I licked my spoon. Today was going to be a busy day.
The phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello.”
“Hey, Kate,” Luther said.
He didn’t call me a heathen or a troglodyte. Things were bad. “How did it go?”
“You were right. They extracted the bones.”
My mind took a moment to digest it. “What kept the bugs away?”
“We don’t know yet. The substance is magically inert, but not devoid of magic. It registers blue on the m-scan, but I can’t tell you if it’s due to human remains or the nature of the solution itself. Is your sensate around?”
“No.” Julie was still off with Curran. I wished they were home.
“A pity.”
“Did you find any inhuman blood in any of the houses?”
“We found hair,” Luther said. “Coarse, reddish brown, short. In one of the houses, someone tore a chunk of it out of their attacker.”
“DNA?”
“We are running it now.”
“Is it hair or fur?”
“Good question. It has an amorphous medulla, consistent with human hair, and a coronal cuticle, which can occasionally be found in humans but typically indicates a rodent, a bat for example. Human head hair continues to grow until we cut it. This hair exhibits synchronized growth, meaning at some point it stopped growing, like fur. It wasn’t cut. But it also exhibits a club root, which is typical to humans. It is inconsistent with shapeshifter hair in some respects and consistent in others.”
“Are you trying to tell me this is a human-bat hybrid?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Frustration spiked his voice. “I’m trying to tell you that I spent twenty-four hours digging in a jellied mass grave and then analyzing what I found, and I have nothing to show for it.”
“That’s not true. You have a sample for comparison.”
“I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”
“Thanks.”
“And, Kate? If you run across this again, I want to know about it the moment it happens.”
“That might be a little difficult, Luther. Last I checked, telepathy wasn’t among my talents—”
He hung up.
“Someone’s pissy,” I told Conlan.
Conlan didn’t look impressed.
I dialed Nick’s direct number. Usually I went through the proper channels, meaning Maxine, but he hadn’t called me back, and Biohazard wouldn’t notify them. The Order’s legal status as a law enforcement agency had always been murky; however, after the Wilmington Massacre, the knights were firmly outside the law. Some kids at UNC in Wilmington took a fun new drug that turned them into monsters. It also robbed them of their intelligence, because their monstrous rampage consisted of running around their dorm and growling at passersby. The Order was called in, and instead of securing the scene and waiting, the knights made an executive decision to go in and slaughter everyone they found. Midway through the slaughter, the magic wave ended, and the kids turned back into humans. The Order didn’t stop. When the blood stopped spraying, twelve young people were dead. At the trial, the knight-protector of the Wilmington chapter testified that he didn’t care if they returned to human form or not. In his opinion, they stopped being human when they took the drug. The national fallout was catastrophic.
Some states still recognized the Order’s semi-law-enforcement position, but Georgia wasn’t one of them. All cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the Order had ceased as of last year. I didn’t care for the Order’s methods or for Nick calling me and my baby abominations every chance he got, but the Order had accumulated decades’ worth of magic knowledge. If my going to Nick would help prevent another Serenbe, it would be worth it.
The message I’d left yesterday was short. It had only two words: “Call me.” He knew I wouldn’t come to him unless it was an emergency. Since he hadn’t called me back, I felt the need to make this one slightly longer.
That done, I sat Conlan down and got his fire truck out of storage. The truck was a gift from Jim and Dali for his first birthday. Large enough for a small child to sit in and climb on, it had a tiny enchanted water engine, which powered lights and a ladder during magic waves. It must’ve cost them an arm and a leg. Conlan adored the truck. He showed no interest in riding in it, but he liked to climb on the roof, which usually took him a solid minute and multiple tries. Once he ascended, he would wave his arms and make strange noises. Sometimes he fell asleep on top of it. Like his dad, my son enjoyed being in high places.
Conlan began his epic journey, and I pulled files on mass disappearances, landed on the floor close enough to catch him if he decided to swan-dive, and tried to review what little was known about people vanishing.
Of all the recorded mass disappearances, the Roanoke colony was the most famous, but there were others. Easter Island, whose inhabitants had melted into thin air, leaving behind only statues. Ancient Puebloans, who were once called Anasazi, meaning “ancient enemies.” The village of Hoer Verde in Brazil. That one was especially creepy. The theories said that the Easter Islanders might have starved to death and Roanoke’s colonists might have died of plague, but everyone was pretty sure something really bad had happened at Hoer Verde. Six hundred Brazilians vanished without a trace in 1923, leaving behind a gun that had been fired and a note that read, There is no salvation.
All those were pre-Shift. Post-Shift, disappearances increased in frequency but were usually eventually solved. Typically something had eaten the people or some magic disease had nuked everyone and burned itself out. One case listed mysterious blue lights floating in the air, which caused the population of a small town to strip naked and run off into the woods after them. They were eventually found by local sheriffs, confused and embarrassed. The worst injuries suffered amounted to scratches and severe cases of poison ivy exposure.
There was nothing in any of the files about boiled people or jellied mass graves.
The phone rang. I grabbed it, watching Conlan trying to scoot backward on the truck’s roof.
“Hello, Kate,” Maxine said.
That ass. Couldn’t call himself. Made his secretary do it. That was a new low, even for Nick. “Hi, Maxine. How is my nemesis?”
“We need your help.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“We need your help,” she repeated.
Conlan got to his feet and made a tiny hop on top of the truck, achieving a lift of about an inch. I walked closer to the truck.
“What can I do for you?”
“We’ve received a group from Wolf Trap.”
Wolf Trap, Virginia, housed the Order’s national headquarters.
“I believe they are here to remove Nikolas Feldman from his position as knight-protector.”
What? Nick was the first decent knight-protector that office had had in the last ten years. His predecessor managed to get the entire chapter killed.
“Why?”
“Nikolas has been rather vocal in his criticism of the Order. It has caused problems.” There was an awful, vulnerable edge to Maxine’s voice. In my time with the Order, she’d been unflappable. No matter what happened, Maxine handled it with her trademark efficiency.
“Within the chapter?”
“No, the knights of the chapter are devoted to him. In the past, we have become a refuge for . . .”
“Problem cases,” I finished for her. Atlanta always was the dumping ground for troublesome knights.
“Yes. Nikolas has a unique talent when it comes to helping people find their niche. He makes sure that they become useful. Most of them owe their lives to him in more than one way.”
The Order encouraged loyalty to the local knight-protectors, and the Atlanta chapter was no exception. In the few times I’d seen Nick interact with his knights, the relationships seemed to be based on mutual respect. They did what he told them to do, and they didn’t question him in my presence.