by Gina LaManna
“The reports say that you were with Lillie and Maybelline when they were snatched,” I said. “Is that true?”
She nodded. “We had all spent the night together at Lillie’s apartment—she had the biggest place, and we’d been out late. We were such good friends—she had this glorious king-sized bed, and we all crashed in it together. We stayed up until some ungodly hour watching horror movies. I still remember waking that morning and finding a piece of popcorn in my hair.”
“I’m so sorry for the loss of your friends,” I said. “I can’t imagine what you went through.”
Cynthia sniffed, as if pulled from a daydream. “Yes, it was hard. It is hard. One doesn’t get over a thing like that quickly.”
“Especially not if you were there when they were taken,” I said gently. “Can you describe what happened to them in detail?”
“I’ve already told the cops everything I know.”
“I understand, and I’m sorry to drag you through this again,” I said. “But there have been new developments, and we have to revisit everything. Please, it’s imperative.”
Cynthia sucked in a breath, and her fingernails dug in deeper to her mother’s shoulder. Her mother flinched, and Cynthia let go at once. “You think this is tied to Linsey’s disappearance. You think the same people who took my friends took her!”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer it. “We need your help.”
“Are they going to kill her, too?” Cynthia’s eyes widened. “That would be a horrible idea. Linsey’s dad is Leonard Luca—he’s making a run for the council of elders next year. He will bring vengeance on whoever took his daughter.”
“All the more reason to get her back safely.”
“You didn’t work this hard to find my friends,” Cynthia said. “They were gone for three months.”
“We did,” Matthew said sharply. “I looked into it myself. There was nothing. No leads. We followed everything we possibly could, and we turned up nothing. Now that their bodies have been recovered, we have more information—more evidence and more leads. We also have a missing person to find. Make no mistake, we will get justice for the dead. Please, Cynthia.”
She gave a shuddering breath, her eyes flicking nervously to Matthew before returning to mine. “I don’t know what more I can tell you that I haven’t already told the other cops.”
“Did you see anyone on the day you were taken?” I asked. “You were coming back from the grocery store—had your attacker followed you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We were just having a grand old time. We walked up to get things for pancakes—a late breakfast, you know, because we’d stayed up all night watching movies. It was just a regular old girls day...until he arrived.”
“He?” I asked. “What do you remember about him?”
“It was a male,” she said. “The voice was male, and his build was big and burly. He had on a Smoke Cloak though, so I couldn’t make out any of his features.”
A smoke cloak was a cloud of thick, inky black smoke that could envelope its wearer and move around them in a disguise. It wasn’t sneaky, but for a quick snatch and grab, it would do the trick. Even worse, it was a common, off-the-shelf spell available for purchase to every witch, sorcerer, and spellslinger in the borough. It was a non-clue as to the attacker’s species.
“There were three of you,” I said. “Did you fight? Run? How did you get away when the others didn’t?”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “There was nothing I could have done to stop the attack. I have gone over, and over, and over this in my mind, Detective, and I can’t think of a way I could have saved them.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that,” I said quietly. “Nobody blames you for this.”
“Really? Then what about that other cop who came here yesterday barreling my door down and all but accusing me of letting my own friends be kidnapped?”
“The other cop?” I asked. “Which other cop?”
“Marcus,” Matthew said under his breath. “He was assigned to follow up on Maybelline and Lillie’s murders.”
“Asshole,” I said, then realized I’d said it too loudly. “Sorry.”
Fortunately, it got a smile from Cynthia. “It’s fine. Anyway, my friends just... fell. It was so strange. We were walking and laughing one moment, and then the next second, Lillie’s eyes just glassed over. She was holding a donut in her hand, and she just fell over.”
“Did you hear a curse, a spell, something?”
She shook her head. “It looked like a Paralysis Potion hit them or something because it was instantaneous for Lillie, but I didn’t hear an incantation.”
“What about Maybelline?”
“That’s the strange thing,” Cynthia said. “Maybelline booked it. She started sprinting, and she almost got away. She should have gotten away.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she was fast. She was in excellent shape, and she should have gotten away,” Cynthia said. “I’ve never exercised a day in my life. I actually tripped over Lillie and fell. I just laid there, waiting for the paralysis to hit, but it never did.”
“Maybe he thought you were unconscious?”
She shook her head. “I screamed for Maybelline. He ran after her. I heard the footsteps, saw the smoke. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any defining features of him. The cops tried to get me with a HoloHex artist, but all I could describe was the smoke.”
“The attacker got Maybelline,” I said. “Did he use the same sort of spell or charm to paralyze her?”
“I imagine so,” she said. “I just heard the thump. Have you ever heard the sound of a lifeless body falling, Detective?” She shuddered. “My ear was to the ground. I heard it, and I knew it was over for her. I stood and just ran. He let me go, and to this day, I can’t understand why.”
“What if I told you,” I said, “that I think this was a premeditated grab. That there was something different about Maybelline and Lillie that drew the killer to them, while he let you go.”
“I’d say I’ve come to the exact same conclusion.” Cynthia watched me evenly. “Because there’s no reason I should be alive today. If he wanted me, he could’ve had me. I didn’t stick around long enough to watch, but I suspect that if I had, he would’ve just killed me. For whatever reason, he wasn’t recruiting me.”
“Recruiting,” I said. “Interesting choice of word.”
“He kept them alive for three months, if what I read in the news is true,” Cynthia said. “Which means he needed them for something. What, I don’t know.”
“They were both full-blooded elf,” I said. “No mixed heritage. Could that be it?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I suppose so. But I don’t know what they had that I don’t.”
“Magic.” The whispered word came from Cynthia’s mother. “They have a magic that the rest of us don’t have.”
“Ms. Nealy,” I said, “Is there a sort of magic that some of you have, but others don’t?”
“Not all of us have it,” she repeated. “I did, though. I had it.”
Cynthia shook her head. “I told you, she’s losing it. I’ve heard this story a hundred times. I’m sorry, Captain, Detective.”
“I’d like to hear it,” I said. “What sort of magick did you have, Ms. Nealy?”
“I don’t know.” Ms. Nealy stared dully out the window. “They wiped me clean. That’s what made me like this: weak, broken, damaged. See, I know I’m not whole. I can feel it. I can feel where my memories used to be, but they’re not there anymore.”
I frowned. “Are you saying the elves wiped your memory?”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “Memory spells don’t leave you with a void. They just block out the memories and replace them with something light and fluffy, like cupcake frosting.”
“But you have a void.”
She nodded, swiveling her old, wizened gaze to mine. “Something I had, a part of me, is gone. And I can’t remember for the life of
me what it was. But they stole my magick when I married my husband. He’s gone now, passed away a few years back. The elves don’t let those from Gilded Row go free.”
“You were from Gilded Row?” I asked, surprised. “Did they force you out?”
“No, I made a choice. But once you’re on the outs, you’re on the outs,” she said. “I don’t remember much from my time there. It’s all fuzzy. But I know, I just know...there was something. I was one of the few, one of the precious.”
“Do you remember anything about it?” I asked. “Cynthia, has she ever said anything that might trigger her memory, any hints to what might have been?”
“You can’t think this is actually real,” Cynthia said. “My mother’s mind has been going since I was born. It just gets worse with age. She clings more and more to the old stories, and she’s started to think they’re real.”
“Maybe they are real,” I said. “We’ve seen the elves do ruthless things. If your mother chose to leave Gilded Row, don’t you think it’s possible they took her memories? Especially if there’s a secret at stake?”
“Memories, sure,” Cynthia said. “But she goes on and on about them extracting some form of her magick, and that is just insane. Whoever heard of an extraction of powers before?”
Matthew and I remained silent. I couldn’t believe our luck. We had one of the special ones, one of the few—an elf who’d likely once had the same unique powers that had caused at least two elves to be taken. Yet she couldn’t remember a thing about them.
“You think this is real,” Cynthia said, her eyes widening. “You believe my mother. You think the other girls—Maybelline, Lillie, probably Linsey—all have this special power. That’s why they were taken. And used.”
“We don’t know anything for certain,” I said. “We’re just trying to find the link between these three girls. A link would help us a great deal in pinning down the why these girls were taken, which could lead us to the who that took them. And maybe it would help in the recovery of the living.”
“I don’t know anything else,” Cynthia said. “It all happened so fast.”
“What about the night before?” I asked. “You all went out, according to my research. Tell me about that.”
“We were at this club called Dust in the Silver District. It’s not the greatest area, but the drinks are cheap, the music is loud, and really, Detective, we just liked to dance.”
I nodded for her to continue.
“We stayed out late as I mentioned before. The other girls were drinking and dancing. I don’t drink, but I danced along with them. Just the three of us—we didn’t even need the men, we just liked the music, the crowds, the ambiance.”
The music, crowds, and ambiance seemed claustrophobic and sweaty to me, but I could see from the way Cynthia spoke that something about the very beat, the rhythm, the motion of it all had mesmerized her. Her eyes had a far-off look, and she swayed to some imaginary tune.
“Anyway,” she said. “Now that you mention it, there was this one sort of creepy guy. His name was Damien—he owned the club. I think Lillie might have known him. Or cleaned his house, or something. We were on the VIP list that night, and I just assumed that was the case. But when Damien approached us, it was weird. He kept asking the three of us to come up to his private room, and we kept declining. Like I said, we weren’t there to meet men. We were there as friends, and to dance. We met plenty of men at work.”
She blinked, as if realizing her slip.
I jumped in quickly. “Right, so you declined Damien. Then what?”
“I went to the restroom,” she said. “When I came back, the girls each had a new drink in their hands. I asked where they’d gotten them from, and they both had this sort of dazed look on their faces. I remember it clearly because I thought maybe their drinks were spiked. I took them and dumped them behind the bar. Lillie was pissed at me, but I was sober, and I wasn’t letting them take risks.”
“You’re a good friend. They were lucky to have you.”
“Not really. If they were lucky, I would have saved them.”
“You couldn’t have,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
She took a shaky breath. “Well, the drinks—they weren’t from Damien because he’d gone all pouty at the rejection, and he already had his tongue down some other chick’s throat. I didn’t get a glimpse of the new guy, but he made an impression on Lillie and Maybelline. They couldn’t stop talking about him all night.”
“What sort of talk?”
“You know, girl talk,” she said. “This guy was handsome and rich, but they kept saying that it wasn’t a romantic thing. They both said this guy acted more like an older brother than someone interested in them which I found odd.”
“Why was it so odd?”
She shrugged. “They were pretty girls, out and about for a night of fun. Usually when a guy buys a woman a drink, it’s because he wants something. And I don’t mean platonic friendship.”
My spine went rigid. None of this was a coincidence. I’d suspected the link between Linsey and the other girls, but now it was so close to being confirmed. I was willing to bet if Matthew and I showed up at Dust and flashed Linsey’s picture around, someone would have seen her there when she was supposed to be at Ms. Margaret’s gala.
Someone was using the club as a recruiting ground. We’d found the club, now we just needed our mystery man or woman. If we could catch him in action, he might very well lead us to the answers we so desperately sought.
“Thank you so much for your time,” I said, standing abruptly. “We really appreciate everything you’ve told us.”
“Did I say something wrong?” Cynthia asked. “I’m sorry, I just tried to remember—”
“Did you see this guy they gushed over?” I asked. “Did they describe him or her, for that matter?”
She shook her head. “You think he’s involved?”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “But I know this was helpful. Thank you, Cynthia.”
“Just find her,” she whispered. “Please.”
Chapter 10
“Dust doesn’t open until five,” I told Matthew, once we’d debriefed on Cynthia and made our way back toward the center of the borough. “We have a little time to kill.”
Matthew reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here are the names and addresses of Lillie’s immediate family members. I have Maybelline’s. We’ll meet at the club at five?”
“Sounds good, boss,” I said. “And remember, I have an obligation tonight at seven. I’ll only have an hour at the club.”
“Noted, Detective.”
We split ways, the silence between us a little uneasy. We had to figure out a way to make this work, I thought. I almost turned around to apologize, but my pride got in the way. Or perhaps, I just didn’t have a good solution, and therefore, I didn’t have anything else to say.
I made my way quickly to the outer edge of the Golden District and found the address listed beneath Lillie’s name on the sheet of paper. She had two younger siblings, a mother, and a father who had outlived her. They all lived in one residence, according to the records Felix had pulled for Matthew.
I hated this part of my job, but it was a necessary evil. The worst part of cop life was announcing a death to the victim’s loved ones. The second worst moment was dredging those loved ones through the victim’s death all over again.
I knocked on the door, already frustrated with the nature of my visit. Not only had this poor family been dragged through three months of not knowing their daughter’s fate, but they’d just been informed of her death.
Now, I was going to poke and prod an already sensitive situation. The chance of them knowing anything useful was next to nothing, but when Matthew led an investigation, he insisted that no stone be left unturned.
I recognized the blond head approaching from the street, feeling a frown curl down my lips as the figure climbed the stairs and stopped next to me. Marcus
.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, just as the door opened from inside the apartment.
“Hello?” A woman who looked older than her years stood inside the door to the apartment, her eyes rimmed in red. It had been a few days since the girls’ bodies had been discovered. And while the rest of the world had continued with normal life, this woman had lost a daughter and was clearly suffering. “May I help you?”
“I’m sorry to be here asking questions,” I said, “but I’m Detective DeMarco—”
“—and I’m Detective Marcus Prey,” my colleague said. “I’m here with Detective DeMarco in regard to your daughter’s homicide.”
“But I’ve already discussed this with you all,” she said. “We’ve been over this time and time again. We’re grieving. I don’t care anymore—I don’t care who took her, or why, or where they held her. It’s not bringing my daughter back.”
“No,” I said. “But it might bring a young elf home to her family.”
“Another—” The woman stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened. “Another girl is missing? A third one?”
“Unfortunately.”
“An elf?” She squinted. “From the Golden District?”
“Gilded Row,” Marcus said with perfectly faked concern. “We are working hard to get her back.”
I gritted my teeth, wondering what I’d done in my past life to end up partners—however temporary—with Marcus Prey.
“We are determined to get her back alive,” I promised. “May I come in and ask you a few questions?”
“Well, I suppose,” Lillie’s mother said. “Though I don’t know if I can tell you anything more than what I’ve already told the Sixth Precinct.”
As she turned to lead us into the house, I hissed at Marcus. “What are you doing here?”
“Following up on a hunch,” he said. “Same as you.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m assigned to follow up on the families of the victims. What about you?”
“I’m partners with the captain!”
“Partners,” he said with a snort. “So that’s what you call it these days.”
