“Just hear me out.” She spun the computer chair until she faced the screen and pulled up a computer file.
From over her shoulder, I could see that the file contained pictures of my mother. We had similar blonde wavy hair and fair skin. I kept some of her old pictures in a shoebox hidden in my closet.
Once in a while, when I was feeling sentimental, I’d take out that old box and flip through the contents. Nicky hadn’t been a deranged killer, dad hadn’t been addicted to alcohol, and my mother had been alive. Our family wasn’t perfect, by any means, but we had our good days.
“Why are you showing me old photos?” I asked. “If you want someone to reminisce with, I’m the wrong gal.”
“Just listen…”
“I’ve had enough listening for one day. When’s my flight back to Arcana?”
She slammed her fist on the glass top desk, causing a crack to web out along the surface. “You are just as stubborn as your mother. Give me a minute to explain!”
I threw my hands in the air in surrender. The threat of death might’ve disappeared, but I was still on harpy ground. It wasn’t a good idea to make her angry.
“I’m listening.”
“Good.” She turned back to the screen and clicked on one of the photos to enlarge it. “This is your mother.”
It was a picture of my mother strolling down the street with a paper bag in her arms.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes… I can see that.”
She clicked the next picture. “This is your mother as well.”
This was a photo of my mother through the window of a coffee shop, sitting at a table and sipping on a mug. All the photos must’ve been taken from a camera a long distance away. While my mother’s shape and hair were clearly visible, the finer details of her face were hard to make out.
“The interesting part about these photos,” Ruth continued, “is that they were taken in Arcana only seven days ago. Not far from where you live, I believe.”
My mouth fell open as I stared at the computer screen. Seven days ago? That was impossible. My mother had been killed on an HQ mission fourteen years ago. If she was still alive and walking down some random street of Arcana, she would’ve reached out to us.
“No, that can’t be her.” I squinted at the computer. Her face may have been fuzzy, but it was definitely her. “Your sources got it wrong. These are old photos.”
“This was definitely from a week ago.” Ruth flipped through the photos, more than a dozen of them. “Anita, our source, never gets it wrong. Olivia Harris is alive.”
“Wait… what?”
“We believe she was taken by Robert Caro, a nasty little human who trafficks supernatural c
reatures on the black market. He was just a small operation when your mother first went to disband it, but he’s grown since then, and has evaded our attempts to infiltrate. That was, until very recently. Due to an arrest of one of their thugs, we acted fast and got our man on the inside.”
Her words flowed through my brain like water through a drain. Nothing she said stuck. I gazed at the computer screen with fuzzy vision, trying to comprehend what Ruth was saying. My mother was still alive. She’d survived the mission. The proof was there, in the pictures.
I leaned on the desk for support. “If she’s still alive, why hasn’t she contacted her family? I mean, I’ve lived in Arcana for years. Why wouldn’t she let us know she’s okay?”
Ruth sighed. “We believe she’s still under duress. This is the first we’ve seen of her, so she was probably locked away for a long time. Who knows what they did to her?”
I nodded. Images of torture, small rooms without windows, and meals just big enough to keep her from starving filled my head. Maybe they’d been able to brainwash her into forgetting her family. It happened all the time in the movies.
“This was your big surprise?” I asked Ruth. “The way you were going to get me to join the HQ?”
She pushed away from the keyboard and stared up at me. “We’re not trying to manipulate you, Aya. But yes, we want you to join the Harpy Quorum. We want you to help us get your mother back.”
I gawked at her. Here we were, surrounded by dozens of harpies far more skilled for secret missions than me. They were crazy if they thought I could take that on.
“How am I supposed to get her back? I’m just a museum curator. Why don’t you send one of your super spies for that?”
Standing up, Ruth placed a hand on my elbow. Her skin was cold and rough. “We have reason to believe Caro’s organization has intelligence on our agents that has allowed him to successfully evade us until now. They would have nothing on you. It would be the perfect ruse.”