“On Earth. They think God put them here to…” She laughed softly as though the very thought made her uncomfortable. “I can’t even say this out loud without cringing, but they think God put them here to fight evil.”
“Okay,” I said, a little taken aback. “Well, it’s good to know we have someone on our side, yes?”
She let out a breath that was part amusement and part relief. It must have felt good to talk with someone about her concerns.
“You don’t think they’re the good guys?” I asked.
“I think they think they are, but they go about it the wrong way. I’m surprised Dr. Schwab hasn’t fired Eve. Especially after her latest catastrophe.”
That perked me right up. I encouraged her to elaborate by inching closer.
She met me halfway. “She told one of our mothers that her son was evil. Told her to be careful and watch for signs of the beast.”
I sat stunned, torn between laughter and alarm. “The beast? Who would tell a mother something like that?”
“That’s what I mean. She’s crazy. Said the kid had a darkness about him.”
A darkness? Could she really see into the supernatural realm? “And she told her that at the doctor’s office?”
“No.” Tiana shook her head and took a drink of water. “That’s the only reason she still has a job. She doesn’t work directly with the patients unless she has to contact them for billing or insurance information. According to Eve, she just happened to run into the mother at a grocery store in the South Valley. A store that’s all the way across town from work and the Fosters’ house. Why was she shopping for milk all the way across town?”
“Good question. What did the doctor say?”
“Well, it was the woman’s word against hers. She denied saying it, of course, but why would that mother make up something so bizarre?”
“I agree. I don’t suppose I could get the woman’s name?”
Tiana was more professional than I gave her credit for. She shook her head, albeit regretfully. “Sorry. They have pretty strict laws about stuff like that.”
I was beginning to like her more and more. The girl had ethics. I had ethics.
No, wait, that was epics. I had epics. Epic ass. Epic boots. Epic looks, but only when I was drunk. Tons of epics.
“I understand.” Besides, if I really needed the info, I could get Uncle Bob to get it for me. But I didn’t want to cause the woman any more grief than was necessary. And I certainly didn’t want to get Tiana in trouble or cast any suspicion her way in the workplace. “So, I get that this is a little disturbing, but I’m sensing something more.”
She put down her fork and shifted in her seat. “There was another incident. The cops came, but they could never connect the two.”
“The two?”
“That’s why I thought you might be undercover or something. You know, like they were still investigating, but I guess not.”
“I can’t tell you everything,” I said to her. “But I can promise you, if I find anything to implicate Mrs. Foster of any wrongdoing, I have a ton of connections with the APD.” A ton meaning one in the form of Uncle Bob. Some might say he weighed a ton.
Okay, he wasn’t that big. In fact, he seemed to be losing weight lately. And not in a healthy way.
“Well, after that incident, Eve kind of eased up on the whole religion thing. At least while at work. Personally, I think Dr. Schwab ordered her not to bring it up again. But this one mother came in with her two kids and … it was so weird. When Eve saw the kids, she had the strangest reaction. Like all the blood drained from her face. She turned white. And the look she gave the mother. If looks could kill.”
Okay, even if the kids did have some kind of dark aura or something, why look at the mother that way?
“Did she say anything about it to you?”
“No. Saint Eve doesn’t exactly confide in me.”
“Saint Eve?” I asked with a grin.
“That’s what we call her at the office. All that holier-than-thou crap. Her husband is just like her.”
Interesting.
“So, no, she didn’t say anything to me. I just kind of overheard her on the phone talking to her husband.”
“Nice. And?”
“She told him that a little girl had come in with her mother and baby brother. She said the girl was marked.”
I stilled. Swallowed hard. Then asked as nonchalantly as I could, “Marked?”
Tiana shrugged. “No idea what she meant. And I wouldn’t have thought much about it except for the fact that…” She shook her head and took another drink. “Never mind. It’s crazy.”
“No, Tiana, please tell me. What happened?”
“It’s going to sound crazy. One thing can’t possibly have anything to do with the other.”
“You might be surprised.”
“It’s just, later that night, the little girl disappeared.”
I covered my shock by wiping my hands on a napkin and sitting back in thought.
“It was all over the news. About two months ago?”
About two months ago I’d been sequestered away in a convent. I missed a lot. “Did they ever find her?”
She shook her head. “No. She’s still missing. I can’t tell you who it is, but it’s public knowledge.” She took out her phone, pulled up a webpage, then laid her phone on the table and looked away. Girl was good. Nobody could prove she’d told me a thing.
I leaned over and glanced at the page entitled Find Dawn Now. It had been set up by friends of the family and offered a reward for any information on the whereabouts of three-year-old Dawn Brooks. Brown hair. Blue eyes. And beautiful.
I could look into it more later and ask Uncle Bob what he knew about the case.
Tiana’s phone darkened, and she pulled it back to her. “The mother came in a couple of weeks ago with her baby boy, Dawn’s little brother, for a checkup. She was a basket case. So different from when I first saw her.” Tears shimmered in the young girl’s eyes. “She broke down in Dr. Schwab’s office. I don’t think she’s doing very well.”
The walls of my chest tightened. “I can’t imagine that she is.” At least I knew where my daughter was. I knew she was safe. Well cared for and loved. This poor woman had no clue, and statistically, children missing that long, those that weren’t taken by an estranged parent, were rarely found alive. “Do you think Mrs. Foster had something to do with her disappearance?”
“I know how it sounds.” She sat back, dejected. “I get it. I just found it odd. The whole thing. They had just come in for a one-month well child visit for the little brother. It was just weird, you know? Eve gets all pale and freaks out. Goes to the bathroom to call her husband. Makes some excuse to leave work early, then that very night the girl is abducted from her home, and Eve is out sick the rest of the week.”
“She called in sick?”
“She missed four days of work.” She bowed her head as though ashamed. “I know how thin it sounds, but something just wasn’t right. So, I … I’m the one who called the police. Or, well, I had my cousin Elias call the police and talk to the detective in charge of the case. I was afraid someone would get the recording and know it was me. I could get into a lot of trouble.”
“Not if there was a threat of danger or wrongdoing, Tiana. Don’t feel guilty.”
“Maybe. But it didn’t do any good. They looked into it. Eve and her husband said they were home that night, watching a movie. Their son corroborated.”
A current of electricity rushed over my skin. It carried dread and suspicion. “Their son?”
“Yeah, I guess he lives with them? He’s getting his graduate degree or something. He’s really nice looking. I met him when he came to pick up his mom for lunch one day.”
“Tall? Blond?”
“That’s him. Shawn Foster.”
“I’ll look into it, Tiana. I promise.” If Mrs. Foster was still up to her old abduction tricks, I wanted to be the first to know. But what startled me most was the whole supernatural slant to all of this. Could she really see auras? Had she seen my light? Had she seen Reyes’s darkness when he was a baby?
Considering everything I knew thus far, it was a strong possibility Reyes’s darkness was why she took him in the first place. That would also explain, to a degree, why he wanted me to drop the case. He was so sensitive about the whole son-of-Satan thing.
“Also”—I pointed to her sub—“are you going to finish that?”
* * *
I thought about skipping my business class, but I’d need those skills once I took over the world. Still, I was running a little early, and since Osh’s digs were close, I decided to pay him a visit.
Osh was a Daeva, a slave demon, who had escaped hell much the same way Reyes had. Only Reyes had used a map. The tattoos on his shoulders and back were literally a map of the void between hell and this plane. Osh navigated the void using only instinct and skill. Few demons were that clever.
I hadn’t seen him since I forced him to swallow my soul so I could sneak up on one of the malevolent gods without my bright-ass light giving me away.
But swallowing a god’s aura, even for a Daeva, was lethal.