The stack of forms on Nathan's desk was thick and disorganized, battered citizen complaints mixed in with the only slightly less battered incident reports from Animal Control. Someone's dog going after someone else's chickens. Raccoons in garbage cans. An unconfirmed sighting of a jaguar out by the farms. Nathan set that last one aside, just in case, but without much hope that it would pan out. He gave the papers a flick with his thumb, listening to the irregular rippling sound as the different sizes and weights of paper snapped back against each other. As far as he could tell, there was nothing in these reports that hinted at animals acting with near-human intelligence. Except maybe the raccoons, but that was always the case with raccoons. He hoped Audrey was having better luck at the Herald.
A familiar voice coming down the hallway broke his train of thought. "I just need to talk to Nathan for a minute; nobody has to know we were here. I was here," Duke sounded like he was correcting himself. His voice dropped. "This is… unofficial official business, you get me?"
"I understand," came a second voice. Oh, great. Duke was harassing Stan. "But this is a government building. You can't bring that in here! There are very strict policies I have to follow!"
Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose. It was impossible for him to have a headache, but he could feel one coming on anyway. He went to the door and opened it reluctantly. "What now?"
"I told him not to come back here," Stan said. He was still half blocking the hall, although he'd turned to face Nathan.
Duke shouldered past him, no longer paying him any attention now that Nathan was there. He was clutching something to his chest. "Hey," he said, ignoring Stan's protests. "You got a minute?"
It was his serious voice, the one he only broke out when they had an actual problem. Nathan gave him a questioning look, and Duke directed his eyes down towards the lump of grey-brown fur he was carrying, which was beginning to squirm. Nathan was starting to guess where this was going. "It's okay, Stan," he said. "Let him in; I'll handle it."
"Okay, Boss." Stan still sounded doubtful. "But you're really not supposed to bring loose animals in here."
Nathan practically shoved Duke into his office, closing the door after them. "Well?"
"Audrey's not here?" Duke asked with forced casualness.
"She's working," Nathan said shortly. "Why do you need her? And what the hell are you carrying?"
"It's a squirrel." Duke said it quickly, as if he could stop Nathan from questioning it if he could just get the words out. He held up his free hand. "Nathan, listen to me. I swear I am completely sober. But this squirrel…" His hand went to his head, and he gave Nathan a look that clearly and eloquently said, I know exactly what I sound like right now. "This squirrel is talking."
"This squirrel is suffocating, is what he's doing!" A furry paw emerged from behind Duke's arm, followed by an angry-looking head. The squirrel wormed his way out of Duke's grip and clambered up to his shoulder, where he began smoothing his fur. "You practically crushed me!"
"If you'd just held still I wouldn't have had to," Duke retorted. "I could have gotten you back here without anyone noticing."
"Why can't anyone notice me? You told me the people here could help me."
"I meant him," Duke said, tilting his head in Nathan's direction. "Not the rest of them. Nathan's different. This is Nathan, by the way," he added as an afterthought, making introductory gestures between them. "Nathan, this is Snowfall."
The squirrel gave him a little wave. "Hi."
For the first time that Nathan could remember, Duke calling him 'different' sounded like a compliment. It was almost as unexpected as the talking squirrel. Almost. "Morning." He turned his attention back to Duke. "You want to tell me what's going on here?"
"I don't know," Snowfall lamented. "He said you would."
"I said you might be able to figure it out," Duke corrected. "Well, you and Audrey. And I figured she'd be less likely to lock me up the second I said I was talking to a squirrel."
"Under most circumstances she probably would be," Nathan agreed. He'd been moving in as they spoke, and now he was practically nose-to-nose with the squirrel. There was, as far as he could tell, nothing unusual about Snowfall, save that he was studying Nathan with the same intensity that Nathan was studying him. "But he's not the first animal someone's heard talking recently. Where did you find him?"
"I was about two jumps morningward from the hard black river."
"The stand of trees out by the Gull's deck, by the highway," Duke clarified in Nathan's ear. His voice was low, possibly out of a desire not to interrupt but more likely because he, unlike Nathan, was aware of how close the two of them currently were. For a moment Nathan had forgotten that Snowfall was on Duke's shoulder, and being as close as he was to one meant that he was also well inside the other's personal space. Duke, however, seemed unfazed by this. "I also had a little conversation with a hawk, if that matters."
Nathan straightened and took a step back. If Duke wasn't going to react, then neither was he. "Not anywhere near the other incident, then." He sat down at his desk, gesturing Duke to follow him. "Have a seat," he told Snowfall, tapping the desk's surface as he flipped to a blank page in his notepad.
Snowfall took a little hop down Duke's arm to the desk and sat down on his haunches among the Animal Control documents, folding his forepaws and looking up at Nathan expectantly. Freed of his duties as transportation, Duke flopped onto the office couch. "Snowfall, is it?" Nathan asked.
"Close enough," the squirrel said with a sigh. Nathan shot Duke a questioning look. Duke shook his head, a don't ask expression on his face.
"Okay," Nathan said, not asking. "Can you tell me what happened to you?"
"Lots of things happened to me. It's been a very busy day."
Nathan couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic, or if he was just simpleminded. "Start at the beginning, then," he said evenly.
"The beginning," Snowfall repeated, tilting his head up and tapping his paws together thoughtfully. "Things started to go strange this morning, I guess. Or maybe last night, but last night was so long ago. You can't expect me to remember everything going back that far, right?"
"Starting with this morning will be fine," Nathan said. 'Simpleminded' was beginning to look more likely. "Is that when you started talking?" He paused. This was Haven, after all. There was always a chance… "That is the strange part, right? You don't normally talk, do you?"
"Of course I talk," Snowfall said, sounding exasperated. Duke smothered a laugh. "Just not this way. Not in human words. I wasn't even sure if humans had words. I mean, I used to listen sometimes when you were out in the woods, but all you do is chatter to each other. It never meant anything before."
"Fair enough. Is this morning when it started meaning something?"
"I guess."
"Okay. Then tell me about this morning."
"I woke up in a hollow in the beech tree by the three round stones. I put my fur in order and I climbed up the tree to see where I was. There were some seeds that someone forgot in another hollow further up the tree, and I ate those."
Nathan raised an eyebrow and made a note on his pad. "Anything unusual about that?"
Duke snorted. "You think he ate some magic beans?"
"Ignore him," Nathan said automatically.
"They were seeds," Snowfall corrected sharply. "I know the difference. And there's nothing strange about finding seeds that someone forgot. Folks lose food all the time, or they turn into food and don't need it anymore. Your cache only belongs to you if someone else doesn't find it first. That's the rule."
"Wasn't trying to accuse you of anything. You ate the seeds, and then what did you do?"
"Same thing everybody does when they're not hungry or tired. I climbed a tree, and then I got out on a branch and jumped to the next one. Then I climbed that one until I got bored, and then I jumped down and ran on the ground for a while. There were some other squirrels running, too." Snowfall took a look back at Duke and furrowed his brow. "You'd say… Notch In His Ear and She Sees The Farthest, I guess. We chased each other up and down some trees for a while. We were having a good time, but then the thing in the tree grabbed me."
Nathan stopped writing. "'The thing in the tree'?" he repeated.
"The tangly thing on the branch. It caught my foot and I tripped and fell off the branch, but the thing held me so I was stuck hanging in the air."
At a loss, Nathan turned his attention to Duke. "Care to translate?"
"He got tangled up in some string."
"String," Snowfall hissed, teeth bared. "I do not like string." Nathan tried not to smile. "I probably could have gotten free," Snowfall continued. "Eventually, anyway. But there was a hawk. I guess she saw that I couldn't move, so she tried to dive for me. Notch and Sees-Far ran off and left me," he added, folding his forelegs indignantly. "I mean, I guess I can't blame them, but I don't like that they did that. It wasn't nice. And that's another human thought," he said over his shoulder to Duke. "I never cared about nice before."
"To be fair, neither do about half the humans I meet," Duke said.
"Can we stay on topic?" Nathan cut in. "So you were caught up in the string and a hawk was after you. What happened next?"
"I screamed. And I guess it was a human scream, because Duke came to save me. He chased the hawk away and freed me from the tree. Then he took me to an inside and took the string away."
Nathan couldn't hide his amusement as he raised an eyebrow at Duke. "Seriously?"
"I heard screaming and I investigated," Duke said, sounding defensive. "That's all. And I didn't 'chase' anyone. I just… talked her into leaving."
"I'm sure you were very persuasive."
"Okay, you're taking a witness statement from a squirrel," Duke retorted. "Which, by the way, may be the funniest thing I have ever seen. I just want that on the record. You have no room to make fun of me for anything right now."
Nathan had to admit that that was fair. Well, he had to admit it to himself, but he wasn't going to give Duke the satisfaction of saying it out loud. Instead, he said, "I'm just trying to get the whole story. Snowfall, can you think of anything else that might have happened? Anything odd or unusual, no matter how small it seemed at the time?"
"No. There was nothing else, I keep saying. I don't know what happened, I just know that I'm different now." He put his paw on Nathan's hand and looked up at him with wide, sad eyes. "I just want everything back the way it was. Duke said you could help. Will you fix me? Please?"
This display of helplessness was the most adorable and pathetic thing Nathan had ever seen. He raised his free hand to his forehead. "Okay, I can see why you had to help him," he said to Duke.
"It's like being attacked by a Disney character," Duke agreed with a wry look.
Snowfall clasped his paws. "Does that mean you'll help me?"
Nathan sighed. "I was already helping. I just didn't know who."
"So what's our next step?" Duke asked.
Nathan raised an eyebrow at that 'our'; he was still not thrilled at how quick Duke was to declare himself part of the team lately. "Depends on what Audrey finds out at the Herald."
"Is Audrey another different person?" Snowfall flicked his tail in what looked like nervousness under the questioning looks from both men. "You said I could talk to Nathan because he's different," he continued at Duke. "Is Audrey different, too?"
"To put it mildly," Duke said. "Yes, you can talk to Audrey."
"Who can talk to Audrey?"
Her voice came into the room moments before she did. The room brightened, or so it seemed to Nathan, as if the warmth from her could reach him from several feet away. Duke sat up a little straighter. "Duke may have found us a lead," Nathan said, gesturing to Snowfall.
Audrey took a step back in surprise. "Okay, then," she said. A chuckle at Duke. "And Stan let you back here with a wild animal?"
"Eventually," Duke said, waving the question away.
"Apparently the wolf wasn't an isolated incident," Nathan explained. "Snowfall was affected by the same thing. He hasn't been able to tell us much, but it's a start."
"I told you everything I can," Snowfall said, insulted. "I'm trying."
"Didn't say you weren't."
Even Audrey couldn't remain entirely unflappable when confronted with a talking squirrel. She shook her head, blinking sharply, and her breath came out in a surprised little laugh. Seriously? she mouthed at Nathan over the squirrel's head. He spread his hands helplessly. Audrey took a deep breath and dove into the weirdness, as she always did. "Hi there," she said gently, bending down until she was level with Snowfall. "What's your name?"
Snowfall didn't react to her. Thinking that he was scared, given Duke's earlier admonition about not attracting attention, Nathan gave him a little nudge. "It's okay," he said. "This is Audrey. You can talk to her."
"Talk to who?" Snowfall cast a wild eye around the room. "You and Duke are the only humans in here."
Oh boy. Nathan gave Duke a questioning look, but the other man shrugged, just as confused as he was. Audrey furrowed her brow. "I'm right here," she said, louder this time, waving her hand.
Nathan put a hand to his forehead. "You don't see a woman standing on the other side of the desk?"
From the way Snowfall turned in a full circle, searching for something but not finding it, it seemed clear that he didn't. "Is this some kind of human joke?"
"Right here," Duke said. He'd risen off the couch and was standing next to Audrey, one hand on her shoulder. "You don't see the woman standing next to me? Blonde? Cute? About this tall?"
"There's nobody there, I swear. Just you."
Nathan raised a questioning eyebrow at Audrey. "But you can see the squirrel, right? And hear him?"
"As weird as it feels to say it, yes." She paused. "You two can both hear me, right? There's nothing unusual about me?"
"No more so than normal," Duke said. "I'm just trying to be clear," he added in response to Nathan's glare.
"You're not whatever's strange about this," Nathan assured her. He studied Snowfall, who was looking increasingly scared and confused. "You can see him, you can hear him…" He made a thoughtful sound. "Can you touch him?"
"I don't think I want your imaginary friend to touch me," Snowfall said.
"Can you just trust me?" When Snowfall made a grudging grumble, Nathan looked back up at Audrey. "We need to know exactly what we're dealing with."
The concern on Audrey's face was deepening, but she reached out and gave Snowfall a quick pat on the head. His ears flattened under the weight of her touch, his head dipping and then rising when she took her hand away. "Did you feel that?" Nathan asked.
"Feel what?" Snowfall asked, at the same time that Audrey said, "Just fur. Like petting a really small dog."
Duke and Nathan exchanged glances. "This is gonna be a fun one," Duke said.
"Okay," Nathan said. "So whatever this is, it only works one way. You can interact with him, but he can't interact with you." This had to mean something for the nature of the Trouble they were trying to find, but what he couldn't imagine.
"Guess you're stuck translating for me until we figure this out," Audrey said. "Can you ask him when this started?"
Nathan started to recap everything that he and Duke had already gone over with Snowfall, but the squirrel interrupted him."I don't like this," he said quietly. He was crouched low on the desk now, making himself as small as possible. "Talking to humans is already strange enough. I don't want to talk to humans who aren't there. I told you everything I can; if you can't fix me can I just go back to the forest?"
Another look passed between Duke and Nathan. Duke shrugged. "I have to go back to the Gull anyway. I can take him with me."
"We might need more information from him."
"I won't go far," Snowfall insisted. "I still owe Duke something, I think. I can find you again if you need me. But I don't want to be inside anymore."
"You're probably not going to get anything more out of him," Duke said. "Especially if he's freaked out."
If nothing else, Nathan had to admit that Duke was probably an expert on recognizing when someone had reached their limit on how much they would or could cooperate with the police. "Okay," he conceded. "Just keep in touch if anything else happens."
Duke held his palm out to Snowfall, letting the squirrel clamber up his hand and rest in the crook of his arm. "You think you can hold still this time?"
"You think you can not crush me this time?"
"I swear to God," Duke muttered. He quirked an eyebrow at Nathan and let out a laugh. "Guess it's a good thing I ran into you first, after know you've hit rock bottom when the talking animal thinks you're the crazy one."
Audrey took a long drink. She was already on her third coffee of the morning, and it was looking like she'd end up going through several more before lunch. "So did Duke and his little friend offer any insight?"
"Not a lot."
Audrey could feel her eyes widening with every sentence as Nathan filled her in on what Duke and the squirrel had said before she got there. "So at least we know the wolf wasn't an isolated incident," she said when he was finished.
"That's about all we know. There's nothing promising from Animal Control. Did Vince and Dave have anything useful to add?"
Audrey shook her head. "They don't have any official records of people turning into animals or affecting animal behavior."
"'Official' records," Nathan repeated. His voice had the same skepticism Audrey's had had when Vince had said that to her.
"All they can find is rumors and folklore," she said. "Nothing with names and dates that might actually be something we can trace. It's all 'somebody heard that somebody saw their neighbor turn into a black cat, and now she's on trial for witchcraft.' I mean, it's possible that one of those stories is actually true, but…"
"Well, we can at least rule out the 'people turning into animals,' option," Nathan said. "Or if we can't, we've narrowed the pool of suspects down to really good actors. That was a squirrel trying to think like a human and not being very good at it, not the other way around."
"So it's someone or something making animals talk," Audrey said.
"And they can't see or hear you," Nathan added. "Which doesn't make any sense."
"Really?" Audrey said dryly. "That's the only thing that doesn't make sense here?"
Nathan didn't rise to her sarcasm. "It's got to be something to do with your immunity to the Troubles," he continued. "It's like the opposite of the ghosts, where you were the only person in town who couldn't interact with them. You're a ghost to these animals."
It was an interesting and apt comparison. "We still can't work out why, though," she ruminated.
"No," Nathan agreed. "And that might be the key to this whole thing." He pursed his lips. "You couldn't see the ghosts because a Trouble created them," he said. "And it's got to be a Trouble making the animals talk."
"So why do you think I can hear them?," Audrey said. "If I can't interact with this Trouble you'd think I'd only see the animal behind it."
Nathan nodded his agreement. "It doesn't make sense," he said. "It still feels connected, but I don't know how."
The silence stretched between them, full of thought but empty of solutions. "Where do we go from here?" Audrey finally asked.
"Aside from bringing in all the local wildlife we can find for questioning?" Nathan offered.
"Yes, aside from that," Audrey said with a laugh.
"I don't know," Nathan admitted. "I can ask Jordan to put out the word, see if anyone knows of someone with a Trouble that might be related."
Audrey covered a wince at Jordan's name. "You think you can trust her information?"
Nathan eyed her doubtfully. "At least as much as you can trust Vince and Dave's," he pointed out.
It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but Audrey couldn't argue with it. "And aside from that?"
Nathan sighed. "As much as I hate to say it, I think this is the part where we have to wait for the clues to come to us."
"Nothing?" Nathan asked.
"Nothing," Jordan echoed. She leaned back against the railing of the café's porch. They were tucked in the corner behind the kitchen, far enough from any of the tables that they were unlikely to be overheard. "The Guard doesn't have any knowledge of a person – or a family – with a Trouble that makes animals talk. This is something new." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "Which is kind of strange, when you think about it."
Nathan furrowed his brow. "Strange how?"
"Well, you said that when you were dealing with that golem, Vince was talking about the possibility that a lot of folklore was based on the Troubles. You'd think that, with how common stories about animals talking to people are, it would have come up at some point." A dry laugh. "Of course, talking to animals would be useful, wouldn't it? And God forbid there be a Trouble that helps someone more than it harms them."
Recognizing the hurt in her voice, Nathan leaned on the railing beside her and rested a hand on her arm, just above where her glove ended. She gave him an appreciative smile. "I don't know," Nathan said. He indicated a pair of birds squabbling in a nearby tree. "Can you imagine the kind of language they'd be using if they spoke English? Nobody wants to hear that."
"Good point," Jordan said with a grin. She watched the birds for a moment. "So why aren't they speaking English?" she finally asked.
Nathan shrugged. "We don't have enough information to know why the animals that are being affected were targeted. Both reports came from out in the woods, though, one of them by a pretty remote cabin and the other out behind the Grey Gull. Nothing from anywhere more urban. It could be something that's affecting the areas outside of town first."
She gave him a sideways look. "You sound like you've been doing your own research."
"I may have attempted to start a conversation with a neighbor's dog on my way here," Nathan confessed sheepishly. "She wasn't very forthcoming."
That got him a bright laugh. "And nobody found that suspicious?"
Nathan made a noncommittal sound. No need to admit that everyone in his neighborhood had long ago gotten accustomed to his habit of talking to any friendly dog he came across.
"Okay, so you're not going to give up your day job and become a dog whisperer any time soon," Jordan said, still grinning at him. "What are you going to do next?"
"Actually…" Nathan trailed off, lost in thought as something that had been brewing in the back of his mind bubbled up. "I told Audrey we should start bringing in other wild animals for questioning. I was joking at the time, but it's actually not a bad idea."
"That just makes me wonder what you would consider a bad idea," Jordan said. "What, are you going to put signs up on trees? 'If you can read this and are a bear, please contact the Haven Police Department'?"
"More like a hunting party," Nathan said. "Or maybe bird-watching would be a better description. Find some people who're willing to just go out into the woods and listen, see if they hear anything. And if they can start a conversation, they might find someone who knows something. Just because the squirrel didn't see anything doesn't mean that nobody else did."
Jordan nodded slowly, looking off into the distance. "I can do that," she said after a moment. "And I know some other people who'd be good for it. Let me ask around, see who I can pull together."
"That's great, thanks," Nathan said. "I've got a couple officers who fit the bill and know about the Troubles; I can send one of them along with you."
Jordan shifted her weight away from him, just enough for him to notice. "Nathan…" she said slowly, sounding almost disappointed that she had to explain this. "My people… they barely tolerate you. They're not going to stand for having another cop butting in on Troubled business."
"Troubled business is the entire town's business," Nathan pointed out. "If there are other people willing to help, what's the logic in refusing to let them?"
"That's easy for you to say," Jordan snapped. She sighed, gave Nathan a patient and gentle look. "It's not how most of the Guard thinks," she explained patiently. "There's the town and there's us, and that's how it's always been."
"And how's that been working out for you?"
"A hell of a lot better than it's worked out for those of us who tried to trust the people in this town," she shot back. She let out an impatient hiss, trying to settle herself. "As long as the Troubles exist, you can't change the way things work. I can talk people into working with you – temporarily – when you're actually working on ending them, but for just putting out fires in the meantime? I have to be loyal to my people first." She brushed a hand against his jaw. "You understand, right?"
"Yeah." Nathan wasn't sure how much he really meant it. "Okay," he conceded. "This part, sending people out into the woods? I'll leave you to it. Just keep me informed."
"Of course I will," Jordan said. She looked at her watch. "I've got to get back to work." A little grin. "Think you can stay long enough to order coffee?"
"Wish I could," Nathan said, which he did mean. "We're a man short; Tommy called in sick." He brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her lightly. "Keep me posted."
"Lynn, I need you to clean the grill."
Lynn gave her shift leader a startled look. "What, now?" she asked, indicating the stack of dirty dishes she'd just started washing.
"It's not like we'll have time to do it later, once the real crowds start coming in," Kate told her. "The dishes can wait for now."
Lynn was beginning to understand why Casey had been so eager to give up his shift despite the weekend pay incentive. Saturdays at the Grey Gull were a nightmare; everything needed to be done now and there wasn't enough 'now' to go around. "I'll be right out," she said, drying her hands and taking a moment to redo the knot she'd put her hair up in.
The grill's racks were crusted so thickly that Lynn was just taking it on faith that there was metal underneath all the carbon. She knew it must get cleaned occasionally – why else would there be a grill brush in with the cleaning supplies? – but it obviously wasn't a frequent occurrence. She couldn't imagine why it suddenly had to be cleaned right this moment. Did I do something to piss Kate off or something?
Ten minutes later, her hair was falling loose again, there were black streaks all along her arms – and probably her face, she was guessing – and the only reason she could see any progress was because she knew what the grill had looked like before she started scrubbing at it. She was starting to sweat despite the mild weather, and her arms were already warning her that they were going to ache before she was done.
"It's just not right, making a sweet little thing like you do all this hard work," a voice behind her said.
Lynn turned and flashed a customer-service smile at the speaker, a round-faced old woman who was the only customer out on the deck. Being short and baby-faced, Lynn was used to comments like this, from customers and from random people on the street. "I don't mind it," she said cheerfully. It wasn't a total lie; this was one of the worst assignments she'd gotten in a while but there was a certain sense of satisfaction that came with watching the chunks of carbon flake off.
"Of course you don't; you're such a nice girl," the old woman continued, her tone the auditory equivalent of a pat on the head. "But just because you don't mind it doesn't mean that it's all right. At your age you should be out enjoying your life, not toiling away like this."
It wasn't the first time Lynn had heard that, either. If you were hanging out with your friends on your day off you got scolded by old people who assumed that everyone under forty was lazy and selfish, and if you were working you got scolded by old people who acted like it was a crime against nature for a teenager to have a job. "I'm fine, really," she insisted, attacking the grill again. She was starting to worry that this woman was the kind of customer who might demand to speak to management about how hard they were working their employees, which would make it look like Lynn had been the one complaining. "I volunteered for this," she added, which was true in the sense that she'd agreed to take Casey's shift.
"Such a nice girl," the old woman repeated. "But you should be out with your friends on a Saturday! Isn't there some kind of party at the high school this weekend?"
"Something like that, I guess," Lynn said vaguely. The fall carnival was the reason nobody had wanted to work today. It wasn't a big event, really, but there was food and a band and everybody was going to be there, and usually there was some kind of after-party. Lynn hadn't wanted to miss it, but between her car and her cell phone bill she could use the money that an extra shift would bring in.
"You should be there, dear," the woman said.
Lynn gritted her teeth. She was busy enough without having someone leaning over her shoulder. "The grill's not going to clean itself," she said. It came out more sharply than she had intended, but less sharply than she would have liked.
"Won't it?" The woman gave Lynn a wink. "Well, perhaps not by itself, but near enough to it. I'm going to tell you a secret trick, dear. Just lay each of the racks out in the sunshine. Draw a bucket of good clean water, and pour it over them while asking the saints to wash away the dust of the earth. Do that three times, and they'll be far cleaner than you could ever get them on your own."
Lynn stopped herself from rolling her eyes, but only just. "I think I'll stick to the old-fashioned way, thanks."
"Suit yourself. But opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, dear," the woman admonished. "When a chance arises, you'd do well to take it." She rose from the table, tucking a couple bills underneath the empty glass she left behind. "I hope you choose to take this one."
Lynn waited until the old woman was well out of sight before sighing loudly and shaking her head. The friendly weird ones were almost as bad as the angry ones sometimes.
The grill continued to resist her efforts. Another fifteen minutes or so of fruitless effort, and Lynn was starting to wish she believed the old woman. And…well, was there really a reason not to, aside from the complete ridiculousness of it? People were always whispering about weird things happening in this town, right? And if it didn't work, there was nobody out here to see her making a fool of herself.
Really, there was no point in not at least trying it…
Duke allowed himself to be led outside by the nervous girl, who was covered in soot and dust. "I didn't know who to tell," she was saying. "I mean, it's not exactly a problem, but it probably shouldn't be happening. And someone should know, you know?"
"I don't," Duke said patiently. Lynn hadn't actually explained exactly what she needed him to see, or why she'd come to him first instead of one of her supervisors. Most of his younger employees seemed terrified of the thought of asking "the boss" for anything. "You still haven't told me what the trouble is." A wince. He hadn't meant to say 'trouble,' as appropriate a word as it was likely to be.
Lynn didn't seem to notice. "I'm going to show you," she said. She led him to the corner of the deck, where the racks from the grill were leaning against the railing. One of them gleamed, so clean that it practically sparkled. "I only did one to start with," she continued. "The top rack is so much harder to get out that I didn't want to bother if it didn't work on the other one."
"I'm guessing it worked," Duke said. "And you did that yourself? Today?"
"Sort of," Lynn said. Her eyes flickered back and forth, making sure nobody else was in earshot. It was a gesture Duke knew well, and he leaned in. "Some of the waitresses…" Lynn started. She bit her lip, then took a deep breath and seemed to try to spit it all out at once. "Some of the waitresses say that whenever the cops show up somewhere because something weird happened, you're not far behind them. So I figured if anyone here was going to believe me, it would be you."
Duke put a hand to his forehead. Of course the waitresses had been talking about him. Of course he'd managed to hire the only people in town who didn't pretend that nothing weird ever happened here. "It's okay," he said when he realized that Lynn was shrinking away from him. He forced a smile. "Yeah, I'm probably your best bet. So tell me what's going on. Or show me, whatever."
The girl's shoulders sagged in relief. "Thank you," she said. "Now watch this." She picked up a bucket that was lying nearby and took it to the tap a few feet away. She struggled to pick it up again once it was filled, but waved away his offer of help. "Oh, saints, wash away the dust of the earth," she muttered hurriedly, sounding deeply embarrassed, and poured the water over the still-filthy grill rack.
Flakes of carbon fell away from the metal. A lot of them. Duke made a small sound of surprise. "Keep watching," Lynn said with a little smile, apparently emboldened by his reaction. She repeated the process, this time saying the incantation more clearly. More exposed metal flashed in the sunlight
A third bucket, a third invocation of the saints, and the second rack was as impossibly clean as the first. They looked as if they'd never been used. "I'm impressed," Duke said mildly. "Think you could do it with the rest of the restaurant?"
Lynn, who had been grinning at the small miracle, looked nervous again, twisting her hands. "I don't know if it's actually me doing it," she said. She told Duke about the strange customer she'd had earlier, the old woman who'd told her she was working too hard and given her the secret to cleaning as if by magic.
"Yeah, probably a good thing you told me," Duke said when she'd finished. "Do you have any idea who she was?"
Lynn shook her head. "Never seen her before."
Duke had expected that. "Would you be okay with talking to a sketch artist?"
Lynn's eyes went wide. "Like, with the police? Do you think she was dangerous?"
"No," Duke lied. He was long past assuming anyone in this town wasn't dangerous, no matter how innocuous their Trouble seemed. "There's just some people who'll probably want to know who she is."
The girl bit her lip. "Yeah," she said after a moment. "I guess I could probably do that."
"Good." Duke patted her on the shoulder. "Hey, don't be nervous, okay? You're not in trouble."
"Hey, Lynn, was this your table?" The girl who'd been clearing tables – Duke would remember her name in a minute – held up a slip of paper. "Someone left you a note."
Well, she wasn't in trouble with Duke. Whether whatever weirdness had taken over the town this time still had something in store for her was another question entirely. He gestured for her to read it.
Lynn's hands were shaking as she unfolded the paper. "'Strike the hazel tree three times,'" she read. She looked up at Duke quizzically. "What hazel tree?"
"I'm gonna guess that one," Duke said, inclining his head towards the forest beyond the deck. There was one tree that didn't quite match all the others, and while Duke wasn't totally sure what a hazel tree looked like, he was sure that all the trees had been identical to each other every other time he'd looked at them.
Lynn hesitated. "Do you really think I should?"
"In my experience, trying to get off this ride in the middle is never a good idea." When Lynn gave him a blank look, Duke suppressed a sigh. "Yes, you should check it out." She didn't move, and her eyes turned pleading. "You want me to come with you, don't you?" A nod. Another sigh, one he didn't try to cover this time. "All right. Come on."
Except for the fact that the hazel tree – assuming it was a hazel tree – hadn't been there yesterday, there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary about it. It looked about eight feet tall, and just as bare and weather-worn as the trees around it. The soil around it was undisturbed, the roots secure in the ground and the grass growing over them as if it had been there for years. There was a little rise of earth between two of the roots that looked as if someone had buried something there long ago, but even that was solid and overgrown. Lynn stepped towards the tree and raised her hand, then looked back to Duke for approval or reassurance. What she expected to happen – and what she thought he could do about it – he couldn't imagine, but he gave her a nod. She brought her knuckles down on the bark three times, producing a series of soft, hollow knocks.
With a loud creaking and groaning, the sounds of timber under stress, the tree opened. The branches turned in a circle, pulling the trunk apart from itself like the plies of a rope untwisting when it was turned in the wrong direction. Acting on instinct, Duke caught Lynn by her shirt and pulled her backwards, out of reach of the creaking branches. He shot a furtive glance at the Gull, but nobody came out to investigate the noise.
The groaning and twisting carried on for what felt like several minutes. When it finally stopped, the tree was an egg-shaped cage of gracefully twisted wood surrounding a small pedestal. On the pedestal was a piece of folded green cloth and…no. Those couldn't be shoes. This was starting to make a kind of sense that Duke wasn't prepared to deal with.
"What is this," Lynn breathed beside him, eyes wide.
She was hesitating again. Duke took a step forward to try and encourage her, and the tree growled at him. The branches shook with a warning rattle, the cage threatening to snap shut on him. "It's yours, whatever it is," he told Lynn, backing off. He gave her a nudge. "Go on, take it."
The tree relaxed again when he stepped back and Lynn came forward. She reached between the slats of the cage and drew out the shoes and the cloth, making a quick grab for them and pulling her hands back before anything could grab her back. When she had removed the items and stepped clear, the tree made a sighing sound and twisted itself back into its original form with much less drama than the original transformation. She shook out the fabric, which – as Duke had suspected – turned out to be a short, simple dress that looked like it had been made to fit her.
Duke took one of the shoes from Lynn and ran a finger across the edge of it. He sighed with resignation when it sang like a wineglass. "Was there somewhere else you wanted to be today?" he asked her.
Lynn looked sheepish. "It's the fall carnival," she told him. "And some of the kids are throwing a kind of party afterwards."
"Okay," Duke said, half to himself. He stared off into the distance for a moment, mentally picturing the rest of the day's schedule, working out who he could ask to come in a little early and who would probably be willing to pick up a couple hours on their day off. "Think you can still make it if I keep you here another half-hour or so, just so I can get someone to cover you?"
"Oh, you don't have to do that!" Lynn said quickly. "I don't mind missing it, really. I could use the extra money, anyway."
"I'll make sure there's a couple extra hours on your schedule next week," Duke told her.
"I don't understand," Lynn said. "Why is it such a big deal to you that I get to go?"
"Because the last thing I need in this life is to piss off someone's fairy godmother." Duke handed the shoe back to Lynn. "Just try to be home before midnight."
"Jordan McKee is here to see you, honey," Laverne's voice crackled over the intercom. "And she brought company."
Nathan and Audrey exchanged looks. "Send them on back, Laverne," Nathan said.
"You're expecting rabbits, aren't you?" Audrey said.
"Bluebirds," Nathan corrected. "Maybe singing mice."
Audrey laughed lightly as she stood up. "You mind if I sit this one out?"
Nathan furrowed his brow. "Because of Jordan? I know you don't trust her, but—"
"Because of the conversation you're about to have with animals who don't think I exist," Audrey corrected. She didn't bother to deny Nathan's first assumption. "I'm not going to be any help, and it kinda creeps me out."
"That's fair," Nathan conceded. Go on; I'll take care of this."
Audrey had only taken a few steps out into the hall when Jordan rounded the corner. There were two little boys holding her hands, one who looked about eight or nine and one that Audrey guessed to be around four years old. The younger one buried his face in Jordan's arm as he caught sight of Audrey. "Oh, that kind of company."
"It's okay," Jordan said, sweeping her arm around the younger boy. "Audrey's going to help you find your parents. They were out in the woods," she added to Audrey. "And Jacob's a little shy."
"She's right," Audrey said, bending down to smile at the kids. "I'm here to help. Why don't you two come back and sit down, and you can tell me your story."
"We're not supposed to talk to strangers," the older boy said suddenly. "We only talked to her—" he indicated Jordan "—because we were all alone and there wasn't anyone else. And she's cool."
Jordan apparently didn't miss the flicker of Audrey's eyebrow. "I did a lot of babysitting when I was younger," she said dryly. "I'm used to kids."
"Well, you're lucky she found you," Audrey said. She touched the badge on her belt. "I'm not as cool as she is, but I'm a police officer, and so is my partner. Do you think you can talk to the police?"
The boy considered this for a moment before nodding. "I guess that's okay. I'm Stephen. Jacob is my little brother."
"It's very nice to meet you, Stephen. Now, how about you come meet my partner and tell us why you were out in the forest all alone?"
Nathan looked surprised at Audrey's return, and even more surprised at who she had in tow. "I'm assuming these aren't the people you took with you," he said to Jordan.
"These are the people we found," Jordan said. She gently herded the boys forward so that Nathan could see them. "They've got a story to tell."
Stephen introduced himself more assertively this time, apparently reassured that it was okay to talk to these particular strangers. Nathan shook his hand with adult seriousness and smiled at Jacob, who was still barely peeking around Jordan's leg. "Take a seat," he told all three of them, gesturing towards the couch.
The boys still flanked Jordan as they sat down, and when they leaned on her she put an arm around each of them. There was color in her face, and it occurred to Audrey that she must be uncomfortably warm in the leather jacket that covered her from jaw to wrists. She would have taken it off the second it was just the three of them – or just the two of them, had Audrey left – and she didn't have to worry about hurting anyone, but she seemed to consider keeping the kids close more important. "Now," Nathan said once they were settled in, "how did you two end up out in the woods on your own?"
"We weren't on our own," Stephen said. "Our dad took us. He woke us up this morning and said we were going on a hike, just us boys. We made some sandwiches and we all got in the truck and drove out to the forest. We hiked around for a while, but Jacob got tired, so Dad told us to sit down and eat our sandwiches. He said he was going to walk for a while longer, just to figure out where we should go next, and then he'd come back for us." The boy's voice wobbled. "But he didn't come back. We waited for a long time, and he never came back. So I told Jacob we had to look for him." Tears were welling up in his eyes now. "I know you're supposed to stay put when you're lost in the woods. I know you're not supposed to wander around if you don't know where you are. But he didn't come back! What if something happened to him and he couldn't find us? There was nobody else to look for us!" He let out a hiccupping sob and buried his face in Jordan's shoulder.
"It's okay," Nathan said gently. He was crouched down beside them now, and he patted Stephen's head. "You were scared, and you did what you thought was right. Is that when you found Jordan?"
"No," Stephen sniffled, turning to face them again. "That's when we found the candy house."
"What candy house?" Audrey asked, giving voice to the question on everyone else's faces.
"The scary lady's candy house," Jacob said, speaking for the first time. "Like the story." The attention that followed this declaration was apparently too much for him, as he sank back into the couch and refused to look at anyone.
"I didn't know it was a candy house at first," Stephen said. "I thought it was just a regular cabin, like the kind the forest rangers had when we went camping last year. I thought, maybe even if there wasn't someone in it because it's not camping season, there might be a phone. But when we got closer it started to look funny, and it smelled like cookies baking. I still didn't figure it out until we got to the front of the house and I tried the door. There were windows, and Jacob was looking through one and broke a piece off of the windowsill. It was all cake, the whole wall! Big chunks of it like bricks, with frosting holding them all together!" He shivered. "It was just so weird. And I was already knocking on the door when I saw it, so we couldn't just sneak away. And then the door opened so fast the knocker tore off in my hand. There was…" he shivered again and hunched his shoulders, drawing in on himself. "There was a scary lady behind it," he said, sounding as young as Jacob.
"Scary how?" Audrey asked. She had a feeling she knew what the answer was going to be, and a glance at Nathan made her guess that he was coming to the same conclusion.
"She was old and wrinkly, with a big nose and a big black dress," Stephen said. He hesitated. "Like… like a witch." Nathan nodded, and it was what Audrey had been expecting as well. "She was yelling, and she tried to grab me," Stephen continued. "So I just grabbed Jacob's hand and I ran, and I didn't stop running until we ran into Jordan."
"Literally," Jordan said. "Nearly knocked me over."
Audrey and Nathan exchanged looks. Obviously it was a bad idea to dismiss anything as impossible in Haven, but this was the kind of story that they couldn't just accept without questioning, especially considering the age of the narrator. "Stephen," Audrey said gently, "I believe that something – or someone – out in the woods scared you. But sometimes, when something scares people, their brains play tricks on them and make them think they saw something they didn't. Are you absolutely sure you know what you saw?"
"I know it sounds like a story," said. "But I didn't make it up. And I can prove it." He pushed away from Jordan just enough to reach into the pocket of his coat, coming out with a wrinkled sandwich bag. "I told you it came off in my hand," he said, holding the bag out to Audrey. "I ran away so fast I didn't know I was still holding it."
A burst of ginger and spice scent hit Audrey as she opened the bag, and she could see Nathan wrinkling his nose. Inside the bag was part of a door knocker, made of something hard and glossy. Fragments of gingerbread clung to the ends of it, as if it had been somehow anchored to a piece and the cake had given way first when it was pulled. Wordlessly, she handed it over to Nathan for inspection. He turned the piece over in his hands, studying it and giving it an experimental sniff. "It's pulled sugar," he said. "The kind they use for art pieces in dessert competitions." He pulled off a crumb of the gingerbread and crumbled it between his fingers, releasing another cloud of scent. "Do you know about where you were when you found the house?" he asked Stephen.
The boy shook his head. "That wasn't where we usually go hiking. I don't know the woods there. And when I ran away from the house, I didn't know which way I was going, I just ran."
"My people are looking for it now," Jordan said. "And for the boys' father. I figured you'd consider that higher-priority than the talking-animal hunt," she added to Nathan.
He nodded. "Good call."
"Do you know if your dad had a phone with him, or some other way to contact him?" Audrey asked.
"I tried to call him on Jordan's phone," Stephen said. "It just rang and rang. It didn't even go to voicemail. And Charlotte didn't answer."
"Who's Charlotte?"
"Our stepmom," Stephen said. Another concerned look passed between the adults; this story kept getting more familiar. "We got her voicemail, though, and I told her that Dad was missing and Jordan was taking us to the police station."
"Good," Nathan said, standing up. He held out his hands to the boys. "I'm going to take you back to the front desk," he told them. "The officer there is going to keep trying your parents until someone answers, and we'll find somewhere more comfortable for you to wait until they come for you."
Stephen looked uncertain. "Is Jordan coming with us?"
"I need to ask her some more questions," Audrey said quickly. "But we're going to take good care of you."
"It's okay," Jordan added. "I'll check in on you when I'm done here. We're all going to make sure you find your dad and get home safely."
Stephen agreed to go, although reluctantly, but Jacob took more coaxing. Eventually, though, he latched on to Nathan's arm as tightly as he had to Jordan's.
"Thank you," Jordan said fervently as the door closed behind them. She immediately shed her jacket and gloves; the tank top underneath was dotted with sweat.
"You need me to open a window?" Audrey asked.
"I'm used to it," Jordan said, only a little bitterly. "I'll be fine."
Audrey nodded and sat down behind her desk, putting a professional distance between them. It was true enough that she didn't trust Jordan, or any of the Guard for that matter, nor did she like what associating with them was doing to Nathan. But if Jordan was willing to be an ally, especially in a case that involved lost children, it would be foolish to turn down her help without a better reason than nebulous suspicion. "You have anything to add that you didn't want the kids to hear?"
Jordan spread her hands. "I didn't see anything out there. No gingerbread houses, no witches, and no talking animals. I mean, I believe them," she said, tilting her head to indicate the door knocker on Nathan's desk, "but I don't have any more evidence than that. And none of my people have reported in about finding anything, although you know how cell service can get out there."
"Which is hopefully the only reason we can't contact their dad," Audrey added.
"Hopefully," Jordan said significantly. She bit her lip, giving Audrey an appraising look. "We're on the same page here, right? I mean, this whole thing… it's Hansel and Gretel."
"Yeah," Audrey agreed, glad she hadn't had to be the one to say it.
Jordan looked as relieved as Audrey felt that it was out in the open now, and that they were both thinking it. "You remember how that story started? Hansel and Gretel didn't just get lost in the woods; their father deliberately left them there. Because their stepmother told him to."
"You think these kids' father doesn't want to be found," Audrey understood.
"And that trying to call their stepmother might have been a mistake," Jordan added.
"We can't know that until we find at least one of the parents," Audrey said. "If there is something weird going on, we can find a way to protect the kids once we know what it is, but until then we have to treat them like any other lost children."
"I know." Jordan leaned back with a worried sigh, then let out a short, sarcastic laugh. "So we've got at least two Troubles going on in the woods outside town. This, and your animal incidents."
"Maybe not." Something was beginning to fall into place in Audrey's head. "How much did Nathan tell you about the animal problems?"
Jordan shrugged. "Just that someone got attacked by a talking wolf last night, and Duke rescued a talking squirrel this morning."
"Not just attacked by a wolf," Audrey told her. "It broke into a cabin, and the owner found it in her bed like it was waiting for her. And the owner's granddaughter said the same wolf tried to steer her off the path on her way out to the cabin."
"Little Red Riding Hood," Jordan finished the thought for her. "And Duke's run-in with the squirrel?"
"Nathan said the squirrel keeps saying it owes Duke for saving its life. People getting repaid for their kindness to small animals; that's one of those themes that pops up all the time in stories." Audrey rested her forehead on her hand. "It's all the same Trouble. Someone is turning Haven into a fairytale forest."
"That's what you're thinking, too?" Nathan asked when Audrey filled him in on her new theory about the current Trouble. It was the same theory that he had started piecing together after he'd handed the kids over to Stan at the front desk.
"It ties everything together," Audrey said. She and Nathan were standing outside the break room, where one of the other officers had taken the boys to get them some water and something to eat. Jordan had joined them once she and Audrey had emerged from the office, and Jacob was still huddled up against her.
Nathan nodded. "Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and one of Aesop's fables."
"Aesop," Audrey repeated. "That was the one I couldn't figure out. I guess that counts as a fairy tale, if you're really loose on the definition."
"They're all kids' stories," Nathan said with a shrug. "There's a common thread, at least. And it might explain why Duke's squirrel couldn't see or hear you. If everyone else is caught up in a story, you could be the audience: you can watch what's happening, but you can't affect it."
"It's a good theory," Audrey said thoughtfully.
"Not the first time we've seen a story come to life," Nathan added. "You think it's T.J. again?"
"First thing I thought of," Audrey said. She shook her head. "I already called him. He hasn't been anywhere near where the incidents happened, and he swears he hasn't been reading any fairy tales." She smiled gently. "He said he's mostly reading nonfiction these days. A lot of science books. Apparently, if the stuff he's reading about is already happening somewhere it doesn't have the same effect here."
"So we've got a second person who can bring stories to life," Nathan said. "Anyone else in T.J.'s family have his Trouble?"
"The only family he has in town are his in-laws. He's not related to anyone local by blood, not that he knows about, anyway."
"So we've got a what," Nathan said, half to himself. "But not a who or a how. Or a why, if there is one."
"It's not a lot more than we had this morning," Audrey agreed. "But now that we know what we're looking for we can start figuring out what the connection between everyone involved is."
"No leads on that yet," Nathan said. He held up his notebook, where he'd been working through the information they had so far. "Margo spent all day yesterday at home; she didn't see or speak to anyone other than Erin. Erin's been out of town, and she drove straight to the cabin without talking to anyone else in town. And our other two witnesses are a squirrel and a pair of kids," he concluded. "Not the best sources of information."
"No," Audrey agreed. "We're going to have to wait until the boys' parents show up, see if they can tell us anything more significant. Assuming we can trust them." When Nathan gave her a questioning look, she repeated the suspicion Jordan had voiced to her. "But we can't even begin to guess at that until they get here," she added.
It was hardly a wait at all before Charlotte Smith-Prentiss finally checked her voicemail and arrived to pick up her stepsons, and the way Jacob immediately pulled away from Jordan and leapt into her arms went a long way to allay the concerns of the other adults in the room. Unlikely to be a wicked stepmother, then.
"I don't know what Rick was thinking," Charlotte said when they finally managed to pull her away from the children again so they could question her in private. "He and the kids have a boys' day out every once in a while, but it's always something he's planned in advance and he always tells me where they're going just in case I need to reach them. But they were all gone before I woke up this morning, without even leaving a note. This is so unlike him."
"Has he done anything else out of the ordinary lately?" Audrey asked. "Or has anything unusual or worrying happened to your family recently?"
Charlotte blew out a breath. "He's been worried a lot lately," she said. "His company is making some cutbacks, and there's a chance he might get laid off. It's not a sure thing yet, just a risk, but we've been talking a lot about what to do if it happens. We might have to move out west with my family if he can't find anything here." She shook her head. "Really, we're just worried about how it's going to affect the kids."
Audrey silently pushed her notepad towards Nathan. H+G's parents couldn't afford to take care of them, she'd written on it. It was true, and it was also the kind of worry that could be enough to activate someone's Trouble. The two of them held a wordless conference for a moment before coming to an agreement. "Mrs. Smith-Prentiss," Nathan said carefully, "are you familiar with the Troubles?"
Her eyes widened. "What do they have to do with my husband losing our kids in the woods?"
"We don't know if they're connected," Nathan said. "But it's a possibility. Do you know if you, or your husband, or anyone in your families is Troubled?"
"No," Charlotte said firmly. "My family's not even from Haven originally. And as for Rick…" she trailed off and shook her head, looking down at her hands. "I made him swear to me that he wasn't before we got married, and that as far as he knew his first wife wasn't, either. I don't hate the Troubled," she said, so quickly that Nathan wondered if he'd reacted without realizing it. "God knows they can't help how they're born. But…" a helpless shrug. "I love those kids, and I think I'm getting the hang of being a mom. But at the time I was barely confident that I could raise two normal kids. I didn't know if I could handle any surprises down the road."
"It's all right," Audrey told her. Under the table, her leg nudged against Nathan's; he wasn't sure if it was supposed to be reassurance or admonition. "Is there anything else you can tell us, anything unusual that you've seen or heard in the last couple days that might help us understand what happened here?"
"No, nothing. And Rick tells me about everything, but he hasn't mentioned anything out of the ordinary." Charlotte shook her head. "Believe me, if there was anything I could say to explain what happened to my husband, and maybe where you could find him, I would. I just want to know he and the kids are okay."
"Well, as far as we can tell, your boys are fine," Nathan assured her. "Just very shaken up, and maybe a little dehydrated."
Charlotte's shoulders slumped in relief. "Does that mean I'll be able to take them home?"
Another look passed between Nathan and Audrey. "Not just yet," Audrey said gently. She rested her hands on Charlotte's. "Until we know just what happened to your husband, and whether he might have been acting under the effects of something we can't yet identify, we're not ready to release them."
Charlotte slowly pulled her hands away, eyes narrowing. "What effects are you talking about?"
A knock on the door interrupted before Nathan or Audrey could answer. "Chief?" Stan asked, poking his head into the room. "You got a minute?"
Exchanging a brief glance with Audrey, Nathan got up and followed Stan into the hall. "What's going on?"
"Rick Prentiss just showed up at the front desk," Stan told him quietly. "Thought you'd want to know right away."
Nathan nodded, not sure if he was relieved or not. "Good. Set him up in the other interview room."
When he returned to the first interview room, Charlotte was still pressing Audrey for information that she wasn't willing to give. "We can't say anything more at this time," Nathan cut in, making his voice as flat and formal as he could. He gave Audrey a nod, inviting her to follow him. "And now you'll have to excuse us; there's something we need to take care of." Another nod, towards Stan this time. "He'll escort you back to the front desk, and I'd like you to wait there until one of us can get back to you."
"What was that all about?" Audrey demanded when they were back out in the hall.
"We've got a more important interview waiting on us."
Rick Prentiss had arrived at the station under his own power and in considerable panic, and he'd nearly burst into tears when someone told him that his missing children had been found unharmed. "Please, can I see them?"
"Not right now," Nathan told him. "We have some questions we need to ask you first. Can you tell us what you were doing out in the woods with your boys this morning?"
"God help me, I don't know," Rick said, his voice small and helpless. He buried his face in his hands. "It just seemed like the best thing to do."
"What seemed like the best thing to do?" Audrey pressed gently.
His voice got even smaller. "Leaving them out there. Oh, God."
When no further response was forthcoming, Audrey spoke again. "Mr. Prentiss, we need to know exactly what happened. Just start from the beginning and tell us everything."
It was her "Troubled whisperer" voice, the one that was so soft and gentle while somehow still leaving no room for argument. Like so many before him, Rick was unable to resist it. "Last night," he started, clearing his throat and trying to keep his voice steady and calm, "my wife and I were talking about our financial situation. We were discussing what our options will be if I lose my job, and what will be best for the kids. And after she fell asleep I realized… I realized that we might not be what's best for them. I thought, maybe they'd be better off with someone else. But we couldn't just ask someone else to take them in; everyone we know is in the same boat if the company starts making cuts. But if they were lost…" He was staring straight ahead now, not looking at anything. "So I took them out to the forest. Someone was bound to find them, someone who wouldn't know where they'd come from and who could take care of them. And if they weren't found… would that be any worse than having parents who couldn't provide for them properly?"
Rick's face was a mask of horror, his voice shaking with the shock of what he was saying. His obvious revulsion at his own actions was the only thing keeping Nathan from wanting to throttle him. "I don't know what I was thinking," Rick continued in a near-whisper. "It just made so much sense last night. And even this morning, after I got them out there. I was—" he broke off in a choking noise, tears building in his eyes. "I was in the truck and pulling back onto the main road when I realized what I'd done. I went back to look for them right away, but all I found was a pile of breadcrumbs from their sandwiches." He was sobbing now, his head in his hands. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened. My poor little boys…"
"They're all right," Audrey said, her voice still soft. Nathan could see in her face that she was having the same mixed feelings that he was, trying to remind herself that what he'd done might not be his fault. "We have reason to believe that you weren't in control of your actions when you took your kids out today. There are other cases that we think might be connected to yours."
Rick's eyes were wide when he looked up at her. "There are? Has anyone been hurt?"
"Not so far," Audrey assured him. "We're looking into the cause of some of the other strange behavior we've been seeing. Will you help us?"
"Of course, I'll do anything," Rick said quickly. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else's kids."
"Neither do we," Audrey said. "Now, to start off, tell us everything that's happened to you over the past few days."
Questioning Rick Prentiss brought them no closer to an answer than they'd been before he'd arrived. He confirmed his wife's declaration that nobody in his family was Troubled, nor had he seen or experienced anything out of the ordinary recently. His social and professional life didn't seem to overlap with that of anyone else who'd been affected, and he was one of the few people in town who wasn't a regular patron at the Grey Gull.
"And I still kind of want to punch him," Nathan confessed when he and Audrey were alone again.
"It's not his fault," Audrey reminded him. "Probably. But me too." She gave him a sympathetic smile. Between the two of them, there wasn't a lot of room for leniency towards someone who might have abandoned his kids. "And I'm not okay with sending those kids home until we're sure whatever's causing this isn't going to strike the same place twice."
"Probably a good idea to get Claire's input on the family, too," Nathan suggested. "Just to make sure there's not something else going on."
"Couldn't hurt," Audrey agreed. "I don't think their dad is going to trust himself with them until he gets a professional all-clear, anyway."
"And maybe not even after that."
"Yeah." Audrey shook her head. "This Trouble is providing the story, but not the happily ever after."
"Business as usual, then."
A mirthless chuckle. "Pretty much." Audrey eyed her phone. "We should probably give Duke a heads-up, let him know that the situation has changed. He needs to know what to look for, and he'd probably appreciate knowing exactly why a small woodland creature is honor-bound to him."
A slow grin crept over Nathan's features. "Because he's turning into a Disney Princess?"
That mental image was enough to stop Audrey in her tracks for a moment. "Probably not how I'll put it," she said, highlighting Duke's name on her contacts list. "As interesting as it would be to see his face."
The phone rang for a good while, and when Duke finally answered he sounded out of breath. "Tell me you have good news," he said, the playful tone he usually used with her absent.
"Wish I did," Audrey said, momentarily taken aback by his brusqueness. "We've been looking for the wrong thing. The Trouble we're dealing with isn't about talking animals, it's—"
"Fairy tales?" Duke cut her off. "Yeah, I figured that one out when one of my kitchen staff got poached by her fairy godmother."
Audrey raised one eyebrow and set her phone on the desk,putting it on speaker and motioning Nathan over so he could hear. "Say that again?"
"I've apparently got Cinderella bussing my tables," Duke said. He gave them a synopsis of what had happened with Lynn. "And now I'm short-handed for the next hour and I'm going to have to pay out some overtime," he concluded. "And I'm not too thrilled at the thought of being someone's wicked stepmother."
Was that better or worse than the thought of him being a Disney Princess? A glance at Nathan told Audrey that he was contemplating the same thing. "Where's Lynn now?" she asked.
"At the carnival, I'd assume; she left about half an hour ago."
"You let her go?" Nathan cut in sharply.
There was a definite change in the timbre of the voice on the other end as Duke realized he was talking to both of them. "You know my policy on getting involved where I don't have to," he said coolly. "If you want to take your chances with the Fair Folk, be my guest, but I'm not in any hurry to get on a fairy godmother's bad side. It doesn't matter how clever you are, nobody wins an argument with a fairy. Not even with a good fairy."
Nathan rolled his eyes so hard Duke could probably hear it over the phone. "Right, because 'good fairy' is so much more plausible than 'the Troubled person behind all of this.'"
"Don't give me that look," Duke said, confirming Audrey's suspicions. "She's not a local."
"How do you know?"
"Because she tipped seven dollars on two iced teas and my staff wasn't tearing each other apart to claim her. There are things waitresses remember."
"And Lynn?" Audrey added. "You're sure it's not her?"
"She doesn't think so. Which doesn't guarantee anything, but this is the first weird thing that's happened to her. You'd think that if she was the one causing everything it would hit her first, right?"
"He has a point," Nathan muttered, his voice grudging.
"Now, was that really so hard to say?" Duke asked, voice dripping with saccharine sarcasm.
"But there doesn't seem to be any geographic progression to what's happening," Audrey said, interrupting before the two of them could get any more aggressive at each other. Funny, she'd have assumed they'd be easier to deal with when they weren't in the same room. "Margo's cabin is nowhere near where the boys found the gingerbread house – I'll tell you later," she added as Duke made a questioning sound, "and the Gull is in between them. Even if it's someone traveling, they're taking a pretty strange route."
"That's assuming people are getting chosen by their location," Nathan said, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on the desk. "We've got a girl who was already going to visit her grandmother in the woods before anything started, a pair of kids with a stepmother with money problems, and a girl who's doing her best to do a dirty job but would rather be at the ball. And Duke."
"Yeah, I'm not sure how he fits in, either," Audrey agreed.
"How he fits into what?" Duke asked.
She leaned in towards the phone. "This Trouble might be specifically targeting people who already fit the parameters of the original stories," she said. "It takes an existing situation and… spins it out into a fairy tale."
"And this translates into me being the Squirrel Whisperer how, exactly?"
"Because you're important somehow," Nathan said with a sigh.
There was a thoughtful silence. "Say that again?"
"You heard me." Nathan's voice held a warning. "You've got someone who owes you his life, and who's looking to discharge that debt as soon as he can. If I had to guess, I'd say there's going to be some situation very soon where your own life is going to be in danger and you have to cash in on this to save it, and maybe someone else's."
A long silence. "Because I'm not paranoid enough already?" Duke finally said. He let out a puff of air. "I gotta go. If I don't get back in there soon, that squirrel's gonna have to save me from an angry waitress armed with a salad fork."
As she hung up, Audrey shot Nathan a look. "It's not a bad theory," she said. "In fact, I'd say it's probably the right one. But did you have to put it quite like that? He already thinks he's got one death threat hanging over his head." She tried not to look at Nathan's arm, his long sleeve currently concealing the tattoo there.
"I didn't say anything he wouldn't have figured out on his own," Nathan said, unconcerned. Audrey was pretty sure he knew exactly what she wasn't saying, but he didn't make any acknowledgement of it. "And he'd be in worse shape if we knew there was a chance something was gunning for him and we didn't tell him."
Which was true, and Audrey definitely would have warned him if Nathan had come up with it while they weren't on the phone. She just might have found a gentler way to phrase it. And she was sure Nathan could have found a better way if he'd wanted to, but his perpetual desire to goad Duke had taken over again. "You're aware that he's probably going to decide that we're the safest place to be until this all gets solved," she pointed out.
"He's probably not wrong about that," Nathan said. "And we're going to want him around." Audrey raised a questioning eyebrow. "You heard what he said about the Fair Folk," Nathan continued.
"I heard it, but I don't see how it's relevant. He didn't want to get involved; that's pretty much his default state if you don't push him." Audrey would like to think she knew that better than most people, having become an expert at knowing how to push him.
"He didn't want to get involved because even clever people don't come out on top when they mess with fairies," Nathan corrected her. "Duke Crocker is admitting that there's an entire class of…people, for lack of a better word, who can out-weasel him. And he said it like it was so obvious that he shouldn't have had to explain it to me."
"Which is how he talks to you pretty much all the time, especially when you're accusing him of something," Audrey pointed out. "Still not sure what you're driving at."
"Would you have thought of that right away?" Nathan asked. "Even once you believed you were dealing with a fairy godmother, would you have decided that you'd heard enough stories to guess at what would happen if you interfered?"
That gave Audrey pause. "No," she admitted. "Fairy tales aren't the way my reading taste usually leans."
Nathan gave her a slight, ironic smile. He knew full well about her – well, the other Audrey Parker's – literary weaknesses. "They're obviously in Duke's wheelhouse," he said. "There are rules to dealing with fairies and fairy tales, and he not only knows them, he's following them. If whoever is causing all this is playing by those same rules, it's a good idea to have someone on hand who can rattle them off without even having to think about it. He might even be able to help us figure out who's in the line of fire."
It was a good argument. Audrey gave a slow, thoughtful nod. "Makes sense," she said. She eyed the clock. "He said he was getting some relief in about an hour, right? Give him until then, and if he doesn't end up back here on his own I'll drop in on him."
"Better you than me," Nathan muttered.
"Pretty much, yeah." Audrey drummed on her desk with a pencil for a moment, and then couldn't resist commenting. "Duke reading fairy tales. Don't think I'd have called that one."
"He reads everything," Nathan said with a shrug. "Or he did when we were younger, anyway. There was a while when he was dropping by the public library every day. Probably went through every book they had before he was twenty."
"Seriously?" Audrey gave a little laugh. "Mister 'the only reason I don't have a rap sheet a mile long is because you can't prove anything' was a baby bookworm?" She shook her head. It was, when she really thought about everything she knew about him – and everything she'd seen aboard his boat – not all that surprising, but it was still unexpected. "That's kinda cute."
The scratching of Nathan's pencil as he worked on his case notes suddenly stopped. "I wouldn't bring the subject up with him if I were you," he said. The words came out slowly and carefully, as if he had realized too late that he shouldn't have brought it up.
Audrey's eyebrows went up. "Something I should know about?" she asked.
"It's not important right now," Nathan said, a little shortly. "And it's not something he'd appreciate me telling you."
Of all the strange things she'd heard today, the idea that Nathan was deliberately not saying something about Duke in order to spare his feelings was the one that Audrey found hardest to believe. "Okay," she said, giving Nathan a nod. "Dropping the subject."
Nathan's answering nod was grave, but grateful. "The library probably wouldn't be a bad place to investigate, though," he said by way of a subject change.
"See if our Troubled person is of the literary persuasion?" Audrey followed his train of thought. "Yeah, not a bad idea. And see if Jordan's people are willing to go out on the search again. Hansel and Gretel isn't the only story about kids getting lost in the woods, and Little Red Riding Hood doesn't have the only Big Bad Wolf."
"That was only a feasible idea when we thought it was confined to a specific location," Nathan pointed out to her. "There's just too much ground to cover. But I can maybe talk to the forestry service, see if they fake some kind of alert that'll keep people out of the woods."
"At least the ones who don't live out there," Audrey said. "The first victims we know of were attacked in their own cabin, don't forget." A wry smile. "Of course, given how that turned out, we might be able to assume that the people who're in the woods already can take care of themselves."
Nathan didn't return the smile. He was looking thoughtful, and even more serious than usual. "This is a big one, Audrey. I don't think we can keep it from spreading, and I don't know how we're going to contain it while we figure out how to solve it."
"The same way we always do. We put out the fires as they come up, and we get everyone we can find in on the act. We can still spread people out far enough to keep their ears to the ground, and if there are rules to follow we can make sure they know what they are." She put a hand on Nathan's shoulder. "We can do this. We just have to figure out where to start."
The crumbling, overgrown stone wall was about eight feet tall, if Annabeth was gauging it right. An easy climb, and if she was careful the drop on the other side wouldn't be a problem, either. Rob had made it, anyway, and Annabeth wasn't about to let her older brother best her at anything. He thought he was so cool and so above her, just because he was in high school now. Annabeth knew he'd hit their last softball over the wall on purpose, just to show off. He'd probably been planning on doing it ever since he found out Becky Crane was planning on bringing her little brother out to the park to play ball with them today. Probably thought he'd get to show off to her twice, first by knocking the ball out of the park – literally – and second by going over the wall into the creepy house's backyard to get it back.
Not that Becky and Brian had ever shown up. Not that anybody had shown up, which was strange. Usually by this time on a Saturday there'd be at least a dozen kids running around the park. But today it was just the three of them, and Rob had apparently decided that showing up his sibs was good enough because the first pitch Shawn had thrown at him had gone straight over the wall. Rob had gone right over after it, making sure to make it look like the climb was no effort at all and cheerfully shouting back to them about just how creepy the overgrown yard was.
That had been a good ten minutes ago. He should have been back by now. Annabeth gave an annoyed grunt. "I'm going after him."
"Mom said you weren't supposed to leave me alone," Shawn said behind her.
"It'll just be for a minute." Annabeth tried not to roll her eyes. Shawn would follow her and Rob anywhere without fear, but leave him on his own for two seconds and he turned into a complete baby.
"That's what Rob said," Shawn reminded her. "What if whatever got him gets you, too?"
"Nothing 'got' him," Annabeth scoffed. "He's just messing with us." Privately, she wished she felt as confident about that as she sounded. Rob had been talking to them over the wall when he first went over, and she didn't like the way his voice had just faded out. She didn't think he had the patience to keep quiet this long for the sake of a prank. She sighed and ruffled Shawn's hair. "He just wants to scare us, okay? He thinks we'll go running home for help because he disappeared, and by the time we get back he'll be standing out here waiting for us and saying that he just went to the bathroom or something and we freaked out over nothing, and Mom will think we're the ones causing trouble. He probably thinks I'm too chicken to go after him. But I'm not scared of a weird old house, and you're not scared of a stupid joke, right?"
Shawn perked up. "Right!" he chirped. "I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not," Annabeth said. She and Rob could make it over that wall with no trouble, but she was less sure about Shawn. And if they brought him home with bruised hands and skinned knees, all three of them would be in for it. "Mom's already suspicious; you want her to find out that Rob's been letting you run wild? She'll never let you out of the house without an adult again. You want that?" Shawn shook his head adamantly. "Didn't think so. I'll be right back, okay?" Annabeth promised again. "Just wait out here."
The rough surface of the wall provided plenty of handholds. Annabeth scrambled up it like a lizard, crouching at the top and surveying the yard below. The idea that Rob might have gotten lost somehow suddenly didn't seem so far-fetched. The backyard was a mess, plants that might once have been a nice garden turning it into a wild thicket. Dark green leaves and creepers covered every bit of the ground, thicker and more lush than they should have been this late in the year. How long has it been growing wild like this? Annabeth wondered. She couldn't remember anyone having ever lived in this house, and she'd lived just down the street her entire life. It was like a haunted house's yard. Or a secret garden, she thought, remembering the book she'd loved when she was younger. That made her smile, and made the tiny forest below seem less daunting. "Rob?" she called out. No answer. "Rob, stop messing around."
When there was still no response, she started to lower herself over the wall. She could see a flattened patch in the ground cover, probably where Rob had dropped to the ground. She aimed for the same spot, stretching her arms out to get her feet as close to the ground as she could before letting go. The landing was soft, and she turned around to get a better look at the yard.
It was even more intimidating up close. Some of the bushes were taller than she was, and she couldn't see the opposite fence. "If you can't find the ball, just admit it and come back," she said, still hoping that Rob would answer and she wouldn't have to go hunting for him. That was starting to look like it might be the answer; she would bet that you could lose a whole stadium's worth of softballs in this yard.
This might take a while. "Shawn?" Annabeth called, figuring her little brother would feel better if she stayed in contact with him. "Shawn!" she repeated a moment later when there was no answer. For a moment she started to worry that something might have happened to him, but then she relaxed. More likely the thickness of the plants in the yard was muffling her voice, making it hard for Shawn to hear her over the wall. That would explain why Rob's voice had faded out. Although it still didn't explain why he wasn't answering now.
If she looked carefully, Annabeth could see places where the plants had been bent or compressed like someone had recently walked through them. More than one somebody, from the look of it, and going off in several directions. What was going on here? Fighting down the urge to turn around and run right back over the wall, Annabeth picked a trail at random and followed after it. As she walked she poked at the underbrush, looking for the missing ball, but that was no longer the most important thing on her mind.
The trail she was following ended abruptly at a thinned-out spot in the thicket, and as Annabeth stepped out into it she nearly shrieked as a pair of grey hands reached out for her. She tried to jump back, and promptly fell on her butt.
From this angle, the scene became clearer. The hand was part of a stone statue, an abstract figure that dominated the clearing. Annabeth stood up and circled it carefully, trying to get a better look at it. Finally she realized that it was meant to represent a teenage girl, bent over to pick up something off the ground. The hands that had frightened her were reaching out for a real soccer ball just in front of the statue. Now that she knew what she was looking at, it was kind of cool looking. A neat, if weird, piece of yard art that must have been left over from when someone lived here. Annabeth laughed at herself, and how badly this weird yard was getting to her.
She turned around to go back the way she came, and this time she did shriek. The person in front of her now was definitely real, a tall, thin old woman with a severe face. "And what do you think you're doing back here?" the woman demanded.
Annabeth opened and closed her mouth a few times before she could manage any words. "I'm sorry!" she finally stammered. "I didn't think anyone still lived here!"
"And that was reason enough to come poking around somewhere you don't belong?"
"I wasn't poking around," Annabeth protested, realizing after it came out of her mouth that it wasn't true. "I mean, I was, but I wasn't trying to snoop or anything. My brother hit a ball over your wall, and he came back here looking for it and then he didn't come back. Have you seen him?"
The old woman seemed to relax a little. "The older boy who was here not long ago? He's been and gone," she said. "Although I don't believe he found what he was looking for, nor do I know where he went."
Indignation bubbled up in Annabeth's chest, burning away her fear and worry. She had been right; Rob was just messing with them. He'd probably gone over the fence on the opposite side of the yard, and had been hiding somewhere waiting to see how badly she and Shawn would freak out. Or maybe he'd even run off to meet up with a girl and had left them alone. He was going to get into so much trouble when they got home. "Thank you," she said to the old woman. "Sorry we bothered you."
"You meant no harm, I suppose," she said, sounding much less unfriendly now. "If you wish, you may continue your search for your lost item. But take only what's yours, do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," Annabeth said. She looked back at the statue and its accompanying soccer ball. "I guess something that looks like it just got lost back here might really be part of your art, huh?"
A strange smile. "In a sense," the woman said.
"It's a really interesting sculpture," Annabeth said. She bobbed her head at the woman, feeling almost like she should curtsey or something. "Thank you for not being mad. I'm sorry my brother and I were trespassing; we really thought there was no one here anymore. If we lose something in your yard again, we'll knock, I promise."
Another strange smile. "See that you do," the old woman said. "Don't linger back here for too long." She turned and walked away, and within just a few seconds Annabeth couldn't see her anymore through the brush.
Annabeth caught her breath, exhaling heavily as she recovered from the startling encounter. She was going to kill Rob when she found him.
No longer concerned for her brother's safety, and having been given permission to keep on searching, she began hunting for the missing softball in earnest. As she poked through the branches, though, she began to wonder if it was really worth the search. It was worse than a needle in a haystack. She did find several more of the strange statues, though, boys and girls of various ages, all posed similarly to the first one, all reaching for or chasing after a ball or other toy on the ground in front of them. It was a neat idea for one statue, Annabeth thought, but this little army was starting to seem just weird.
There was no real point to this, Annabeth finally decided. She was never going to find the softball, and her concern was starting to move back towards where Rob was and what he was doing, and to how long she'd left Shawn alone by this point. She was turning around and trying to remember which direction she'd originally come from when something white in the undergrowth caught her eye. Finally!
Annabeth pushed the ground cover aside and reached for the ball. As her hand was moving, though, she took a closer look and realized that this was a hard plastic kids' ball, not the real softball she'd been looking for. She attempted to pull her hand back and leave, but her hand refused to move. Her entire body was refusing to move, in fact.
Before darkness closed in over her mind, Annabeth's last thought was, That first statue looked a lot like Debbie Crane.
