An Artificial Night

Nothing looked out of place, and yet, despite the outward lack of disturbance, there was something in the air that made the room feel like it was somehow wrong. Sliding my knife back into its sheath, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. There were other scents under the expected odors of sweat and small boy. I started focusing on them, shutting out everything else.

The smell of blood came first. Of course it did; I’m my mother’s daughter and if there’s blood I’ll find it. I identified it as Andrew’s almost without thinking, spending just enough time feeling it out to be sure that he’d been the only one to bleed, and that his wounds had been superficial at worst. There were other things layered in an undefined pattern beneath the blood, and so I pushed it aside to study them more carefully.

Mold; old, dry dust. Ash. Fire. Steel. They were faint, nearly overwhelmed by the smells of blood and plastic and fabric softener and finger paint, but they were there. And I had no idea what they meant.

Eyes still closed, I stretched my arms out in front of me and began following the scent trail, ignoring the plastic dinosaurs squeaking underfoot. The scents were stronger close to the bed. My hands hit the window, and I stopped, pressing my palms against the glass as I tried to sort through the increasingly disparate scents.

There was a distinct tang of candle wax, freshly burned and not quite dry, hidden under the stronger scents of blood and fire. “Candles?” I said, bemused. Spike snarled again, the sound climbing to a roar as the smell of ash became overwhelming. The glass beneath my hands was suddenly searing-hot, and I jerked away, opening my eyes. “What the hell—?”

The window looked normal, showing nothing but the front yard and street beyond. I glanced at my hands. They were already starting to blister.

I had my answer, after a fashion; the kids hadn’t run away. They’d been taken by something that made glass burn and left the scent of ashes and candle wax in its wake. Unfortunately for all of us, I had no idea what it was. The only thing I was sure of was that it was going to take more than a few missing-child flyers to get them back.

“Spike, come.” I turned away, beckoning for the goblin to follow as I left the room. Surprisingly, it came. I closed the door behind us, ignoring the pain in my hands, and turned to at least look into the girls’ room. It was much the same: messy, cluttered, and with no signs of a struggle. Their window was open, and the fresh air had wiped away any traces of the scent trail I’d followed in the boys’ room, if it was even there to start with.

Shaking my head, I walked down the stairs to where Stacy waited. There was no way I could tell her I was done, even though I knew damn well that we wouldn’t find the kids without a lot more power than I had. You don’t tell a panicking mother that her children have been taken by something you can’t identify or name; it doesn’t work that way. So I did the next best thing.

I lied. I told her I thought they might have wandered away on their own. I made a lame excuse about hurting my hands by picking up Spike the wrong way and bandaged them myself in the downstairs bathroom. The rose goblin didn’t notice or care that I’d defamed its character; it was perfectly willing to follow me through the house, although it refused to calm down. It kept stopping and snarling at nothing, rattling its thorns in challenge. I took note of the places where it stopped and didn’t touch any more windows. I can be taught.

Stacy stayed in the living room, clutching Karen’s hand. She’d stopped crying about twenty minutes after I arrived, but she didn’t look like she felt any better; shock can take an awful lot of forms. I was in shock myself—fortunately for me, my version of shock normally manifests as anger. Anger, I can use—I understand it. Sometimes it can even help keep me alive.