Katherine scolded me for twenty minutes when I returned, angry that I hadn't slept with Rachel. She knew what had happened before I told her, thanks to the uncanny affinity she now enjoyed with the other girls, but it wasn't the information that set her off as much as the feelings she picked up afterward. 'Betrayed' was the first word she used to describe it, and even though she took it back, the accusation festered like an injury that wouldn't heal.
Rachel didn't bring it up again, but the change in her behavior hurt more than anything she could have said. I didn't resist or protest because I had convinced myself I deserved every ounce of her ire, though in hindsight the weight I carried was fueled more by self pity and pride. I felt cheated of my own nobility, having remained as true to Katherine as fate allowed and still ending up the bad guy. In all fairness I could have been projecting because I couldn't look at her without remembering, and remembering made me question every choice I made that led her to this place, imprisoned in a relationship she didn't ask for and couldn't leave.
Even that might have been bearable if not for the implication I had left hanging in the air. Was I really in love with Rachel? I didn't believe refusing her contradicted my claim. Hell, giving in would have been the easiest thing in the world, satisfying both her and Katherine and making me the benefactor of a genuine harem. But I loved Katherine, and probably Becca if I had the courage to face it, and that complicated everything.
Loving them wasn't really the problem. I loved Amy too. I loved Tracy and Mason, Dr. Dang and Miss Gold. It wasn't the same, of course, but I'd never thought of love as a limited resource that you had to ration. It was the commitment that worried me. I always believed intimacy was more than a physical act. It was an investment, a sign that you were no longer an individual, that you willingly surrendered part of yourself to another person, physically and emotionally. How could I divide that without diluting it?
Nothing changed the fact that I had to kiss Rachel at least twice every day, but she accepted it politely, even gratefully, and didn't pressure me for more than what was necessary. It was no different from our first days together, and I should have felt relief from the constant pressure against my moral boundaries, but no matter how I spun it in my mind, we had taken a step backward. The lights that often accompanied her seemed to agree, remaining faint, appearing only when she passed by, and all but closed to me.
Meridian suffered through the weekend with apprehensions high, anticipating my father's next move. I wanted to do something—anything—to head off the inevitable discovery of his next victim, but I had no way of knowing where he was or who his target would be. I couldn't even beg him for mercy, as if that would have done any good.
Monday evening came and went but the lack of news offered no peace. He was out there, hurting people connected to us, and in the meantime we could only wonder who he'd chosen. Which of our friends or acquaintances would we never see again? Rachel continued to withdraw and Becca spent more and more time in the arcanum, but Katherine was focused on keeping me emotionally stable through the mounting stress. Her solution was to drag me to her bedroom every few hours. I protested at first because giving free reign to animalistic pleasure seemed profane in the light of unfolding events, but it worked. Those frequent escapes banished my anxiety, if only for a short time, far more effectively than medication ever had. It wasn't just the sex. I felt stronger in the aftermath, more hopeful of the future. At least until I saw Rachel again.
Those days weren't all doom and gloom. By the middle of the week, Becca had another breakthrough in her studies and spent hours prancing around the warehouse, druid's staff in hand, tending the plants like it was her job, and there wasn't a single wilted leaf or blossom that didn't flourish under her enthusiastic care. Once in a while her efforts would reduce the plant to dust, but she remained undeterred, using a clipping from one of its neighbors to restore it.
"You're a genuine wizard," Katherine said, eying the plate of pizza rolls Rachel held out to her, but refusing to take any.
Becca shook her head, "Please don't say that. I still have a long way to go, and I'm making a lot of guesses."
"Your guessing kicks the shit out of anything the rest of us have done." Rachel didn't look at me, but I knew who she meant. "Pretty soon we'll be able to tell doctors to fuck right off."
"No we won't," Becca said. "I'm not that scared of messing up with plants and little cuts aren't too risky, but I don't think I'm brave enough to try anything big on a person unless it's an emergency."
She waved her hand and another flower stood taller, spreading its leaves wide. "I mean when you think about it, Juhan is amazing for lots of reasons, not just because of his powers. He can't just go 'boop' and heal you, he's got to make it just the right amount in just the right spots and that means he has to know as much as he can about what's broken and all the other parts that aren't. I think he must know more about anatomy than most doctors. I can't be that specific, and that makes it more dangerous because it affects everything."
Rachel paused with a pizza roll half way to her mouth. "Okay, two things. First, what do you mean it affects everything? When you fixed my finger, did that speed up my whole body? Am I a few days older now?"
"It doesn't make you older. It doesn't affect time at all, it only borrows from the healthy parts to give the broken parts enough energy to work faster. And it won't stop you from getting sick or anything, that's totally different, but you can fix most of that with some of the teas..." she stopped herself and paused to recover her train of thought. "What was the second thing?"
"Did you really just use 'boop' to describe a magic spell?"
Becca glared at her, but it came off more cute than stern. I chuckled at their exchange and reached for one of Rachel's snacks but she turned, pretending not to notice, and moved it out of my reach.
"Can you use that as a weapon?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Over heal someone on purpose."
Becca looked horrified, "Oh gosh, that would be awful. Why would you want to do that?"
"Our enemies are more powerful than we are, we need every advantage we can get." Discussing the clinical murder of another living being didn't sit well with me either, but I wanted the others to know I was being proactive.
"Spells do the job they're made to do," Becca explained cautiously. "I don't think a healing spell can stick at all if there's no damage."
"And what if there is?"
"Then it'll fix it. Will shapes the Veil, Tom, and that means your intentions matter. I only know how to heal and I didn't write the original spell so I can't just change part of it to do something different."
"But if the spell's design won't let it cause harm, why do the plants sometimes die? It seems like it should be one or the other."
Becca sighed, "Because it's not the spell that's killing them. This magic only changes a few things and the body does the rest. The better I get at it the more flexible I can make it, but that's all."
I nodded, disappointed that we couldn't leverage it in our fight against my father. The mirror had been a bust as well, throwing out nothing but confusing visions and nothing about Caratacos's location at all.
"What you've done here is wonderful, Becca," Katherine drew her into a hug. "We're proud of you."
"I'm pretty proud of me too," she smiled back.
"Thomas, get up, something's wrong."
Katherine shook me awake while ripples of sound resolved into a faint rapping at her door. "What's going on?" I mumbled.
"It's Becca. She's scared."
I quickly threw on my boxers and stumped down the stairs while Katherine hunted for her negligee.
"Hey," I said, pulling open the door and rubbing my eyes with my free hand. The girl didn't even flinch at me standing in front of her half dressed, perhaps because she was also in her underwear.
"Tom, it's Rachel! We have to stop her!"
"Stop her? Why?"
"The vision—" She paused as Katherine joined me. She had given up on her search and was wearing only my t-shirt.
"Slow down, Becca, what vision?"
"Rachel, she—" she paused, suddenly aware of her state of undress, then dismissed it before continuing. "She's been acting strange so I decided to take out the mirror again. I didn't want to snoop, but she wouldn't talk to me, not about anything important. Tom, I saw it again."
"Saw what?"
"Rachel dying. I don't know if it's real, but I'm scared it's going to come true this time."
Katherine inhaled sharply, her fingers digging into my arm. "What is she saying, Thomas?"
"She's talking about the wooden bowl we used to speak with Miss Gold," I explained. "Becca's been learning how it works. Maybe it can tell the future, maybe not, but it doesn't make a lot of sense."
Becca nodded. "This is the only thing that's been clear to me all week and it's happening now, we have to hurry!"
Katherine's eyes shifted out of focus while she concentrating on something I couldn't see. "No," she said finally, slightly relieved, "I'd know if she was dead."
"I didn't say that," Becca urged. "But it's happening now, or soon."
She moved out of the way as I stepped forward, Katherine following close behind, and we approached Rachel's cottage in a huddle."
"I already tried knocking," Becca started to protest, but I motioned for her to quiet down. Rachel's door unlocked obediently as I reached for it. Her bed was still made, and the clothing she'd worn that day lay in a crumpled heap on the floor in front of her desk. The mirror on her vanity had been smashed, and shards of glass sparkled dimly from the floor.
"Thomas," Katherine whispered and gripped me tighter.
Becca mumbled something to herself, then turned and skipped off Rachel's porch, calling back, "I'll try the mirror again, maybe it'll help me see where she went."
The newspaper Rachel was reading that afternoon had been hastily tossed onto her loveseat. I grabbed it and scanned for clues.
"Anything?" Katherine asked, attempting to steady her voice.
"No," I began, but something caught my eye. "Yes, there's an article about the school." I read through it quickly until I found a name I recognized. "Jackie?"
"Rachel's replacement? What happened, is she okay?"
"It says she's been missing since Monday."
Katherine stomped her bare foot and cursed. "He took her."
"We don't know that."
"That doesn't matter if Rachel thinks he did. She'll have gone looking. She's not going to let him hurt her if she thinks there's something she can do about it."
Right or wrong, we couldn't just wait around to find out.
"You should get dressed," I said.
"This isn't the time to worry about—"
"I assume you're going to insist on coming when we figure out where she went?"
She paused and looked down at the shirt she'd thrown on. "Fine," she said quietly and released my arm. "but don't you dare leave me here."
I needed time to change too, but we couldn't do anything without a plan, and I wanted to think without distractions. The newspaper story was part of a police blotter that mentioned the RA's unexcused and unanounced absence. The student housing department had called the police only as a matter of policy and there wasn't any sense of urgency, nothing that suggested the girl was in danger.
Rachel wasn't impulsive, but she wasn't the kind who could debate for hours if she had the power to act. If she believed Jackie was in danger she'd try to confirm it, and failing that, she'd check for herself. We needed more to go on, however, because if Becca was right we couldn't afford to waste time running off in the wrong direction.
Rachel's laptop was warm, sitting open on her desk, but she'd put it to sleep and I didn't know the password. The keys to her Jeep were left on an end table, which meant she probably jogged into town and called an Uber. Her ID was next to them, but not the wallet she usually kept it in.
I found the fur-lined handcuffs that had come with her Halloween costume lying on the floor of her closert, still clipped to a hanger along with the strappy harness, but the latex suit was gone. The carved box Finn had given her for her birthday sat open on her dresser with its false bottom removed.
If she found my dad and the gun worked as promised, it would spill his toxic blood. The skin suit covered most of her body and would possibly protect her from it. If she took the trouble to put it on, it meant she planned to come back if she could.
Becca returned a few minutes later wearing sneakers without socks, and she had thrown on a pair of overalls with a wadded-up sweatshirt tucked under one arm.
"I told Amy what was going on," she panted. "If Rachel has her phone she might be able to track it."
"Good," I said firmly. "Did you see anything in the bowl?"
"A little. She's not alone, but the mirror is really dark and I can't see who's with her. I can't even tell when it's from. It could be last night or even weeks ago."
"Did you hear anything?"
She shook her head again. "I don't know how to get sound out of it yet. The pictures are bad enough. They're really shaky, like a lot of things are about to happen but it's not sure which ones are true. Or maybe it's trying to show me Rachel's OK because that's what I want to see, but it can't because she's not."
Shortly after Katherine returned, Amy appeared with her satellite phone strapped to her back, its smart-watch interface in her hands.
"She either turned off her phone or switched on airplane mode or I'd have had it sooner," the tiny Fae said. "She obviously didn't want to be followed."
"You can track a dead phone?"
"I copied the IEMI codes from all your phones the first time you accessed the WiFi, and I can pinpoint the last known location through the mobile network as long as she didn't pull the battery."
"You hacked the carrier?" Katherine asked. "Isn't that illegal?"
"If the FBI finds me do you really think they'll give a shit about the fact that I broke into someone's phone?" Katherine gave her a tight lipped smile. "I didn't have to go that far though. The phone case Meg gave her is attuned to Meridian's network and it leaves traces, even off site. It's not as good as a GPS tracker, but it's better than nothing."
"Great," I said, grabbing Rachel's keys from the night stand. "I'll throw on some pants on and we'll go bring her back home. Text us if you hear from her."
"I'm coming with you. She's not just waiting around for you to pick her up. You'll need me if she moves."
"No way," I told her. "I can't stop Kath and Becca, but you aren't infected."
"That bastard murdered my clan," she growled dangerously. "If you think for a second that you can stop me, you can go fuck yourself. Find a backpack. That'll be enough to hide me in public."
"She's right, Tom," Becca said. "She has the right to decide."
"And there's something else you need to know," Amy added. "There are at least three other cell signatures near her, and they're all active. One of them is linked to Gloria Walton."
The news hit me like a brick. I'd been such an idiot! My father's parting words with his pinky and thumb held to his ear. The asshole had stolen Gloria's phone. Other clues began to assemble on their own. His attacks weren't random. They weren't near Meridian either, or even in the nearby city. They had all taken place in Elwin, a college town with few places that weren't thronged with students and middle-income housing. My father knew I was being hunted by the courts, which meant I couldn't risk exposure by canvasing the area trying to find him—and he very much wanted me to find him.
The sonofabitch was in the last place I wanted to look, and the first place I should have tried.