little magical wave of the hand opened a portal there, and a portal in the Kingdoms a few inches away from where you were let out to send you on your merry way to the proper location. The only way it worked was if you walked straight.
I had that nice fleeting desire to veer onto the apple-green brick road to the left. But I didn't, and I wound up…in Svenson's office. Not at his door, no. Inside of it.
Suffice it to say, he was shocked to see me there when he turned his chair around. He actually sputtered and coughed. Gutt would be hearing about that one when I got face-to-face with him again. Wasn't exactly helping Svenson's opinion of the OPA, I had to imagine. I didn't particularly care about his privacy, but I imagined he did, and he was the one who kept us approved for, you know, existing.
Svenson coughed to clear his throat a couple times before finally speaking up. "Dash. I didn't hear you knock."
"I just wanted to give you our latest report on this elemental case, and I had to come back here anyway. Seemed like the right time."
He nodded, still not fully put together. "I'm glad to hear it. Is it all being handled well?"
"Everything's being handled exactly the way it should be. But I thought you'd like to know the scope of this particular case."
"It's no longer just Burlington, I take it? How far into the surrounding areas?"
"South Carolina up to Maine, sir."
His eyes widened, and he brushed his thinning hair back away from his forehead. "South Carolina to Maine? How many individual disappearances are you talking about in this case?"
"Over three dozen, sir. And about a dozen murders that seem likely to be connected as well."
He shook his head. "What are you spooks doing down there in the OPA if you can't notice three dozen missing preets? Missing children, nonetheless."
Oh good, he was going to get self-righteous. The man who thought I was the only OPA agent who could actually be trusted was about to leverage missing elemental children in his argument. "Permission to speak freely?"
He nodded.
"There's no mandate for any PD to report missing preet children to us like there is with missing human children. That particular bit of legislative change is continually stalled up." I'd been there three months and seen OPA/PD communication bills stall out three times in three different guises. And that wasn't a new state of affairs, according to King and Swift and everyone else. "Our computer picked up on it, but it takes time when it has to compile from local PD reports instead of a national database."
"What, there's nothing set up for this? If you know the problems, I'd think you'd want to tackle it."
"There's a protocol set up. It doesn’t happen immediately, like I said. And if I may continue to speak freely, the issue at hand is not when and where we found out about these missing children, it's the fact that three dozen missing children are out there somewhere, and every last one of them is a walking bomb that can be set off at any time."
He lost some color. Good. It was high-time he reacted a little bit better to the missing children instead of focusing on the OPA. "Walking bombs?"
"Elementals have their magic bound until they can learn to master it. The kidnappers are removing the seals that keep their magic in check. It blows out all their life force, and it releases a lifetime's worth of magic in one fell swoop, wherever the kid happens to be standing."
"That's what's been happening, then. This is dangerous."
Finally, he was on board. "Yes sir, it is. It's not a good situation for anyone. Those kids need to be back home." I knew that wasn't his concern, because of course not. He was focusing on the collateral damage of having almost forty of these Vermont situations spread around the country. Or around the world, if I wanted to get really pessimistic and hopeless.
Honestly, that wasn't the bad part. It was good to have someone focusing on the collateral damage with these kids, because all I could see when I thought about it was little boys and girls all locked up in cages, crying and waiting until it was their turn to explode. But I also knew Svenson wasn't focusing that way for the right reasons. That's why it bugged me.
"I need to get back to work on this case, sir. Agent Swift just thought it best to keep you apprised, considering the magnitude of this development."
Svenson nodded absentmindedly. "Yes. Of course, thank you. What is the plan for handling this?"
"I'll be working with Kimiko and Agent King to sort through the information we have and try to come up with a viable list of suspects. Swift is still in Vermont to hold down the fort up there, and Gutt is heading into the Hidden Kingdoms to tackle things from that direction. We're in motion, sir, and that's the best I can offer you right now."
"Well stay in motion. And make it fast."
We could agree on that. "Yes sir."
&
nbsp; Chapter Six
Kimmy had everything set up for me when I got into the vault. But unlike the last time she'd been saddled with me, I didn't have to face away from her. I got to sit right next to her where I could see exactly how much of a luddite she thought I was. King sat on her other side, swigging down coffee. I didn't want to know how many cups she'd already had, but I was pretty sure her edges were blurred from the vibrations. Hadn't actually expected her to be down there instead of locked in her office, but I guess this case had everyone a little frazzled.
"Svenson's up to date on what I know." I took my seat next to Kimmy, careful not to touch any of her four keyboards in case I set off the self-destruct sequence she undoubtedly had built into this place. "What is there that I don't know?"
"Absolutely shit. That's what it's amounted to so far." Kimmy had her hair tied back into a rough ponytail, the platinum streak just peeking out if I craned my neck far enough. Up on one screen was a map of the east coast, marked with way too many little red dots. Another was buzzing through something that looked suspiciously like case files. I guess it was time to try and find more missing elementals, so that was totally super fun. One was running through scans of different pages and parchments.
"What's going on here? Trying to find some kind of magic?"
"Last time we had a rash like this, they were summoning a giant world-destroying serpent." Kimiko didn't deign to look up at me as she responded. "Don't know if you remember that little bit or not."
"I do. I was the one who killed it, remember?"
Kimmy snorted. "I just want to make sure there's not some ritual that takes several dozen young elementals to pull off. Thought that seemed like smart idea."
Well, she was at least back to her normal level of hostility. "It does make sense. Good call." I sighed and looked to the fourth screen that was actually up and running at the moment. It just had the database of prisoners who escaped from the Hidden Kingdoms. The ones who still hadn't been caught in the last ten years, plus anyone new who got added to the list.
