Page 20 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

That doesn’t sound so bad. Perhaps she was an ally after all. "What did you lose?" I asked.

"I started many stories about myself to deflect attention, so you’ve probably heard why I’m in this predicament. Few of them are true. As for what this effort did to me, for starters, the sight never left me.” She turned her head to the window and the empty pier. Her gaze drifted past the gray water.

"Building that road tore something open that never closed. Now I see the children I couldn't reach—the echo children, still trapped in the gap—everywhere I go. There's a boy in a market up in Ellsworth. He’ll be six years old forever. There’s a girl on the third landing of the library who has been waiting since before they poured the foundation." Her eyes were heavy when they turned back to us. "It took me ten years to buy groceries without weeping in front of strangers.

"It took most of my power. I didn’t think I would ever get it back," she continued. "Half my power burned in the building and never grew back. I was never able to carry a child of my own. I’m sure you're wondering since one of the stories I spread was about my children. The crossing took the part of me that makes new life. It’s ironic that a woman who built a bridge for dead children was left barren by the process. The thing is, I’m not sure what I’d do if I went back in time. These children are suffering. They’re prey for other, more powerful beings and don’t understand their predicament."

"You said on the phone you'd survived this," I pressed, folding my arms on the table. "How many others have? Caolinn called your people the Veiled Ones. What exactly does that mean?"

"There are a few of us scattered wide. Though that term is one of the stories spread," Ava explained as she picked at the edge of the table. "We're not an order or a coven. Just people who survived the same wound. We traded names so there'd be someone to call when the sight got too loud to bear alone. Our group is more of a loose net with no leader. The thing that lets us find the lost children is the same thing that broke us, and broken people make poor generals."

"You’re part of a phone tree of traumatized hermits," Stella translated. "I say that with respect. We have a similar group that includes an old woman with a shotgun, a tribred, the Pleiades, and a pixie. Are there people we can call for other information?"

Ava's mouth twitched toward approval. "Elena in Mexico City, runs a flower stall and is the steadiest of us. Call her first. The whole net runs through her. She'll mother-hen you over the phone, but she answers. And she's never steered me wrong. There's also Wilhelm in Germany. He’s gone silent. Astrid in northern Norway is furious, but useful if you aim her. She's dangerous if you don't."

She made a face before continuing, showing her distaste for the last name. "And there's Morrigan in England."

"You stopped on that one," I observed. "Why?"

"Because Morrigan lost her granddaughter to this thing forty years ago. It was around the time I built my bridge," Ava explained, looking more tired than when we’d walked in.

"She knows my bridge method better than anyone alive but me. She'll share it freely, but somewhere in the process, she'll lie. She can't help it. Forty years of grief wore the seam between the truth and what she wants so thin she can't see it." She leaned closer, and her voice dropped. "She’s not who she was forty years ago anymore. Put it this way, I wouldn’t leave your children alone with her, not even to use the washroom."

A cold went through me that had nothing to do with the dead radiator. "Understood," I promised. "If we are ever near her, we won't leave their side."

Wanting more answers, I moved on as my mind tried to put the pieces together. "Lilith's archivist found scorch marks on a page. Hearing you talk, I think the journal detailed an earlier form of your bridge method at one time," I said. "Someone burned them out of a hundred years of records. Is that person still out there? Are they the ones after you?"

"I believe so. They've been after me for thirty years. Granted, I have no proof, but everything I’ve encountered and discovered tells me it’s true," she replied, an old edge surfacing through the weariness. "I have ugly theories about who profits from those children staying lost. What you need to know is that your babies are on a clock. You can't chase the ones who hid the cure while the disease reaches through your nursery window. Pick the bleeding wound first."

“I really hate how often the magical world spouts cryptic bullshit,” I complained as I triaged the problem and how to address this. "We need to find the man at the pediatrician's first. He wanted proof that one of them would answer when another was threatened, and my son obliged him. Could he be working for this Kaltherax you mentioned? Speaking of, I want to know everything about him."

Ava frowned. "No—that was not Kaltherax. Flesh and blood people belong to the only other party with a stake. The people who burned the cure and fed quietly on lost children for a century. They were patient until your three came along brighter than anything in a thousand years. Patience went out the window then. But that problem moves at a human pace. Kaltherax doesn't. You need to handle him first."

"Okay. Tell me what he is," I pushed. "What is he? And what does he want?"

"Kaltherax is a predator. An old one. Far older than the records that burned," she explained, laying it out. "He is an it, really. He’s a creature that lives on the far side of the gap. He no longer has a body, but he doesn't need one. He can reach across and come through a wall, into mothers' dreams. He invades living children's minds. He also invades the echo children I can't stop seeing. And here's what most never grasp. He doesn't only catch the children. He uses the ones he already has. He freezes a child in the gap, then sends that echo out to do his bidding. The child becomes a small, dead lure with a familiar face, to find the next living child bright enough to take. The boy in the cereal aisle isn't only a tragedy. He's a hook."

“Does he eat them?” Stella asked with a grimace.

Ava shook her head. “No, he doesn’t.”

"What is he taking them for, if he doesn't eat them?" I asked.

Ava lifted her hands out to her sides, palms up. "Kaltherax collects children. It samples a child, measures the power in them, and selects those it wants." For a moment, she looked every one of her years. "Your three are a bright lure to the dark and irresistible. Whatever it's building toward, your children are the prize."

"We have two problems facing our babies," Stella muttered, folding the napkin into a tight square. "We’ve faced worse odds. We’ve got this."

“Don’t get so overconfident you miss things.” Ava twitched as she reached for the cane next to her. "And don't put weight on what Caolinn calls us. Like I said, 'The Veiled Ones' is an old tale. It’s a draped figure glimpsed at a sick child's bedside. The story spread to keep frightened people whispering about bogeymen instead of hunting for the truth. We took the name because a myth makes a fine cover. There's no order, just a scattered net hiding inside a legend."

She got herself upright by inches. "Kind of like the old stories that say Kaltherax is a hunter for Orenthiel. In thirty years of chasing that tale, I've never once found proof. That doesn't mean Orenthiel isn’t a bigger threat.”

“Just when I thought we were getting somewhere, the rug is pulled out again,” I grumbled.

Stella chuckled and patted my arm as we stood. "We will deal with Kaltherax first and see what we can discover about Orenthiel. One thing at a time."

Before Ava could escape, I blurted, "Why me? You’ve said why my babies were targeted, but I get the feeling I have been marked as well. And don't tell me I'm special. I've had a bellyful of that."

"You're not special. You're inconvenient," Ava corrected me, leaning one palm flat on the table. "Every other mother the dreams reached didn't have the power you do. You've got a god in your bed, a familiar tuned to your blood, a pixie who has hunted me for four months, and a house full of women who never learned to lose. That power is attractive. For us, you’re the one household that might do something besides grieve."