The phone rang once, twice. She didn't recognize the number. "Hello, Sarah Pelham speaking. Who is it?"
"Hello. It's Laura, Daniella's mother?"
She remembered the long-haired girl, a friend of Carol's girls. The mother too, she knew, though they hadn't spoken since well before Leviathan. "Laura! It's been a while. How are things going?"
"Yes, it has, hasn't it? We're good. Somehow." Laura paused and Sarah readied herself for what always came next but she never managed to be prepared for. "I… I heard about Neil and Eric. How is Crystal?"
Dealing. They all were. "As well as she can. It's been… rough, for all of us. But it's a reality we were all ready for." No, it wasn't. Sarah was spewing out acidic lies, propaganda, burning her own lips. Eric had been fifteen. Just fifteen, her son.
"I'm sorry." There was a pause. "Anyway, I was wondering if Amy was home?"
Amy. Sarah straightened her spine, her whole attention shifting towards the phone call. Could she need Panacea? She said they were doing good, and it didn't fit with what she knew of the woman. No. And she had called her, not Carol. "No, she's not." A brief moment of indecision. "There was an attack on Carol's house and Amy ran away. We don't know where she is. Have you seen her?"
"Oh. Well…" Laura hesitated and some suspicion became more solid, settling heavily on her stomach. "She was here last night."
She'd been staying with friends, of course. Sarah felt like slapping herself. "At your house? Do you know where she is?"
"No. She left this morning and didn't come back. I wasn't expecting her to, but I got worried. Decided it would be best to check if she'd gone home."
"Thank you so much. I'd rather give her some time to come back, but we're all worried." She said honestly. "Is there anything you could tell me? Anything at all that could help us find her?"
"Well. She showed up after curfew. Soaked to the bone and… clothes all torn up. We thought she'd been attacked. Trouble at home, she said, so…"
"There was a cape fight, yes." But despite it being Bonesaw, Amy hadn't gotten more than a few scratches. Sarah bit her lip, worried.
"She was famished. I gave her dinner and then she spent the night. Insisted on taking the floor and everything." Yes, that did sound like Amy. "She was so… so skittish I wasn't going to insist too much. And this morning she just grabbed her things, thanked us and left after breakfast."
"I see." Something had happened, it was clear and it only exacerbated Sarah's worries. "Thanks again Laura, that's really helpful."
"No, no, I'm just glad to be of help. If you find her…"
"Sure. I'll tell you when we find her."
She exchanged quick goodbyes and hung up. She finally had a lead. She'd call her sister first, then coordinate to call other people her adopted niece might be staying with. With any luck they'd find her. Then, Lady Photon would patrol the streets with Laserdream.
With the momentum, the fact that she had forgotten to tell Laura about the Slaughterhouse Nine went unnoticed.
A girl with red-streaked hair pursed her lips. Walking at her side, a bearded man noticed it.
"Cherie, you've been awfully quiet." He commented, idly playing with a switchblade. "Something caught your attention?"
She smiled slowly, eyes focusing back on him. "Well Jack, one of the candidates changed." She stressed the last word. With a slithering of chains, one of her companions got closer to them, head tilting to the side. Mannequin. Cherish elaborated for him. "After Bonesaw talked to her, the scaredy cat ran away. The beloved sister followed and there was a very interesting talk…" Her smile widened at the memory of the conversation, a beacon to an empath as herself. The events had been really interesting to Cherish too. "She changed her sister and there lots of horror and guilt... And then I stopped feeling her."
"Eh!" A blonde child, hair styled in ringlets, protested from Jack's left. "Amy didn't die already, did she? I wanted her with us..." She whined. The black and white Siberian ran a hand through her curls soothingly.
Cherish shook her head. "No, it was just for a while. But when I started feeling her again, she was different. She's harder to feel now."
Bonesaw whooped with joy but Mannequin tilted his head in the other direction, questioning. The healer was of interest to him.
"Yes." Cherish paused, looking for a way to describe the tones of acceptance. "The scaredy cat used her claws. And with claws like that..." The perfect word occurred to her, one that was certainly running around the candidate's head. "A cat can become a real monster."
That interested Jack. "Oh, so she's becoming one of us now?"
Cherish felt the muted melody of that mind, the calm that blanketed the fear and the vague self blame. The dwindling screeches of horror, lessening more and more as time passed. The lack of guilt concerning that incident, in which she'd copied Cherish own methods. "She's certainlyon the right path."