Several hours passed. My back ached from poring over the book, but I pressed on. I had to read most of the passages aloud. While my eyes couldn’t make much sense of the Old English spellings, when I read aloud and heard myself pronounce the words, I could decipher at least seventy percent of the text. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.
I’d read a dozen tales about Jenny Greenteeth and had found three aliases she’d been known by over time or that had been associated with her. Tommy Rawhead had only one other alias that I’d found: “Rawhead and Bloodybones.” Yeah, he sounded like a pleasant guy. I’d passed the aliases on to Falin, in case they were listed under those names in the census, but so far he hadn’t come up with anything.
I wasn’t sure I was doing much better. I was jotting notes in my phone, but most of the stories illustrated what we already knew: they were both bogeymen who ate naughty children.
I leaned back, trying to stretch the kink out of my back. Somewhere down the hall a door slammed open hard enough to bounce off the wall, the loud boom followed by the sound of running feet. A shrill voice called out, “Is anyone here? We need all hands, pronto.”
Then the owner of the feet and voice passed in front of the records room door and ground to an abrupt halt. “Sir, I—I didn’t know you were here,” the agent said, her voice thin as she gasped for breath.
She was glamoured to look human, and with my shields up I couldn’t see what she looked like beneath that glamour, but she didn’t quite pull off human. She was too small, too thin, and her features too wide on an angular face.
“What is it, agent?” Falin asked, looking down at the smaller fae.
“We just got a call. There’s a fire.”
“What does that have to do with the FIB?”
She swallowed, her full lips pressing into a thin line as she gulped. “Well, um, early reports say the fire isn’t natural and, um, something about daemons dancing in the flames.”
Chapter 21
Dark had fallen by the time Falin pulled onto Cardinal Avenue. If I’d been afraid my night blindness would be an impediment, I needn’t have worried—the scene was ablaze with light. Literally.
“They haven’t gotten the fire out?” I said, staring through the front windshield. An effort had been made to clear the narrow suburban street, but official vehicles, from ambulances to cop cars with their lights flashing and, of course, fire trucks, clogged the way forward. We were nearly a block away, which was about as close as we’d get in the car, so I couldn’t make out any details, but from what I could see, the fire had to be huge. And raging out of control.
Falin made a noncommittal noise as he pulled off the side of the road, his tires brushing the sidewalk, but he said nothing. He popped the trunk, and I followed him to the back of the car, where he grabbed his gun with holster and his badge from a bolted-down lockbox. Shrugging into the shoulder holster, he nodded toward the mess of lights and flame before striding down the sidewalk.
Oh, please let this be a normal fire. But I knew it wasn’t. Even before I saw it, I knew it wasn’t just a fire. After all, the other agent had said there were figures dancing in the flames.
Falin had to badge his way through the crowd of onlookers that had gathered at the edge of the police barricades. People muttered as they shuffled aside, barely opening a path. I stuck close to Falin’s heels. I had no official reason to be here, so if we got separated there was little chance I’d make it past the police line.
“This is your kind’s fault,” a man said behind me.
I didn’t realize the comment was directed at us until I heard someone spit. Falin stopped, looked at the wet spot on the leg of his pants, and then turned. His face was carefully blank, but I knew him well enough to see the icy anger in his eyes.
“Is there something I can help you with?” There was nothing menacing about the words, and Falin’s tone, while low, was polite enough, and yet the man stumbled back as if threatened. Hell, I felt like taking a step back myself.
“No, I—” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I’m just saying they were a nice family. Never did nothing to the fae.”
Family? I glanced toward the scene ahead of us. I still couldn’t make out more than the general shape of the fire, but judging by what I could see of the houses on either side of us, it looked like a nice neighborhood. A family neighborhood.
“Little Sam was only three,” a woman’s voice said, but I wasn’t sure where in the crowd she’d spoken from. “And Molly was a sweet girl, for a teenager.”
Dread clawed at my stomach. We hadn’t seen the scene yet. It could be anything. Hell, it could still be a natural house fire. But if the fire had been caused by Glitter . . .
I touched Falin’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”