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The house faced west, so the shadow was cast a long way into the yard before us.
Funny, it wasn’t even noon yet.
The faeries buzzed around Val’s head for a while, as if testing him for a landing platform, but when Neme arrived, they changed their minds. For a ferocious-looking wolf, she was accommodating of faeries. They settled into her coat where she lay on the porch. I would swear they were asleep.
That didn’t seem right for dream creatures.
Rose and Samuel had explored every inch of the house before joining us. They’d both decided to sit to either side of the broad set of steps leading to the ground.
“Nothing else in there?” I asked.
Samuel spread his hands. “No. Nothing. The people took some of their stuff. Not all.”
So the house was indeed empty. If it hadn’t been, we’d be in big trouble explaining the bullet holes.
Had they left because of the creatures? Could they have sensed them? You didn’t just up and leave a farm you owned, and the sign didn’t say it was a bank debt recovery sale. “Why’d they leave?”
He only shrugged. “Is there anything you need us to do, Mistress? Before we go?”
“What? Hold on.” I tugged out my phone and typed in a web search for the property. It was for sale, and nothing there on the realtor’s site told me more.
But when I popped back to the original search, further down was a news item about an event that had happened on the farm about five months ago.
“Crap,” I whispered.
“Found something?” Val reached out to grab the phone.
The look on my face stopped him dead. He raised his palms as if in surrender and even though I could sense it pained him, he waited for me to read.
I scanned the news item again and my mouth dried. This wasn’t the original news; it was an aftermath story. “Jeez. The man’s wife drowned in the creek.”
“Your creek, where we—”
I nodded. “It was an accident.”
But was that true? I was beginning to wonder about cause and effect. What if this was what nightmare creatures did to humans? Stirred them to anger or depression or sadness—pick your favorite bad emotion—made them prone to acts of violence?
“They thought she took her own life as the creek isn’t that deep. Then the husband came close to suicide as well. He was revived at the hospital after overdosing on his wife’s old drugs. Then...” I tapped the screen. “He put the place up for sale, and left, with his two kids.”
Was that why the faeries? Because of the kids?
I liked tidiness and logic. The Cucitrice hadn’t coughed up any info on this but what if?
“I’m wondering, Val. What if the creatures either gather where tragedy happens...or they gather before it and make it happen?”
He nodded. “Either. Yes.”
“Sam? Rose? Any input on that?”
This sort of sadness made my heart ache, but that it had happened here, and at the place where Yvaine had been kidnapped and stolen away, the place where her bones rested?
That was too much coincidence. Had the monsters been here since my childhood? I would never know.
“God.” I dropped my hands to my lap.
Rose looked up from cleaning her knife with a rag. “We don’t know for sure, but the Cucitrice did say she thought violent incidents were more likely where the creatures swarmed. The statistics aren’t there yet. No one has done a study.”
“Who would?” I muttered. “Even the dream creatures? The faeries and so on?”
