My throat tightened. “She’s been gone less than a day.” “I know,” he said, and his voice had that raw sound people get when they don’t have the right words. “This is not my type of investigation. If I get handed this case, something has gone very, very wrong.”
Considering that John worked homicide, I couldn’t agree more.
We were both silent for a moment, the only sound the static buzzing as the house wards interfered with my cel signal.
“You’re going to go, aren’t you?” he final y asked.
“Yeah.”
His heavy sigh carried through the phone. “I’l make some cal s, see if I can get you some backup on that bridge at the cal s, see if I can get you some backup on that bridge at the very least. But, Al, if this goes down, I can almost guarantee the cavalry that swoops in to the rescue wil also arrest you.”
I sank down onto the bed. “Yeah. I know.”
There was real y nothing left to say after that. He disconnected with a promise to get back to me and a warning to be careful. I checked the time. Nine thirty. I had four hours before I needed to leave to reach the bridge at two. Well, I can always get some sleep. Rest could only help. I set my phone alarm for midnight. Then I col apsed on the bed, settling in for what I was afraid might be the last bit of rest I managed to snatch for a while.
By the time I woke, my eyes had recovered and my psychic vision had faded until the other planes were visible only as ignorable washes of color. At twelve thirty I cal ed for a taxi.
I didn’t have any more cash, but I had my bank card. It would leave an electronic trail I didn’t want, but it wasn’t like the cops didn’t know where I was headed. John had sent two text messages while I slept. The first said missing persons had no hits with the tracking spel and the second said we were set for two.
I’d already taken a shower—and I’d been shocked to find my clothes clean and folded and my boots buffed when I got out—but I stil wasn’t ful y awake, so I headed for the kitchen while I waited for the car to arrive. I was on the hunt for coffee when a cabinet door smashed open behind me.
“Outta there. Outta there,” Osier yel ed, charging out from under the sink. He swatted my calf with his spoon hard enough to sting through the thick leather of my boots. “My kitchen.”
I jumped back. “I was looking for coffee.”
“Little girls shouldn’t drink coffee. It’l stunt your growth.”
I wasn’t sure which I should object to more: that he thought I was a girl or that he thought I’d be growing any thought I was a girl or that he thought I’d be growing any tal er. “Point me in the right direction and I’l be out of your kitchen in a minute.”
“Sit,” he said, using the spoon to gesture toward the white table by the window. “Suppose you want gril ed cheese. Always did like gril ed cheese best.”
What I wanted was coffee, but now that he mentioned it, real food would be good too. “What do you mean, always?”
I asked as he shooed me to the table.
“Boy would say hamburgers or spaghetti. But, no, you’d cry gril ed cheese, gril ed cheese. Cried more than the baby. Always had to leave to get more cheese.”
I gaped at the little man. I did have an older brother and a younger sister. “Have I met you before, Osier?”
“Helped raise you, didn’t I?” He waved his spoon, and a tub of butter and a chunk of cheese floated out of the fridge, a pan jumped down from a cabinet over the stove, and the bread took itself out of the bread box.
Osier marched along the counter like a general overseeing his troops as he directed the gril ed cheese sandwich to assemble itself. A moment before, I would have been mystified and intrigued by the magic required for a sandwich to cook itself, but now, with his words stil ringing in the air, it was his statement that left me speechless.
I had absolutely no memory of the brownie. Hel , I would have sworn I’d never seen a brownie before I met Ms. B
less than a week ago. If Osier had “helped raise” me, as he put it, I must have been young. Real y young. I’d spent most of my time at academy after I turned eight, and my brother, Brad, had disappeared a year after that.
The sandwich, lightly browned on the outside with a runnel of cheese escaping between the thick pieces of bread, floated out of the pan and hovered as it crossed the room. A plate fol owed, a tal glass of milk right behind it.
“So you knew my family when I was a kid?” I asked. Osier jumped onto the table and sat cross-legged in front of me jumped onto the table and sat cross-legged in front of me as first the plate, then the sandwich, and final y the glass settled between us. “Stil know the family, don’t I? Though I’ve never seen much of the baby and I’ve been told the boy is gone. Sad, that. He was a good boy. Liked more than just gril ed cheese.” As he spoke, he looked from the mentioned meal to me, his gaze asking why I wasn’t eating.
“It’s not faerie food, is it?” I thought it was a perfectly legitimate question; after al , it had just prepared itself.