“What?”
“Someone took Desmond’s sister. ”
“Fuck me sideways. ”
Yeah, that about summed it up. “I gotta go. ”
“Secret, wait. ” My thumb hovered over the end button, but I pulled the phone back to my ear. Nolan’s breathing was raspy on the other end of the line, like he was working hard at something. The muted sound of a keyboard filled the silence. “Give me a sec. ”
A pile of bread debris now littered the otherwise clean oak table in front of me. I set one elbow on the polished surface and cupped my chin in my open palm. Somewhere a clock was ticking. Dull pain had started to etch a path up the back of my neck, its long fingers threatening to take hold of my brain and give it a migraine-inducing squeeze.
The swinging kitchen door nudged open and Desmond slipped in. Given the uncanny hearing werewolves had, I suspected he must have heard me mention his name and had come to see what was happening. I gave him a tight smile, but I
knew it didn’t fool him. Since he couldn’t offer immediate assistance to me, he moved to the stove and removed the potatoes from the element. Judging by the smell, they’d been reduced to a starchy mush. He shut off the oven before the turkey had a chance to burn, then came to sit across from me.
“Tell me you have something other than the shifter connection. Something that might actually help me. ” I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, because under normal circumstances I’d be impressed with what Nolan had dug up. But this wasn’t a time to applaud him for a job well done. I could do that later, once we had Penny back.
Nolan coughed and I heard rustling noises and more typing.
“Nolan?”
Desmond had piled the bread bits together and made a little circle of them on the table, pushing them around while he listened to me talk. With his clean-shaven face and his hair slicked back he looked much younger than his twenty-seven years. But the wan, fretful expression made him look older by a decade. I reached out and grasped his idle hand, giving it a squeeze. It wouldn’t make him feel better, but it was all I had to offer.
A Christmas plaque rested above the kitchen sink, propped against the window. It said ’Tis the season for family.
I squeezed Desmond’s hand harder, like I never planned to let it go.
“Here it is,” Nolan said at last, and based on Desmond’s sharp inhale, he’d picked up on that part of the conversation as well.
“What is it?” I found myself edging off the chair, prepared to stand, or run, or do anything at a moment’s notice. I needed to feel useful instead of scared and impotent.
“Well, one of the kids was being raised by his old grandma. And she said something about how this wasn’t the first time. She remembered it happenin’ before. ”
“Are you sure?”
“She was sure. ”
“I don’t remember hearing anything about a bunch of dismembered bodies. I think if this had happened before we’d have known. Or at least the police would have. ”
“Only if they found the bodies,” Desmond suggested.
A chill slithered down my back like a drip of ice-cold water.
“Let’s skip the exposition. ” Then, scolding myself for how rude I was being, I added, “Just until we have Penny safe. Then I want to know it all. ”
This appeased Nolan, because he continued, skipping over the backstory from were-Grandma. “It’s a type of lesser fae that feeds on fear, in the literal sense. Older records say it goes after the amygdala”—he had to work to emphasize the a—“ya know, the emotional core of the brain. Seems like the fae originated in England in the sixteenth century, or that’s when the first written record of it shows up. It could be way older, or have had a different—”
I cleared my throat.
“Oh, right. Sorry. ”
“What kind of fae is it?”
“It’s a tidal fae, salt water. It moves with the phases of the moon, coming up when the moon is full, then going back to the water once it’s fully fed, usually by the time the next full moon is out. It has a pretty long hibernation period. If the gaps between stories’re a good indication, once this thing is back in the water it’s not coming back for ’nother forty years. ”
A knot in my throat threatened to choke me. The full moon was only days away. If this thing planned to complete its business and go to ground before then, we were running out of time.
“Any idea where we can find it?”