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I slid into the chair at the desk and rifled through Violet’s desk drawers. Even they were organized in what appeared to be an almost OCD manner. It was obvious she wasn’t a smoker, nor did I find any booze or . . . I looked around. No books. There were no books in the apartment and no television. Oddly enough, the entire place felt devoid—except for the houseplants and the cat. In fact, now I knew what it reminded me of. It felt like a hotel room—impersonal.
I looked for a calendar but couldn’t find one. “Do you know if she had a Day-Timer?”
“Nah, she used the calendar on her phone and synched it to her laptop.” With a frown, Tad looked around. “Speaking of, I don’t see her laptop anywhere, or her tablet. She might have taken them with her, wherever she went.”
“Maybe in her bedroom?” I often took my laptop to bed with me to play games or answer e-mail before I went to sleep.
Blushing, Tad led the way. He stopped for a moment, staring at the bed as we entered. Covered with a gauzy spread, the bed was a king-sized futon, and a filmy nightgown made of spidersilk lay across the bottom. Two hooks had been drilled into the headboard, and velvet ropes hung down from them. One guess what they were for, I thought, trying to repress a smile. I’d seen Camille’s toy box often enough. I knew restraints when I saw them, just like I knew that my sister liked to be tied up at times.
But Tad just stared at them, glaring.
There was no sign of any computer anywhere, but I did find something under the pillow. A journal, written in an ES Fae language. I flipped through it, able to pick out a word here and there, but my command of the dialect wasn’t good enough.
“Camille, can you read this?” She could read a number of dialects, so I was hoping this might be close enough to one of them for her to muddle through, but she shook her head.
“No, but Aeval can. Let me take this, please. I’m due out at Talamh Lonrach Oll this weekend. I can ask her then if she will help me translate it.” She tucked it in her purse.
Menolly was standing over by the window. “You know, her bedroom faces the park. And there are no curtains here. Anybody could hide out there in the bushes and watch her.” She turned back to us. “Before tomorrow’s over, somebody should check out there to see if they can find any footprints or signs that someone has been staking out her house.”
The thought made me shudder, but I added it to my list of notes. “Right. I’d go out there tonight but we’d just mess up any prints in the dark. Tad, Albert . . . did Violet mention that there has been anything upsetting her? Anything out of the ordinary, at all? Think. Any little tidbit might be important.”
Tad ran his hand over the nightgown and shivered. “She said something a few days back that struck me as strange . . . let me think for a moment to make sure I get it right.” He mulled over his thoughts, then snapped his fingers. “I remember—she said that she was getting friend requests from someone online who made her nervous.”
“Really? She has a MySupe page?” MySupe was the equivalent to Facebook, even though most Supes used Facebook anyway.
“I don’t know if it’s Facebook or MySupe or what. She didn’t say and I mostly hang out at Tech-Know-Katz, so I’m not sure.”
“Hmm, we’ll look into it.” Camille frowned, then motioned for me to step out of the room with her. The look on her face set me on edge.
“I hate to bring up this thought,” she said, once we were alone, “but, do you think Tad might have something to do with her disappearance? He’s in love with her and she has never expressed an interest in him. She’s dating someone he obviously dislikes. Maybe he broke . . . did something to her, and now is trying to cover it up? Or he feels guilty and wants to get caught.”
At my expression, she shrugged. “Hey, it happens. Just saying . . .”
“I know, I know but . . . I don’t think so. Maybe I still want to believe the best in people, but my gut tells me he’s just as worried as I’m beginning to get. I could buy her running off to someplace without telling them, but not leaving her cat. Or her plants. Woodland Fae tend to treat their plants like children. And a dryad—or one of her cousins—wouldn’t abandon her floral babies or fur babies.”
She considered my point, then let out a sigh. “You’re right. But if she didn’t run off, then she was kidnapped. Or dragged away. What are the chances we’re going to find her alive?”
I didn’t want to think about that possibility. If she’d been the victim of a violent crime, chances weren’t good that we’d find her alive. I already knew that much. But now I wanted to help.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s finish searching her apartment and then we’ll head to Carter’s. And tomorrow, we’ll come out here and search the park out back of the house. She has no fence dividing the lawn from the ravine. Anybody could have been lurking out there.” Another thought crossed my mind. “Can you do a Seeking spell to find her?”
Camille considered the thought. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Remember the harpy? There’s no guarantee and my Moon magic still fizzes out as often as it works. I’m willing to give it a go. I’d also have to gather the right components first. We’ll see how it goes.”
With that, we finished our unfruitful search. Camille clutching the diary, headed out into the night. Albert found a carrier and took Tumpkins home with him.
• • •
After promising the guys we’d call them the minute we found out anything, we dropped Menolly off back at the bar—she had some things to attend to there—and Camille and I headed to Carter’s. The son of Hyperion, the Titan, and a succubus, the half Titan, half demon was leader of the Demonica Vacana Society, a group that watched over humanity and recorded interactions between the Demonkin and humans throughout the ages. Essentially, Carter was a demigod.
He had shoulder-length hair the color of Menolly’s, and he cut a handsome figure, with horns that curved gracefully back like those of a ram’s. He was able to pass in society by masking his demonic heritage when he chose to, but mostly, he stayed in his apartment, content to be a recluse. He was friendly and polite to us, but we never made the mistake of forgetting just how powerful he could be.
We parked outside the brick building that he lived in, and Camille stopped for a moment, closing her eyes.
“He’s got his wards back up, strong as ever. His sorceress must have rebounded after Gulakah’s bhouts and spirit demons dispersed.”
For a while, every magic-using person in the area—be they OW Fae or human—had been in danger. The energy-sucking spirits that the Lord of Ghosts had summoned had turned the city into their private feeding ground and nobody who used magic was safe.
Now, things seemed to be returning to normal, although we’d learned that it would take quite some time before the increasing ghostly activity would scale back. Gulakah had spent eons increasing the connection between the angry spirits of the Netherworld and Earthside. The mess wasn’t going to balance itself out in a few months, or a few years, even though he was no longer a threat.
