Chicagoland Vampires: Wild Things Part 20

I bobbed my head toward the screen. "I a.s.sume Jakob's the male rider. Who's the chick?"

The female character was impressively dressed in a jointed suit of armor much like Jakob's, but shaped for her curvier and more pet.i.te form. Her hair was long and golden, pulled into a complicated braid down her back, and her eyes were blue. A tattoo on her left cheek looked like a Celtic knot.

"That's Adriel," Fallon said. "She's the kingdom's crown princess, but she gave the throne to her twin brother and sister so she could keep the land safe."

Jeff reached out his hand and she took it, and they shared a look of such intimacy and love that I turned away, not wanting to intrude on it.

Ethan touched the back of my neck, acknowledging the love that swirled in the room.

"Now that we've covered the software," Ethan said lightly, "the hardware looks equally impressive."

"That's what she said," Jeff muttered. Love or not, he was still Jeff. I bit back a smile at Fallon's eye roll.

"We put it in a few months ago," Nick said. "After the incident involving Jamie."

The incident had been an unfortunate attempt at blackmail that Papa Breck believed was our fault. That was at least some of the reason for the strained relationship between us.

Nick walked to a freestanding screen, swirled a hand across the gla.s.s and, when a keyboard prompt filled the screen, typed in a pa.s.sword. The screen shifted, throwing up images of the house, the grounds on the right side. The left side showed news channels, newspaper headlines.

"It's impressive," Ethan said. "Have you had much cause to use it?"

"Not until this weekend," Nick said. "And unfortunately, not until after the fact."

I heard the guilt in his voice, the regret they hadn't been able to stop the harpies or elves ahead of time.

"Security cameras do not afford the gift of premonition," Ethan kindly said, hands behind his back as he stepped forward to review the screen. "You've heard about Scott Grey?"

"We have," Nick said. "The mayor doesn't seem eager to let up on you."

"No," Ethan agreed, sliding his hands into his pockets. "She does not, although I suppose that's not entirely surprising considering her past actions."

Jeff swiped the screen again, and Jakob and his trusty steed disappeared, replaced by a mock-up of the dry-erase board from the House's Ops Room.

"You made a whiteboard for us?" I asked with a grin.

Jeff shrugged adorably. "We've kind of become a team. It seemed like the thing to do."

"And with that," Nick said, moving toward the door, "I'll let you get to work."

He disappeared, closing the door behind him.

"The Brecks have a house of p.i.s.sed-off Pack members," Jeff explained. "They'll be packing up, heading out, and he wants to make sure they remain calm until they do."

"Entirely understandable," I said. "Let's talk business."

Maybe I was becoming a private eye. I really needed to learn more of the lingo.

"The receipt," Jeff said, enlarging it on the screen. "Showing a flight to Anchorage. I talked to Luc, who talked to his connection at the airlines."

"Ex-girlfriend," I murmured, and Ethan whistled low, apparently recognizing the potential drama that would cause.

"Yeah. So she confirmed Aline was on the pa.s.senger manifest for the Anchorage flight, but she didn't show up or call to cancel."

"The ticket could have been a plant," Mallory suggested, but Jeff shook his head.

"Damien called the Meadows," Jeff said. "She reserved a room but didn't show."

"The Meadows is where shifters stay when they're in Aurora," I explained. "So she didn't get on her flight. And, more important, she didn't actually arrive."

"So she changed her plans?" Ethan asked.

"Or she met with foul play on the way to the airport," Jeff said. "But I haven't seen anything in the news along those lines. The receipts in the storage box were dated up to three days before Lupercalia," Jeff said, showing a spreadsheet that itemized each and every one of them. He'd been busy. "And since we didn't find anything else in the locker, I'm thinking it's a red herring. She buys the storage locker because, literally, she's running out of s.p.a.ce in her house."

"It was that bad?" Mallory wondered.

"It was that bad," Jeff and I simultaneously agreed.

"It's also possible she was never going to get onto that plane, and someone went to a lot of trouble to fake us out," Ethan said.

"That's a lot of trouble to go to for a Pack outcast," Catcher said, crossing his arms with a frown.

"Or it's exactly the right kind of trouble," Mallory said. "If you're gonna take out a shifter, why not make it a troublemaker no one's likely to miss?"

"Or both," I said. "She's a troublemaker. She planned to defect back to Alaska. But she didn't make it to the airport because someone intercepted her."

"But if you're going to intercept her, why do it with harpies and a full-on attack? Why not just grab her at home?" Mallory asked.

I shrugged. "For fun and profit?"

"She's still a shifter," Jeff said quietly. "She may be a pain in the a.s.s, but she's still a shifter. She'd put up a fight if she knew they were coming. And if they don't have power of their own-if they're using magic and other species to do the fighting for them-maybe they thought the fight was necessary."

"The elves managed to grab you and Damien," Catcher pointed out.

"An army of elves," Jeff said. "With threats and promises to kill Merit if we didn't cooperate."

Ethan nodded. "So the harpies were a cover, or a way to completely throw the Pack off balance and sneak Aline away. We talked to her right before the ceremony began, so she didn't leave long before the attack." He glanced at Jeff. "I don't suppose there are cameras in the woods?"

"There are not," Jeff said. "Just around the house. I've run facial recognition, but there's no footage of her returning from the woods to the house."

Catcher nodded. "So she didn't sneak back in when the fight was under way, grab a bag, leave."

"Let's play this out from the beginning," I said, walking closer to the screen and glancing at the timeline. "She was living in her house, running errands, saving stuff. She comes to the Brecks' house. We meet her in the woods; the ceremony begins. The harpies attack." I glanced back at the group. "Does anybody remember seeing her during the attack or afterward?"

There was only telling silence.

"Truthfully," Jeff said, rubbing the back of his neck, "I wasn't looking for her. But no, I didn't see her."

Ethan stepped behind me, pressed his lips to my neck. "I love it when you play detective."

"I'm working," I said, but I said it with a smile.

"What's next?" Jeff asked.

"Niera," I said. "An elf and a mother. She was taken during or after the glamoury magic was used on the elves. And that attack happened during the day after the harpy attack."

"If we're a.s.suming these are kidnappings, what could Aline and Niera possibly have in common? What's the motivation for taking them both?"

"They're both sups," Mallory pointed out. "There are plenty of people out there who hate us. Maybe the motivation's political."

But Catcher shook his head. "Political means proving a point. There's no evidence of murder here, n.o.body claiming responsibility. By all accounts, the attacks were by two completely different groups."

"Which we've decided is technically impossible, since vampires were the second group. If one group was doing this-or one person-who could it be?" I glanced at Catcher, Mallory. "This is old-fashioned magic, right? The kind you do, or make. So that's sorcerer territory."

"Yeah," Catcher said, shifting uncomfortably. "But it couldn't be anyone we actually know. Baumgartner, Mallory, Simon, Paige, me. That's the entire crew within the tristate area. And you'd have to be closer than that."

"Then we're missing someone, or ignoring them. Are there any other sups who could do this, who may or may not be extinct, or who we think are just mythological creatures?"

No one answered, so I took that as a no. Frustration building, I looked back at Catcher and Mallory. "Okay. So you guys can funnel the power of the universe, right?"

They shared a glance that was intimate enough to make me uncomfortable.

"I'll take that as a yes. Are there sups who can, I don't know, work spells or magic that might seem like the good sorcerer stuff?"

"They'd be sorcerers," Catcher flatly said.

I took that as a no.

Ethan's phone beeped, and my heart jumped nervously. He glanced at the screen, nodded, looked at Jeff. "It's the librarian. Can we conference him in?"

Jeff took Ethan's phone, and when Jeff tapped a few keys, the librarian appeared on-screen, his dark, wavy hair sticking up in disheveled locks, as it usually did. He wore a polo shirt and a new pair of black-rimmed gla.s.ses that, however unnecessary, added to his debonair-scholar appeal.

Beside him sat Paige, a woman who was almost ridiculously attractive. Vibrant, short red hair with a Marilyn-esque wave, pale skin, green eyes. She wore a heather gray Cadogan House sweatshirt that somehow, on her, looked elegant.

We'd found Paige keeping a lock on the Order's archives in Nebraska until Dominic Tate burned the place down. And then we brought her home, with the last few books she'd managed to pull from the flames.

"Librarian. Paige," Ethan said in greeting.

Paige offered a small wave.

"Liege," the librarian said.

"Have you identified any connection between Aline and Niera?" Ethan asked.

"Directly? No," he said. "No information on Niera beyond what you've provided, for obvious reasons. Basic biographical information for Aline, but nothing terribly interesting there. No, the key here isn't Niera and Aline; it's their disappearances. Long story short, they aren't the only ones who are gone."

If the librarian hadn't yet gotten everyone's attention, he got it now. Even the low hum of the computers seemed to drop another decibel.

"They didn't have anything in common except for the fact that they're supernaturals and they've disappeared. So we dug through newspapers and missing persons bulletins in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and . . ." He fumbled through a stack of papers on the table in front of him.

"Minnesota," Paige politely finished, sliding him a smile. "You always forget Minnesota."

"I always forget Minnesota," he agreed. "We looked over those records for the last three years and cross-referenced the records with the North American Vampire Registry, friends in the community, anyone else we could think of to identify whether any of those missing persons were supernaturals."

"We talked to Merit's grandfather," Paige said. "He seemed very eager to offer his thoughts."

I smiled. "He's probably ready to jump out of his skin and appreciated the distraction."

"That he was," she agreed. "He's looking forward to seeing you. I told him I'd pa.s.s along his love."

"Consider it pa.s.sed."

The librarian cleared his throat. He wasn't much for chitchat. "We took those missing supernaturals and looked for an a.s.sociated supernatural event."

"An attack," I said, and he nodded.

"No harpies," he said, "but there are instances of magical attacks with some of those kidnappings. One involved a sudden bout of bloodl.u.s.t-set off a bar brawl. Another was an indoor pixie attack. Nothing at the scale of the harpies or elf glamour, though."

"And how many did you find?" Ethan asked.

"That we can confirm, six."

Ethan blinked at the screen. "Six missing sups with attacks? How has no one noticed this before? Realized this was going on?"

The librarian frowned. "Why would they? Supernaturals didn't used to talk to each other. Most of this happened before we were out of the closet. Some group attacks you, you lose a member, you probably aren't going to publicize it."

Ethan nodded. "What groups did you find?"

"That's the unusual thing," the librarian said, crossing his arms on the table and leaning forward. "It's a veritable Noah's ark: troll of the non-River variety, sylph, doppelganger, giantess, a suspected but unconfirmed leprechaun, and an incubus."

There was a buzz of recognition in my bones. "What about shifters and elves?"

"Neither," he said. The librarian read the names of the missing in chronological order, and Jeff added them to the growing "Victims" list on our electronic whiteboard, which already included Niera and Aline.

I scanned the list and looked back at Ethan, dread growing cold and heavy in my stomach. "How many of these species live together?"

"Together?" the librarian asked, lifting his gaze to me. "In families?"

"Families, clans, houses, whatever. How many?"

"Incubi tend to live alone. Ditto doppelgangers, trolls. The rest live in small bands-usually family-based structures. But that would be maybe five or six together at most. Nothing even approaching the size of a Pack or elf clan."

"Or the ferocity," Paige said, scanning a paper in front of her. "Most of the creatures on the missing list are relatively peaceful, keep to themselves. Incubi and leprechauns can be troublemakers."

"It is Noah's ark," I said, walking to the board and pointing at the top of the list of victims we'd a.s.sembled chronologically. The first on the list? An incubus.

"You start with the solitary species," I said. "One supernatural at a time. Sups who live alone, who a.s.similate. They're easier to trap, to catch. And their human friends just think they've moved along, or they've been the victim of some traditional human violence."

"And then you ramp up," Jeff said, moving beside me to get a full view of the screen. "You target the sups who only band together in small groups. The ones less likely to put up a fight, or the ones you can easily overcome in size."