Page 2 of The Shade of Things
“And?” I took Eli’s hand to help me down a steep slope.
“Bear with me,” he replied. “According to the police report back then, what little the investigating officers got out of him made it sound like he’d been abducted by aliens.”
When Ian Carlyle disappeared five years ago, his brother swore that Ian vanished into thin air. Literally. The two had been rock climbing on their survivalist camping trip when Ian supposedly disappeared. Police’s initial determination was that Ian had fallen, but it was changed to foul play when no body was found. His brother had been charged.
Everyone was stunned when Ian showed up a week later, shell-shocked. The only intelligible thing he said other than his human race line was that it wasn’t aliens. Then he lapsed into silence, diagnosed with depression and PTSD.
We skidded down the last bit of the dirt hill and I recovered my footing.
Eli whacked a dead low-hanging branch out of our way. “Everyone wrote Ian off, and over the years, he became more and more distant from his friends and family. He lost his job, turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with whatever happened to him, and ended up living on the fringes of the Downtown Eastside.”
I tore a leaf out of my hair and ripped it in half. “I’m still waiting for the compelling argument that being fed off by a vamp is a step up. Or free will.”
“Since this wasn’t an alien abduction, Ian’s vanishing into thin air has a magic explanation. Hell, that’s why the deputy chief constable got me involved. At least with a vamp, Ian is with someone who believes him if he shares what happened while he was missing. He isn’t dismissed as insane. Plus, Damien won’t necessarily kill him.”
From the moment that Eli had asked me to come on board this case, I’d wondered why the Lonestars weren’t involved. After all, Deputy Chief Constable Esposito’s daughter Ryann was the head magic cop here in Vancouver. And if there was one thing I’d learned about the Lonestars in my tangles with them, it was that they didn’t mess around with their prime directive: keep magic hidden from Sapiens at all costs. These abductions seemed like a no-brainer for them to investigate.
I wiped sweat off the back of my neck with my T-shirt collar, praying there was an explanation that didn’t make the magic cops complicit. “The vamp might not kill Ian, but he might turn him.”
“He’d still be alive,” Eli said with a pointed look. “Wasn’t that your argument to Topher Sharma’s parents?”
I scowled, hating that he used my words against me. “I like you better when you play good cop.”
“Well, I am a saint.”
“You’ve been talking to your mom again.”
He winked at me. “Between the opioid crisis here in Vancouver,” he continued in a more serious tone, “and risk of overdose, Ian could have easily died from doing drugs. You said that vamps don’t feed off addicts, and that means Ian had to get clean to provide blood. It’s not a great situation, but it’s better than he had.”
“Fine,” I muttered. “That’s still not saying much.”
It chafed that our mission wasn’t to rescue Ian in addition to getting information to help with the actual case we were on—finding Teresa Wong, a second-year theater major who’d gone missing two days ago on Monday.
Like Ian, Teresa had a close circle of family and friends, no rampant or reckless credit card spending or unexpected bills, no criminal record, and no enemies. She’d just started her second year of university and, by all accounts, loved her program.
Also, like Ian, Teresa had vanished into thin air. She and her best friend had been thrift store shopping together, and when her friend had turned around to inspect some faux Fiestaware, Teresa had disappeared.
Eli shouldn’t have even been on this job since he was a homicide detective, but his superior, Deputy Chief Constable Esposito, had recalled Ian’s old case with its “vanishing into thin air” connection and looked up the records. He’d come to the same conclusion that this involved magic and assigned Eli to an off-the-books job.
My ex was one of the rare Sapiens who could see magic and was thus tasked with tracking Ian down and obtaining information to help Teresa.
Eli, in turn, had insisted on hiring me to help him navigate the magic community. Neither of us had been privy to my boss Tatiana’s negotiations with the deputy chief, but she’d emerged from her office smirking while the poor man looked like a boxer who’d been KO’d in the first ten seconds instead of lasting the expected ten rounds.
“The other problem is that Ian being clean now may not even matter.” Eli snapped a twig underfoot, startling a tawny-brown owl, who flew away. “He wasn’t of sound mind after his abduction. He may not remember anything useful or even real, and he’s our only shot at finding Teresa. The Missing Persons Unit has nothing to chase down.” He kicked a rock, and when his hands unclenched, there was a moment where they shook. “That girl is only a few years older than Sadie.”
I placed my hand on his arm, my heart sinking at how tense he was. “If Ian doesn’t know how to find Teresa, then we put the screws to Damien when the sun sets and he wakes up.” Pep talks weren’t easy while traipsing through a forest with nothing to recommend it beyond being a perfect body dump for the mob, but I did my best.
A series of short howls rising and falling raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Eli and I froze. My heart was hammering so loud that I almost didn’t hear him whisper, “Coyotes.”
Their cries echoed all around us, a chilling lament interspersed with barks and yips.
I swung my head from side to side, tensed for yellow slits to blink open and a furry body to leap out of the nearby trees and tear into my soft, delicious underbelly. Damn you, carbs, for being so tasty.
Coyote attacks were reported in these parts on a regular basis, so sue me for having a vivid imagination and a healthy dose of paranoia.
I wanted to devote my energy to tracking Ian down but surviving feral beasts had just shot to the top spot, so I threw my magic cloaking over Eli and me. Coyotes—be they real animals or shifters—wouldn’t be able to detect us.
