“What!? Jesus—”
“It has nothing to do with Caitlin or Fiona. I’m almost entirely certain the culprits aren’t fae.”
Edward drew in a few slow breaths. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “You’re sure they’re not at risk?”
“I am. Aside from it being nowhere near you, all the victims have been homeless kids.”
“Homeless?” Edward asked. “That’s a fairly common early-stage victimology.”
Dante was glad to get him onto a different topic. “What do you mean?”
“Lots of serial killers get their start that way. It gives them time to develop their skills without pressure from police. If you want to get away with something, prey on those that won’t be missed or draw any attention.”
“And that’s exactly the case. For the most part, these have gone unnoticed and unreported.”
“So, how did you find out?” Edward asked.
“Unreported to mortal authorities.”
“Well, I’d suggest you start looking for bodies. It’s gruesome but can provide you with a lot of information on who you’re looking for. You can actually gain a lot of insight about a killer based on his victims, how he kills, and the like.”
Dante made a noncommittal grunt.
“You’re sure—”
“I swear to you, neither Fiona nor Caitlin are in any danger.”
There was another long pause. “It’s just—”
“Edward, if I thought there was any risk, any at all, I’d have wardens all over your place.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
“It’s fine. All things considered, I understand completely.”
“I’m not going to like this research, am I?” Edward asked.
“Probably not,” Dante said. “See what you can find about granting normal mortals the ability to use magic, and if it has anything to do with changelings. I have some theories, but your library is the most extensive I know of. This is out of my area of expertise.”
Edward let out a breath. “Okay, I’ll head home now and get on it. I’m going to find some pretty horrible things, aren’t I?”
“I’m afraid so. And I wouldn’t speak to Caitlin about it, at least not right now. She doesn’t need to know the things you’re likely to find. Really, no one does.”
“I tend to agree, but I’m not going to lie to her.”
“Just don’t mention it unless she asks. All right?”
“I’ll give you a call as soon as I find anything.”
“Thank you.”
Dante disconnected the call and put the phone away. He felt bad keeping the details of how widespread this was from Edward. The wizard had proved himself worthy of trust a hundred times over, but then, this wasn’t anything to do with trust. Dante was working with suspicions and conjecture. A fae could be responsible for all this, but it felt like a mortal; the magic was almost certainly mortal. If Edward found something in his, well, eclectic library, Dante would have some facts to share. Until then, there was no point casting any more darkness on the wizard than necessary.
Flashing lights out the window caught Dante’s attention. Two unmarked police cars and a large black SUV pulled into the empty lot out front.
He turned to leave but stopped and looked back. For the first time, he noticed that all the items appeared to have been thrown out from a central point, a circle, a couple feet in diameter that was clear of anything, including dirt. He stepped into its center. The smell of magic actually overpowered the fetid rot. Someone had practically ripped reality apart here. Slowly, Dante turned and reexamined the room. He was right, everything was sent out from this spot, like an explosion. He looked down and saw the dirt extending away from the circle made a rough spiraling shape.
“And I told you,” someone coming up the stairs said, “no one from homicide answered the call.”
“I saw the guy’s badge and ID,” Officer Willard said. “If it was fake, it was the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, that equals a great pile of puppy turds,” the other voice said. “Next time you wonder why you’re still on a beat, remember this moment.”
Dante walked to the stairway and whispered a charm. His glamour drew up around him, making him, to mortal eyes, just another piece of the background. Officer Willard and two men in cheap suits came up the stairs, walked right by him, and went into the room.
“So, where is he?” one of the real detectives, a balding man in his fifties, asked as he looked around.
“He was here five minutes ago,” Willard said.
“How many exits to this place?” the other detective, a younger guy with thick black hair, asked.
“Just the one,” Willard said.
“Well, either you’re wrong,” baldy said, “you’re hallucinating, or he grew wings and flew away.”
Dante silently descended the stairs, ducked under the crime scene tape, and exited the building. He stepped around two more oblivious cops and headed to his car.
One of the patrolman’s radios crackled, and Dante stopped.
“Any units in the vicinity of Myrtle Edwards Park, check report of 11–46, possible juvenile.”
“Oh god,” the cop said. “Glad we don’t have to respond to that.”
“No joke,” the other said. “Another freaking kid? What’s that make, fifteen just this month?”
“Nineteen.”
Dante’s stomach twisted. Nineteen just in this city. He opened the door to his rented Maserati, which, while an improvement over the SUV, still wasn’t his custom Mustang. As he closed the door, his phone rang again. He glanced at the caller ID and answered.
“Not a good time, Faolan.”
“Sorry, but you said to let you know if we heard anything. You’ll want to head to—”
“Myrtle Edwards Park?” Dante asked as he started the engine. “I’m on my way now.”
“Well, be prepared. Couple of joggers found another body. Report says it’s a little girl, looks about ten. From the dirty clothes and hair, they think she’s another street kid. Word is the FBI is being called in to investigate now.”
“Took their sweet time, didn’t they?” Dante sped down the road. “We need to figure this out and resolve it before the Feds get too deep into it. Try getting in touch with Donovan again.”
“I’ll see what I can do, but I’m running out of ideas.”
“Don’t take any of the usual crap from his underlings. He doesn’t get to brush us off anymore.”
“But—”
“I’ll go see him in person, if I have to. If he has half a brain, he won’t let it come to that.”
Faolan laughed. “So, you’ll want his address, then.”
Dante left his car well away from the park and approached on foot. The flashing police lights, gathering news vans, and thronging joggers and bikers had made the spot easy to find. The crowd was mostly mortals who’d stopped to find out what happened or had just come to feed some morbid fascination. There were, however, several changeling kids hovering nearby, all in dirty secondhand clothes, whispering to each other.
The murmurs stopped when Dante approached. They were the only ones who would notice him, but every time he looked at one, they cast their eyes down and pretended they hadn’t. Some in the Rogue Court looked down on these fringe dwellers—they were the untouchables of the fae world. Some of the nobles even debated whether these changelings should be recognized as court members at all. Dante suspected Donovan was in the camp that said no.
Dante walked up to the edge of the tape, careful to stay out of the view of the television cameras on the scene. The reporters and other mortals wouldn’t see him if he didn’t want them to, but cameras were unpredictable.
The police were standing around a white sheet with a tiny form
underneath it. From the size, the girl couldn’t be much over eight. He did a double take when he saw the wildflowers growing up just around the white sheet. Her mother must’ve been a dryad.
How are these kids coming into their power so young?
With effort, Dante kept from dwelling on Edward’s stepdaughter, Fiona. Instead, he closed his eyes and looked away, swearing under his breath to find whoever was responsible and make them account for it. He didn’t care anymore if it was a mortal, fae, or some creature from the Stygian Depths—someone would answer for these atrocities.
When he opened his eyes, he noticed a group of teenage changelings were looking at him and whispering again. From the look of them, they were on the cusp of the Choice, where they would have to choose between their mortal or fae natures.
“I’m—”
“We know who you are,” a girl of perhaps fourteen said. Her hair was deep auburn and her sad eyes were a shade of green that nearly matched Dante’s.
“What do you want, noble?” asked a boy who appeared to be going through the Change at that moment. He had brown hair and a rough beard. The small nubs of horns on his forehead spoke of his satyr heritage. “Since when do any of you care about us?”
“Some of us always have,” Dante said. “Do any of you know who that is?” He motioned to the cloth-covered body.
“I do.” This girl was probably nearing sixteen. She was short with bright eyes of deep purple. Her hair was a shade of lavender that spoke to a pixie in her family tree. “Her name was Luna.”
“How long ago did she go missing?” Dante asked.
The girl shrugged. “No one’s really sure. She was really a sweet kid. Way too young to be on her own. But like most of us, when it became clear she wasn’t normal, her family didn’t want anything to do with her.” The girl paused to wipe away some tears. “When I didn’t see her for a while, I kind of hoped she had moved on, maybe to someplace warm, maybe even to some kind of family that would accept her.”
“I’m very sorry,” Dante said.
“What are you doing looking into it? This isn’t your region,” the satyr boy said. “And the western nobles don’t give a damn, unless we’re getting in their way.”
“I’m not the magister of the Eastern Region anymore,” Dante said.
The group exchanged glances.
“And I do give a damn. I’ll find who did this and—”
“Yeah, whatever.” The boy turned and walked away.
“Fitch, wait.” The auburn-haired girl followed him.
“Don’t mind him, we’re all kind of on edge,” the remaining girl said.
“I can understand.”
“No, you really can’t.” Her stare was granite. “The press cares only when the bodies turn up, and after a few minutes, everyone forgets about it. The cops don’t investigate, not any more than they have to. They have real crimes to solve.”
Dante opened his mouth but didn’t get a chance to speak.
“We tried to report them, at first anyway, to the cops and the court.” The girl clenched her jaw and spoke through her teeth. “The police told us they just went to a different city, and the court can’t be bothered with fifties. No one cares.” She looked Dante square in the eye. “Half mortal, half fae, and neither side wants us. We’re on our own, always have been.”
“You’re not—”
“Yes, we are. We watch out for each other, since no one else will. If it wasn’t daylight, we wouldn’t have come.” She looked past Dante to the body being placed in a black bag. “I just had to know if it was her.”
Dante didn’t say anything. There weren’t any words.
“Everyone knows about what happened last year, how you helped that little girl. It’s kind of become a legend.” The girl turned her tear-filled gaze back to Dante. “Are you really going to find who’s doing this? Or is this some Rogue Court publicity thing?”
“Oh, I’ll find them. This is no stunt, I promise you that.”
The girl nodded, her expression dark. “When you do, make them bleed. Make them pay, for every single kid they’ve hurt, here and everywhere else.” She turned and followed her friends.
“I will, and then some,” Dante said after she was gone.
Chapter Nine
Even without looking, Wraith could feel everyone’s eyes on her. The furniture had been moved to provide her audience a better view. Ovation and Geek sat on the dingy sofa with Sprout between them, her legs folded beneath her. Con slouched in a broken old recliner, slightly apart from the others. Wraith was on a worn out, overstuffed chair, Toto’s head in her lap. His ears twitched as she scratched one then the other—despite his ecstasy, he was keeping one eye on the boys.
“Well?” Con asked, his voice terse.
Ovation shot Con an icy look, then his eyes softened and he turned back to Wraith. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
“And you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” Geek said.
“Like hell!” Con said.
Sprout glared at him.
“We need to know how you got here, if there’s a hole in our protections, so we can close it. That’s all. ” Ovation’s voice was soft.
“I call it striding,” Wraith answered.
“What is that?” Geek asked.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Wraith said.
“So give us the simple version,” Ovation said.
“Okay. On the quantum level there are an infinite number of wormholes. They connect every point in reality with every other point at the same time. A sufficiently focused sentient will can modify the quantum information, shifting the probability of a convergence of wormholes from exponentially unlikely to one, or certain. That will allow something, or in this case someone, and all the constituent particles, to move from one point to another without crossing the space in between. That sentient will can then control, to a limited extent, the entropic principles that guide the location of the two ends of the wormhole, a point of origin and a destination.” She shrugged. “Of course, once you reach that level, the very notion of a three-dimensional reality is completely irrelevant and actually illusionary—” She looked up and saw two completely blank expressions. Geek was the only one who seemed to understand, and he was grinning.
“That was the simple version?” Con asked.
Wraith nodded. “Pretty much.”
“That is so cool!” Geek said, eyes wide. “You teleported!”
Wraith furrowed her brow. “Oh, well yeah, I guess that’s a simpler way of putting it.”
“You’re like Nightcrawler, or Dr. Strange!” he said.
“What the bloody hell does that mean?” Con asked.
“Well, in the comics,” Geek said, “Nightcrawler and Dr. Strange step through other dimensions to move from one point to another.”
“Okay, mate,” Con said to Ovation. “How are you going to close a trans-dimensional hole in our security?”
Ovation ignored him. “So why’d you teleport here?” Ovation asked.
Wraith shrugged. “I can’t always control it. And the snatchers didn’t exactly give me time to focus, you know?”
Everyone exchanged a nervous glance, except Sprout, who just kept smiling.
Wraith ignored the reaction. “Of course, even in the best of circumstances, I don’t always have sufficient . . .” Her words died as pieces began to fall into place. “Could that be it?”
“What?” Ovation asked.
Wraith closed her eyes. Calculations and equations spun through her head and it took all her focus to keep them inside and to not stride, here and now. “I need my bag.”
“Here,” Geek said, handing it to her.
She dug into the main pouch, pulling out a composition book and pen, then flipped through pages until she found the right calculation. It wa
s easy to spot—the manic writing was double underlined. Her hands began to shake, and she heard the pen hit the floor and her voice reading the notes aloud. “It could be that the effect of altering universal probabilities at this level, and controlling the requisite power, would cause a break from a singular-view reality.”
Wraith stopped reading. At the bottom of the page, there was a single word written in large letters, circled and underlined. She didn’t want to say it out loud.
Crazy.
Her throat felt tight and somewhere distant, Toto whimpered while voices talked over each other. She wanted to believe her life, her friends, and the few memories she retained were real, but—
“Wraith?” Ovation shouted.
Her mind went still. The notebook had joined the pen on the floor and she now held the arms of the chair in a white-knuckled death grip. She looked up. Everyone was staring at her.
“What?” she asked, her voice sounding small in her ears.
“Take a breath,” Ovation said. “Freaking out won’t help.”
She managed to let go of the chair.
“Why don’t we eat something?” Geek asked. “Are you hungry?”
Her stomach gurgled in response and she turned away.
“So that’s a yes,” Ovation said and smiled. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Maybe you’re, I don’t know, miscalculating or something?”
Wraith nodded. Eating seemed ridiculous, but she was hungry.
Geek went to the large canvas bag, near to overflowing with cans, and hefted it one-handed. She kept herself from staring. They went through the selection, and she made a noncommittal grunt when given a large can of SpaghettiOs. Con offered a flaming hand to warm it up for her, but she just ate them cold. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she started eating, and paused only long enough to drink from a bottle of water. She tore a blank page from her composition book and poured onto it the remaining half a can, then set it on the floor for a grateful Toto.
She could feel Ovation’s eyes on her. He didn’t stare, but she knew he kept looking her way. She couldn’t blame him. Having a crazy person around would make anyone uneasy.
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