“You sleep okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Pretty good. I thought about my father a lot.” Feeling uncomfortably vulnerable, I looked out the window so he couldn’t see the emotion in my face.
We drove through the Garden District and back to Fourth Street to the colonnaded house where we’d found the girl last night.
Liam parked on the street, and I followed up the sidewalk and into the house.
We’d left the door open, and rain had dotted the wooden floor. “You want upstairs or down?”
“I’ll go upstairs,” I said. “I’ll call you if I find something.”
He nodded, walked down the hallway.
I took the stairs, which were covered by a thick, carpeted runner. Several rooms led off from the landing.
The first two had been bedrooms for young boys, judging from the paint color and baseball-themed wallpaper border. No furniture, no toys. They’d left in the exodus, probably. Packed everything up, including the children, and gone in search of safety.
There was a small bathroom, covered in old-fashioned pink tile, a pink sink, a pink bathroom. The owners had been into vintage, maybe. Or just hadn’t had the chance to upgrade before they’d moved out.
I walked to the third door, pushed it open, and walked into another world. The room had been stripped of furniture and belongings from whoever had lived here before. But the wraith had made it her own. There was a roundish pile of blankets on the floor—probably where she’d slept. Food scraps in another—chunks of rotting vegetables, a few late berries, energy bars, empty water bottles.
I rose and walked to the doorway, called his name. “Liam.”
I heard him step into the doorway behind me. He walked in, spun in a slow circle as he surveyed the room.
“She was living here,” Liam said. “It’s safe, it’s secure. Think about the fact that she ran away from us.”
“But if she was able to evaluate that—if she could gauge whether she was in danger—why not just go home?”
“Maybe she didn’t have a home to go to. Or she thought they’d be in danger from her.”
That was depressing.
“Let’s look around,” he said. “See if you can find anything that will tell us who she is or where she came from.”
I nodded, moved to the pile of bedding. That was the nest, the spot where she slept. It made sense that it would be the most secure.
Great theory, but totally wrong. The blankets had feathers, leaves, crumbs. But nothing that wouldn’t require forensic equipment to analyze.
I rearranged the blankets—it seemed only fair not to disturb her spot, even though she wouldn’t be coming back—and took a step backward so I wouldn’t step on it. The floorboard slipped under me with a squeak.
I glanced down. The end of the board was lifted just a little. Accident, or intention?
I got down on my knees, pulled the store keys from my pocket. There was a flat bottle opener on the key chain. As Liam moved silently beside me, I wedged it into the board, pried it up.
Something jumped out. I screamed, jumped back . . . and watched a tiny mouse scurry across the room.
“They don’t make wraiths that small, Connolly.”
I laughed nervously at the joke. “That scared the crap out of me.”
“So I saw. What else is in there?”
I wasn’t thrilled about sticking my hand in this time, but I bucked up, reached in, and pulled out a purple Crown Royal bag, the kind with the yellow stitching. I opened it into my hand. There was a house key, a small rock, and a driver’s license.
“Hello, Marla Salas,” I said, looking down at the picture of the smiling blond girl. She was twenty-three, and her address was only a few blocks from here.
I looked up at Liam. “She hid this stuff, Liam. She put it together, and she put it somewhere she thought was safe. She was thinking.”
“Yeah,” Liam said, standing up again. “She was. And now we’ve got her address. Let’s go see if anyone’s home.”
? ? ?
The house was a small bungalow with a roofed front porch, dormer windows above it, in a pale pink color. The trim was warm and yellow, and the house was in remarkably good condition. Music was coming from inside. It sounded like Big Band jazz from the 1940s. The music, the cheery paint color, brightened my mood. Someone was making a life there. It was always awesome to see that.
Liam stopped when we reached the porch, stared at the house. “I don’t do this often.”
I looked at him. “This?”
He glanced down at me. “Make notifications. Someone’s in there, probably someone who knew her. That means we’ll have to tell them what’s happened to Marla.”
My mood deflated instantly. I’d been so focused on finding out about her, about the wraiths, that I hadn’t even considered what we’d say to her loved ones.