Etched in Bone

CHAPTER 25

Thaisday, Messis 23

The police set up roadblocks at every road leading out of Lakeside, but everyone already knew it was too late. With the chaos and blocked traffic on Crowfield Avenue, there had been time for Cyrus Montgomery to get Meg Corbyn out of the city. Officers from each precinct had been assigned to the manhunt, and patrol captains were sending in their findings to Captain Burke as well as Police Commissioner Alvarez.

Nobody had expected any luck at the bus and train stations, but the police checked them anyway, talked to the ticket sellers, showed Cyrus’s photo around.

They tried hard to find Meg Corbyn, but the minutes ticked by into an hour—and then two.

While waiting for any news from the police, Vlad, Blair, Nathan, and Officer Debany went through Cyrus Montgomery’s apartment, first looking for any clue that would tell them where he might be heading and then looking for whatever drugs Sandee might have ingested before her clash with Leetha. They found her stash of pills hidden beneath the tampons in what looked like an unopened box. They found some money in the fridge’s freezer box, hidden in a small, hollowed-out loaf of something labeled cranberry-artichoke bread—an unappealing combination that explained why no one had been hungry enough to thaw out the loaf and discover the money.

After checking the apartment a second time, Debany said, “I think we’ve found everything there is to find.”

“Then it’s time to pack up their possessions,” Vlad said. “Miss Twyla offered to help with that.”

Debany frowned. “Pack? But I had understood that you weren’t pressing charges against Sandee.”

“We’re not. But we are evicting her for breaking our no-drugs rule.” Vlad smiled, showing a hint of fang. “If she ever comes within sight of the Courtyard again, the Sanguinati won’t bother to bite. We’ll just snap her bones, one by one, until we get to her neck.”

Debany went white.

“But that is unlikely to happen because either you will arrest her for the drugs you just found and she will go to jail, or she will be on the first train out of Lakeside tomorrow morning.”

Debany swallowed hard. “Alone?”

“Alone. As for that Clarence, you may hold him accountable according to your laws for his part in Meg’s abduction, or we will hold him accountable according to ours. Either way, he isn’t coming back here.”

“What about Frances?” Debany asked.

“For now, Eve Denby is looking after Frances and Lizzy since we all feel that it is easier to protect the children if they’re all in one place.”

Debany gathered the evidence bags. “If any of you or Miss Twyla notice anything else that doesn’t look right, give me a call.”

“I don’t think it will take long for Miss Twyla to pack the carryalls. You should wait a few minutes and take what belongs to that Sandee and that Clarence.”

“All right. I’ll be nearby.” Debany walked out with the evidence bags.

Vlad knew the patrol car was parked in the Courtyard’s employee parking lot. The other officer, Hilborn, was still helping to free the motorists who had been buried under several feet of snow—snow that was getting harder to move by the minute as the Messis sun beat down, compacting it and making it heavy with water.

This time no Wolves came to help dig out the cars. This time it was humans with shovels.

Vlad took out his mobile phone and called Twyla Montgomery to let her know she could come over and pack up the things that had belonged to the humans who had stayed here. Then he called Chris Fallacaro to come over and change the locks.

He hadn’t seen Henry since they all realized Meg had been taken by that Cyrus. He hadn’t seen Tess.

Some of the terra indigene in the Courtyard had gotten too close to the humans, had become too involved—had developed feelings that, in the future, might be the very reason they chose to shun contact with humans. If they failed to find Meg, Simon wouldn’t remain in Lakeside where he would listen for a voice that would never be heard and search for a scent that would fade day by day. No, Simon would head into the wild country, alone, and simply disappear.

But Vlad would remain in Lakeside with Grandfather Erebus. He wasn’t sure Henry would stay. Maybe the Grizzly would relocate to the River Road Community or Great Island, where he would be able to continue working on his sculptures and totems. Maybe he would go farther west. Maybe all the way to Bennett. Elliot would take Sam far from here to a place that had limited contact with humans. As for Tess . . . Vlad wasn’t going to think about what would happen to the humans who crossed Tess’s path while she looked for some other place.

A pebble dropped in a pond created so many ripples, disturbed the surface of the water, revealed possibilities. When Meg first came among them, they had seen her as a puzzle, a confusion. But she had become so much more.

It was still possible to find her. There was still time to save her—and Simon.

Jenni, Starr, and Jake Crowgard walked into the Three Ps.

“Hey,” the Lorne said. “Any news?”

“You gave the police pack pictures of that Cyrus,” Jenni said.

The Lorne nodded. “They’re distributing them to the police in the city.”

“Those are big pictures. Can you make smaller ones that would fit into this?” Jenni held up a mesh bag no larger than a human hand, with woven handles that a Crow’s foot could grasp and carry over a distance.

“I could print some out small enough for that. When do you need them?”

Jenni stared at him. “Now.”

The Lorne went behind the wall that hid the computers and the printers. He returned quickly with a piece of paper that held one picture of that Cyrus.

“We need many,” she said, wondering for a moment if this human had helped that Cyrus steal their Meg.

“I wanted to be sure it was the right size before I started printing multiples,” the Lorne said. “You want them on the photo paper like the ones I did for the police?”

“Yes.”

While they waited, Jenni looked at the postcards in the spin rack. The police had found one in the sorting room addressed to her. From the Jana. She hoped their Meg had read it and smiled before . . .

Lorne returned to the counter with a stack of photos that would fit in the mesh bags. The Crows took them and hurried back to the Crowgard Complex. Every Crow had acquired a small bag to carry little treasures. Now the bags would carry something else.

Once all the photos were distributed and put into the bags, all the Crowgard in the Lakeside Courtyard shifted to their Crow form, picked up the bags, and flew away. They flew hard, in all directions. While waiting for Jenni, Crows who knew about the telephone called Crowgard in terra indigene settlements, telling them about the theft of their Meg, telling them to meet up with the Lakeside Crowgard.

Crows who lived and worked at one of the terra indigene farms met up with Jenni, who pulled one of the photos of the enemy out of the mesh bag so that all the Crowgard could study the face. This enemy would stay on human roads, so that was where the Crows should search.

Crows flew off in small groups. One Crow took Jenni’s mesh bag with the photo and flew hard to meet the Crowgard farther down the road, who would study the face of the enemy and tell more Crows, who would tell more Crows, who would tell more Crows.

Simon ran back to Howling Good Reads. Having let himself in by the back door, he bounded up the stairs to the office, where he had a spare set of clothes. After shifting to human and getting dressed, he went to the Liaison’s Office.

There was nothing to track, no scent to follow to find Meg. Unable to stand being around humans, he had gone to the Green Complex and lain on her bed for a while, breathing in her scent. As it always did, her scent soothed him so that he started to think past the anger and fear.

Meg had dreamed about being thirsty. She had dreamed about finding a body—or at least a cold hand. Details of something she had seen in the prophecy cards? Maybe, before she was taken, she had asked another question, had selected more cards. Skippy had been wounded and needed help, so Simon hadn’t looked for cards once the Wolves confirmed that Meg was gone.

She had seen where her journey ended. He just needed to figure out how to find that specific place. When he did, he would also find her.

He walked into the sorting room and stopped, not sure what to think when he saw Merri Lee, Ruthie, Theral, and Agent O’Sullivan already standing around a map of the Northeast Region that was spread out on the big wooden table. Next to the map was the notebook Meg used to write down the images on the prophecy cards.

“We could use your input if you feel up to it,” O’Sullivan said.

Simon reluctantly approached the table. He’d wanted to look at the notes Meg had made about the last vision; he hadn’t wanted to deal with any humans. But here was part of the human pack sniffing around for clues.

Merri Lee tapped the notebook. “Tombstone means a grave, but it’s not Meg’s. It isn’t. It’s something she’ll see in a woods somewhere.”

“Which made me wonder if there were any failed settlements that might be near any of the current roads,” Ruthie said, waving a hand over the map. “Someplace small from a few decades ago, someplace that could have had a graveyard. By now, the buildings might be gone and the land might be wooded, and the gravestones could be weathered to the point of looking like ordinary stones.”

“Would the terra indigene have any records of places reclaimed by the wild country where humans might have been?” O’Sullivan asked.

Simon shook his head. “If a place was reclaimed, it either disappeared or the terra indigene turned the buildings into a settlement and gave the area a different name. But Meg didn’t see a tombstone or grave in the prophecy dream; she saw a body hidden under some leaves.”

It sounded like a tree full of squirrels had suddenly landed in the room. So much chatter out of so few bodies.

He snarled at the female pack. They ignored him and kept chattering, so he snarled louder. They kept asking him questions and questions and questions, but they wouldn’t stop talking long enough for him to answer.

“Mr. Wolfgard has more information,” O’Sullivan boomed.

The chattering human squirrels shut up and stared at him. That annoyed him enough that he wanted to nip someone, but he decided to take advantage of the momentary quiet and told them about Meg’s dream.

“A white hand,” O’Sullivan murmured. “Not Cyrus Montgomery, then. As a member of the governor’s Investigative Task Force, I can mobilize the police in every city in the Northeast.”

“Hasn’t the governor already done that?” Ruthie asked.

“Yes, but my being part of ITF means they’ll give any requests coming from me or the other agents top priority.” O’Sullivan looked at Simon. “Any sense from Meg if the body was adult? Male or female?”

Simon tried to think. Couldn’t remember.

“Well, I’ll do what I can,” O’Sullivan said.

Simon understood what wasn’t said: there were a lot of humans missing these days. Some had disappeared by choice, while others hadn’t survived the Elders’ wrath. A lot of those bodies would never be found.

O’Sullivan hurried back to the consulate to make his phone calls, leaving Simon with the female pack.

“We’ll find her,” Ruthie said.

“She didn’t see anyone else in the dream?” Merri Lee asked. “Then she got away from that man.”

Alone and thirsty and scared. Was that better? “When?” he countered. “A day from now? A month? A year?”

“Why not an hour ago?” Merri Lee demanded. “Meg is smart.”

Simon retreated to HGR. Yes, Meg was smart and had escaped a bad human once before. But he also knew better than the female pack how many “smart” blood prophets had died in the past few weeks when they could no longer cope with the outside world.

The Elders’ anger rippled beneath the skin of the world, making big trees shiver, scaring flocks of birds into flight. The Elementals’ fury was a scent in the air, a taste in all the creeks and streams that flowed in the Northeast.

That anger, that fury, became a message to all the terra indigene.

The sweet blood. The howling not-Wolf. Broomstick Girl. Taken away from the terra indigene by a human.

Find the human.

But more important, find the not-Wolf.

Jimmy backed into what looked like a farm road—dirt with no road sign or marker at all. Taking a bottle of water, he walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk.

“You want some water, cha-ching?”

“My name is Meg!”

“Now it’s cha-ching. You know why? Because that’s the sound of money.” He opened the bottle of water and tipped it so the water began to pour onto the ground.

“Stop!” Meg said.

“Ask nice.” He saw the defiance in her eyes. Well, he could fix that. He dropped the water bottle, shoved her back in the trunk when she tried to scramble out, and pulled the razor out of his pocket. He pinned her down with one hand, flicked the razor open, and held it over her face. “You sass me, I’ll cut your face. I’ll cut you so much you won’t look human anymore and people will run from you, screaming. You want that? Do you? Answer me!”

“N-no.”

“Then do what you’re told.” Remembering the way she became a hot pussy after speaking prophecy, he added, “And maybe I’ll give you something nice.”

Yeah, he could haul her out of the trunk and put her on the backseat for a few minutes. Maybe even let her stay there for a while as a reward.

He grabbed her right arm, moved it into position, and made another cut across the old scars. “Where do I go to keep ahead of the cops? Speak!”

“Crows watching roads. Photo of Cyrus Montgomery. Crows looking at cars. Calling police.”

“Where?” Jimmy shouted. Fuck! They had a photo of him? “Where?”

She sighed, her visions revealed.

He pulled her up and made another cut. “How do I avoid the fucking birds?”

He listened hard, too scared to be distracted by lust as she spoke route numbers and a name. He listened, looked at his wristwatch. “Shit.” Had to get moving right now if he was going to stay ahead of the search.

He closed the trunk, got back in the car, and drove off as fast as he dared. He had to find that roadside diner where he could blend in. If the cops put up a roadblock before he reached it, he didn’t know the names of any places where humans were living around here—if there were any places. But as sure as shit, the cops would know. No reason to think they knew about the car yet, so he just needed to find a place to catch his breath. Needed to get ahead of the freaking birds and the freaking cops.

Jimmy drove, glancing in the rearview mirror, looking to either side, as sweat beaded his face and made his hands slick on the wheel.

Maybe the cops weren’t the worst things looking for him.

The visions from old prophecies collided with the images from the new cuts, producing things that looked so bizarre they made her queasy. Clocks melted, dripping over the edges of tables like ice cream on a summer day, and Skippy ate all the numbers that ran off the clockfaces. Stumps of trees tore roots out of the ground to become twisted legs that scampered through the woods while the stumps themselves sprouted black feathers on the tops and grew huge mouths with teeth made of saws. Just before her mind shut down, Meg saw a series of images that revealed the next stage of the journey. Then rocks rolled together to form the shape of a wolf—and they howled.

“I don’t need supervision, Crispin,” Twyla said as she folded another small top and set it on the bed. “I’ve packed a carryall before.”

“Procedure, Mama,” Monty replied holding a pen and small notebook. “We need to inventory everything we’re removing so that no one can claim later that someone took his or her possessions.”

Twyla turned to him. “You think Frances is going to make a fuss over a shirt after what happened today? And if something is missing, one of the Wolves can come over here with her and help her find it.”

“She’s not the one who will make a fuss.”

“I don’t think Cyrus is going to call and ask any of us to forward his clothes, do you?” Twyla checked the closet and chest of drawers. She went down on her knees and one hand, lifted the sheet and lightweight blanket, and checked under the bed. “This place needs a good cleaning. The only thing that woman ever tried to keep clean was herself, and even that . . .”

Monty helped his mother to her feet. “Right now this apartment is part of the investigation. After . . . Well, I think Eve will appreciate some help cleaning it up.”

She placed her hand over his. “Why are you here, Crispin? One of the young officers could be doing this. You should be out there, helping Mr. Simon find that girl.”

“My brother abducted Meg. My nephew created the diversion that helped him do it. If my involvement provides a loophole . . .”

She gave his hand a light slap. “You’re feeling guilty. So am I. Cyrus was here because we are here. We’re not responsible for what he chose to do. But either of us using Cyrus as an excuse for not doing what we can now?” She shook her head. “When you needed help with Lizzy, Mr. Simon stood by you, helped you protect your own. Now you do the same for him, as a police officer and as a man.”

Monty put his arms around her and held on for a long moment. “You’re right, Mama. You’re right.” He released her and stepped back. “Two of these carryalls need to go to the station, so I’ll wait until you get everything packed. Then I’ll go to the station and see what I can do about locating Jimmy.”

Clarence’s clothes were mostly in a pile on the floor. Twyla picked up a piece, sniffed it, and made a face. “I’ll wash these first. See if you can find anything clean for him right now.”

Monty found a T-shirt that looked like it had been run over by a lawn mower, but it smelled clean enough. “Is tattered the new fashion in Toland?”

“Boys,” Twyla said with a shrug.

Not sure how to interpret that, despite having been a boy himself, Monty went into the living room to call Captain Burke while Twyla went into the other bedroom to deal with Sandee’s clothes and personal items.

“Any news?” Monty asked when Burke answered the phone.

“Nothing yet, but we’ve eliminated all the car rental places, so the vehicle Cyrus is driving was either stolen or rented from a private citizen.”

“Needle in a haystack.”

“Officers are going to places around the university that might have bulletin boards for such things.”

“Anything I can do?”

“Crispin?” Twyla called.

“Supply whatever assistance you can to the Courtyard,” Burke said.

“Crispin!”

“Captain, I have to go.” Monty ended the call and hurried into the bedroom where Twyla had been packing up Sandee’s things. “Mama?”

Twyla held out a plain glass jar with some kind of white cream inside. “Careful. It looks like skin cream but it has a sharp smell, like something I would use for cleaning. Could this be the stuff that hurt Miss Leetha?”

Monty opened the jar and took a cautious sniff. Then he closed the jar. Had someone developed something that wouldn’t harm a human but was toxic to the Sanguinati? Or had the substance been aimed at anyone living in the apartments—especially the women, who would be more likely to use a moisturizer—and Leetha had been injured by accident?

“I have to take this in and get it tested,” he said. He eyed the makeup and powders and lotions. “I’ll take all of this into evidence. Don’t touch any more of it, okay, Mama?”

Twyla nodded. “I’ll pack up the clothes.”

He noticed she didn’t offer to wash anything for Sandee—or for Jimmy.

Pulling out his mobile phone again, Monty called Vlad and told him his suspicion about the skin cream and suggested that the Sanguinati healer talk to a doctor at Lakeside Hospital if the healer didn’t have any experience with treating someone who had ingested a toxic human-made substance. Then he called Burke in case the substance was intended to harm any human who put it on her skin. Finally he called Debany, since Kowalski was escorting Clarence from the hospital to the station. The boy had stitches on his back and shoulders from the Hawk’s talons, but she hadn’t raked him as deeply as she could have—as she would have if she had known about Meg being abducted.

“Officer Debany, I need evidence bags brought to the apartment.”

“But we checked everything,” Debany protested.

“We missed something.”

Jimmy sat at the end of the counter, chomping on a hamburger and fries. He’d found the diner with the name the cha-ching had given him. So far he was ahead of the cops and the freaks, and he intended to stay that way.

Two cars pulled in. A deeply tanned young man and woman got out of one car and three teenage boys got out of the other. As they walked into the diner, they were all talking.

“Weirdest thing I ever saw,” one of the teenage boys said. “Keeping pace with the cars.”

“It was creepy the way they kept trying to look into the car,” the woman said.

“I slowed down and took off my sunglasses,” her companion said. “They seemed okay with us driving on after that.”

“They’re looking for somebody,” another teenage boy said. “Did you see the roadblock? We saw a couple of cars the cops had pulled over and were searching. I think if you didn’t slow down enough for the Crows to look at you, they signaled to the cops somehow to block the road. Like if you didn’t slow down, you had something to hide.”

Jimmy dropped the hamburger on the plate. It wasn’t sitting so well anymore.

“We heard on the radio that roadblocks were being set up at all the towns in the Northeast,” the woman said. Then she shuddered. “A manhunt like this? Somebody must have done something really bad.”

The two groups split up as the waitress showed them to their booths. But other men eating at the counter turned to ask them about the roadblocks and the Crows who were pacing cars.

The men at the counter shook their heads and agreed that this was a bad place to be if the Others were looking for you. Crows and Hawks were often seen around the rest stops or small places like this. The men who drove delivery trucks and made regular runs along this route swore the Others knew their trucks and their faces. Didn’t bother them any. In fact, it was advantageous when some of their deliveries were made to little towns that looked human but weren’t.

Stomach burning and appetite gone, Jimmy paid for his meal and accepted the offer of a to-go container because leaving the food would give the waitress a reason to remember him. He bought a small bottle of water and went to the car.

As soon as he opened the trunk a few inches the bitch tried to push the lid up a little more.

“Get your fucking fingers back inside or I’ll slam the lid on them.”

Her fingers retreated.

He tossed the water bottle into the trunk. “If you mess yourself before I let you out, you’ll be breathing in the stink.”

He closed the trunk, got behind the wheel, and dropped the to-go container on the passenger seat. Then he headed south. He’d passed unmarked dirt roads that intersected with the paved roads. He’d take one of those as soon as he could.

Meg struggled to open the water bottle. After she got it open and managed a couple of sips, she felt the rough edge of the plastic screw top. Nothing a normal person would think about, but it might just be sharp enough to cut her kind of skin.

But not yet.

She screwed the top back on the bottle. She’d probably dump the water when she made the cut. She didn’t want to lose it, so she would wait. She needed to wait. She’d seen enough when Cyrus opened the trunk to know this wasn’t the right place to escape even though she’d heard voices and thought there were other people around.

Then the car made an odd turn and bumped hard. Because she was unprepared, her teeth snapped shut, catching the edge of her tongue—the spot that had prickled and burned a couple of times over the past few days.

Meg swallowed the blood, swallowed the agony, swallowed the words. She heard the warning blast of a truck horn and saw the moment when she would run away from Cyrus Montgomery.

Douglas Burke walked into the interrogation room, dropped a folder on the table, and sat down opposite Sandee Montgomery. They had taken her to Lakeside Hospital for treatment as soon as Monty called about the substance in the jar. Judging by the way her chest and shoulders looked, he thought the lab that tested for poisons and toxic substances would find a stew of caustic chemicals mixed into that skin cream. She hadn’t even noticed that something was wrong until she started to come down from whatever she’d taken, and he wondered what would have happened to her if she hadn’t gone outside when the kids were fighting, if Leetha Sanguinati hadn’t been injured from contact with her skin.

He had some thoughts about why she might have been targeted, but discussing that with the station chief would have to wait.

“Where’s CJ?” Sandee demanded.

“Not available,” Burke replied, giving her his fierce-friendly smile.

“I want a lawyer.”

“You can certainly call one, although you’re not being charged with anything.”

“Then why am I here?”

Burke sat back. “Where can you go?”

“Back to the apartment.”

He shook his head. “You broke the terra indigene’s no-drug rule and have been evicted, effective immediately. Your belongings are being held here at the station until you decide which train you’re taking tomorrow morning. Not a lot of choices first thing in the morning, but if you’re still in Lakeside when that first train pulls out, the Sanguinati will gather in force and hunt you down.” He opened the folder and put a handwritten list on the table, turning it for her to read. “These are the towns where you’re allowed to resettle. They’re still in the Northeast, but they’re all small. No Toland, no Hubb NE, no Shikago for you. Small, isolated towns where everyone will know your business before you have time to unpack. I imagine some of those towns would have need of a prostitute. That is how you earn a living, isn’t it?”

Her eyes flashed with anger, and she looked like she might try to rake him with her long nails. “You got no right to talk to me like that. You got no right to try to run me out of town. What about my husband, my kids?”

“I’m not the one running you out of town. In fact, the Others would like you to stay, if only for the excuse of killing you slowly. As for your children, Frances has been removed from your home for her own safety. Or weren’t you aware that your son was making the first moves to pimp his little sister?”

She knew. He saw it in her eyes before she looked down at the table.

“Clarence is an accessory to the abduction of a young woman, and he will go to prison.”

“What?” Fear, and a hefty dose of shock, filled her face.

“Cyrus Montgomery abducted a young woman around noon today. He managed to get out of the city with her. Every police department in every city in the Northeast is now involved in the manhunt. We will find him. The only question will be if Cyrus and Clarence are charged with kidnapping or with murder if the woman doesn’t survive.”

Sandee swayed. “What?” The word was barely a sound. “Clarence is a boy. He’s just a boy.”

“His crime is not a youthful mistake, Sandee. His actions, like yours, were an attack on the terra indigene. Going to prison is the only chance he has of surviving. The Others don’t often kill children, but I can tell you with no doubt at all that Clarence won’t last a day if we release him.”

He’d gutted her, finally got past her self-involvement for her to understand how bad things were.

“I want to talk to CJ,” Sandee said.

“No.”

“Twyla then. I want to talk to Twyla.”

“No.” Burke pulled out a photograph of the unlabeled jar of skin cream and set it on the table. “Want to tell me where you got this?”

“Piss off.”

He shrugged. “We’re testing it—along with all your other lotions—but I’m pretty sure this is what injured the Sanguinati who bit you. So you should know that, no matter where you resettle, the Sanguinati are going to be watching you from now on. They’ll know everyone you talk to, everyone you sleep with, every purchase you make, legal or otherwise. And sooner or later, they will kill you.”

“You’ve got to protect me!”

“No one is going to start a pissing contest with the terra indigene to protect you, not when it could end with the whole city being destroyed.”

“I’ll never be safe,” she whispered.

Burke leaned forward and tapped the photograph. “Tell me about this. Tell me where you got it, what you know about who’s making it—because this is a death sentence for the people of this city, maybe for people in every city. We’ll have corpses stacked floor to ceiling in the morgue just like we did after that storm last month. You tell me where you got this, and I’ll arrest you for possession of drugs and you can go to jail for a little while. Long enough for the Sanguinati to forget about you. You wouldn’t be free, but you’d have a place to sleep and three meals a day because the prisons have their own farms and grow most of their own food—and you’ll stay alive. That’s a better deal than you’ll get outside.”

In the end, she told him what he wanted to know and he arrested her for the drugs and had her taken away to be processed.

Already tired and knowing they had a long way to go before any of them could breathe easy—if they could ever again—Burke walked out of the interrogation room and found Commander Louis Gresh waiting for him.

“You heard?” Burke asked, tipping his head to indicate the observation room.

“Sometimes you’re a bastard,” Gresh said quietly.

“I got the information we needed, and I made the deal that would give Sandee and Clarence a chance to live.”

“Deal with who?”

Burke shook his head. The phone call hadn’t come from Vladimir Sanguinati; it had come from Stavros, who had been the Toland Courtyard’s problem solver—the one who made all kinds of problems disappear. And Stavros had made it very clear how the Sanguinati would respond if Burke didn’t uncover information about the new weapon the humans had developed to smear on their skin.

Thank the gods it hadn’t been meant as a weapon against the Sanguinati. It was petty and personal and cruel, but he was confident the investigation would confirm that Sandee Montgomery had been the intended target.

“I have work to do.” Burke pushed past Gresh and almost ran into Monty.

“Steve Ferryman and Roger Czerneda are here,” Monty said. “They have information—something we need but can’t show to the terra indigene. They’re waiting in your office.”

The three men hurried to the office, Burke in the lead.

Oh gods, Burke thought when he saw their faces.

Roger Czerneda pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. “License plate number. I’ve already sent it to the authorities in the Intuit communities that might be anywhere along the route.”

“Where did you get this?” Monty asked.

Louis Gresh took the paper. “I’ll call the motor vehicle department and start looking for the vehicle’s owner.”

The moment Gresh was out the door, Burke turned to Ferryman. “What else?”

Ferryman hesitated. Then he opened a manila envelope and pulled out a piece of paper but didn’t turn it around for them to see. “The Intuits have communications cabins near the tip of Lake Superior, one in the Midwest Region and the other in the Northeast. They’re located close enough to deliver messages from one region to the other via citizens band radios. An urgent message came in from Tolya Sanguinati, who had received it from Jackson Wolfgard.”

Burke felt his blood go cold. An urgent message from Jackson Wolfgard meant one thing: the young blood prophet living in Sweetwater had seen something.

“So Hope saw the license plate?” Burke asked.

“And this.” Ferryman turned the paper around, revealing the drawing.

Monty sagged against Burke’s desk.

Hope’s vision drawing was a partial map showing the roads leading out of Lakeside. Only the roads running south and east, and one road was drawn heavier than the others—the road Cyrus Montgomery must have taken.

The drawing also showed the back of a brown car, with the license plate clearly rendered. The trunk was partially open. Meg Corbyn looked out of that dark space, her arms and clothes smeared with blood.

But it was her eyes that chilled Burke, because he couldn’t tell if those blank eyes meant she was seeing visions or if they meant she was dead.