AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Skamar said nothing, mesmerized by the idea of this man as a freckle-faced boy and knowing now why he’d gone so still in the bakery. Blueberries.
“She was taken the next year from in front of her house. Nobody ever saw her again, not alive, and I would stare at her empty desk every day, remembering how she looked hunched over her work, hoping she’d just walk in the classroom, wearing those plastic barrettes, maybe say that she had just gotten lost.”
He looked down, biting the inside of his mouth, then back up at the sky, lost in his memories.
“That summer I went to the library, got permission to use the microfiche, and found her school picture alongside her obituary. I looked at that image staring back at me, and I swear I could fucking smell the blueberries.”
Skamar swallowed hard. “So it’s a quest for you? Like tho
se medieval knights, fighting to protect the innocent?”
Zoe’s mind had been filled with those stories. She loved them, which was ironic because a former superhero shouldn’t wish to be saved by someone else. But Zoe had. She’d longed for it even while taking steps to save herself.
“Don’t joke about this.” Vaughn pushed away from the fence.
“I’m not,” Skamar replied, placing a hand on his arm to stop him, forcing him to look her in the eyes. She slid her fingertips down his arm, then led his to the scarred divots in her wrists. “I—I could have used a knight once myself.”
Vaughn froze before that hard expression fractured. Then he gave her destroyed arms a gentle squeeze, and Skamar sucked in a surprised breath. She’d revealed the scars for his sake, to show that bad things happened and it was impossible for him, a mere cop, to be everywhere at once. But the dizziness that shot through her was surprising . . . and it was also unwanted. Okay, so his story about a girl who’d died long ago touched her. But she couldn’t let his softheartedness do the same. That would be dangerous for them both.
“Do you have plans tonight?” he suddenly asked, still holding her wrists.
The question had Skamar blinking twice. She pulled away, but Vaughn’s grip tightened. “I’m not asking for a date. We can’t patrol the whole damn city at once, but we can be in the most likely places these girls are targeted. The Festival of Lights is tonight, and there’ll be an enormous teen presence. The Jameson Brothers are playing at eight.”
Skamar remained silent, having no idea who the Jameson Brothers were.
“We’ll stand out less if we go together,” Vaughn explained under her steady gaze. “Follow the girls who most fit the profile and see if anyone else is doing the same.”
She frowned. It was a long shot, though no more remote than canvassing the entire valley in hopes of stumbling upon some random abduction. “How many teens did you say will be there?”
“A few hundred. All screaming and giggling, probably at the top of their lungs.”
Skamar winced, and the teasing man she first knew, the one who visually undressed her from over his balcony wall, showed his face. Odd, but this time she almost didn’t mind. “C’mon,” he said, “you were a teen once. You remember what it’s like.”
Skamar had never been a teen and remembered nothing of the sort—not giggling with friends, not chasing boys in the schoolyard, not even blueberry gum and plastic barrettes. But she did remember hanging from a lightning rod like a sacrificial offering, and she was willing to try anything she could to reconcile that. “I’ll be at your place at six.”
The Festival of Lights was a month-long event, and while the first three weeks were a cacophonous celebration of family, the last one—and the last night in particular—belonged wholly to the valley’s teen population. It was held outdoors, on a refurbished ranch, because despite the carols being sung about sleigh bells and winter wonderlands, December in Vegas was relatively mild. The cold weather wouldn’t really strike until the new year, so the light jackets and festive scarves were mostly for fashion’s sake.
After excusing himself, Vaughn momentarily left Skamar in front of a faux North Pole, where a Santa smelling of peppermint and vodka was taking pictures with groups of girls too old be sitting on his lap. Skamar took the opportunity to scan the crowd without being watched by Vaughn or burdened by making small talk. She was still in search mode when he returned with a pastry, which she glanced at as if it were an alien life form.
“We’re here to work,” she said, crossing her arms.
“We’re here to blend,” he corrected, nudging her with something called a churro. She studied the stick of fried dough and cinnamon sugar, twisting it in her hand before taking a tentative bite. The warmth, the sugar, and the surprising cream-filled center had her eyes winging wide, and she looked up to find Vaughn watching her with a soft, amused gaze. It wasn’t the knowing look he shot her from behind his apartment balcony or the hard glaze that assessed her work. It was new, and when he reached up to wipe sugar from her lips, she found she couldn’t hold it and dropped her head.
Then he surprised her yet again. The steam from the coffee cup he’d been hiding warmed her face, and she jerked back, causing his amusement to turn into full-fledged laughter. “I told you we were going to share a cup of coffee, sunshine.”
His cockiness made laughter well in her, too, so she reached for the cup, muttering as she brought it to her mouth. “Stop calling me that.”
“What should I call you, then?” he said, angling again for her name.
She only narrowed her eyes, but when he linked her arm through his, she didn’t pull away. His size gave the illusion that he was the stronger of them, she reasoned, and his body heat and the low rumble of his voice were a relatively pleasant duet accompanying an unpleasant task.
So they walked arm in arm, threading through enough teens that the hormones practically flattened the air molecules. As Vaughn had predicted, most were giggling girls, clustered and texting, hair-tossing and bouncing with more energy than twelve-week-old puppies. At one point, a piercing chorus of squeals went up so close to Skamar that her eyes actually crossed. But the uniformity in scent made it simple to ferret out the aberrant one . . . and it was one Skamar knew well.
“What is it?” Vaughn asked, feeling her stiffen. He followed her gaze to a man standing near the fence, a protective arm draped over the shoulders of a glassy-eyed girl. Her head was hidden beneath a thick brown ski cap, and their coloring was so alike that anyone who didn’t know better would take him for her father.
The ability to change shape and form was so convenient, Skamar thought, stepping forward. Too bad for the Tulpa that his black slush aura was always the same.
“It’s Debi,” she whispered. The Tulpa was obviously using the girl as cover while he canvassed the crowd for another victim. He knew, then, that she wasn’t the one. And if the Tulpa was attending to the matter personally, Zoe was right. He was hunting their granddaughter.
