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“Nothing,” he says. “It’s just that a year ago, fuck, a few months ago, you were all like, we need to worry about the future, the war is coming, evil is going to take over the world. Now you’re worried about her.”
I don’t think he means it as an insult, but it’s still somewhat difficult not to be annoyed. He must see it in my eyes.
“Oh, calm down, Father,” he says. “I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. I’m worried about her too.”
“You might find this hard to believe, Misha, but I’m worried about all of it,” I say. “Since she seems to be in the way of things, since they seem to have picked her, worrying about her is absolutely the least we can do.”
“You’re right,” he says. “So we’re going to keep digging until we find something that we can take to her. Obviously we can’t rely on our good looks and sweet talking to convince Trine of anything at this point. I…”
He trails off for a second as his eyes settle on the laptop screen. He doesn’t stop talking shit once he’s started until something significant happens. I want to ask him what’s going on, but he’s reading intently, and I know better than to interrupt him.
He’ll tell me what he’s thinking about when he’s ready.
I can’t stare at the blank expression on the picture of Malon’s driving license anymore, so I close my laptop and get to my feet. “I’ll leave these outside,” I say as I grab the plates and put them on the tray.
“Wait,” he says as I stand up. “I think I found something, but it’s…I mean, it’s honestly ridiculous.” I set the tray down on the table in front of me and wait for him to continue.
He takes a deep breath. “Come here,” he says.
I sit down on the bed next to him after he makes space for me.
He doesn’t tell me anything. It’s one of those old archived newsletter pages, all one image, so I’m having a hard time figuring out what he wants me to look at.
“It’s a footnote,” he says. “The drunk driver arrested? On your right.”
I let my gaze scan over the newspaper until it settles on a few sentences. There’s nothing remarkable about the article. A family of three was rundown by a suspected drunk driver, who had been indicted. The mother and young child died at the scene. The father was in critical condition, and not expected to recover. He’d been airlifted to a local hospital.
There is no mention of anyone’s first names, but it does say something about the O’Mara family.
“This could be anyone,” I say. “I don’t know if that name is uncommon.”
“Agreed, but this is somewhere up in South Georgia, and they mention he’s the town psychologist. They also said he was young, so if my calculations are correct, his age would be around right.”
“And a young man who’s just lost his family…he would be vulnerable if a demon approached him,” I say. “Are you sure it’s him?”
“Moderately,” Misha replies. “I looked up his surname with the town’s name and I found his wife’s obituary. Says her husband Malon will miss her. I think that’s a pretty uncommon name.”
“Okay,” I say. “That’s a start. What now?”
“We likely won’t be able to find anything about him since his medical records will be sealed, but we might be able to find something about his family, and that way, we could find a little more about his origins. I think Trine would be a bit less inclined to forgive if she knew where he came from.”
“Maybe,” I say. “I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Well, we’re going to find out,” he replies. “We can’t exactly travel up there and leave Rei to take care of here, so we’re going to have to make a bunch of phone calls and see who we can bribe over the phone.”
“Bribe?” I ask him with a smile. He looks dead serious.
“Bribe, threaten, whatever,” he replies. The expression on his face wipes the smile off my own. “I don’t care what we need to do. We need to protect her.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Who is the article writer?”
“I can’t make it out, it’s too small,” he replies, pinching his screen to zoom in. “But we could see if the editor-in-chief is still there. If the newspaper is still around, and that’s a big if.”
I nod. That makes sense; a bunch of newspapers have shut down since then, particularly local ones. That’s going to be a difficult thing to look into.
“Come on,” Misha says. “Let’s see how much work we can do this morning.”
“Right,” I say.
