It was a victory. A small one, but a victory nonetheless.
They lapsed into silence. Marley shoveled in the pasta, the spiced apples, and the energy bar from the MRE with no complaints or change in expression. It was the kind of single-minded focus of someone who didn’t know when or if the next meal was coming. Another question about her past that pulled at him, but he didn’t give it voice. None of his business.
When she’d finished, Marley wrapped her hands around the mug of tea and sipped. “My mother was murdered by some kind of shapeshifter.” Her inflection indicated only mild interest. It rained last night. But her aura boiled black with grief.
Ian wanted to pull her in, comfort her. Instead, he picked up his coffee and waited.
“She must have known it was coming somehow because she hid me in the air return. He didn’t find me. I was a good girl. I didn’t make a peep.”
Horror choked him as he imagined her wedged in the tiny space while unspeakable things happened only feet away.
“The bastard took my favorite doll. What kind of asshole steals from a child?”
“The kind of asshole who wanted proof of that child’s existence and the ability to track her. Jesus.” Ian set the mug down before he crushed it, and scrubbed both hands over his face, as if that would somehow cage the frenzied rage roiling beneath his skin. Inexcusable. No law, no mission, no justification existed anywhere for assassinating a child.
“Do you know who had your memory wiped?”
“My father. He came home, got me out of the vent. He said it wasn’t safe with him, and he had to go away. When he took me to the woman, he said she would make the bad dreams go away.” She gave a humorless smile. “She went a bit further than that. I didn’t speak for more than a year.”
God, no wonder she’d rebelled at the idea of a memory wipe. “That’s a lot of detail for something that happened when you were three.”
“I know. It’s weird. I thought it would fade once I really woke up, like a dream. But even though some parts are still kind of fuzzy, I remember a lot of what came before the block like it happened last week.”
“Normal memory decays over time with normal forgetting or interference from new information. It could be that the block shielded those memories somehow.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged.
“What happened to him? Your father?”
“I don’t know. I went to sleep and when I woke up, I was in Social Services. He left me behind.” She shrugge
d in a gesture meant to downplay the impact of that decision, but Ian could see her devastation.
Only a child. Alone and terrified.
A thousand and one questions churned in his brain, but he wasn’t about to interrogate her, so he asked only one. “When you say shapeshifter, do you mean changing from one human form to another or changing between human and animal?”
“The first. He came in as our next door neighbor. Mrs. Benson. Gained entry by casserole dish.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I’ll one up that.” Marley retrieved her box of charcoals from the bedroom and turned to a fresh page.
This sketch came much faster than the one she’d done of her parents. Quick, efficient, a series of lines and shading that rapidly worked into the recognizable shape of a man. She was good. Very good. Without a word, she shoved the sketchbook across the table to Ian.
He didn’t recognize the hulking man with a thin slash of mouth and diamond chip eyes. He hadn’t really expected to. A doll dangled like a dead animal from one meaty hand. The perspective made him appear a giant. But that fit with Marley’s view from the air vent. He was garbed in dark clothes, generic black pants and black t-shirt with no insignia. No visible weapons, but she might not have seen any. A tattoo swirled up the left side of his neck, bony fingers wrapping around his throat.
“This isn’t a Hunter,” he said. “At least not one sent by the Council.”
“You said the same thing about the warlock in my apartment. How do you know?”
“Council-sanctioned Hunters all wear a specialized gauntlet as a mark of their rank. Runs all the way from fingertips to shoulder.”
“That seems…I don’t know. Kind of weird. Like advertising ‘Hey, I’m a badass, and I’m here to kill you.’ Not exactly subtle. How does that fit in with the whole keep it secret thing?”
“They don’t have to be subtle. They do most of their work in the dark, and their targets rarely escape. Plus some of them really enjoy the extra layer of fear that goes along with recognition.”
“Well that’s just sick.”