by Neill, Chloe
“On it,” Jeff said. Normally, I’d have heard the clack of keys in the background. But since he’d upgraded his tech, his work was silent. I didn’t realize I missed the sound—a comforting reminder that Jeff was there and his magic fingers were engaged—until it was gone.
It didn’t take him long to cringe. “This is going to take a while,” he said, pointing at the screen, where he’d opened a search engine but had gotten no results.
“First run on the carnival isn’t pulling up anything other than the articles we’ve already seen. Not a Better Business Bureau complaint, a business filing, a single online review.”
Ethan frowned. “That’s unusual.”
“Try impossible,” Jeff said. “For a business that’s been around this long, to this many states, there should at least be a review, a social media mention, if not the hard copy articles we’ve already found. But there’s a complete blackout.”
“So they’re careful about what goes online,” I said.
“Very,” Jeff said.
“Okay,” I said. “Let us know if you find anything.” I glanced at Ethan. “We can make this trip just informational. Spy on the carnival for a bit?”
Ethan frowned at the screen again, propping his hands on his hips, mulling his options.
“No,” he finally decided. “There’s too much at stake to risk an opportunity like this.” He looked at me. “I can’t leave the estate, but you can. Go to the carnival. And quickly. Find an employee to interview, peacefully, quietly, and with no collateral damage. We need information before they move on, or we’re going to be out of luck. Especially if they’re so careful about their electronic trail. If Aline and Niera were their quarry, they may already be preparing to move.”
He looked up at the screen, where Paige and the librarian still watched our discussion after their own break for snacks. “Try to identify friends, colleagues, of the missing sups. See what they remember about the carnival. Perhaps their missing friends mentioned it, made an acquaintance there, anything. Perhaps we’ll get lucky. I’ll stay here and get Luc up to speed.”
He didn’t sound thrilled about the possibility, but leaving the Brecks’ house wasn’t an option for him right now.
“Catcher, Mallory, Jeff, could you please accompany Merit on a field trip?”
“I think we can find the time,” Catcher said.
Jeff and Catcher began discussing transportation options while Mallory slipped an arm through mine. “Is this seriously what you guys do all night? Make like Veronica Mars and solve crimes?”
I frowned, nodded. “As it turns out, yeah.”
“It’s fun.” She pulled her hair back and into a ponytail, using an elastic she’d kept around her wrist. “Although I feel like we need embroidered jackets. Like the satin ones? We could be just like the Pink Ladies.”
“I’ll talk to the boss,” I said. My voice was sarcastic, my but heart thudded with excitement I’d never admit aloud. I’d always wanted to be a Pink Lady.
Chapter Thirteen
BARNSTORMING
Catcher drove his sedan. Jeff sat shotgun, while Mallory and I shared the back.
The night was dark, the country roads essentially empty and thankfully clear of elven armies. Still, every time we neared a streetlight or floodlight, my stomach clenched with fear that we’d see the outline of a battalion of soldiers cresting a hill, bows in hand and arrows ready to strike.
Catcher had dialed in Luc and Ethan. “Ladies and gents,” came Luc’s voice through the speakers. “Once again, you’re enjoying an adventure without me.”
“We don’t time them that way.” Ethan’s voice followed Luc’s. “And I’m not there, either.”
“As it should be,” Luc said. “At least you had sense enough not to attempt to lead this particular away team.”
“Star Trek,” I murmured, picking out one of Luc’s ubiquitous movie and television references.
“I have trained you well, Padawan.”
“You’re mixing your Wars and Treks,” Jeff pointed out.
“They’re interchangeable,” Luc said, earning a horrified look from Jeff. “Why don’t you give us the rundown on the carnival?”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember the layout. “It’s in the corner of the shopping center parking lot. A small carnival—five or six rides, a midway.”
“Semis or trucks?” Catcher asked. “I presume that’s how they’ve moved the carnival from town to town?”
“Not that I saw.”
“They probably park the trucks off-site,” Luc said. “Keep them out of the public eye. Merit, what else?”
“There’s a low fence—a gate—around it. Like a crowd-control barrier. Otherwise it’s open. The rides are mostly along the outsides, with the games and food in the middle. The attendants were pretty well dressed. They wore full outfits—costumes.”
As we neared the shopping center, my nerves began to light, my blood running faster, anticipating the coming confrontation. When a rock bounced off the windshield, I nearly fell to the floorboard, my heart palpitating with tangible fear. Post-elven stress disorder was no laughing matter.
But when Catcher turned the car into the shopping center, the parking lot was empty.
“What the hell?” he murmured.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked.
“They’re gone,” I said, hope deflating, and barely waiting for the car to stop before I opened the door and hopped out.
Everything was gone—the rides, the ticket booth, the games. The tourists and the carnies. Only the detritus of the carnival remained. The scents of fried food and exhaust, puddles of dirty water, scabs of black tape where cords had been adhered to the asphalt.
“We couldn’t have been that far behind,” I said, turning back to the group, who’d joined me in the lot. “You can still smell it.”
“Maybe they thought their luck was running out,” Mallory said, “so they decided to pick up camp and go.”
“Or maybe they accomplished their goals and they’re moving on to the next spot,” I said, blue that we’d missed our targets. Utterly.
Catcher turned back to the car. “Let’s get back to the Brecks’. Maybe Ethan can get Paige and the librarian started on where it might have gone next.”
I nodded, then glanced up at the shopping center. The grocery store was closest to the carnival, and it was the only shop still open. A few people milled around inside, visible between the stems and serifs of the giant gilded letters that advised passersby of sales and specials.
I gestured toward the store. “Why don’t I check out the grocery store? I’ll ask when the carnival left, if they know where it’s going next.”
“Don’t get kidnapped this time,” Catcher said. “Ethan gets irritable when you get kidnapped.”
“That’s only one of the many reasons he gets irritable,” I pointed out. “And I’ll do my best. But I make no promises.”
Considering the crimes we were investigating, that seemed best.
• • •
It was late, but the grocery store glowed with light and welcome heat. Disco played on the store’s sound system, and the cashier nearest the door smiled when I entered.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty, and she didn’t seem to mind the late hour or the dearth of customers. She filed her nails and hummed along with the music, a headband with fuzzy cat’s ears poking from her otherwise straight jet-black hair. She looked up at me and took in the katana when I walked over. Her eyes widened.
“Nice sword,” she said in a whisper when I moved closer. “That’s a katana, right?”
“It is, yeah,” I said with a smile. I’d forgotten I’d worn it, and appreciated that she didn’t feel the urge to signal the manager.
“Cool.”
“Thanks. Question for you.” I hitched a thumb toward the window
. “The carnival that was here—when did it pack up?”
“I don’t know. Why? Were you hoping to win a goldfish?”
“Not exactly.” My prey was significantly larger, but I didn’t mention that aloud. “I don’t suppose you know where they were headed next?”
The front doors shushed open. A woman with short blond hair walked into the grocery store. She wore snug jeans and a short red cape with a hood. It barely reached her waist and was perfectly cut, the type of garment you’d see on a New York runway. A very expensive leather handbag—the kind my sister, Charlotte, might have bought in the stores on Oak Street—was tucked on her arm. She looked, I thought with a smile, like a very chic Little Red Riding Hood.
“No clue,” said the cashier, drawing my gaze again. “I’m not really into kiddie carnivals, you know?”
I took in the cat’s ears, the Rainbow Brite T-shirt. “You’ll appreciate them when you’re older. Thanks for the help.”
She shrugged and went back to her nails.
I walked toward the door but caught another glimpse of the girl who’d come in. She grabbed a red basket from a stack near the door and headed to the pharmacy aisle.
She looked familiar. I squinted, trying to remember the face and where I might have seen her. She wasn’t a shifter. Not an elf, certainly, with that haircut or fashion sense. And she was down a bow and sense of entitlement.
I walked quietly closer, pretending to be interested in hot cocoa mix, dandruff shampoo, frozen chicken dinners. She pulled supplies—bandages, rubbing alcohol, gauze—into her basket.
A clerk stepped in front of me, blocking my view. He was another teenager, this time with dark skin, short braids, and suspicious eyes. “Can I help you?”
I grabbed a box of soda crackers from the Willis Tower–shaped display in front of me. “Are these, you know, on special?”
He looked at me for a moment, gestured toward the display. “The sign says they’re two ninety-nine.”
“Awesome!” I perkily said. I turned to a nearby shelf and pretended to be very, very interested in wasabi-flavored popcorn. Actually, I didn’t have to try that hard. It was wasabi-flavored popcorn. I was already intrigued.
I waited a beat. Apparently satisfied that I’d only been nosy, and not pre-felonious, he disappeared. When the sound of his footsteps dissipated, I peeked around the end of the aisle again. The girl inspected the medical tape, and when a clerk approached and offered help, she waved him off with a smile, dimples at the sides of her cheeks. She turned just slightly, and I caught sight of her singularly gray eyes.
That’s when I knew where I’d seen her.
Her hair was different now, and her clothes. She was no longer a brunette, no longer wearing her uniform, no longer enticing customers into the Tunnel of Horrors. But there was no denying the smile.
She was the carnival barker.
Like a deer scenting a predator, her head popped up, her eyes scanning for trouble.
She caught my gaze, and there was a hint of a smile on her face. But she turned back to the tape, fingers skimming the boxes.
I walked around the corner, checked out a rack of plastic sunglasses while Lionel Richie crooned on the store’s music system.
The girl moved forward, disappearing into an aisle that, according to the sign hanging above it, held chips and soda.
Ever so quietly, I shifted closer, and when I reached the aisle, looked around the corner.
She was gone, but the thick rubber flaps that covered the entrance to the back room were swinging, and her basket was on the floor, the contents strewn about. She’d definitely made me.
And that wasn’t my only problem.
In her wake were scents much too familiar—sulfur and smoke. Dominic Tate, Seth Tate’s vanquished worse half, had smelled the same. But Dominic was dead; I’d seen Seth destroy him. Seth had left Chicago, and his scent had been different—lemon and sugar, like freshly baked cookies.
We hadn’t known any other Messengers, as the dueling angels had once been called. And yet, here I was, standing in a grocery store that smelled like the devil’s front porch.
I muttered a curse and took off, following her through the flaps and into a cold room that stank of overripe produce and cardboard. The room was large, with a polished concrete floor and office built into a corner. I ran to the office. A man in a collared short-sleeved shirt sat at the desk, munching on a sandwich. Roast beef, by the smell of it.
“You can’t be back here!” he yelled, over a mouthful of beef and bread.
“Just passing through,” I promised, then hurried down a narrow hallway to a storage area. This one held ten-foot-high stacks of boxes and wooden pallets. There was a back door across the room, but no one in sight.
“Can we just talk?” I asked, peering around a mountain of soda cartons, and caught a glance of blond hair hurrying away when a skyscraper of pallets rocked like a children’s block-stacking game. As always, gravity won.
I jumped aside and missed the falling tower, tripped over a box behind me, and ended up on my ass one way or the other.
Footsteps echoed through the room.
“What the hell is going on here?” asked the meaty voice behind me. The back door clanged shut as the woman slipped through it.
I rose, ignoring the manager and his threats of police calls and litigation, but decided to send a little thank-you to Papa Breck in consideration for all the kindness he’d shown us.
“The Breckenridges will be happy to pay for any damages,” I said, jumping over the messy pile of pallets and vaulting toward the back door. I slammed through it only to see her dart across the drive that ran behind the shopping center to the chain-link fence that separated it from the next property. A scrubby and empty lot, by the look of it.
I ran to the fence, jumped up a few feet, and began to climb. There was nothing remotely movielike about it, or elegant. The chain link wasn’t securely attached, and it bobbed beneath my feet like I was climbing a rope ladder. I hit the top, felt skin slice as my palm caught one of the bare prongs of chain link. Ignoring the pain, I threw my body over the top and hit the ground.
Only then did I recall the fact that I could have simply jumped over the damn thing. Maybe the House library was the place for me.
The girl was already running full out across the lot, which was pockmarked with piles of dirty snow, frozen hillocks of dirt, and construction debris. Something had been planned for this space, but considering the cracked and peeling WILL BUILD TO SUIT sign that lay abandoned on the ground, it wasn’t going to be finished anytime soon.
She ran with the long-legged grace of a marathon runner. I had vampiric speed and enhanced bone and muscle, but she was the running type, with a long stride and smooth motion that made it look completely effortless.
She reached a large concrete pad, hopped onto it, glanced back, searching the darkness to see if I was still behind her.
Because I was busy watching her, and not the ground in front of me, I didn’t see the ditch until it was too late.
I fell down into the three-foot-deep depression, hit my knees on the ice and inches of muddy water that had accumulated in the bottom. The fall jarred me, and it took a moment to get my brain unscrambled. I got back onto my feet and toed up a knobby dirt incline until I was at ground level again.
I spat out a curse that would have raised even my liberal grandfather’s hackles, and put my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
She was gone.
• • •
“She couldn’t have just disappeared,” Catcher said.
We stood on the edge of the lot, surveying the darkness, eyes straining for any sign or scent of the girl who’d so handily eluded me.
“She disappeared,” I assured him, trying my best to squeegee mud from my leather pants. “I hit a ditch, wasn’t down for more than a few seconds. When
I looked up, she was gone. And she’s fast. I never got closer than ten feet, and that was in the building. Out here, she was like a rocket.”
“Supernatural?” Jeff asked.
“Actually, yeah.” I glanced at Mallory, worried how she’d react. “She smelled like smoke and sulfur.”
Jeff frowned. “Smoke and sulfur?”
He might not have understood the connection, but Mallory clearly did. She paled. “Like Dominic Tate. It’s what the fallen smell like.”
“Oh, damn,” Jeff murmured, clearly understanding.
“Dominic’s dead,” Catcher said.
“Seth said there could be more Messengers out there.”
“But not the fallen ones,” Mallory said. “They were magically bound together into the Maleficium. Seth and Dominic only separated because Claudia kept Dominic safe all those years ago.”
Or so we thought. This, I feared, was not going to help Mallory’s recovery—having the Messengers and Maleficium thrown back in her face again.
“I’m sorry,” Mallory said. “If this has anything to do with me, I’m sorry.”
Catcher rubbed her back. “Let’s not worry about what she is right now. Let’s think about who she is and how we can find her.” He looked at me. “Did she have any other physical characteristics we can search on? Piercings? Tattoos?”
“Nothing. Clothes looked expensive. Hair was blond, short. She had darker hair on the midway. It must have been a wig.” I glanced at Catcher and Mallory. “Can you do some kind of searching spell and find her?”
“Locating spells are actually pretty complicated,” Mallory said. “They don’t work like bloodhounds. Otherwise we’d just use that box of stuff from the storage locker to find Aline. We’d have to have something substantial—something marked by her magical signature.”
If only she’d whipped that expensive purse at me.
“Maybe the grocery store had security cameras,” I suggested, looking at Jeff. “Could you do something with facial recognition?”
