Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Margaret
This Hyrrokin male is taller than Hannibal, which I did not think was possible.
Hannibal is built like a soldier. But this one is built like something else entirely, lean and long.
He’s bare-chested, which is normal for a male of his species, but for some reason I’m noticing his red chest when my eyes don’t normally linger on such things.
His dark trousers are more formal than Hannibal’s and fit him so very well.
His feet are bare, with silver-tipped toenails, because nobody on this planet wears shoes.
His head is smooth and bald, the way they all are, with two black horns curving back from his forehead. Black lips. A long folio is balanced in one massive claw, the kind only academics carry.
And he wears small, dark-rimmed reading glasses, perched right on the bridge of his crooked nose.
A fire-breathing devil in reading glasses?
I suck in a breath. Nobody prepared me for this. I’m not scared of this red-skinned Hyrrokin. Instead I’m instantly flooded with desire.
He’s been looking down at the folio. He looks up when I enter and goes completely still. Those black eyes fix on me. His heated gaze trails down my body from head to toe and back up to my face again. A thin curl of smoke drifts up from one nostril.
Oh my.
What is this? Am I…am I actually attracted to this male? How is this even possible?
I step forward and of course my purse chooses this exact moment to slip off my shoulder and hit the stone floor with a slap that echoes off every hard surface in the room.
“Sorry…Sorry. That’s…hi. Hello.” Oh jeez.
After fifteen years of interviews, depositions and live broadcasts I’m suddenly flustered by this one particular Hyrrokin.
“This is Dr. Vidar Coalstone,” Hannibal explains. “He’s a Senior Fellow at the Royal Hyrrokin Science Academy. Vidar, this is Avery’s best friend Margaret Reyes. She just got in from Salo.”
Vidar sets the folio down on the side table and inclines his head. “Ms. Reyes.”
Heat rushes through my body at the sound of that low, luscious voice. It’s a voice made for audiocasts. A voice I would pay currency to hear again.
“Dr. Coalstone.” I put out my hand, in greeting. “I’m here on vacation.”
He reaches out and his claw swallows mine completely, the silver tips brushing the inside of my wrist so gently. Oh dear gods. Now the heat from that instant connection spreads down my body and between my thighs.
How is this even possible?
He lets go after exactly the correct number of seconds.
“You’ll take the lower guest quarters,” Hannibal tells him, like it’s already settled business.
Vidar glances at me. Then back at Hannibal. “You have room for us both?”
“Yes. We have two guest rooms on separate floors. Yours is the one on the lower level. It has its own entrance.”
“Good.”
That’s his entire reaction to the news that he’ll be sleeping one floor beneath me for the next two weeks. One syllable.
Across the room, Avery catches my eye and mouths, Sorry. I didn’t know.
I give her the smallest headshake back. It’s fine.
“May I ask why a member of the Science Academy is here?” I question because I’ve always been insatiably curious about anything out of the ordinary.
“It’s because of that thing I mentioned,” Avery says, a beat too fast. “With the kids. At the wall.”
I look at her. “You said it was nothing.”
She shrugs. “Well, it was nothing, at first.”
I let that sit, because I’m going to come back to it and we both know I am. Then I turn to Vidar.
“I’m here,” he tells me, “because the residents along this stretch of the wall have been reporting anomalies.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Heh. I’d been told it was just odd sounds?”
“Yes, sounds at night, scratching against the stone, always after full dark. But then there was eye-shine in the canopy that matches no species in the regional catalogue.” He says it the way another male might read off a grocery list. “Domestic beasts refusing to enter particular corners of particular gardens. Repeatedly. The same corners.”
Skylo shifts against my feet.
“That’s four separate categories of report,” I say.
“Five. Children’s belongings, left out in yards overnight, have been recovered afterward inside the preserve.”
My eyes widen. “Inside?”
“Past the wall. Yes.”
Hannibal crosses his arms. “This is when several of us reported the happenings to the Academy.”
“How far past the wall?”
“Between two and nine nanco, in the four instances that were documented well enough to measure.”
Documented well enough to measure. He measured them. Of course he measured them.
“And who are the witnesses who saw the eyes, for instance and heard the noises?”
“Several children in this community have independently reported seeing something at the wall. They do not socialize as a group and yet their accounts are consistent.”
“How many children have seen something?”
“Six.”
“And their ages?”
“Four through fourteen.
“Are any of them related?”
“Two are related and living in the same household, the rest are not.”
I should let this go. I am on vacation. I have a suitcase upstairs that isn’t even fully unpacked and a goddaughter who wants me in a costume in ten days.
“As Hannibal said, several families have contacted the authorities. The Touchstone family requested a formal evaluation,” Vidar goes on. “Sir Bane Ashmoor recommended me to the peacekeepers.”
“And what do you make of this so far?”
“A stray predator, most likely. Wandered out of its range during rainy season, when there were fewer beings outdoors. The dry season has begun and activity returns to the community. The animal moves on. I am here to find and document. The sightings are nocturnal,” he adds.
“My instrumentation runs overnight and requires checking at intervals. This domicile backs directly onto the wall, and the lower quarters have a separate entrance. I can come and go at odd hours without waking the household. I will not disturb your vacation with my studies.”
I should let it go, but I keep asking questions as if I were back on a case with the IBB. “What, specifically, do the children describe?”
“A figure, not an animal. Standing. Taller than a Hyrrokin male. Long claws. Golden eye-shine. One of them called it the friend at the gate,” he says. “They are consistent on one point in particular. They do not believe it wishes them harm. They say it watches.”
“Why would the eye-shine be golden?”
Nobody says anything for a second.
Vidar looks at his folio. “Eye-shine varies by species.”
“That's not what I asked.”
“They are almost certainly combining genuine wildlife encounters with stories their grandmothers have told them in the dark.”
“I agree,” Hannibal says. “And Vidar is here to put this thing to rest, prior to Halloween and before this gets any further and causes anyone to do something irrational which can cause harm.”
And there it is.
“Six children,” I mutter. “Independently said the same words.”
“Children are highly suggestible, Ms. Reyes.”
“Children are terrible liars. That’s a different thing.
I used to work for the Intergalactic Business Bureau, but now I work on an audiocast of cold cases for financial fraud.
Every episode I’ve ever made starts with somebody credentialed explaining why the witness was mistaken.
That’s the whole show, Dr. Coalstone. Which makes me think that the witnesses in this instance, even though they are children, might be given a little more credibility. ”
“Then you and I will disagree productively.”
I purse my lips.
“Are you going out to the wall tonight?” Dagr questions, while sitting on the floor, his back against the couch, tablet in his lap. He hasn’t looked up once and he’s clearly heard every word.
“I am,” Vidar answers.
“Is Aunt Margaret going with you to help with your investigation?”
Vidar looks at him with an expression of such genuine, uncomprehending confusion that I almost laugh.
“Why would she do that?”
He isn’t being unkind. I can tell. He’s stating a fact about the allocation of responsibility, the way you’d note who’s carrying which bag. It does not occur to him, not even a little, that it could land any other way.
Hannibal makes a noise into his drink.
Avery briefly closes her eyes.
“Well, she does this for a living,” Dagr says.
“This human hosts an entertainment program.”
“She solves cold cases.” Dagr still hasn’t looked up. “The program is about the cases.”
“Thank you, Dagr,” I say and turn back to Vidar. “But I’m retired from the IBB and it’s true that I’m on vacation. I should be here to help with Halloween and make sure none of the kids get sick from eating too much Halloween candy. I do not plan to work on your investigation.”
“Good,” Dr. Coalstone says. Satisfied. Matter closed.
And that lands wrong somewhere under my ribs, which is ridiculous, because I am on vacation, and because it turns out I’d rather have been asked and turned down than not asked at all.
Then he adds, “You should understand that this is a credentialed evaluation, Ms. Reyes. My findings will be submitted to the Royal Academy and to the peacekeepers. They must be defensible. Unimpeachable.”
“I know what an evaluation is.”
“Then you understand why I cannot have an unaffiliated investigator with a public audience working adjacent to my fieldwork. Anything you published would compromise the objectivity of the record.”
“And for my part,” I snort, “I don’t work under anybody’s credentials. Ever. That’s the whole methodology. The second I’m attached to somebody else’s findings, I’m not independent, and if I’m not independent, I’ve got nothing.”
“Then we agree.”
“Yes, we will stay out of each other’s way.”
“That would be best.” Vidar stands and collects a hard-shell case from beside the couch.
I turn to Avery, because I’ve been sitting on this for twenty minutes and she has been watching me learn all my information from a stranger. “You should have told me.”
She puts her palms up. “I told you.”
I point at Vidar. “You did not tell me the Royal Academy sent a Senior Fellow to run instrumentation off your back wall.”
“Well, that part’s new.”
“Avery.”
She sighs. And then she says it straight out, in front of everyone, including Vidar. “If I’d told you, you’d have come here to work.”
“I came to see Mitry.”
“Mar,” she says gently. “You’d have come to work, and I was hoping to keep this a fun visitation and not let it turn into something more.” She waves her hand. “Let him focus on the case, that’s what he’s here for. You and I can still have fun setting up the very first human Halloween on Tarvos.”
I don’t have an answer for that, because there isn’t one.
“She is correct,” Hannibal says into his drink.
“Nobody asked you, Hellstone.”
Vidar shoulders the case. He inclines his head to Avery, then to Hannibal. Then, last, to me. “Ms. Reyes.”
I look up.
“For the record,” he says, “I was not told you were coming either.”
Then he’s out the side door and gone.
“He didn’t fully answer your question about the golden eyes,” Dagr comments. He still hasn’t looked up from his tablet.
“I know,” I say.