Chapter 4
THOUGH ONLY A crack, it was enough to make me jump off the bench and race across the yard.
I hadn’t reacted in time with Mom. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Creeping up the stone steps, I peered through the one-inch gap.
“You know for a fact she’s not in Fiji?” It was Dad’s voice. That was his arm by the kitchen table.
“That’s our belief, sir,” a feminine voice replied. “We can tell you everything we know if you’ll sign here.”
I tried to get a peek at who Dad was talking to without opening the door.
Blue skin.
I clapped a hand over my mouth to cover my gasp. It was that hulk thing that had taken Mom! Except, maybe not... This one seemed about two feet shorter. Were there a lot of blue fae? Another fae shifted behind the first, mostly blocked from my view. How was Dad so calm?
“No problem.” The paper crackled as Dad took it. “Like I told you when we crossed paths earlier, I had a gut feeling I had false information. I’ll do anything to get her back.”
He wouldn’t actually sign something, would he?
Dad, don’t be stupid! I wanted to yell.
But after confronting the fae last time without a plan and failing miserably, I wasn’t going to repeat my mistakes.
Instead, I leaned over the thin metal railing beside the steps to peek through the window over the sink.
“Ouch,” Dad hissed. “That pen is sharp.”
“Did it make you bleed?” the fae said with an innocent tone that I didn’t buy for a second.
“It’s fine,” Dad assured them. A second later, I caught a glimpse of his solemn face as he held the paper out. “Here you go, officers.”
Officers?
A hand snaked out to take it, the same pasty-white color as the paper. Something that looked like ivy wrapped around the slender forearm.
Nothing about these two said “police.”
The list I’d made in my notebook, still in my backpack by the bench, came to mind. Are they doing that illusion thing? Making Dad see what they want him to see?
That made sense, except—why can I see through it, then?
It must’ve been because they didn’t know I was here. They probably needed to focus on people to make it work.
“You said you have daughters?” the female voice asked.
“Yes,” Dad agreed distractedly, waving at the bedroom behind him. “Thr—”
“They’ll need to sign as well,” she said, cutting him off. “We need all the family signatures.”
Nope, nope, nope, I chanted internally. Nothing about that statement made sense. Dad would realize they were faking it now. Even if his eyes somehow saw uniforms and normal-looking people, his ears still worked, right?
“Well, Rissa and Olive are in their room, and Bry—” He stopped abruptly. “What’re you doing?”
I leaned so far over the railing to see that my feet lifted off the ground. The big blue brute had shouldered past Dad to open the bedroom door.
“We’re in a hurry,” the woman—or fae—said in a soothing tone. “Please ask them to join us.”
“Oh, okay,” Dad agreed, too easily. “Um, girls? Can you come out here please? The police need to talk to you.”
Olive came out first, eyes glued to her sparkly pink phone.
She definitely hadn’t been doing her homework.
Rissa shuffled out a few moments later in her blue robe, yawning, dark hair sticking out in multiple directions.
“Dad,” she whined, eyeing the big blue fae staring at them but not seeming to notice anything unusual. “I was napping.”
If I weren’t so worried, I would’ve snorted. She’d completely forgotten about making dinner.
“These officers are helping search for Mom,” Dad told them.
“But. . . don’t we know where she is?” Olive said slowly, glancing at Rissa, who chimed in, “Yeah, the note said Fiji, didn’t it?”
“Well, that’s what we thought, but today these officers were explaining—”
Once again, he was cut off. “We believe she was likely taken.” The other fae moved into view as she spoke to my sisters.
Her hair was as white as her skin, and she had pale blue eyes lined in black with equally black lips, but it was her translucent wings that caught my eye.
They stretched out gracefully from her back and shimmered different colors in the sunlight, waving gently, as if there were a breeze inside.
“We will tell you everything we know if you’ll write your signature here besides your father’s. ”
Olive grabbed the pen, eager to sign. “Ah, it cut me!” It barely slowed her down. She signed the page, then handed the pen to Rissa to excitedly text someone.
I huffed silently. She hadn’t even bothered to read what she was signing.
“Ugh, why’d you give me the pen that cut you?
” Rissa grumbled, pulling her finger away to reveal a small spot of blood.
She, at least, tried to read the contract first as she sucked on her sore finger.
But the fae cleared her throat, rushing her, and my middle sister caved to the pressure.
Putting her hand on the table, she carefully signed on the same line as Dad and Olive.
“Well,” Dad said with a heavy sigh. “That just leaves Bry—”
He stopped abruptly, eyes widening.
I couldn’t tell what had stopped him, but Olive glanced up from her phone at that same moment and dropped it with a scream. Rissa joined her. Dad stepped protectively in front of them. “What’s going on? How did you do that? You’re not the police!”
Ah, they’d dropped their illusion.
“You are correct, Mister. . .” The pale one paused to pick up the paper and read the signature. “Donovan.”
I frowned. They didn’t even know Dad’s name? The ones that’d taken Mom had seemed to know her. Were they not working together?
Dad paled. “I knew she didn’t leave us,” he whispered to himself. He raised his voice. “You took her!”
Fiiiiiiinally. I didn’t know how he’d pieced that together, but at least he was figuring it out. The mixture of relief and stress made my chest hurt.
“Oh, no, not us personally,” the female replied calmly, waving toward the blue one. “But Toothaker here heard a rumor that you were searching for our kind.”
Wait, what? Dad had been looking for answers too—did that mean he’d suspected Mom’s note wasn’t real all this time? Did he actually know about the fae? Why hadn’t he said anything?
“It’s my personal policy to take the entire family when possible,” the fae was saying. “No loose ends that way. But it seems someone was lazy and missed the three of you.”
Four of us, I thought. But she obviously didn’t know she’d missed one.
“Now, please,” she said cheerfully, as if inviting them to a tea party. “Come with us.”
“Absolutely not.” Dad crossed his arms, shifting on his feet. “I think you should leave.”
I’d never heard him fight with anyone in his life, not even Mom, but there was iron in his voice.
The female pointed to the contract. “That’s binding. You don’t really have a choice.”
“First of all,” Dad snapped, “that’s not going to hold up in court. And second, you promised to bring my wife back if I signed.”
The fae cackled. “I made no such promise. I only agreed to tell you everything I know, which, as it turns out, is nothing at all besides a suspicion that one of the fair folk may have led her away. There, I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain.”
Dad pushed Rissa and Olive behind him, subtly moving them toward the archway that led from the kitchen to the living room.
Without missing a beat, the female followed them step for step as she continued, “As for your human courts, they mean nothing to me. You will fulfill your side of the agreement, or the magic will bend you to its will and enforce the contract that way. And I guarantee it will be more painful.”
A flash of emotion that looked like genuine fear flew across Dad’s face. His voice trembled slightly as he asked, “What is ‘our side’ of the agreement?”
That’s why you should have read the contract! I wanted to yell at him.
“You’re coming with us.”
A metallic taste filled my mouth, and my whole body went cold. I felt lightheaded.
This can not be happening.
“Girls.” Dad’s voice lowered to a dangerous level I’d never heard from him before. “Run!” he yelled, pushing them toward the front door, grabbing one of our pans off the counter where it’d been drying. He swung it wildly at the creatures.
Rissa only hesitated a second before she took off, dragging Olive by her collar, both of them looking over their shoulders at Dad with sickened expressions.
The blue one caught Dad’s frying pan in one big hand.
If the cheap metal bothered him, he didn’t show it.
Calmly, the other fae moved to the table where Rissa had last signed the paper. She touched it.
The paper glowed softly.
With that one touch, she ripped the fight out of them.
Dad let go of the frying pan, hands falling limply to his sides. But the worst part was the way his face went slack, like the lights had turned off.
A few seconds later, Rissa and Olive shuffled back into the kitchen with their jackets half zipped and boots thrown on, laces untied. Though tears left tracks across their cheeks, their eyes were dry. Blank. Just like Dad’s.
“Make sure to cover our tracks,” the pale one said to the blue hulk, turning to the back door. “And get more creative while you’re at it. It needs to be something different than the last few times or the humans will get suspicious.”
I ducked before she saw me in the window and threw myself off the steps, landing by the corner of the house and rolling around it as if I were in a clumsy spy movie. I barely made it out of sight before the door swung open.
Breathing hard, I caught the air in my lungs and refused to let it out.
If they discovered me—well, I didn’t honestly know what they’d do, but I didn’t want to find out.
They’d clearly come for our whole family. That explained why I’d had so much trouble tracking down family members of people who’d been taken before. Dad had never gotten a chance to tell them about me though. They didn’t know I existed. Which meant I had an advantage.
Slipping my beat-up phone from my coat pocket, I tried to call 911, desperately hoping the word vomit issue wouldn’t apply this time since their contract seemed different than Mom’s.
The nine worked fine, but the cracks across the top left corner had spread so far that no matter how many times and ways I tapped the screen, the one wouldn’t dial.
My eyes swung wildly about the yard, searching for a weapon.
Nothing.
Not even a shovel for the sidewalk, because none of us had gotten around to doing it yet.
Gritting my teeth, I pressed into the shadows along the side of the house, careful not to let them see me as they passed by.
They trailed out the back door single file, following the fae female toward the woods.
Dad, Rissa, and Olive didn’t say a word.
They moved after her like obedient zombies, and a second later, the big blue one shut the back door with a quiet click and brought up the tail.
It was an exact repeat of Mom’s kidnapping.
Except this time, a crazy plan formed.