Sophie went with the two men to the door. “Once you’ve looked around, would it be okay if I stayed in Emily’s apartment?” she asked.
“That depends on what we find there,” Tanaka said. “It may be a crime scene.”
“You think you’ll find her body in there,” Sophie inferred.
Tanaka flinched at her directness. “That is a possibility. The fact that no one’s seen her since last night doesn’t mean she didn’t come home last night.”
That didn’t stop Sophie from following them down the stairs. When Tanaka turned to glare at her while Michael unlocked the door, she said, “I know I can’t go inside, but I have to know.”
“Wait out here. You, too,” he added to Michael. “In this case, you’re a civilian.” It didn’t take Tanaka very long to go through the studio apartment. He came back to the door a moment later. “She’s not here,” he announced, “but I can’t let you in until I’ve checked things out.”
She nodded her assent. “Maybe I’ll go find something for dinner. I’ve been traveling all day and I’m suddenly starving.”
Michael reached through the doorway and took two keys off the row of hooks just inside Emily’s door. “Here’s Emily’s key to my place, so you can let yourself in when you get back,” he said, handing it to her. “And this one opens the front door.”
“Thank you,” she said before running upstairs.
Once she was gone, Tanaka said, “You wanna help me poke around?”
“I thought I was a civilian here.”
“Now I know it’s not a crime scene, and you’d know better than I would if anything’s different or missing.”
There wasn’t that much to search. While Michael scanned the one-room apartment for anything that seemed out of place, he asked, “So, Tank, what did you think of her?”
“Very pretty, in spite of her feet. Great legs.”
“That’s not what I meant. Don’t you think she’s kind of, well, odd?”
“Oh, you mean the woo-woo stuff? That ‘feeling’?”
“That, and other things.” He heard the front door close, went to the window, and saw the ballerina umbrella gliding rapidly down the sidewalk.
“Well, quite frankly, she scares the sh–heck out of me. That was one freaky stare. Her eyes are weird.”
“You’re allowed to curse in front of me. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Then I’d be lying, and I’d be corrupting the Reverend Saint Michael into lying, and that’s worse than having to put a dollar in the jar.”
Michael had long since given up fighting his department nickname and all the nonsense that went with it, so he asked, “What’s weird about her eyes?”
“Didn’t you notice? They’re two different colors. One’s blue and one’s gray. I thought it was just the light at first, but the way she was staring at me, I couldn’t help but see it. It was like I saw a different face depending on which eye I focused on.” He shuddered.
Michael couldn’t help but smile, in spite of the situation. “I never thought I’d see the day someone could make you sweat in an interview.”
Instead of responding to that, Tanaka said, “Emily must be old school—a landline and a machine,” and hit the “play” button on Emily’s answering machine.
“Hey, Em, it’s Sophie,” Sophie’s voice said, sounding much less steady than Michael had heard it so far. “I know it’s really early, and you probably hate me for waking you up if you’re there, but I got one of those feelings again, like when Daddy died, or that time before with you, and I’m on my way to New York. If you are around and I’m just being silly and paranoid, call my cell. I’ll be changing planes in Atlanta, so that’ll be your last chance to tell me to turn back. They’re calling my flight now, so I have to go.” Her voice took on a strained quality, like she was close to tears. “Call me, Emily. I love you.”
The call clicked off, then the robotic voice of the machine gave the time stamp as seven thirty a.m., Wednesday. “Her story checks out,” Tanaka said. There was another message from Sophie a couple of hours later, followed by one from a friend an hour after that and three from the show’s stage manager, starting at one. “All these messages back up what she said. So she really did know in the middle of the night, all the way from Louisiana, that her sister was in trouble. Holy s–wow. That is freaky. I’ve dealt with a few of those psychics who volunteer to help in investigations, and none of them have been that accurate.”
Michael thought the message also meant that Sophie was human, after all. She was as scared and worried as anyone might be in this situation, even if she hid it well. He took a framed photo off the bookcase to get a better look. The picture showed two little girls in ballet outfits. The older one, maybe about seven, stood tall and proud, her hair slicked back into a tight bun. The younger one, no more than three, was still pudgy with baby fat, and there was a bow stuck in her short curls. Her fingers clutched her sister’s skirt. “I think it has something to do with them being family,” he said. “It’s not like she gets the Bat Signal whenever random people are in trouble.”
“I didn’t want to put you on the spot in front of the sister, but I have to ask, what’s the nature of your relationship with the missing girl?” Tanaka asked as he searched a drawer.
“She’s my downstairs neighbor.”
“Her dog is at home in your place, and you have keys to each other’s apartments. Look, I’m not prying into your personal life, but you know how these things go. There’s no hiding anything in an investigation like this, and it’s better if you come clean with it now.”
“Yeah, I know, the husband, lover, or boyfriend is the first suspect. But there’s nothing to come clean about. She’s just my neighbor. You met Sophie. Now imagine her taller and more extroverted. If she wants to look after you, there’s not much you can do to stop her that doesn’t involve physical violence or moving out in the middle of the night.”
“Uh, huh.”
“Gene, I’m married. There’s nothing going on.”
Tanaka turned to face him directly. “Rev, don’t you think it’s time you moved on? It’s been, what, seven years?”
“They found that girl in California after eighteen years. Alive.”
“That’s why you’re so keen on this case, isn’t it? You find this girl, and it gives you hope.”
“I’m so keen on this case because it’s my downstairs neighbor, and I’ll be stuck with her inanimate bulldog if you don’t find her.”
Tanaka opened the laptop on the desk in front of the window. “Hey, she left her computer on, and the e-mail’s still up. I won’t need the geeks to hack in.”
Michael leaned over his shoulder. “Anything good?”
“No ransom notes or creepy stalker messages that I can see. Still, I’ll take it and let the tech guys give it a once-over. I hope they come across something. Otherwise, it’s like this girl disappeared into thin air.”
“And those cases are nearly impossible to solve.” As Michael knew all too well.
Seven
New York City, The Upper West Side
4:10 p.m.
Sophie forced back a rising tide of panic as she hurried down the sidewalk. She’d wasted far too much time talking to policemen who couldn’t do anything because this was way beyond their jurisdiction. If she’d known that the dog was being cared for, she could have gone to a hotel instead of to Emily’s apartment and avoided the police entirely.
Then again, it would have looked awfully suspicious if she’d been in town while her sister was missing and she hadn’t contacted the police. It wasn’t as though the police were likely to get in her way, since they’d be looking in all the wrong places.
In the meantime, she had other things to worry about. She didn’t think the waves of fear assaulting her senses were just her worry-fueled imagination. Wherever she was, Emily was in danger and afraid. Sophie bit down hard on the inside of her lip to keep herself from screaming out loud from the frustration of not being able to
act immediately. Sitting through that police interview while feeling that fear had been sheer torture.
It was hours before twilight, when she might be able to find a way into the Realm, so she couldn’t stage a rescue immediately, but she could buy some time. Emily knew better than to eat the food where she was, and she might be able to hold out longer if she had human food. Sophie stopped at a corner grocery and bought a couple of energy bars, a packet of roasted peanuts, a bottle of water, and a half-pint container of cream, then hurried to Central Park, the most likely place in the city to have what she needed.
She doubted she’d find what she was looking for too close to the street, so she walked until the traffic noises faded and looked for an oak on a hilltop. When she found one, she investigated the roots. The ground was muddy after a day of rain, and she slipped and skidded as she searched. At last she found a hole in the earth under one of the larger roots.
She lifted her skirt, wrapping it around her thighs to keep it from dragging in the mud, then knelt on the ground and opened the cream carton. She poured a small amount on the ground inside the hole and set the open container nearby. “Good Neighbor, I bring you this offering,” she said softly, hoping this worked. She hadn’t ever tried it, but she’d read a number of mentions in her research. As she waited for a response, she considered whether she might be able to squeeze through the hole and make it directly into the Realm without having to find a gateway. It would be messy, and it would require braving the Borderlands, but it would mean less waiting.
Before she could convince herself to try, a small, gnarled creature emerged from the hole. The creature lapped at the cream on the ground, sniffed greedily, found the carton, and asked, “Who brings me this offering?”
“I do, Good Neighbor,” Sophie said.
The creature looked up at her, then fell on its knees. “Your gift is welcomed, my good lady. What has one such as I done to merit your favor?”
“It’s what you will do for me. My sister has been taken to the Realm. I need something brought to her, and I ask you to take it through for me.”
“I could do that, my lady.” The creature sounded surprisingly eager.
“Oh, good,” Sophie sighed under her breath. She’d expected more haggling, based on her research, but she had no quarrel with doing things the easy way, and this task was minor enough that she didn’t feel the need to look for traps or loopholes. She took a sheet from the memo pad in her purse and scribbled a note, then put it in the plastic grocery bag with the food. In the depths of her purse she found a ribbon from an old pointe shoe. She wrapped the ribbon around the neck of the bag, tied it in a bow, and handed the bag to the creature. “Please see to it that this gets to the human girl who just entered the Realm.”
“I will do that, my lady,” the creature said with a bow.
Taking care not to give direct thanks—which would have implied an obligation to the creature—she said, “Your assistance is gratifying. Please enjoy the cream I leave for you.”
The creature dragged the package into the hole, then returned for the carton of cream. That mission accomplished, Sophie stood and let her skirt fall so that it hid most of her mud-streaked legs. A few good puddles would take care of her shoes and ankles. She hurried back toward the street. Now she really did need to find some dinner, because she hadn’t been lying about feeling starved.
Eight
The Realm
Immediately Afterward
Emily’s trick with the umbrella must have bought her a few minutes, as no pursuers had yet caught her, but she was under no illusion that the umbrella would hold a bunch of magical creatures for very long. So, she paused to put her shoe back on and then ran all-out, as quickly as she could.
She was running down a tree-lined avenue like the Mall in the real Central Park, but she wasn’t sure where to head. Sophie said the gateways between the fairy world and the real world existed at right angles to reality, and you had to find them by feel. Emily had no idea what she was supposed to feel. What she needed was a white rabbit to follow down a hole, but there wasn’t one in sight, and she wasn’t sure she’d trust it even if there was. Since she’d been brought into this world from near Tavern on the Green, she struck out in that direction. The old restaurant might not be there in this skewed reality, but she hoped that if a gateway existed near there in her world, there might be a corresponding gateway in this reality.
Changing course allowed her to glance behind her. She saw no sign of the hotel or apartment building, but she did see her pursuers, who had been far enough behind her that they hadn’t yet realized she’d left the Mall. She dove behind a nearby bit of shrubbery and watched as they ran past.
Once her heart quit pounding so loudly it drowned out everything else, she noticed a strange, wild, and beautiful music wafting through the park. It reminded her of her first encounter with the fairies, when she was fourteen. She’d been walking in the woods, trying to get lost, when she’d been drawn by music like this, music that sounded to her like freedom.
The music seemed to be coming from within a nearby grove of trees. The trees offered cover, she rationalized as she left her hiding place. She most definitely wasn’t going in search of that soul-stirring music.
Within the grove was a clearing, and there the fairies danced. They weren’t doing the twist that fit into Maeve’s Doris Day fetish or the foxtrot from Nick and Nora’s ballroom. These looked wild and free, wearing filmy garments made of spiderwebs and flowers as they danced in a circle to music played by fairy musicians on instruments made from nature—a fiddle carved out of a gourd and a harp strung on a curving tree branch. It was the most amazing dancing she’d ever seen, even more hypnotic and entrancing than Sophie alone in a studio when she didn’t think anyone was watching and she dropped her rigid self-control.
The sound of a hunting horn rang out before the temptation to join the dance overcame her. The fanfare sent a surge of adrenaline through her body, but she wasn’t sure if it was triggering fight or flight. Apparently, she wasn’t alone in that response. The musicians stopped suddenly, and there was a flurry of rustling noises as swarms of little creatures disappeared into the underbrush. The fairies in the grove also scattered, running as if the devil himself pursued them. Emily didn’t want to see anything that could scare fairies, unless it was her sister, and she doubted even Sophie could trigger a fairy stampede.
A fairy woman grabbed Emily’s hand and dragged her away with the others. Emily resisted, not wanting to be kidnapped yet again. “You don’t want to be caught out,” the woman urged, “not if you don’t want to serve them.” That sounded reasonable to Emily, so she ran with the fairy woman. They crossed what might have been Bow Bridge, but which wasn’t, and ran into the woods, where they crouched behind some large rocks that allowed them to see the bridge while remaining hidden.
The horn sounded again, this time closer, and soon the head of a procession came into view. Tall, thin soldiers led the way on horseback, one of them sounding the horn. They wore leather and golden armor, and their hair streamed down their backs. The horses were armored and draped in silk. Behind the soldiers rode a man and woman wearing crowns and solid black clothing that was somewhat medieval in style. Both had white skin, solid white hair, and silver eyes that made Maeve’s eyes look warm and twinkly in comparison. Aside from the white hair, they showed no signs of age, but Emily still got the sense that they were absolutely ancient. Behind them rode more courtiers and soldiers, and red-and-white hunting hounds ran alongside the horses.
They passed within yards of Emily’s hiding place. She held her breath, now understanding why the fairies had run for cover. These people had an air about them that said they saw the entirety of creation as existing to serve their whims. A hidden fairy not much farther down the lake’s shore must have made some noise because the queenly woman gestured and one of her soldiers dismounted, then pulled the struggling fairy out of the bushes. He bound the captive’s hands with a silver chain and fastened t
hat chain to his saddle before remounting and rejoining the procession. The fairy captive was left to run alongside the soldier’s horse.
The procession went on forever, with hundreds and hundreds of fairies, not all of them going willingly. Emily thought a few of the captives looked human. They all moved in total silence, aside from the occasional blast on the horn. None of the fairies spoke to each other. They just stared straight ahead. If this was the alternative, Emily could see why fairies might be drawn to Maeve’s court. Maeve seemed like a lot more fun.
Finally, the tail of the procession passed. The hiding fairies waited several more minutes before tentatively emerging from their shelters. “I’m lucky you were there,” Emily said to the fairy girl who’d helped her.
“I would not subject anyone to the whims of Niamh and Fiontan,” the fairy girl said with a shrug.
“I don’t suppose you know a way out of here—to the outside world?” Emily said, hoping the girl’s helpfulness might go further.
The fairy pointed behind Emily. “There is a passage in the woods. Look for the roots of the oak tree.”
“Okay, oak tree. Got it.” Emily left the fairies behind and headed deeper into the woods. This was like the Ramble in her park, only it really was wild, not carefully cultivated to give the appearance of wildness. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was also getting darker, and not just because the trees blocked the light.
It would have been easier if she knew what to look for. Would it be like a magic mirror with the real world on the other side, or would she hear traffic noises? Traffic noises would have been reassuring and definitely less creepy than the noises she heard now, which were wilder and fiercer than anything that came from the zoo.
She glanced up at the forest canopy to look for oak leaves, then realized she wasn’t actually among trees. Roots came down from above to form what she’d thought were tree trunks. So, that was what the fairy meant when she mentioned the roots of the oak. Fairyland must be underground, and there must be a passage hidden in the tree roots. The trick would be finding it. How would she recognize an oak tree without being able to see the leaves?
A Fairy Tale Page 5
