Many Bloody Returns Part 33

"Bit of both, I expect."

"I feel like we're being watched from behind lace curtains."

"Why lace?" Henry asked.

"I don't know." Tony waggled the fingers of his left hand in front of his face, sketching in the air lacy lines of power that dissipated almost instantly. "It's creepier I guess."

"I don't know about the lace, but we're definitely being watched." Henry could feel the fear and anger roiling through the town. Could feel some it directed toward them. With a child missing in a village of only three hundred and eight souls, any and all strangers would be suspect. "It might be best if we were...unnoticed."

"Do you have to use such cheesy setup lines?" Tony muttered, laying two fingers against the metal strip between the front and back windows. In the last few months, he'd gotten enough practice in with the Notice-me-not spell that he no longer needed to consult the instructions on the laptop. Of course, there were still one h.e.l.l of a lot of spells he wasn't as adept at, so the laptop remained close at hand.

From their perspective within the car, nothing changed but Henry felt the watcher's attention drift away.

"Could be a troll under the railway bridge."

"Julia Martin wasn't anywhere near the bridge," Henry reminded him. "And a troll would never hunt that far from home. They're creatures of habit."

Grace Alton, the witness who'd spoken to Kevin Groves, lived out past Eighth Street where Main began to curve toward Cache Creek, three houses closer to town than the Martins'. Old enough to be part of the original settlement, the small, white frame house was set back from the road at the end of a long, gravel driveway.

Henry pulled in behind an aged Buick and parked. "There's lights on in the front room. She's still up."

"It's just ten. Why wouldn't she be?" When Henry turned and lifted a red gold brow, Tony shrugged. "Right. Country."

Standing on the front porch, Tony fingered the ball bearing that anch.o.r.ed his personal Notice-me-not and glanced back toward the car. Because he knew exactly where the BMW had been parked, he could almost see a shadowy outline-anyone else would have to b.u.mp into it to find it. Which was how he'd found it the first couple of times, although it had been more slam into it than b.u.mp. His right knee ached remembering.

"One heartbeat. She's alone."

"Does it matter?"

"Makes it simpler," Henry said as he opened the door.

"The door's not...Right. Country," Tony said again as he followed Henry into the house. By the time he reached the living room, Henry was on one knee beside an ancient recliner holding the hand of an elderly woman who was staring at him like he was... something elderly women really got into. Tony had no idea of what that might be although from the decor, crocheted doilies and African violets figured prominently. The place smelled like cat p.i.s.s and the fat black-and-white cat staring disdainfully at Henry from the sofa seemed the most likely culprit.

Unlike dogs, cats had no issues with vampires.

Or wizards, Tony noted as the cat turned that same unblinking green stare on him, and if there was a spell they deigned to acknowledge, he hadn't found it yet.

"Just tell me what you saw," Henry said softly, and by the way the old lady leaned toward him, Tony knew his eyes had gone dark and compelling.

"I was out back, wasn't I, checking to see how the trellis at the end of the old summer kitchen had come through the winter. I have roses in the summer, pink ones; they climb right up to the roof. I saw something moving down by the river. There's nothing wrong with my eyes." Her upper lip curled. "I don't care what that constable says. I can see at a distance as well as I ever could. All right, fine, up close maybe I should wear my gla.s.ses, but at a distance I know what I saw."

"What did you see, Grace?"

She preened a little, an involuntary response to Henry's attentions, which, given the visible as opposed to actual age difference, was kind of creeping Tony out. "It was pa.s.sing between those two clumps of lilac bushes. They're nothing much now, but you should see them in the spring. Lovely. And the smell. Snotty young pup from the Ministry wanted to tear them out. I tore him a new one, that's what I did. Those lilacs are older than he is."

Tony wasn't without sympathy for the guy from the Ministry, whichever ministry it happened to be.

"What did you see pa.s.sing between the lilacs, Grace?"

"I saw something bigger than a man but hunched over. And it had a big, hairy hump. The shape looked wrong. It looked...evil!" She drew out the final word with obvious enjoyment, and Tony, who'd seen some terrifying things over the last few years, suppressed a shudder. "It was moving fast but I saw, I saw clear as anything, that it was holding a child. I saw the leg kick and the poor little thing had on a red rubber boot. Julie Martin was wearing red rubber boots when she disappeared, you know. I yelled for it to stop but then it was gone, so I came inside and I called the Mounties and they didn't believe me. Oh, they were polite enough, those young men, but they didn't believe me not for one minute. 'Are you sure the boot was red?' they said. Like I couldn't see a little red boot against a big, hairy creature. Not like a Sasquatch, I told them. They're just misunderstood, poor dears. This was ungroomed, ratty. I don't like to judge but it was clearly a creature of evil appet.i.tes come down out of the mountains to feed. He asked me what kind of creature, and I said how would I know; did I look like I knew creatures? And he said maybe the light was playing tricks so I said it was a lot better back when I saw it because they hadn't exactly hustled to get here, you know. When they left, I said to Alexander"-she gestured toward the cat, who looked bored-"I said, we'll involve the fifth estate, that's what we'll do, and I called the paper."

A messy pile of tabloids, topped by a copy of the Western Star, had a place of prominence beside her chair. The only visible headline screamed, IT'S NOT A RACc.o.o.n! Tony rubbed at a healing bite on his calf. It had actually been a Pekinese with a really bad temper.

"The man at the paper, he believed me."

"I believe you, Grace."

She patted Henry's cheek with her free hand. "I know, dear."

As amusing as it was to see Henry Fitzroy, vampire, treated in such a way, Tony couldn't see how this was getting them any closer to finding Julie Martin. They'd gotten as much information from Kevin.

Then Henry leaned closer. "What did you hear, Grace?"

Her eyes widened. "Hear?"

"What did you hear?"

She frowned, slightly, and c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "I heard rustling through the bushes, but that might have been the wind. I heard the river, of course. I heard..." She looked surprised. "I heard a car door slam."

"Werewolves drive."

"Some of them," Henry admitted as they crossed the backyard. "But not very well."

"It's been a long winter and kids are easier to hunt than elk. Maybe they're taking food back to the pack."

"It's possible but unlikely that there'd be enough rogue were around to form a pack."

"You just don't want it to be were," Tony muttered, staring into the gap between the lilac bushes. The gap was only minimally less

dark than the bushes themselves. The sky had clouded over and he could barely see his hand in front of his face. "You'll have to guide me through to the other side. I don't want to risk a light until I'm blocked from the road. There's only so much a Notice-me-not can cover.

"Guide me," he repeated a moment later as Henry set him down. "Not carry me."

"This was faster. You need to put more work into that Nightsight spell."

"Yeah." Tony snapped on his flashlight, beam pointed carefully at the ground. "I'll get right on that in my copious amount of spare

time between working and saving the world. You got anything?"

Crouched, Henry brushed a palm over the crushed gra.s.s. "Unfortunately, the police believed Grace enough to check this out.

There's no scent here now but theirs."

The tracks-the mess the police had made visible even to Tony-followed a path behind the lilacs probably created by deer or

some other non-small-child-eating animal. The police appeared to have reached a set of tire tracks that lead up between two houses and back to the road and stopped their search.

"Do you think Ms. Alton told the Mounties about the car door?"

"No. She didn't remember it until I asked her specifically what she heard. I think because this"-Henry indicated the tracks-"is the obvious place for a car but the tracks just as obviously haven't been used this spring, the police a.s.sumed Grace was..."

"Making things up to get attention?" Tony offered diplomatically.

"Possibly. And you can't exactly blame them; there'd be no reason to bring an abducted child down here unless you had a car

and this"-he waved at the unused tracks again-"this says there was no car. But because we know there was a car involved we need to find another place you can bring in a vehicle. Wait here."

"Why-"

"Because I'll be moving quickly and I don't want you to fall in the river."

Tony sighed and turned off the flashlight. He couldn't see the river, about three meters away and down a steep bank, but the

sound of rus.h.i.+ng water filled the night, drowning out every other sound.

Five minutes. The scar on his left palm itched and he thought about conjuring a Wizard lamp. Ten minutes. When he got his first

decent job in Vancouver, he'd bought a cheap watch with a luminescent dial, tired of spending unacknowledged time in the dark.

Fifteen minutes. He yawned and nearly swallowed his tongue as Henry's pale face appeared suddenly out of the shadows.

"Just past those cedars, it's all bare rock. It wouldn't be impossible to get something with four-wheel drive and a high clearance

along the edge of the river and then back up to Highway Twelve right at the bridge."

"Just because it 'wouldn't be impossible' doesn't mean there was a car there," Tony pointed out as they headed for Grace

Alton's driveway and the car. "I doubt Ms. Alton heard anything over the sound of the river, Henry. That track's likely got nothing to do with-"

Henry held up a small red boot.

Boot in one hand, laptop balanced on his knees, Tony scrolled through his spell directory. "Here it is. Pairbonding: joining two halves back into a whole. I cast the spell on the boot and it acts like a compa.s.s leading us to its mate." He pulled a black marker from the pack between his feet and slowly drew a rune on the instep of the boot.

"Whatever has the child reeks of old blood, old kills," Henry growled, driving up onto the bridge. "The stench hides its nature."

"If it isn't rogue were, there's nothing that says some of the smaller giants couldn't drive. I mean, as long as the car was big enough." Rummaging in the pack, Tony pulled out a plastic grocery bag of herbs, removed a spray of small red berries almost the

same color as the rubber, and dropped it in the boot. "Belladonna," he explained. "To clear the way. I'm working the sympathetic magic angle. It's a diuretic, makes you p.i.s.s, and that's clearing that way anyway."

"I didn't ask."

Boot balanced on his palm, Tony reached for power and carefully read the words of the spell.

The boot slammed against the middle of the inside of the winds.h.i.+eld.

Henry's nostril's flared.

Tony sighed, powered down the laptop, and performed a quick Clean Cantrip. "Yes, I p.i.s.sed myself," he muttered defensively,

cheeks burning. "Like I said, it's a diuretic but at least the boot didn't blow up. Or melt. Or break your winds.h.i.+eld."

"But you're still using too much power."

"Am not. New spells always need a bit of fine-tuning."

"Fine-tuning? My car-"

"Is clean. Fresh. All taken care of." He slouched down in the seat. "Whether they believed Ms. Alton or not, the cops had to have

searched the riverbank. How come they didn't find the boot?"

"I found it by scent down deep within a crack in the rock. The RCMP would have needed to go over the riverbank with a fine- tooth comb to find it, and I doubt they have sufficient manpower even for this given the foolishness of the recent budget cuts."

"You sound like Vicki. Only with less profanity."