Demon’s Quest (High Demon #4)(20)
Author: Connie Suttle

Reah, it was a wrench allowing this to leave my closet. I had hopes of seeing you inside my suite at times, searching for something suitable to wear—Lendill.

Reah, I kept some of your things—they bear your scent and I couldn’t part with them—Chash.

Reah, this is my favorite dress. You wore it when you graced my arm at the harvest ball, remember? I love you—Wylend.

Reah, come and skip rocks with me. Please?—Tory. That note was on a pair of faded jeans. I recalled the first time we’d done that—Tory, Rylend, Gavril and I. More tears came.

My love, you are my treasure. You know that—Aurelius. "I know that, Auri." I sat on the floor and wept, even when there shouldn’t have been any tears left to fall.

I used my codes to get into the local constabulary’s records on the three disappearances in Targis. Very little evidence had been collected—I found vid images where all three girls had last been seen. I was forcing myself to work at this—I’d almost succumbed to huddling inside my new apartment instead. The notes—they’d been so loving. There’d been no demands from Teeg, and that’s what I was used to from him. I wanted to talk to him. Ask him about Farzi and Nenzi. Ask to speak with them, tell them I was all right. Would he settle for talking or would he be as he was, only waiting for me to make the first move and then pounce like a cat, playing with a mouse but never truly letting it go? I shook my head, hunched into my knee-length wool coat against the cold wind and skipped to the location where the first girl disappeared.

Dusk was settling in so I would have to hurry if I expected to see anything. Only a few fibers from the girl’s jacket had been left behind for the authorities to collect, and those had been caught on the brick of a building near a street corner. She’d been walking home from a friend’s house; they’d spent the afternoon together. The girl was fourteen and taller than I, according to the records.

Bending over, I examined the brick carefully—I could see where it had been scraped for possible DNA samples.

"Lose something?" I whirled to see Mr. I prefer taller women with dark hair.

"I lost nothing," I snapped. "But some parents lost their daughter. I was looking to see if the authorities missed anything."

"As if you’d know," he said.

"Wait, is that sarcasm? I thought you were the master of the flat and uninflected."

"Do you treat all your customers this way?"

"No." My voice was sullen, now. "Do you treat all cooks this way?" I went back to studying the brick, wondering what he was doing there. I moved down toward the corner—the brick that held the fibers was several feet from there. Reaching the corner, I turned, going down the narrow alley between buildings. Nearly fifteen feet down, I found it. More fibers. They’d missed this.

"Fuck." His voice was right behind me. He’d seen it too, shortly after I’d found it.

"They dragged her around the corner and into this alley," I muttered, looking around. Seven days had passed since the abduction, but I pulled the small, ultra-bright penlight from my pocket and searched the alley anyway. Tulgalan doesn’t use paper anything, so there was very little litter. The Falchani was breathing over my shoulder the entire time. Wanting to give him an elbow in the ribs, I chose silence instead.

"What’s this?" I pulled a collapsible metal wand from my pocket and lifted the piece. It looked to be a few links from a chain. Metal bracelets were popular among young men on Tulgalan at the moment. The Falchani was staring at the evidence, too, before hauling out a comp-vid and tapping out a rapid message. The alley was swarming with local police in no time.

"And just who are you?" A detective leaned over me. Mr. Falchani had pulled out a badge—he was a private investigator. Go figure. I—for the moment, anyway, was just a cook for Dee’s restaurant.

"She’s ex-ASD." Norian Keef sauntered into the alley. I wanted to kick his kneecap. Break it, too. I’d just been thinking of Lendill and wondering if I were going to have to play that card to get myself out of this. Instead, Norian showed up. Lendill can’t fold. I can, came the mental message. "This is sloppy work if your employees missed this before," Norian went on. "I ask one of my former employees to check on this and what do we find?" Norian had already whipped out his credentials, cowing all of them. The Falchani faded away the minute Norian showed up.

"We’ll handle this from here—no need to call in the ASD," the detective snapped.

"Then don’t force us to do your work for you," Norian grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the alley.

"Reah, they’re touchy as hell about this," Norian said as soon as we got out of hearing distance. "They don’t have any leads. I know you were on Bardelus—that idiot innkeeper described you. You know what happened there. I also know that you don’t work for me anymore, but if you can file a report, I’d be more than grateful and it may help us track the scum responsible. Lissa is ready to go if we find Ra’Ak, and if it isn’t Ra’Ak, we need to know that, too. Our agents—all of them, could be putting their lives on the line needlessly if we don’t know what we’re dealing with."

"I’ll file a f**king report, Norian," I said, jerking my arm from his grasp.

"Reah, I didn’t mean to be rough with you, little girl. Lendill is about to go crazy without you. Please consider throwing him a bone now and then. And file the report." Norian disappeared.

I filed the report. In official ASD form and fashion, sending it to Lendill and copying Norian. Was I supposed to send a personal message too? I couldn’t think of anything to say.

"I hope we have more ox-roast. We’ve already run out of the oxberry dessert," Oris placed the last salad on a tray for the waiter to take to a table.

"We’ve got five more servings," I said. The restaurant was packed and people without reservations were turned away—it was nearly closing time. I’d suggested we send the ones we turned away through the door with a small dessert and a sampling of our other dishes. That turned grumbling into surprise. Many of them we took reservations from for the following Eight-Day.

"The man with the long braid is back, asking for noodles," a waitress rushed into the kitchen. I’d held some back, just in case.

"What else does he want?" I asked.

"He wanted to try the ox-roast. I told him we might be out." She gave me a wry expression.

"I’ll put his dinner together." She actually helped, putting a light salad on a plate and taking it to him as I threw rice noodles into broth and cooking that while plating up the ox-roast.