Black Wings, Gray Skies (Black Hat Bureau 4)

1

Forearms braced on the chill metal railing, I gazed out at Charleston Harbor from the Battery. From here, I had a clear view of Fort Sumter, Castle Pinckney, Fort Moultrie, and Sullivan's Island Lighthouse. Behind me sat a trim row of historic, and historically important, antebellum mansions with price tags in the tens of millions. White Point Garden wasn’t far. And, being a peninsula, the Atlantic Ocean swirled around us.

Charleston might be a small city, but it was plenty big enough for our missing kids to get lost in.

A breeze ripe with hints of green apples and smoky cherry tobacco teased my nose, and I filled my lungs. I bargained with Asa to wear his long hair loose today, and the wind thanked me for it, teasing the velvet black strands. The way the ends whipped into his serious peridot eyes must have driven him nuts, but he let me enjoy myself.

Probably because his inner daemon was counting down the hours until I brushed out the tangles.

The bar through his septum glinted, titanium bright, and his rough-cut druzy earrings sparkled in the sun as he approached me.

“We have another victim.” Asa mimicked my pose, his hands tight on the metal. “A seven-year-old boy.” His fingers flexed. “Andreas Farmer.”

“Human?”

“Yes.”

The most peculiar aspect of this case was the choice of prey: human children.

A classic, yes, hence the storybooks, but few predators dared hunt them openly in the era of cellphones, hobby drones, and traffic cameras mounted at every intersection. Shadows were no longer dark enough for monsters to hide in. Not with humans wielding night vision goggles and brandishing thermal imaging.

Modern technology was its own kind of magic, and paranormals were rapidly losing ground to science.

The parents had no idea what had happened to their children. Neither did we. They assumed the boys had been kidnapped, because we couldn’t afford to let them think anything else. Even with what we knew, we were no better informed, really. We assumed, given paranormals’ tendency toward predation of humans, that we were hunting a killer and not a serial kidnapper, but we simply didn’t know yet.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

What a way to ring in the new year.

Early-morning sunlight glittered on the water, but a chill had settled in my bones. “Are we sure…?”

“There was no body,” he allowed, “but the child lost too much blood to have survived.”

The same as the others.

“Where was he taken?”

“Fort Sumter.” Asa reached over, twining his fingers with mine. “His parents both work full-time, so they enrolled him in an educational day program at his school. The program offers students adult supervision during holiday breaks when parents are unable to watch their kids for extended periods. The curriculum is heavy on field trips, and that’s how his group came to tour the island. They were scheduled to leave at noon, but he didn’t get back on the boat. His teacher worried he might have climbed where he shouldn’t have and fell in the water, but the park rangers didn’t find anything. Neither did Marine Patrol or the Coast Guard.”

Civil War-era cannons, hulking cast iron beasts, made popular jungle gyms at Fort Sumter, and kids never thanked adults who warned them away from dangerously good fun.

“A large blood smear,” he continued, “was discovered by a young girl this morning. The body volume of blood was nearby in the grass.” His fingers twitched in mine. “The girl and her little brothers are visiting their grandparents in Charleston over the holidays. It’s family tradition to visit a historic landmark a day to keep the children occupied during their long break.”

The layout of the fort was hazy in my mind, jumbled with other maps I had skimmed. “Where did she find the blood?”

“In an alcove where restoration work is being done on a cannon.”

“Those poor kids.” I blew out a breath. “I’ll file the paperwork to have a witch sent to them.”

The director—well, one of his underlings—would lie about what agency offered the children help adjusting to their trauma. Say anything, do anything, promise anything. Whatever it took to get a Black Hat special agent through the door. From there, the family would receive the same treatment I had administered to Camber and Arden. Except in a much higher dose. With no follow-up appointments.

Should they recall any damning specifics later, they might rate a second consult.

Their final.

With anyone.

Ever again.