Maria got out of the car, frowning as she looked around the place. There was a forensics team at the slab, taking photos and examining the place.

“So, what’s the story, Tim?” she asked the lead tech.

The man ran his fingers through this thinning gray hair and shrugged. “The story is wait for the toxicology report. Nothing happened here. The kids talked about smoke? No smoke. No sign of soot or fire, new or old. Not even the homeless camp out here.” He gestured. “I had my people look down the slope and nothing. No footprints, no signs of anyone moving around. The only thing we have are the car tracks.”

“Their rescuers,” Maria said.

“Maybe.” Tim glanced over at her. “Weren’t you involved in the spooky shit department?” Maria sighed. “Spooky shit department” was the nickname for what she’d been roped into. Fortunately, the X-Files jokes weren’t as common, because nobody knew what the hell had happened in Hancock Park or Fullerton.

“Yeah, and this checks some of the boxes.” Maria glanced over at the slab. “I just got in touch with our tech-geeks and those selfies the kids took inside the house?”

“The fakes?”

“Yeah. The fakes. Except, as far as our people can tell, they weren’t. They even sent them over to some of the special effects houses in Hollywood to see if their people could ferret out a fake.”

“That good?”

“Perfect. I figured the kids were using some kind of freeware filter, but no, every detail looks perfect.” She shook her head. “The closest they can get is there some sign some of the objects didn’t fall quite as fast as they should when the girl knocked the vase over.”

“Well, there wasn’t a house here,” Tim said. “We know that much.”

Do we? Granted, no civilian satellites had been over the neighborhood, at least not ones with cameras, but Maria had asked her bosses to find out if the government had any satellites. She didn’t know if she’d get a response, but that didn’t matter. She just wanted someone else to take a look.

“And we got the toxicology report back. The kids didn’t have anything in their system, but they both had bruises consistent with being tied down.” Maria shook her head. “I don’t think they are lying.”

“So something new? Something that breaks down fast enough that we can’t detect it?” Tim whistled. “That isn’t very good.”

“No.” And I don’t think that is what it was. They’d hauled the giant robot in from Fullerton, and the people going over it had come back with a simple answer. It wasn’t a robot. There was no way it could have been moving around, no engines, no servos, no nothing.

And yet dozens of film clips proved it hadn’t simply been moving, it’d been moving fast.

Like magic.

Like the haunted suits of armor that murdered their owner in 1919. The files she’d gotten were full of stories, some of them dismissed as outright fabrications, some of them assigned to other causes, and some of them… inexplicable.

A vanishing house wouldn't be the strangest thing in those files.

“What are the kids saying?”

“Parents are lawyering up,” Maria said. It pissed her off, but given how some people were accusing the kids of doing this for some kind of Internet fame, Maria couldn’t blame them. “What can you tell me about the car?”

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“Well, not much left, not after the kids got home, and the police checked the place out. We have a few that are intact, one looks like a police vehicle. The only one that stood out was some impressions in a bit of damp soil, right front tire. I’ve got the tire type and what kind of cars it would be used for.”

“How many?”

“How many 2004 Honda Civics are there in LA?” Tim shrugged. “Not to mention what other cars it might be on.”

“Honda Civic.” Maria frowned. “Great.” She looked around and frowned. “Who dropped the broom?”

“The only bit of unusual stuff here. Someone left a broom,” Tim said. They walked over to where the broom was. “Not that unusual. You’d be surprised what people drop around here.”

“Right,” Maria said. She stared at the broom, remembering…

Big Sis, chasing me through the house, waving a broom like it was some kind of broadsword. She shook her head. That was a coincidence. Had to be.

And yet she was at Hancock Park. She lives in Fullerton…

Maria frowned and then shook her head. “Yeah, it’s just something somebody left. Take a picture of it, but I’m going to ignore it.”

And the kids aren’t going to say much. They had the initial interview, but the kids had been freaked, talking about Satanists and a masked hero and woman who came in and saved them. They weren’t saying much about their rescuers, probably because they didn’t want them to get into trouble.

“Not even any Youtube videos.”

“Pardon?”

“Let’s say the kids are telling the truth. That somehow, someone set up a stage for this, kidnapped them, scared the shit out of them, then pulled everything down.”

“Okay.”

“Super expensive. And the kind of person who would do that—why isn’t it on the Internet?” The Internet had been one of the FBI’s greatest weapons, not because of some super-secret hacking team, but because you got bank robbers who live-streamed their adventures. Okay, maybe they just want to keep it for themselves, but if this isn’t some kind of spooky magic crap, there had to be a lot of people involved. And nobody sent out the juicy video file to their friends?

“Early days yet. Wait until the end of the week.” Tim shook his head. “Thank God we’ve got interns for that kind of crap.”

“Yeah. Let me know if you find anything else.”

“I will. But this looks like a waste of time.”

“Maybe.” What did they say? Once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action? And if you counted the gang up in the high desert, they were now at four inexplicable incidents.

The rest of the day passed quickly. Maria had paperwork to do, something that nobody ever talked about on the cop shows. Some of it was just looking at witness statements from Fullerton and Hancock park, but she had a hard time focusing on it.

Finally, well after the sun had gone down, Maria found herself driving back to Fullerton. She pulled up and parked her car on a street a block away from Millie’s house.

It didn’t take long to walk there, and with the sun down, most people were inside.

Exactly what Maria wanted. Because there was Millie’s house. And parked in the driveway was her battered 2004 Honda.

There are a lot of Hondas in this city. Just because Millie had one…

Maria glanced around and then moved quickly to the car. Just a quick check, the right front tire and…

“Crap,” she breathed. There was crusted mud around the tire rim and on the tire.

It’s not proof. But Millie sticks to the city, so why would there be mud here—and mud only on the right front tire?

But it wasn’t proof. Which meant she didn’t have to tell her bosses.

Not yet.

Maria started as she heard indistinct words from inside the house. Getting up, she walked away as fast as she could without it being obvious.

She didn’t have proof.

But she had a growing suspicion.