There was a shuffling, shifting noise and the wail was briefly muffled, then came again, even louder.
"There, I've got you. I've got you. There, there. Shhhhhh. There's no need for that, is there? It's all here for you."
There was a snuffling, mumbling noise and then a soft rhythmic slurping.
"There, then. That's better. You were just hungry, weren't you? All better now. All better."
Feeling as if I was spying on something deeply personal, I gently removed my hand, not wanting to disturb that moment of quiet intimacy, even slightly. Wherever Helen Franks was, she was probably sleepdeprived, irritable and wondering whether she could cope, but that was motherhood. I had found her and she was well. I didn't want to intrude any further.
I placed the photographs of Helen and Debbie on one side and returned to the pictures of Trudy and Gillian. I'd started with five young women who were missing. I had Karen, who was living in Hull with her husband, Helen, who was a nursing mother, and Debbie, the party girl. Even if no one knew where they were, they were OK, and that was all that was important. As Greg had said, you had to figure out what people needed before you tried to help them. If Helen and Debbie didn't want their families to know where they were, then maybe they had their reasons. They were young women, not children.
That left me with two who were still missing. I looked up into the mirror. The bags under my eyes spoke of too many late nights and early mornings, but there was one more thing I could try. I placed my hand gently on the mirror and whispered softly into it.
"Alex?"
The glass cooled and clouded again, bringing a stillness into the room. No sound emerged, no hint of space or location, just deep silence. The glass under my hand chilled and moonlight crept into it, until it glowed from within. Still no clue emerged, but I knew she was there somewhere. With Gillian there had been a sense of dissipation, of dilution beyond any ability to hold the link. This was different. I couldn't reach my daughter, but I knew she was there. I dropped my hand again before my unconscious desire to find her intensified the connection and set off alarms as it had before. I would find her. It was just a matter of time.
It meant something, though. It meant that the two missing women were not unconscious, or somewhere in a coma, or protected from me. I couldn't find them because they weren't there to be found.
That thought stayed with me while I collected the pictures, replaced the bowl of pot-pourri and went back out into the church. I carefully placed the photos back in the positions they had occupied and, checking I was leaving everything as I'd found it, I locked the door behind me and returned through the darkened streets to my room at the Dolphin. The night was quiet. As far as I could tell, no one saw me leave or return, if indeed anyone cared.
Finally done for the day, I undressed and brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. With the light out, the glow from the window reflected a rectangle of orange on to the wall opposite. I thought of Blackbird, sharing watches throughout the night, surrounded by iron horseshoes, listening for any noise that might be an unwanted visitor, knowing that, by the time they heard it, it might already be too late.
My mind drifted to thoughts of Karen, tucked up with Ahmed above the cafe. Was she happy? It wasn't fair to have to choose between your family and your husband, but then life wasn't fair. I had found myself liking Karen, perhaps because she'd made her choice and was determined to be happy with it. A glimpse into Debbie's life and the contrast couldn't be more vivid. The quiet contemplation and study of the Qur'an were a long way from the pounding music and adrenalin rush of the dancefloor. What time would it be before Debbie made it home? Maybe after first light? If that was her choice, did it make it any less valid?
Was Helen happy? Had anyone known she was pregnant? Is that why she'd disappeared so suddenly, faced with a situation she felt unable to share with anyone? Did she wonder whether she could ever come home? If it were me, it wouldn't matter. An unwanted pregnancy was a serious matter and would affect the lives of more than just the mother and the baby, but it could be accommodated. It was nothing like the hopeless empty loss of a daughter that wouldn't or couldn't be found. Then again, I knew from past experience that not everyone felt the way I did. For some people the public disgrace of an unexpectedly pregnant daughter meant more to them than their child's safety and happiness, an attitude I found incomprehensible. Still, I knew it happened, the parents whose attitude and actions harmed the girl, the baby and ultimately themselves. Was that what Helen feared?
The fey were more pragmatic about such things. They had so few children now that every babe was treasured beyond sense or reason, except by the Untainted. Fey like Raffmir believed that children who were half-breeds, mixtures of fey and human heritage, were an abomination, an affront to nature and a pollution of their racial purity. They thought that humans with fey ancestry would be the downfall of their race, their bloodlines diluted until it made no difference who was fey and who was human. They had tried to prevent the mixing of the races through diplomacy, failed, and then tried to kill all the half-breeds in one fateful night. They failed, and as a result Altair had taken them into exile to another world, an exile he was now trying to end though negotiation.
But how could he? In order to return, the Untainted would have to accept the existence of the gifted, those humans who had, directly or indirectly, inherited the genes of the Feyre. Either that or the rest of the courts would have to abandon their children to a massacre, something I could never see happening. It was a stalemate, so why were they here? What could they possibly hope to achieve? The Untainted would no more accept the sharing of bloodlines with humans than humanity could accept the sharing of their bloodlines with animals.
That thought brought back the mewling, whining cry that had roused Helen from sleep. It was an animal noise. It was a noise I would have to get used to again, once my own baby was born. Feed one end and wipe the other; that was the way it went. I remembered the sleep-broken nights when Alex was tiny. At the time it seemed as if it went on forever but, looking back, it had flashed past. Before I knew it she was walking, talking, running and playing, from teddy bears and ponies to boy bands in the blink of an eye. I was beginning to think she didn't need me any more. Then she was snatched from me.
I would find her. I would.
I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Bruised and exhausted, sleep should have claimed me, but the images of the young women were there every time I closed my eyes. Each time it ended with Gillian. The way she leaned across just as the camera flashed, capturing that moment of unconscious grace, preserving a tableau in two dimensions. In the morning I would have to find a way to tell Greg what I had discovered, but I would leave that problem for later. Maybe he would know how to tell Gillian's and Trudy's families what they needed to know?
But even if Greg told them, how would they know it was true? I knew what it was to be told of a death without the evidence of my own eyes – without proof. Even if he told them, would they believe him? The anger at what had happened to Gillian, to Trudy and to Alex, welled up in me, making my heart pound in my ears and banishing sleep. My thoughts returned to Blackbird and my unborn son, and I started again.
How many times my thoughts travelled that circle, I couldn't say, but sleep must have come eventually because I knew I was dreaming.
It was always cold here, yet I didn't feel cold; certainly it was nothing like the bone-chilling ache that Solandre had induced in me to feed from my life force when she trapped me here. Naked, I walked along the path, brushing fingers of pine branches that only moved as I stirred them, the faint scent of resin hanging in the air as I passed. No breeze ever stirred this place.