Once our feet hit solid ground, Caleb and I found ourselves standing in a small seaside town, opposite a row of bed-and-breakfast hotels. We were looking for the Rusty Anchor, where Maurine Grey lived with her three sons—one of whom had been missing for exactly two weeks, the same timeframe in which we suspected our kids had gone missing from Murkbeech.
It was tourist season in Plymouth. Everywhere we looked people were milling about with their families, eating ice cream, riding on the countless merry-go-rounds that fronted the sea edge, and slurping from iced sodas.
“Easy for someone to go unnoticed in this crowd,” I observed to Caleb.
“No matter how unusual they might have looked,” he muttered, nodding to a group of teenagers dressed up in elaborate medieval costumes—obviously they were going to some sort of fan convention or fancy-dress party.
The Rusty Anchor was the last house on the block, painted a bright pink with blue signage. It looked like a cheery, happy place, with brightly colored drapes in the windows and a neat, orderly garden out front, decorated with various seashells and wind chimes. Sitting out front on a bench to the side of the entrance was a small boy, I guessed around twelve or thirteen, who was looking moodily out to sea.
“Hello.” I approached, smiling.
The boy studied Caleb and me, looking faintly surprised at our GASP uniforms. I instantly regretted not wearing civilian clothes—in this happy little seaside town, we really stuck out.
“Are you from GASP? Are you here about my brother?” he asked, his surprise turning to fascination as he studied our faces intently, no doubt looking for the key indicators of our vampirism.
“We are. We’ve come to speak to your mother. Is she Maurine Grey?”
“Yeah, that’s her.” He jumped up from the bench. “I’ll go and get her.” He darted indoors before I could stop him. I’d wanted to tell him to stick around. Sometimes kids made more interesting witnesses, as they tended to be more observant on the whole and less stuck in daily routines that blinded them to the goings-on around them.
“He’ll stick around anyway,” said Caleb with a wry grin, reading my mind.
A few moments later, a woman appeared at the door. I could instantly tell that Maurine Grey was a typically happy-go-lucky sort of person; she was dressed in bold colors and her hair was pinned up in a neat chignon with a headscarf. Today, however, her mouth seemed unnaturally pinched, and her brown eyes tinged with red.
“Are you here about my Christopher?” she asked, her eyes earnest and desperate.
“We are,” I replied. “I’m Rose and this is Caleb, we’re from GASP. There were some questions we wanted to ask.”
“Do you think it’s supernatural, then?” she squeaked.
“We can’t be sure, but there have been other circumstances where children have gone missing recently, most likely through supernatural causes, and we wanted to see if there were any similarities between the other incidents and your missing boy. Would it be okay to come in?”
Maurine hastily stood aside, opening the door wide.
“Of course! Thank you for coming all this way.”
We were ushered into a large kitchen-cum-dining area—guests’ leftover breakfast plates still sat on the assortment of mismatched tables.
As we sat down at one of the cleaner tables, a sharp thump came from the hallway, and then the young boy peered around the doorway.
“James!” Maurine scolded. “Pick up whatever you’ve dropped and wait outside while I talk.”
“Actually, would it be okay with you if he stayed? There are a couple of questions I’d like to ask him too, if you don’t mind,” I said.
She hesitated, and I could see the reluctance in her eyes. She obviously didn’t want her son being more affected by the disappearance of his brother than he already was.
“It’s nothing too intense,” I persuaded her gently. “It’s just that kids can be very perceptive.”
She nodded. “Well, he’s certainly got a story to tell…not that anyone’s believed him so far. But none of my boys are liars. They’re good boys, Rose.”
She called her son in, and we went through the interview process with Maurine first. There wasn’t a lot she could tell us that hadn’t already been put in the report. However, the cold hard facts in the police report did seem to indicate a runaway. Christopher had been in trouble with the police in the past, mainly for small, stupid acts of vandalism. The way his mother told it leant away from that conclusion. Christopher might have been high-spirited, but she didn’t for a second believe that he’d left home of his own volition.