As soon as they heard that something was wrong, the others wanted to come with. So, I explained what little I knew as we made our way out of the food court and found a quiet, out-of-the-way area in a corner of the underground parking garage so we could use our transport coins to get back to the station. Not that we actually needed to hide from the crowds, given the Bystander Effect. But transporting like that left energy behind that could theoretically be used to track where we went. Just to avoid anyone… bad passing close to that spot soon and being able to do anything with the energy remnants, we didn’t want to do it in a big public area. Not that we were transporting directly anyway. The spell took us to three different destinations first before depositing us on the station. But still, better safe than sorry.
In any case, I told them what I knew while we were walking, about Denise in general and what had happened. At least as much as my mother had been able to tell me in a couple sentences. Apparently, the girl had been gone for several weeks, at least. It was hard to be specific, because her parents never actually noticed she was missing. Yeah, that sounded bad, but apparently they believed she was staying with her aunt. Mom’s friend, who went to check up on the girl, actually followed through and went to the aunt’s rather than just assuming it was fine, only to find out that she had no idea where the girl was either. Both Denise’s parents and aunt thought she was with the other. No one actually knew where she was. The girl had completely disappeared.
By the time we emerged from the last of the rapid series of transports into the receiving room on the Star Station, Rebecca was shaking her head. “But who would kidnap her? I mean, do you think it’s related to all that… Fossor stuff?” She said the man’s name in a whisper while twisting her face in disgust at even having to speak it aloud. It looked like bringing him up made her physically ill. Which was a reaction I could definitely sympathize with.
“It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise,” Koren pointed out while we stepped down from the small platform. “Even if it’s not his people directly, it’s probably connected to him in some way. Why else would she disappear like that?”
“That’s right.” Mom’s voice was crisp as she marched toward us from the entrance. I could hear the barely constrained emotion and guilt almost like a physical slap. “Someone out there drew a connection between her and Fossor, and now they took her. No.” She stopped, hands tightening. “They could’ve taken her as far back as three weeks ago. Anything could’ve happened to her, any–”
“Mom.” I quickly moved that way, catching her hands. “You had no reason to think she was in any danger. She’s just a normal kid, and both Fossor and Ammon are gone. They’re gone. Nobody had any reason to think anyone would be after her. And you still sent someone to check on her. It’s– there’s nothing else you really could’ve done, not with what we knew.”
From the look on her face, I was pretty sure that wasn’t helping. I felt my insides twist almost painfully. This was Mom’s win over what Fossor had done to her son. She couldn’t bring back any of Ammon’s other victims, she couldn’t bring back Ammon himself. She couldn’t fix what Fossor had done to him, couldn’t save her little boy. But the one thing she had been able to do was make sure that he stayed dead and couldn’t be used to do any more evil, while giving one of his victims her life back. That was the only thing she had been able to actually do for the little boy she loved. And now someone had attacked that. Someone took Denise, to do… who knew what. No wonder Mom seemed like she was right on the edge of falling apart. This wasn’t just about Denise, awful as that was. It was about Fossor, Ammon, and all the rest of that horror. This was the one thing from that time, from what had been done to her son, that she had been able to fix.
Tabbris and December had jogged up to join us by then, and while the latter stayed back a few steps, Tabbris herself came forward and caught my mother’s arm with both hands. Her voice was quiet, yet firm. “We can still find her, right? We can still figure out where she is and get her back.” Left unspoken, of course, was the fact that we would only be able to find her if she was still alive. To say nothing of the fear about what had been done to her in all that time.
Koren spoke quickly. “Yeah, we can find her. I mean, it probably won’t be easy, but… at least we can find out how she’s doing. You know, make sure she’s still…” She trailed off, clearly not wanting to say the worst option aloud, even though we were all thinking it.
Visibly shoving that thought down, Koren continued. “The kid had to leave DNA at her house. You know, on her toothbrush or comb or whatever. All we have to do is find some of that. There’s a spell we can use to see how she’s doing. I mean, umm, physically. It should still be connected to her enough for that.”
“Can you track her with it?” Rebecca quickly asked. “I mean, if you can use her DNA to check what sort of… umm, shape she’s in, can you use it to find out where she is?”
“It’snotreallythateasy,” December abruptly put in. “Ifshe’snotreallyclose… towhereyou’reusingthespell….itwon’tfindheratall… oryou’dhavetouse… somuchpowertomakeit….reachasfarasitneedsto… you’ddrainalltheenergyinthiswholeplace.”
Mom gave a short nod. “December’s right. That sort of spell works at relatively close range. Even the strongest ones I’ve seen are limited to the general vicinity of a city. And we don’t have the extra power to spare for a big thing like that. Every bit of extra energy anyone’s had for the past few weeks has gone to boosting Liesje’s spell.” Her gaze hardened a bit then. “But there are other ways to find her, and we’re going to. First, we go to her house and get that DNA. I already have a few others checking the aunt’s house, just in case there’s anything there. We don’t know when exactly she disappeared. She might’ve been there for awhile after all. We just–we don’t have any time to waste. Not when she could’ve been missing for three weeks already.”
“What about Wyatt, and Deveron?” I spoke up. “Or Sariel, they could all–”
“No.” Her head shook, clearly regretting the answer she had to give. “They’re working on the spell. We can’t interrupt them. It’s too important and they’ve been working too hard. That sort of magic, it’s… so specific, about every little detail. Including when you cast it, and everything about the day itself. Throwing that off, even a little bit, would mean weeks more work.” Even as she said that, I could tell that it was taking everything mom had not to insist anyway. She was desperate to find Denise. But we all knew how important getting the anti-possession spell running was. Denise was important too, of course. Yet there were a lot of people who could be saved with this spell. It was so hard to even think that way. It made me feel like a monster. But we couldn’t interrupt the work on that spell. Not when they were so close after spending such a long time on it. Denise was important, but so were all the people who would be saved or protected by the anti-possession magic. If it was interrupted now, there was no telling how long it would take to reset everything. As horrible as it felt, we had to figure out what happened to the kid without pulling in the whole cavalry.
“We’ll find her,” I announced, forcing my voice to sound confident. “We’ll do it ourselves.
“So let’s stop wasting time and get down there.”
*******
Both of Denise’s parents were at work. Because, of course, they had no idea there was anything wrong with their daughter. And we weren’t going to tell them, at least not yet. With a lot of luck, maybe we could find the girl before that was necessary. It wasn’t as though they could actually contribute in any way to find her. Hell, they wouldn’t even be able to retain the information about what was really going on if we did try to explain the situation.
In any case, it wasn’t exactly hard to get into the house. Mom disabled the alarm and we spread out to look around. We weren’t just looking for her DNA. We also wanted to see if there were any hints about where she might have gone or what happened. There were a few spells we could use to see if any Alters had been around the house within the past couple months, as well as a few other things. If there was anything to find in this place, we were going to find it.
At the moment, I was down on my side, peering under Denise’s bed to see if she had left anything important there. Mom was in the hallway behind me, working on those Alter-detecting enchantments. A bit further away in one of the other rooms, I could hear one of the others playing messages off the telephone on the very slim chance that might tell us anything.
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Unfortunately, there was nothing under the bed aside from some old shoes and stuffed animals. I pushed myself out and turned just as my mother stepped into the room. She was holding a black coin the size of a half-dollar. As soon as she stepped inside, the coin flickered, glowing red very briefly, then blue, then it went back to dull black. A moment later, it flickered again before going out. Wherever she moved it while moving slowly around the room, the coin flickered for a brief second or two, went out again, then flickered once more, repeating that.
“Uhh…” I stared that way, frowning as the thing continued to glow, then not glow, then glow again. “I thought it was supposed to glow if there was any sign of an Alter being around here. What does it mean if it flickers like that? Is it just detecting a tiny hint or something?”
Mom shook her head, frowning as well as she held the thing out between us. “No. If it detects anything at all, it’s supposed to glow. Red is if it’s detecting only the faintest trace, blue is a little stronger. If it was green, there would’ve been an Alter here within the past few days. Flickering like this… maybe something’s blocking it. Check for any spells that might’ve been left behind.”
So, we started to do that as well. I checked in the usual places, along the baseboard, behind furniture, in the closet, and so on. I used that time to keep looking for any clues about what happened to the girl as well, also to no avail.
At least, to no avail until I pushed the clothes and toys out of the way to check the back wall for any runes. I didn’t exactly find a spell, but I definitely found something interesting. As my eyes scanned over what I’d found there, I felt a chill run through me. “Mom!” I called. “Look at this.”
She came quickly, and I stepped aside a bit to show her. There were words carved into almost the entire surface of the rear wall of the closet. Two words repeated over and over again, often carved on top of each other. Him Me Him Me Him Me Him Me. It went on and on like that, the words carved with some sort of knife. It was incredibly creepy to stare at. Worse, and more tellingly just in case we hadn’t gotten the point yet, there were much larger letters carved on top of those ones. Three letters, A-M-M. Then those were crossed out with what had clearly been a quick series of sharp jagged cuts. AMM. Ammon. She started to carve Ammon into the wall. Him, Me, Him, Me, Him, Me, then the start of the name Ammon? This… this was bad.
Also, as soon as Mom stepped up to the closet, the Alter-detection coin began to glow once more. It was still flickering, but more slowly. It stayed lit up longer between flashes of darkness. Either whatever was partially blocking it was weaker here, or the detection itself was just stronger in this spot, or… or… I had no idea. Mom said, it wasn’t supposed to work like that. If it was detecting anything, it should just light up, period. This whole flickering thing was… weird. Between that and the words carved in the wall, a cold shiver ran down my spine once more.
“She remembers,” Mom murmured, sounding stricken as she reached out to touch the carved letters. “That should be impossible. She shouldn’t remember anything.” Her voice shook a little from the implication that this little girl actually even partially remembered what had happened to her.
The two of us stood there, staring at the words carved into the wall for several long seconds. Then we were interrupted when Rebecca stepped into the room behind us. She was holding what looked like an appointment book in one hand and a tablet computer in the other. “Hey, umm, I don’t know if this means anything, but it turns out this girl’s mom was trying to get her to see a therapist. I mean, she got her to see one, but the girl wouldn’t go back to her again. So she was trying to get her to go to another one. Something about nightmares she was having.”
“That’s not all.” Koren had joined her in the doorway, holding up two thick books I couldn’t see the titles of. “These were in the garage, hidden in a box full of balls and outside toys. Looks like they were checked out of the library a few weeks ago, in her name. They’re all about umm… mind control. Pretty heavy stuff. Looks like the kid had a lot she wanted to go back over again.” She showed us where a lot of the pages had strips of cloth, string, or other bookmarks, as if the reader had simply shoved whatever was in their pocket to mark the spot.
Yeah, this had moved further and further into unsettling and creepy. Denise, as far as she or anyone else around her should have known, was like eleven years old. Even if we hadn’t seen the partial name and those words carved into the wall, one thing still would have been clear. The only reason she could possibly have for being obsessed with reading about mind control from adult books was if she actually remembered Ammon using it on her.
Mom’s gaze moved from the books back to the words carved into the wall of the closet. “This is all wrong. It can’t… she can’t remember this… why would she remember anything?”
“What’s going on?” That was Tabbris, as she and December arrived. “What happened?”
We went through it all, the books, the therapist appointments, the words carved into the wall, everything. With all that put together, it sure sounded like the girl was sort of remembering at least part of what happened to her. Which had to be unbelievably traumatizing. I couldn’t imagine being a little kid and experiencing those sort of nightmares.
“But what about the thing with the Alter detector?” Koren brought up. “Could that maybe be from someone like… projecting memories or thoughts or whatever into her head from a distance? I mean, if they aren’t fully physically present, maybe that could screw up the detection?”
Mom seemed to consider that for a moment, looking at the coin in question as it continued to flicker. “Perhaps,” she murmured thoughtfully, before her gaze darkened. “But when we find whoever was responsible for that, whoever… took…” She trailed off, clearly taking everything she had to control her reaction. I was pretty sure she was even more upset than I was, and that was saying something, because I felt like putting my fist through the nearby wall a few times.
Denise was fine! Why would she–why was she–who could possibly have…
“I need to call Asenath,” I murmured. “She thought this was over too. I mean, she got into this whole thing by trying to find out what happened to Denise the first time. I have to tell her. She can help.”
“It’ll be dark in half an hour,” my mother informed me while glancing toward the nearby window. “Let her sleep until then. Maybe we can find something else, something better than bad news.”
“I got this,” Rebecca announced, holding up a hand with a pink and purple hairbrush. “Pretty sure it’s hers. Can you do the spell with that?”
Mom confirmed that she could and then took the brush down to the kitchen table to get started on that. Meanwhile, the rest of us kept looking around in the vain hope of finding something else useful. I was almost afraid to look in more closets or behind more dressers, just in case there were more creepy carvings. It was horrible to think about what had to be going through that girl’s mind to wonder if Ammon was still controlling her, to the point that she was carving those words into the wood. But I did anyway. We had to know just how bad of shape she was in. Though, to be fair, maybe the fact we were to the point of checking for how many bits of wall in her house she had carved rambling, repeating words into with a knife, sort of answered the question.
Fortunately, or unfortunately given it might have helped, we didn’t find any more carvings. Nor did we find anything that could have told us where the kid went or who took her. It would take longer for Mom to work her way through the spell, given how thorough she was being. So, when we were done with the search, I took the time to call Asenath.
That… was not a fun conversation. As soon as I told her what had happened, at least as much as we knew, the other girl went quiet for a few seconds. I could almost picture her face, staring at open air as she fought to contain herself. I knew exactly what she was feel–no, I didn’t. Close, but I did not know exactly what she was feeling. She had been hired to find out the truth about Denise’s murder, and that was what led to her meeting me and everything else that happened since then. She’d thought she had closure on the whole thing when Ammon died, and then closure of a better sort when Mom told her about Denise being brought back. Now this had happened and that closure was ripped away.
“Who?” Her voice was a cold demand, brittle from anger that she was barely restraining. “Who took her?”
“We don’t know,” I admitted. “Not yet. But we’re tracking her down. Mom’s working on a spell to… you know, check on her umm, physical state. It should tell us how healthy she is, whether she’s been drugged or enchanted, that sort of thing. Might even point us in her direction if she’s close enough and they haven’t blocked that.” Not that I had much faith in whoever had taken Denise being dumb enough for that. But hey, we had to try everything. Besides, that was even considering someone had physically taken her. Considering what we’d been finding around this house, I had this nagging thought in the back of my head that all these nightmares she was clearly having could have driven her to run away. Or maybe…
“Wait,” I said aloud. “If she was having dreams about… about what happened, do you think she might’ve actually seen where it happened? I mean, the… the gas station. What if she went there to–I don’t know, to try to get some answers? It’s nearby, right?”
Both Koren and Asenath immediately confirmed that it was only a few blocks away from the house. So, I checked in with Mom, made sure she was gonna be okay there by herself working on that spell, and told her what we were going to do. It would still be hours before the girl’s parents got home, so we were good on that front.
“Okay, Senny,” I announced while heading for the door with the others right behind me. “We’ll meet you at that gas station.
“Let’s hope there’s someone or something there that can give us some clue of what the hell is going on.”