Taken

by Jennifer Blackstream

  The artist’s attention bounced from Sarah, to Andy, to me, then Sarah again. Pink tinged her face, and she gave Sarah a shy smile, peeking out from under asymmetrically cut bangs that hid the upper-right corner of her face. “Thanks, Mrs. H. The hair was a pain in the ass, but only because it took forever, not because it’s hard.”

  “Well, it’s amazing.” Sarah beamed at various students.

  With a natural social presence that would do a society matron proud, she flitted about the room, talking to each of the artists and offering glowing feedback on their creations. A handful of the youths shyly accepted a hug, and one or two bounced with anticipation as they waited their turn. My heart swelled at the emotion Sarah brought to the entire room, and the kids soaked it up, their faces softening when Sarah spoke to them.

  I leaned closer to Andy. “She’s good.”

  Andy studied the kids as they all watched Sarah weave between the art tables. “She’s putting them at ease.”

  Fifteen kids stood in different areas set off from one another as work stations. Several were using easels, or makeshift easels, to paint, while others wrestled with clay. One girl, a short redhead with bright blue eyes and a smattering of freckles over her nose, paused with one hand full of wires, and the other holding her sculpture to keep it from unraveling. A few of the kids remained unmoving, staring at me and Andy as we waited by the door for Sarah to finish her circuit.

  “All right, these people would like to talk to you,” Sarah said. “If you took part in last year’s art show, could you please raise your hand?”

  The artists shared uneasy glances, but, after a brief pause, three or four raised their hands. Andy headed toward the first kid on the right, a tall blond boy spreading blue and green paint over a canvas. The kid watched Andy approach, and his fingers tightened around the paintbrush.

  “Hi. I’m Agent Bradford, and this is Shade. What’s your—”

  “You’re here about Matthew.” The boy put down the paintbrush and crossed his arms, smearing green and blue over his triceps where his fingers touched them.

  I blinked and glanced at Sarah. She hadn’t mentioned that she’d told the kids about Matthew’s death. The director stiffened and straightened from where she’d been leaning against a table.

  “Jeremy, how did you know about Matthew?” Sarah asked.

  Jeremy shrugged one shoulder. “Everyone knows. Who do you think found his body?” A scowl tightened his mouth as he glanced at Andy. “It sure as hell wasn’t a cop.”

  Sarah pressed her fingers together and raised them to her mouth. After a second, she took a deep breath. “Yes, Matthew passed away. They found him this morning, and it seems like he ran into some bad people.” She paused for a moment, taking the time to look at each teenager in turn. “If anyone has questions, or needs to talk to someone, come see me.”

  “We don’t need to talk,” a girl said. She gave us a sullen stare from under a lock of bright blue hair. “He’s not the first homeless kid to turn up dead. Won’t be the last. What’s the point in standing around talking about it?”

  “Amy—” Sarah started.

  Amy snorted and returned to her painting, adding another bright red stripe to the flank of a dragon rearing up over a woman in full battle armor.

  Andy leaned down. “And her painting? Big monster about to eat some warrior princess? What’s that tell you?”

  “Completely normal,” I said under my breath. “Fantastic beasts are a common motif in this age group. There’s a clear good vs. evil theme—that’s a promising sign.”

  He raised his voice to speak to the room at large. “Does anyone know where Matthew has been for the last year?”

  “Someone cut him up,” Jeremy said. He said it casually enough, but he pressed his elbows to his sides, hunching to make himself smaller. Whoever had found Matthew had obviously not spared the details.

  “Or he cut himself,” Amy added.

  “What makes you think Matthew might have cut himself?” Andy asked.

  Jeremy shrugged and turned to his painting. Amy held my gaze for a long, defiant moment, then refocused on her dragon. Movement out of my peripheral vision made me turn my head to see Sarah gesturing for Andy and me to come closer.

  “Matthew used to cut himself when he was painting,” she explained quietly. “He said the pain helped him create, helped…” Her brow furrowed. “Said it helped him ‘let it out.’ But he stopped doing that when he took his meds.”

  “The cuts were all over his body, even on his back,” Andy pointed out. “Even if he cut himself, someone had to have helped him.”

  “And I doubt he stabbed himself in the gut,” I added. “Did he ever demonstrate suicidal tendencies?”

  Sarah tightened her fists and leaned into Andy’s space. “Never. Even during his depressive episodes, he never expressed a desire to die. If he was manic, he shut himself away with his work and barely ate or slept at all. Then when the depression hit, he’d give up, refuse to touch his art. But like I said, his meds were working.”

  “But we don’t know if he was on his meds,” Andy said. “Dr. Dannon is still waiting on the blood work.”

  The skin between my shoulder blades itched, and I turned to find the girl working with the wires staring at me. I eased away from Andy and Sarah and walked over to her.

  “Hi, what’s your name?”

  “Pam.”

  “Hi, Pam. I noticed you seemed to be thinking hard about something just now. Do you know what happened to Matthew?” I asked.

  Pam pursed her lips. “No. But I think Mr. Keegan had something to do with it.”

  I tried not to let the excitement show on my face. Keegan. The fey. “Why?”

  She tapped a wire against the desk, filling the air with a faint metallic twanging sound. “When the cops were here last year, they asked a lot of questions about Mr. Keegan. What was he like, what did he talk about…could I describe him.”

  Realization dawned. “You were the one who said the other kids were describing him wrong. You said he wasn’t old, that he was young with silver hair.”

  She tapped a fingernail against her sculpture, her brows dipping to form a sharp V. “I don’t get it. Everyone kept saying he was old, but he wasn’t a day over twenty. And his ears were pointed.” She scowled. “Everyone called me crazy, but I know what I saw.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to go tell Andy that Pam could see the Otherworld, but then something gave me pause. If Keegan was fey, then he would possess strong personal glamour. Most humans couldn’t see the Otherworld, and they would overlook his pointed ears and youthful complexion, but it was still risky. Most of the fey I knew who walked among humans would use their personal glamour as extra assurance, to hide what they were from those humans who could see them. If Keegan was sidhe, his glamour would be even stronger. Even a fellow sidhe would have a hard time seeing through it.

  Peasblossom poked her face out from behind my hair. Before I could warn her to stay hidden, she glared at the girl’s statue, then at me. “Go stand somewhere else already. That thing is giving me a headache.”

  I froze, chastisement forgotten and stared at Pam’s artwork. The statue. “Were you working with metal last year too?” I asked her.

  Pam’s mouth was open, her focus locked on Peasblossom. “What is that?” she whispered.

  “I’m not a that, I’m a who.” Peasblossom sniffed.

  “Who are you?” Pam whispered.

  “Peasblossom. And I don’t like metal.” She squinted at the statue. “But that is good,” she admitted. “You even captured his arrogance.”

  I blinked, then followed Peasblossom’s gaze to the statue. My lips parted and I let out a short laugh. From where I’d stood before near the doorway, it had looked like a hunk of wires. But standing in front of it, I saw a bust of a man. A man with pointed ears.

  Keegan.

  “Are you going to find Lindsay and Grayson?” Pam asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer, then realiz
ed she was talking to Peasblossom.

  “Yes.” Peasblossom glanced at the sculpture. “You should work with clay. If you choose the right model, it wouldn’t take much.” She marched onto my shoulder and struck a dramatic pose.

  Pam laughed.

  “I don’t pose for metal,” Peasblossom warned her.

  “Get out of sight before someone else sees you,” I whispered, urging her to scoot under my hair.

  Peasblossom smacked my finger, but resumed her hiding place.

  “Keegan isn’t human, is he?” Pam asked, her attention still on my neck where Peasblossom had been. She abandoned the wires on the table and retreated a few steps away, staring at my neck with hopeful expectation. Waiting for Peasblossom.

  There was no point lying now. “No, I don’t think he was. Do you have any idea what he wanted with Matthew? Where he might have taken him?”

  “No. Mr. Keegan stayed away from me, so I never asked about him.” She paused, then pointed to her sculpture. “You think it was because I work with metal?”

  “Fey don’t like iron,” I said. “Though they’re arrogant enough that if he’d seen this, he’d probably have offered to supply you with silver or copper wiring instead.”

  “Too bad Matthew, Grayson, and Lindsay didn’t work with metal.” Pam bit her lip. “Do you think you’ll find them? Grayson and Lindsay? Find them in time, I mean?”

  “I’ll do my best.” I unfastened my coat so I could get at my pouch, then dug around for a business card. When I freed my fingers from the knot of twisty ties, I gave the card to Pam. “Take my card. If you see anything strange, or think of anything that might help us find the others, call me. Mrs. Hatchet will let you use the phone, right?”

  “Yeah. And I will.”

  “Thanks.” I paused and surveyed the room. Most of the kids had returned to their artwork, and the few who hadn’t, were watching Andy and the blond boy. “Say goodbye, Peasblossom,” I whispered.

  Peasblossom lifted a lock of my hair and waved at Pam. “Bye!”

  Pam giggled and tucked my card into the pocket of her jeans. I gave her a little wave, then returned to where Andy was rejoining Sarah.

  “Mrs. Hatchet—” Andy started.

  “Sarah, please,” Sarah said.

  “Sarah says there was another kid who took part in the auction last year that’s not here this year. He left after the art show.”

  “His name is Simon,” Sarah said. “He was incredibly talented, could mimic any of the masters as though it were nothing. His paintings sold very, very well.”

  “Why did he leave?” I asked.

  Sarah hesitated. “Simon was a little… Well, he could be a bit…”

  “He was a self-centered asshole,” Jeremy snapped. “Treated everyone else like shit and thought he was God’s gift to art.”

  “Well…yes,” Sarah admitted.

  “Did Mr. Keegan show interest in him?” Andy asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Pissed Simon off, too.” Jeremy grinned. “Keegan complimented a lot of our work, but all he said to Simon was ‘nice technique.’” He barked out a laugh that spread to the rest of the teenagers in a shared joke.

  “Is that bad?” Andy asked.

  “It’s the worst thing you can say to a real artist,” Jeremy scoffed. “Art is about passion and feeling, how your work affects people. Better someone hates your work than says nothing but ‘nice technique.’”

  “Anyone can learn to paint,” Amy added. “Any idiot can paint by number, or practice until they can make a lump of clay resemble some naked guy’s junk. But it takes real talent to put emotion into something so people who see it can feel what you want them to feel. That’s something you can’t teach, because you can’t explain it. You either have it or you don’t.” She smirked. “Simon doesn’t. And that’s why he was a pathetic loser.”

  “He was not a loser.” To us, Sarah added, “Though I’ll admit he could be a tad unpleasant.”

  “Like a hammer to the kneecap is unpleasant,” Jeremy muttered.

  “Where can we find Simon?” Andy asked.

  Sarah bit her lip. “I haven’t seen him since last year’s auction.” She perked up. “Wait, now that I think about it, a woman who liked his work last year asked if he’d consider letting her commission some work. She owns a diner a few blocks away.”

  “Simon told her to suck his—”

  “Jeremy!” Sarah rubbed the base of her throat. “Simon was less than kind to her when she first suggested it. However, if he wanted to leave here enough, he may have changed his tune.”

  “We’ll check into it.” Andy raised his notebook, pen held at the ready.

  “Her name is Shannon Myers,” Sarah told him. “And she owns Shannon’s Diner.”

  “Such a creative name,” Amy sniped.

  “Amy, please be nice,” Sarah begged.

  Amy shrugged and elongated one of the dragon’s impressive fangs with a few strokes of her brush. “Whatever. If you find Simon, tell him to quit hounding me. He might listen to you.”

  “Hounding you?” Andy straightened, his pen and notebook sagging. “In what way?”

  “He hangs out a few blocks from here and jumps me when I’m on my way here to paint.”

  Concern pinched Sarah’s features, and she stepped closer to the teenager. “What do you mean he jumps you?”

  Amy didn’t take her attention off her dragon. “Relax, Mrs. H., it’s not like that. He asks me questions about Keegan. Is he around, have I seen him.” She added a shine to a section of her dragon’s scales. “He still can’t get over the fact Keegan never bothered with him. Pathetic.”

  Andy gestured to the room’s other occupants with his pen. “Has he talked to anyone else?”

  At least three kids raised their hands.

  “Same questions?” I asked.

  They nodded.

  Andy and I shared a look. We needed to find Simon.

  We said our thank-yous and goodbyes to Sarah, left her our cards, and returned to the car.

  “Are we going somewhere where I can participate in the conversation?” Echo asked, her tone clipped. “Or am I to remain in your pocket like a store receipt you’ve been meaning to throw away?”

  “I’m sorry you feel neglected,” I muttered. “I was so busy trying to find kidnapped children, it completely slipped my mind to find a way to include a ghost in the conversation.”

  “No need to be snippy,” she grumbled. “I’m only pointing out that I left the oracle because you promised to be more interesting.”

  Andy started the car, and I pulled at the pocket of my trench coat so I could peek inside at the ceramic skull. “You don’t find the search for missing children interesting enough?”

  “I think you’re being dramatic. The boy probably didn’t appreciate what he had, and was murdered by humans after leaving his fey host. History is full of humans not smart enough to appreciate the privilege of living with the fey, who died before they saw the error of their ways.”

  I studied the skull. It was hard to judge her attitude without moving facial features, but there was something about her tone. Like she wanted to believe what she was saying, but…didn’t.

  “Or,” I said, “maybe they led those children away with pretty words, and now the kids are in over their heads. Maybe Matthew realized the truth of his situation and wanted to escape.”

  “He made a choice,” Echo said.

  The words lacked confidence this time, and the green flames in her eye sockets dimmed until, even in the darkness of my pocket, I couldn’t see them.

  I abandoned the conversation, but made a mental note to have a longer chat with Echo in private. I had her oath she wouldn’t leave the skull, and Peasblossom would have sensed if she were evil. Still, she obviously had strong emotion on the subject of being Taken. It might behoove me to find out more sooner rather than later.

  The GPS interrupted my train of thought with an electronic “You have arrived.” I looked up
as Andy parked on the street near a small restaurant with a sign proclaiming it Shannon’s Diner. As soon as we walked in, it was clear whatever attitude Simon had held when Shannon first made her offer, he’d reconsidered. Paintings covered the walls, each one a copy of a master. Van Gogh’s Starry Night; one of Monet’s Water Lilies. It was like stepping into an art gallery. If the art gallery smelled like cheap coffee and fried food and had walls painted that in-between color that inspired arguments of salmon vs. pink.

  “Hi, I’ll be with you in a moment,” a young girl in a server’s uniform said, passing by us on her way to a booth.

  “We’re here to speak with Shannon, if she’s available?” Andy said.

  She balanced a tray of empty soda glasses on her shoulder as she snagged a stack of dirty dishes off a vacated table. “I’ll get her.”

  “I’ll bet they have honey here,” Peasblossom whispered.

  “Not now,” I said.

  The sulking pixie slumped against my neck, but I didn’t have time to negotiate. The swinging doors that had swallowed the waitress swung open, and a woman stepped into the dining room. Streaks of grey swirled through her black hair, and laugh lines spread out from her eyes and mouth. Flour dusted her black dress pants, and she had a coffee stain on her pale green blouse. She greeted us with a warm smile and held out her hand.

  “Hello, I’m Shannon. Katie said you wanted to speak with me?”

  “Yes, we were wondering if you’ve seen this boy?” Andy asked.

  I lifted the pamphlet from Constellation House with Simon’s image on it, and she tapped the picture. “Simon, yes, I know him.” She gestured at the walls. “He sells me art.”

  “Has he sold you anything recently?” I asked.

  “He’s supposed to deliver a new piece today. You’re welcome to wait?”

  I looked at Andy, and he nodded. “Thank you, we will.”

  Shannon smiled. “Lovely. Sit wherever you like, and I’ll have Katie take your order. Take these menus.” She took a few battered cardboard menus out of a wooden slot fixed to the wall, smiling as she offered them to us. “No pressure to order.”