Chapter 15 #2
Comenius nodded, returning my embrace. His shoulders loosened slightly, but I knew he wouldn’t fully relax until his daughter was returned, safe and sound.
Releasing him, I forced him to sit at the kitchen table and help us come up with a list of places to look for her.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t think of where to begin—the school had been shut down for structural repairs, and Rusalia hadn’t been around long enough to make any friends.
“She’s refused to go to the replacement school on the cruise ship,” Comenius said tiredly. “She claims she cannot understand the lessons, her classmates are all horrid, and the teachers don’t want her around.”
Big surprise, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. “We’ll have to track her the old-fashioned way, then. By scent,” I explained at Comenius’s confused look. “Do you have a piece of clothing she’s recently worn, that Fenris can sniff? He hasn’t met her yet.”
Comenius retrieved the girl’s nightgown, and Fenris changed into wolf form before taking a good sniff.
Shifters could scent things better in animal form, and we decided it was best that I stay in human form since Rusalia didn’t know Fenris.
Com was clearly torn about staying behind, but we convinced him that given her hostile mood, it might be easier for us to approach her and convince her to return.
She’d recognize me on sight, at least, even if she didn’t like me.
Besides, if she changed her mind and returned home, she should not find the door locked.
Promising Com that we’d update him as soon as we could, Fenris and I went out to the fire escape, hoping to pick up her scent from there.
“She did indeed use the fire escape to leave,” Fenris said, his bushy wolf’s tail high in the air as he sniffed the ground. “Let’s hope she did not go too far.”
Leaving the steambike parked outside Comenius’s shop, I followed Fenris on foot.
A few shoppers gave us strange glances—it wasn’t unheard of for shifters to walk around in wolf form, but it was a little unusual to see one sniffing around the way Fenris was doing.
We followed Rusalia’s scent all the way down to Market Street, then promptly lost it amongst the crowds of people and the delicious scents of roasting meat and baked goods.
“There are too many other scents here.” Fenris shook his great wolf head. “I do not think I will be able to pick up her trail again.”
“Dammit.” I pursed my lips, scanning the crowd, but I didn’t see any sign of Rusalia here. Had she come down this way to filch something to eat off one of the food carts, or seek shelter in a toy shop somewhere?
“Miss Baine!” someone called. I turned to see Lamar, the ham and sausage vendor I’d met with the other day, hurrying up the sidewalk toward me. “Have you made any progress in your search for that pesky arsonist?”
“I turned the case over to a unit in the Enforcers Guild,” I said, and immediately felt guilty for the way that sounded. “The new captain put together a crew specifically to investigate the fires.”
“Well, they’re not working fast enough,” Lamar groused, folding his beefy arms over his chest. “There was another incident early this morning—this time at Alice’s cart! All of her divine cinnamon buns, completely ruined.”
Fenris and I exchanged a glance. “We don’t have time for this,” he warned.
“Yeah, but I can’t just dump this again.” I turned back to the vendor. “Take us to the cart.”
Lamar escorted us to the remains, which were little more than a charred pile of wood and the strong scent of burnt sugar and bread.
“My poor cart,” Alice moaned, rocking back and forth on her heels.
She was a pretty blonde human, dressed in a pale yellow frock with a white apron.
“I’ve had it for ten years, and it’s never failed me. I don’t know how I’ll replace it.”
“Sunaya,” Fenris said, his voice urgent. He had been sniffing the remains, but now he lifted his head, as if he’d caught something. “Rusalia was here. I would bet my tail on it.”
“Shit.” My stomach plummeted straight into my toes as the truth began to dawn on me. “Did either of you see a little blonde girl hanging around here when your carts were set on fire?” I asked both vendors.
Lamar shrugged. “I don’t know. There are many little blonde girls in Rowanville. I see dozens of them every day.”
“I might have,” Alice said suddenly, her eyes bright. “She was standing over by the produce cart, eyeing an apple. I remember because I warned Prickett, the owner—she looked like she was about to steal from him.” Her face paled. “Do you think she set my cart on fire because she was angry with me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but I had a feeling that was exactly what happened.
By Magorah, I should have considered this.
Rusalia was an angry, confused child with two magical parents.
Of course there was a strong likelihood that she, too, had magic, and she was about the right age for it to manifest. “But I’m going to find out. ”
Energized by the promise of a lead, I questioned the other vendors who had been hit by the arsonist, with Fenris in tow.
A few of them confirmed they’d seen a little girl shortly before the fire had started, and they directed us further up the neighborhood, to where other businesses and individuals had been victimized.
Pretty soon, Fenris and I found ourselves a few blocks away, in a residential neighborhood.
“Hang on a second,” Fenris said, coming to a stop outside the chain link fence of a school. “Is this not where Rusalia would have gone to school?”
“Shit. You’re right.” Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I surveyed the three-story, rectangular brick building, which boasted a small playground and a track field. “Could she be hiding out here?” The wind shifted, and Fenris and I both stiffened as we caught her scent.
“She’s definitely in here,” Fenris said, taking off toward the entrance.
I sprinted after him, knowing his instincts were taking over—he was on the hunt.
My blood hummed in my veins in anticipation—there was no doubt Com’s daughter was hiding out in this abandoned building, the only place she could go to be alone. Why hadn’t we thought of this sooner?
The gate and entrances were all locked, with not a single guard stationed on the premises, but magic enabled us to get inside fairly easily.
We moved slowly through the empty halls, and I took care not to let my boots ring out against the vinyl-tiled floors.
If Rusalia was here, we didn’t want to startle her.
A normal human would have been forced to check all the rooms—and even though this was a simple elementary school, there were still over fifty of them.
Luckily, Fenris had latched onto her scent strongly, and he led us straight past the classrooms, toward a door at the end of the hallway that led to a basement.
My hair stood straight on end as I caught the scent of smoke—something was burning down there.
“Rusalia?” I called, summoning a flame to my hand as we descended the stairs.
The bluish-green fire illuminated the large, rectangular space, crammed with old filing cabinets and shelves full of supplies.
Rusalia was huddled in a corner, her hands hovering over a small fire—she was burning textbooks, I realized, to keep warm.
“You,” she shouted, jumping to her feet.
Her blonde hair fanned out behind her, and I noticed she was dressed in a simple sweater and pants—not nearly enough to stay warm in this weather.
There was no central heating turned on in the school right now; she had to be freezing.
Her eyes widened at the sight of Fenris, still in wolf form. “Stay back!”
She hurled a ball of flame at us, but before it could hit, I countered with a spell Iannis had often used during our training sessions. With a flick of my wrist, I formed a bubble around her fireball, cutting off the oxygen completely and extinguishing the flames.
Rusalia snarled in fury and hurled more fire at us, but I’d done this dance before, and managed to quickly counter her attacks. Fenris deflected a few of them too—even in wolf form, he was more than able to use simple magic like this.
Still, I could tell this was going to get worse before it got better. Rusalia was going to keep flinging around fire until either someone really got hurt, we set the building on fire, or she passed out from exhaustion. Neither of those three options were good.
“Fenris, I’ll cover you, just try and get to her,” I cried, stepping forward and bubbling another fireball.
“Fine,” he growled in mindspeak as he leapt over the stack of books Rusalia was using as kindling.
She screamed, summoning more fire, but before she could fling it, the big wolf landed on top of her, knocking her down.
As her hands smacked into the ground, the look in her eyes made my blood run cold.
Fenris was so close to her that if she hit Fenris with those flaming hands, there’d be nothing I could do to stop her.
“Don’t you dare,” I shouted, taking a step forward and lifting my own hand. Magic crackled at my fingertips as I glared at her. “We’re not here to hurt you, but if you try to harm my friend, I will knock you out myself.” I lifted a hand, magic crackling at my fingertips, and she blanched.
“L-leave me alone!” she wailed, tears running down her face as the flames wreathing her hands vanished into the ether. She tried to squirm out from beneath Fenris, but he simply sat down, putting his not-inconsiderable weight on her chest.
“Fenris,” I chided, drawing closer. “Get off the poor girl. We don’t want to crush her.
” I put out the fire Rusalia had started, then used another spell to heat up the air until it was comfortably warm.
“Is that better?” I asked as she scrambled away from the wolf and scrunched herself into the far corner, arms wrapped around her knees.