Chapter 42 #19
“It’s a place that takes care of people who got back after crossing the river and going where they don’t belong.”
She went into their bedroom and closed the door.
After changing into sweats and thick socks, she curled up on the bed and tried not to think.
Would Yaron look at the website for that place?
Would he pay attention to the careful wording and read between the lines?
People who went to Wyrd uninvited weren’t the same when they came back—if they came back at all.
Yaron was gone the next morning before she woke up. She reported to work, did what she could to assist the investigation into the dead women and the missing woman. She ignored any calls from the university. They wouldn’t be calling her if Yaron had showed up to teach his classes.
Home again, she heated up a bowl of soup for her dinner. She was still sitting at the table when Yaron returned. He looked pale and subdued—and resentful.
She waited.
Eventually he got up and heated a bowl of soup for himself.
“I went to that place,” he said after he’d eaten a few spoonfuls.
“You made your point. I’ll teach my classes.
I won’t be impulsive.” He finally looked at her.
“Those people weren’t prepared, Sheina. That’s why they got in trouble.
When I finally cross the river, I will be prepared to meet the uncanny. ”
She said nothing. But the next morning, she called her captain and took an hour’s personal time. Then she went to a bank and opened her own checking and savings accounts. Yaron wouldn’t notice. Paying the bills and balancing their finances were pesky jobs he always left to her anyway.
37
Beth Fahey sat at her desk with a large cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich she’d purchased from one of the food trucks that set up every morning in a lot across from the precinct.
Bonnie would have said she was being extravagant—or lazy—to be buying breakfast and lunch instead of bringing something from home.
It’s my money, my budget, my decision, Beth thought, feeling defiant as she reminded herself that Bonnie Wilson no longer had any say in what she bought—or what she thought.
Today she wanted to get an early start and look over all the information they had accumulated about Rachel Nightingale’s disappearance. Someone would have to go to Wyrd, and she wanted to be prepared because this investigation was big.
A joint investigation involving three of the six towns that were on the human side of the river.
Was there a reason there were only two towns that bordered the Fate River in each of the three counties?
Were those towns, and the people who lived in them, like canaries in a mine, providing a warning that ripples of the strange were about to touch human places before something went very wrong?
You’re being fanciful, Beth scolded herself.
And yet Rachel Nightingale had been seen in four places at the same time.
Three of the women who had accompanied the Nightingales had been found dead that same morning—and had been dead for days.
And a phone call aimed right at her assured that the 13th precinct in Penwych would be involved in the investigation.
Beth reviewed all the information Captain Russell and Detective Kali had provided. Rachel Nightingale had changed her address from a post office box in King’s Hill to a post office box in Lovecraft. Was that significant? Or just convenient? If convenient, why?
While she ate, Beth accessed the files for people from the six towns who had been reported missing over the past year.
Was there a pattern of multiple sightings of people who then vanished?
Plenty of people went missing every year—and there were plenty of reasons why people disappeared.
Surely not all of them had crossed the river and made some mistake or bargain while on Wyrd. Surely not.
Beth clicked through the files. Some senior citizens.
Plenty of teens who were probably runaways who had taken a bus to some other part of the country.
She’d come close to doing that herself a couple of times in her teenage years when Bonnie’s verbal attacks had been particularly vicious.
Yes, there were plenty of ordinary reasons for someone to walk away from a life in order to start a new one somewhere else.
She stopped clicking through the files when she came to a boy who went missing a few months ago.
A handsome boy with an easy smile that didn’t look quite genuine, and eyes that were already old and haunted.
His family lived in Lovecraft, so Captain Wozniak was the contact listed on the file.
According to the parents, the boy had left home one morning to go to school and never came back.
The look in those eyes bothered her, made her want to find some way to locate him and help him.
Beth printed the first page of the file. She had the printout folded and tucked into her purse before Tom Castelletti and Ian Kuhn showed up for work.
“Coin toss to see who goes to Wyrd?” Ian said.
“No, I’ll go,” Beth replied. “I’ve already reviewed all the material we have about Rachel Nightingale.”
They looked at her.
“It’s okay. I’ll go,” she repeated. “If Rachel Nightingale is hiding out at the hotel on the island, maybe she’ll talk to another woman.”
Captain Forrester walked into the team’s area of the precinct as she gave that explanation for wanting to go. “And maybe she’s so far away by now we’ll never find out what happened to her.”
He stared at Beth, who felt the last bite of her breakfast sandwich go down her throat in a hard lump. “Sir?”
“The call made from Rachel Nightingale’s cell phone was aimed at you for a reason,” Forrester said. “My receiving the PIN for that phone was aimed at this team for a reason. If you’re the one going to Wyrd—”
“She is,” Castelletti said.
“—you will confirm that Rachel Nightingale had been on the island at some point and had provided that information.”
Beth nodded. “I can ask about the other women—”
“No.” Forrester took a step closer to Beth’s desk.
“Those women were found, they were identified, and their families will have some closure even if the police in Jackson never find the person or persons responsible for killing them. That’s not our case, Detective.
We were asked to inquire about Rachel Nightingale, and that is what we will do.
If you can’t stick to that, I will send someone else to Wyrd. ”
Stung by his tone—and confused by his refusal to have her ask about the other women—Beth squared her shoulders and said, “I understand, sir.”
“No, you don’t. You were lucky the last time you went to Wyrd and pushed for more information. You might not be as lucky a second time.”
You think I’m not good enough to do this job? I am good enough. And I will find some answers.
Beth balled the paper from her breakfast sandwich and tossed it in the wastebasket. “I’d better get moving if I’m going to catch the next ferry.”
“Officer Monkton will drive you to the pier,” Forrester said.
“Good luck,” Ian whispered as she walked past him and Castelletti.
On the way to the docks, Beth thought about the tone of Captain Forrester’s voice and the look on his face. Was he reprimanding her for some reason? Or was he trying to protect her from something he already understood?
38
Rachel cowered at the bottom of the cage, wakened from an uneasy sleep when something huge landed on the top of the cage and began tearing it apart, pulling at the cover that gave her some privacy. Pulling and pulling and…
“Faulkner,” Lucas Frost said as he walked up to her cage.
“Caw?” A sound that fit the words “Who, me?”
“Rahele still needs to be quiet today. Removing the cover isn’t being helpful.”
The pulling on the cover stopped. The crow looked down at her. “Caw.”
Caw to you too, Rachel thought.
The crow pushed something through the bars. It fell, just missing her head.
A berry. Peace offering? Breakfast? Did larks eat berries? How would she know? Why hadn’t she ever done any research about larks for one of her novels? Probably because she hadn’t considered that a bird could be an active participant in a story.
If she had to spend a few months being around a crow, she might rethink that in terms of a plot.
“Good morning, Rahele,” Lucas said.
Rahele. Yes. She needed to start thinking of herself by her new name. She liked the way he said the word—rah-HEEL.
Lucas gave Faulkner a stern look. “Do not pester Rahele today. Go back to your own house—or go outside and play.”
When the crow flew off somewhere, Lucas opened the door of Rachel’s cage. “He’s friendly and curious and wants to help. Surprising, really, when you consider the condition he was in when he arrived here.”
Condition? Someone else who had chosen an unusual escape as the only way out of a bad situation?
Lucas disappeared. Rachel walked to the open cage door, moving awkwardly as she adjusted to feet that were shaped very differently from the ones she’d had yesterday. She looked at the floor, which was a long way down. A long way to fall. Did her wings work?
When Lucas returned with a platform on a stand, she twittered at him.
He smiled. “Sorry, Rahele. I don’t speak lark.” He waited a moment. “I’m going to lift you out of the cage and put you on the platform. Kia will be here in a minute to make sure the places where flesh was harvested are healing properly and to put more salve on those spots.”
She had to fight against the instinct to struggle when Lucas picked her up and set her on the platform. His hands were warm—and gentle—but being held usually meant danger. Didn’t it? Or was it different for a lark?
Kia walked into the room. “Good morning, Rahele. How are you feeling today?”
Rachel twittered at the Arcana woman.