Shelby shrieked, and Nora drew the shadows close, transforming once more into Indigo. She knew how to expend power. Now she experimented with absorbing it. Like a vacuum cleaner, she told herself. She felt the moment Shelby became part of her. Indigo felt the surge of strength, an incredible jolt of power. She closed her eyes to revel in the feeling, and to fight off the guilt and shame that swept through her.
When she opened her eyes, Shelby was gone. The closet door hung open, the rack inside it vacant. The apartment was bare and silent, aside from a dripping tap in the tiny bathroom. And an empty space was inside Nora. But even as the Nora part of her acknowledged this loss, the Indigo of her felt invigorated and leaped into the shadows.
*
With an unprecedented swiftness and ease, she emerged behind the open bathroom door in Sam’s hospital room.
“Before I come out, I want you to know I’m here,” she said, and Sam squawked.
When Indigo emerged, she saw that Sam was half-sitting on the bed, his hair rumpled and his expression startled.
“I was asleep,” he said in protest. “Could you not do that ever again?”
“Sorry. I see you got your laptop.”
“Yeah, my neighbor has a key to my apartment, and he brought it over for me.”
“What have you been doing in your waking hours?”
“Mostly battling a killer headache,” Sam said sourly. “But I started looking up the names on the list you gave me.”
“And?”
His sourness deepened.
“Wow, Sam, I’m so sorry you got hurt because you are my friend. I’m really devastated that you’re missing work and running up a hospital bill.”
Indigo felt ashamed. But only briefly. Children’s lives were in the balance. She hadn’t lost sight of the missing children of Graham Edwards. Edwards had told Rafe Bogdani that he was through with the Children of Phonos. Bogdani might dispute that, and he was both a powerful and a violent man.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Indigo said with as much contrition as she could summon. “You shouldn’t have been hurt, and I hope you recover in record time.” She kissed his forehead lightly.
“You don’t smell like Nora.”
Shocked, Indigo flinched backward. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Sam shook his head, dismissing his own words with visible effort. He winced when the movement made his head swim.
“Okay,” he said. “I checked all the names. Some of the people on the list are dead. In fact, at least eighty-five percent of them. They were killed in that massacre in the warehouse. Maybe you read about it.” He eyed Indigo narrowly. “Maybe you were there.”
Indigo did her best to look blank.
After a moment Sam went on, “The real shocker on the list was Captain Fritz Mueller, of the NYPD. He’s alive and well and raging in the press over the death of his detective, Angela Mayhew. She was apparently gunned down by her partner, Hugh Symes, whom she’d stabbed with a knife. One witness said he saw a dark cloud in their car. And the last time I saw them, you were leaving this room with them.”
She took a breath, then told him about Mayhew’s being a member of the cult, about how the detective had tried to kill her, and Symes had intervened and been stabbed for his efforts.
“Symes had to shoot his own partner,” Indigo said. “I don’t know how he’ll come out of the inquiry. I can’t make it up to him, but I can at least ensure that all the pain and trauma were worthwhile by saving kids’ lives. And in ridding this city, and maybe even the world, of the Children of Phonos.”
For a fraction of a second she was Nora, looking at the man she’d loved, maybe still loved, and he was looking back at her with a whopping dose of doubt.
“Assuming I accept your point of view,” Sam said deliberately, “and that’s a big assumption … what do you plan to do next?”
“I plan to find out where Graham Edwards stowed his children. He indicated in a conversation that his wife, Charlotte, had been preparing them for sacrifice. Edwards hid them, and because he was busy taking them away, he missed the slaughter at the warehouse where his wife died.”
Sam had pulled the laptop toward him and he began to type. “I think I can answer one question, though not the one you asked. Look.” He turned the screen to face Indigo, and she bent closer. Graham Edwards, looking ten years older than the man she’d watched confronting Rafe Bogdani, was standing at a bank of microphones. A handsome blond man was standing at Edwards’s elbow, and Indigo had no trouble pegging him as the family lawyer. The man at Edwards’s other side was a uniformed police officer. As long as the cop in charge wasn’t Fritz Mueller, Edwards might keep his children safe.
“My wife died two days ago,” Graham Edwards told the cameras, looking suitably shocked and grieved. “I have received revelation after revelation about her secret life as a cult member. I thought I had hit rock bottom, until my children were taken from me. I have contacted the NYPD, the finest police force in the world, to help me to get them back.”
One of the reporters yelled, “Ransom demand?”
Edwards shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Don’t you think calling the police in on this will make the kidnappers think twice about giving them back?”
“I hope, by going public, I’m enlisting the eyes and ears of the good citizens of this city.” Edwards appeared to start crying, and his lawyer gently turned the distraught father away from the microphone.
He took Edwards’s place. “If any of the cult members have survived the mysterious massacre in which Mrs. Edwards died, we plead with you to please come forward to share any information you have concerning the whereabouts of Anastasia Catherine Edwards, age twelve, and Andel Raymond Edwards, age ten. We beg you to come forward. I’ll be distributing recent pictures of the children at the exit doors.”
“Any reward?” called a voice.
The police officer stepped forward and almost shouldered the lawyer out of the reach of the microphones. “I’m Captain Ray Delaney. In situations in which a reward has been posted, the flood of information becomes almost impossible to wade through. But it’s still under consideration.”
“But if you don’t offer a reward, you might miss the good tip that leads to their recovery!” a young woman said.
She could have been me a few years ago, Nora thought. Voicing the unpopular thought, trying to get an honest answer.
Captain Delaney looked at the reporter with distaste. “For now, we rely on the goodwill of the people of New York to save the lives of these two children. Thanks for coming. Good-bye.”
And the press conference was over. Sam had pulled his laptop back, and he was typing as he talked.
“What do you think?” Sam said. “Sincere, or staged?”
“Little of both. It makes me suspicious that they emphasized New York City so much. If that’s sincere, it’s smart, but maybe Edwards is trying for misdirection. Maybe he knows where his kids are, but in case something happens to them, he wants all eyes watching.”
“Does he really think the cult took them?”
“He has good reason to wonder.”