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Gina let that go for the moment. “Where was she?”
“Gone.”
“She couldn’t just be gone,” Gina insisted. “What did the other one say?”
Jase lowered his arm. “After she stopped shrieking like someone was sticking an ice pick in her eye?”
Gina could imagine. She was surprised she and Teo hadn’t heard the girl down here.
“Yeah, then,” Gina agreed.
“It didn’t make much sense.”
“Which would make it equal to a lot of what the As have said so far.”
Jase’s lips curved again. Making jokes seemed to help him focus or at least calm down enough to continue. “She said they were singing, then there was a whoosh, a swirl of black, and—” He paused, then snapped his fingers. “Ashleigh was gone.”
Gina and Teo exchanged a glance. He opened his mouth, but she shook her head. Better that she asked the questions of Jase.
“A swirl of black?” she asked. “What’s that mean?”
“How the hell should I know? Amberleigh said the darkness took her. She’s still gibbering about it.”
Gina couldn’t blame her. She was starting to feel a little like gibbering herself.
“Anyone else see ‘the darkness’?”
“No,” Jase said. “But they all heard the howl.”
* * *
Matt had been studying the glyphs again, listening with one ear as McCord and Gina talked. Certainly Matt was concerned about who was dead, but there was something about that wall and the pictures on it that was off.
Before he could really begin to ponder things, Matt heard McCord’s last sentence, and his gaze flicked to Gina’s. Hers was already waiting for him.
“What kind of howl?” Matt asked.
“The same kind we always have around here.”
“The one that isn’t made by actual wolves.”
“Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?” McCord asked.
Matt shrugged. Just because it sounded ridiculous didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
Too bad he hadn’t figured that out before he broke his mother’s heart.
“Any tracks?” Matt asked.
“No.”
“How can that be?” People didn’t just disappear into thin air.
“You figure it out, pal, you let me know.”
Matt’s mind began to flirt with images of pterodactyls swooping out of the night and King Kong–like beasts reaching down from nearby trees to snatch up an unsuspecting A as she sang about ghost chickens in the sky.
Maybe they’d taken her.
