Seraph of Sorrow (43 page)
“Who came in with this girl?”
Mouton bit his lip.
“No one came in with her? You just let this girl come in alone off the street, fill out paperwork—barely—and you admitted her into class?”
“Of course not. One of our teachers spoke for her.”
“
What
teacher?”
Edmund Slider, for a public servant, was a very hard man to talk to.
He’s not stupid,
Hank mused as he watched the man leave the school with the help of his live-in girlfriend, Tavia Saltin. City records were extensive on both of them, of course. How Glory tolerated the presence of two known arachnids, Hank didn’t bother to wonder. Plainly, the mayor was getting overconfident, or senile, or both.
Hank didn’t want a public confrontation with the man. He wanted a quiet conversation, to learn everything he could, without prying eyes learning what he’d learned, or hordes of Amanda’s friends giggling at him in the school hallways. There seemed to be no way to get to Edmund Slider alone.
Nearly a week went by. With Amanda still missing and Sarah beside herself, Hank finally just walked up to the man’s front door and banged on it. A strained wisp of a woman, five or ten years older than Hank, answered.
Tavia Saltin,
he recognized. She looked him up and down. “We’re not interested, thank you.”
He stopped her from closing the door in his face. “I’m not a salesman, ma’am.”
“I know who you are. As I said: We’re not interested.”
“I need to talk to Edmund Slider. He lives here.”
“He’s out this evening.”
“You can’t seriously think I believe that.”
“That’s not my problem. You should leave now.”
“Do I have to break this door down, with you underneath it?”
The woman let go of the door with her hand, but as Hank moved to push it open farther, braced it instead with her foot. Her finger came up and nearly poked the intruder in the eye. “I grew up,” her thin voice pricked, “with bullies like you. Do you think you scare me?”
He assessed her. She was no more than half his weight, and the clothes she wore revealed more bones than muscle on her frame. While not foolish enough to think size was the only thing that mattered, Hank knew the odds were against her. Maybe if he . . .
“Aunt Tavia? You okay?” A brooding, tall shape slunk up behind the woman.
Hank identified the face immediately and recalculated his odds of succeeding by force. “Skip Wilson. Perhaps you can talk some sense into your aunt. I need to speak with—”
“My aunt told you to leave.”
Hank knew the rumor: The boy was a werachnid, like this woman and the hobbled Edmund Slider. Normally that would have suggested the end of this conversation, but there was Amanda Sera to consider, and her distressed mother. “A girl from your school is missing. Amanda Sera. I’m here on behalf of her family. Of course, if you want to slam the door in my face, I suppose I’ll have no choice but to tell Amanda’s parents that they should file a missing persons report, and that this town’s authorities would do well to start their search at this house.”
He removed his hand from the door. It did not swing open; but it did not close, either.
“Who’s this Amanda?” the woman asked her nephew.
Skip shrugged. “Like he said. Girl at school. Pretty popular.”
“Might she have an enemy?” Hank wondered. “Someone who’d want her to disappear?”
“I don’t know her that well. Like many popular brats, she pisses some kids off, terrifies others. But I never heard of her doing anything unusual.”
“She’s from a beaststalker family, isn’t she?” Tavia’s keen eyes fixed on Hank. “Sera. Her mother is on the town council with you. That’s why you care. If she was a normal girl, or heaven forbid someone
different
, you wouldn’t even bother looking around.”
He ignored the woman. “Skip, what do you know about a new girl at the school? Andeana de la—”
“Andi?” Hank could tell from Skip’s expression that he had hit the jackpot. To the boy’s credit, he immediately realized his mistake and did not try to hide it. “Yeah, I know her.”
“You’re friends with her?”
The boy’s face toyed with a shade between crimson and purple. “I wouldn’t . . .”
“It’s fine, Skip.” This new voice came from the hallway beyond, a pert but modest tone. “I don’t mind if people know about us. At school today, Jennifer was asking whether you and I were friends now. If she’s figured it out, everyone else will soon enough.”
Skip’s features darkened at the mention of Jennifer Scales—Hank couldn’t blame him. Beyond the boy, Hank caught a glimpse of a slender brunette with tan features.
Andeana, I presume.
He saw no more before Tavia pulled the door in more tightly.
“Best if we keep to ourselves, dear,” Tavia said sweetly, cold eyes still on Hank.
“I need to ask that girl questions!”
“Honestly! As if you have the right to ask. We’re done here. Edmund is not available—not to you, or the mayor, or anyone else. I’m sorry there’s a girl missing, but when you consider what the Quadrivium could have done and how everything ended up . . . Well, I think we can all agree this town got off lightly. Your girl is gone, and a new girl is here, and there’s nothing to be done for it. Yes, I see the impatience in your face, and I hear the threats rebuilding in your throat. Don’t you ever sing a different song? Send the authorities, if you must. If we wish to avoid them, we’ll have little trouble.”
The door closed, ending the conversation. But Hank’s thoughts were just getting started.
An hour later, lying in his bed in the Seras’ guest room, he kept thinking.
One girl disappears, as though she never existed. At the same time, another girl shows up, as if out of the wind. Edmund Slider vouches for her. She befriends Skip Wilson and Jennifer Scales. And somewhere beneath it all, this woman Tavia and her nephew expected even more to happen. “This town got off lightly.” Which means they expected more replacements. Maybe they still do.
Edmund Slider was a dead end. His girlfriend was protecting him, and Hank doubted he would get much more from either one of them, or from Skip Wilson. He could call the authorities, but he doubted the mayor’s cronies would find out any more than Hank had.
That left the nagging matter of Jennifer Scales, whose name kept popping up more frequently and annoyingly than the pimples on his son’s useless, sweaty face. He would have to find a way to find out what the girl-freak knew. Talking face-to-face was out of the question—he knew he would not be able to stand next to that thing without pulling out some sort of weapon and maiming it. Unfortunately, that left a host of unappetizing alternatives.
The father? Worse than the daughter.
The mother? Worse than the father.
Eddie? Given their last confrontation and the boy’s obvious love for animals, Hank doubted the conversation would last longer than two (rude) words.
That left Wendy, who admittedly would be tough. But she was still his wife. She would consent to talk to him, even if it was for a scant minute. If she had spent enough time at the Scaleses’ house, there might even be some actionable intelligence in what she passed on. So he sat up in his bed and called her cell phone, and when she didn’t answer, he left her as polite a message as he could manage. He told her he wanted to talk, and gave her a time (later that night, so she wouldn’t have time to think about it) and place (in public, so she would feel more comfortable) where he would be waiting.
Two hours later, he was sipping beer at a local bar, watching the other men watch his wife as she walked in.
She is lovely to watch
. He noted with satisfaction that she still wore her wedding ring. It was a glorious fragment of a jewel, flashing a clear message to each of the desperate males in this stinking joint that this female was taken. He tore his gaze away from it in time to give her a small smile as she sat next to him. “I’m glad you came.”
She waved off the bartender. “Lizzy’s waiting for me outside. If I’m not out in five minutes, she’s coming in after me.”
“How romantic. She never did like me.”
“She had higher standards than I did. What do you want?”
The inside of his cheek gave a little; he unclenched his teeth and licked the blood off them. “You know Sarah and Jim Sera? They have a daughter, Amanda, who’s been missing for days. The school doesn’t know where she is, her friends don’t know, no one does. Except . . .”
He saw how he drew her in so easily again. The simplest details of his selfless investigation into a teenaged girl’s disappearance had Wendy frowning with concern and hanging on his every word. She leaned in as he paused. “Except what?”
“Except another girl appears to have replaced her. Someone with ties to Edmund Slider. Someone named . . .” He paused, unsure how much to reveal. “Andi. Have you heard of her?”
“Yes!” It was delivered with such enthusiasm, Hank was sure he could convince this woman to slip out the back door with him and come home. “Jenny’s talked about her. She’s not from here. She’s from that other universe, where werachnids were everywhere, and there are no dragons or beaststalkers. The plot that Jenny stopped, Hank!”
He tried to keep up with what Wendy was saying. A plot to twist the universe? And the brat-beast stopped it? How? Why? “Who was in on the plot? Who was responsible?”
She gave him a quizzical look. “The Quadrivium, of course. What other plot is there?”
Skip Wilson’s aunt had used that word, and Wendy seemed to know about it. It burned Hank that he didn’t. “Back up. Is this Quadrivium just Edmund Slider, or are there more?”
“Yes, Edmund Slider, Otto Saltin . . .” Then Wendy frowned. “You don’t know this? But Lizzy already sent Mother a letter explaining everything. Mother didn’t talk to you?”
This, Hank wasn’t ready for.
I
should
have been ready for this,
he chastised himself as he braced his white knuckles against the slick, dark wood of the bar.
I mean, she sold my secrets to spiders. Kept the truth about the Scales family from me. Allows creatures like them, and Slider, and heaven knows what else to live in this town. Why wouldn’t she keep news of a genocidal plot from me, as well? It’s not like she respects me, does she?
“No,” he finally managed.
Wendy paused, and Hank watched his chance to win her back slip away. “Maybe you should talk to Mother . . .”
His composure disintegrated. “I’m not going to grovel to Glory for the tidbits of information she’ll scrape off her plate! Wendy, the Seras want to know where their daughter is. They want her back! If you have information . . .”
“Tell them to talk to Mother. They’ll understand.”
Hank searched the bar for an idea that would keep Wendy here, keep the Seras from going to Glory, keep him calling the shots. “Wendy, I’m on the council. That information is mine to have! You’re my wife and it’s your duty to help me!”
Her voice cooled. “Don’t worry about marital duty. I won’t be your wife for long.”
He slipped off his stool. “You’re still wearing your ring. I’m still wearing mine—”
“You and your things! Your rings, your swords, your bundles of information, your wife and son. Your possessions.” She was spitting the words out, getting the taste out of her mouth. “All tools to you, to enhance your legacy. To promote the Blacktooth name. This cause, this girl—that’s just more of the same, isn’t it? You don’t care if you actually
help
her. You want to be the one who’s in charge, who knocks the heads together and finds the girl, or her body—all the same to you—and then uses whatever you find out to make yourself look better. If she’s alive, you’re a savior with the Sera family in your debt. If she’s dead, you’re the one to rally the outrage . . .”
She went on, but Hank had stopped listening. He could only watch her pretty face, with her pretty blue eyes glaring and her pretty vermilion lips curling, her pretty white teeth grinding and her pretty dark hair shaking. It was never going to smile at him again. It was never going to invite him to bed with a wink, or ask him if he wanted a cool drink out of the refrigerator, or thank him for fixing the porch light so it didn’t attract so many bugs. In fact, it was never going to do anything for him at all again. Ever.
So he slugged it.
“Go back to your lizard lover,” he spat at the top of her head as she tried to pick herself up off the floor. He swung his leg and knocked her arms out from under her, causing her to collapse to the ground again. The back of her shirt rode up a bit, revealing her bandages. “Go back to your pathetic life, with your pathetic son, and your pathetic friends, and your pathetic—”
Wendy’s foot swept through his calves, knocking him off his feet. His head slammed into the bar and he blacked out.
He woke up to three unpleasant truths. First, his skull felt like it had been split and then reassembled by elves—sloppy, drunk elves. Second, Wendy was gone and instead he was surrounded by many patrons of the bar, all pretending to be concerned about his health when he knew what they really wanted was to get the dirt behind why the two of them had been arguing, so they could spread it to their friends, who would spread it to
their
friends, who would spread it to Glory. Third, there was a large, foreign object stuck in his right nostril.
He got to his feet with a growl, shooed the crowd away, and stumbled into the men’s room. There, in the quasi-privacy of an enclosed, tiled space reeking of urine, he poked into his nose and pulled out the thing Wendy Blacktooth had crammed in there. It was her wedding ring.
Hank dipped his head in a perfunctory nod. “Mayor Seabright. You called for me.”
Glorianna pointed at the newspaper on her mahogany desk. “Explain this.”
He didn’t need to look at the
Winoka Herald
; he knew the headline. Trying not to betray satisfaction, he replied as calmly as he thought his mother would have, years ago. “Nothing I can’t imagine you don’t already know, Your Honor. It says some spiders—”
“I don’t mean the story. I mean why it’s plastered on page one of the
Herald
!”