Ghost Light

“Yeah, glad to have you back,” Jinx said.  “Smooth ride?”

“Minimal turbulence,” I said voice scratchy.

My mouth was dry and the copper taste of blood caught in my throat.  But I didn’t feel too bad, actually.  For a vision, this one was mild.

I pulled on my glove and sagged against the metal file cabinet at my back.  Jinx handed me a paper cup of water and I gulped it down.  It was holy water from our water cooler, not that it tasted any different than regular water, but at that moment it seemed to come straight from Heaven.   I let out a satisfied breath and Jinx held up her notepad and pen.

“Any leads?” she asked.

  Mab’s bones.  A dancing, glowing orb had rousted the child from his bed and led him away from his home.  Kaye’s books were filled with stories of wisps leading men to their doom.  Could wisps, my own brethren, be responsible for the missing faerie children?

“Something woke the kid, some kind of dancing light,” I said.  “Kid left of his own volition, but whatever that glowing orb was, it seemed to be leading him out of the house.”

“Did you see where the child went to?” Ceff asked, leaning forward.

“No, sorry,” I said, shaking my head.  “He dropped the toy while fumbling with the latch on his front door.  I just know that he followed the light outside.”

I remembered wrinkled pajamas disappearing into the darkness.  I squeezed the paper cup, crushing it into a tiny ball, and tossed it across the room.  It dropped short of the wastebasket, another thing to worry about later.

“At least he wasn’t hurt or anything, right?” Jinx asked.

“Yeah, the kid was fine last night,” I said.  It had been dark outside during the vision, but now daylight was streaming in through our office windows.  “But that was hours ago.”

Ceff rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the floor.  This had to be hard on him after losing his sons.

“What do you think the lights were?” she asked.  “Some kind of spell?”

I hoped it was a spell, because if my suspicions were correct, then wisps were involved.  If my own people were behind this, where did that leave me?

I’d been flinching away from the prospect of coming out as a faerie princess.  But if wisps committed this crime, then I was partly responsible.  My father, king of the wisps, had left our people leaderless.  I had known this for months and done nothing.

I stared at the table covered in plastic bags—so many missing children.  Had the same lights lured the other children from their beds?  There was only one way to find out.

“I’ll know more when we’re done,” I said.  I pointed to the table.  “Keep ‘em coming.”

Jinx gave me an understanding nod and handed me a plastic bag.  Ceff’s brow wrinkled and he cleared his throat.

“Are you certain?” he asked.  “Couldn’t we search the homes for clues?  The families may have missed something.”

The chances of that many families all missing something was a long shot.  In the case of the winged child, he had walked out the front door himself.  There had been no forced entry and the only physical intruders were the lights which floated in the air, never touching any surfaces.  No, my gut told me that the answers were here in these objects, not back in the victims’ homes.

“I have to do this, now,” I said.  “I can’t put this part of the job off until later.  The first few hours are the most important in any missing person case.  If I don’t learn anything new, then we’ll try other methods, but this is our best chance of finding out what happened last night.”

“She’s right,” Jinx said.  She placed a hand on Ceff’s shoulder.  “This is the best way to save these kids.”

“If you are both in agreement, then I acquiesce,” he said.  Jinx put her hand on a curvy hip and raised an eyebrow.  Ceff raised his hands, palm out, and smiled.  “You are the professionals.  I surrender.”

Professionals?  I didn’t feel like a professional in my wrinkled, sweat stained clothes, but we had worked missing person cases before.  I focused on the few facts we knew so far and what information we were missing.

“We need to know if the cases are connected,” I said.  “Maybe, just maybe, one of the kids saw something that will lead us to where they’re being kept.  And if we find the children, we’ll need backup to get them out.”

I was assuming that the children were still alive.  We all were.  To think that these children may already be dead was too horrible to imagine.

“I’ll call Jenna,” Jinx said.

The Hunters Guild wouldn’t sanction a raid to extract faerie children—they only fought to protect humans—but Jenna didn’t mind working a side-job, even if it was to save non-humans.  For a Hunter, she was remarkably open-minded.

“I will send word to the leaders of the local water fae,” Ceff said.  “For now, we should all remain vigilant.”