My heart crawled up my throat on pounding feet. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“She’s got dead stuff all around her. And she’s scared. She’s talking to God and you gotta help her.”
Molly was talking to God? Molly hadn’t really believed in God for a long time. “Okay. I’m trying really hard.” And then I grinned. “Your other birthday present? Is this.” I reached over and picked up the kitten, depositing her in Angie’s arms. “Her name is KitKit.”
Angie’s eyes went wide as saucers. “I been holding her! I love her!” She hugged the kitten close. “I always wanted a kitten for my own! Hi, KitKit! I love you already!” Angie Baby threw her arms around my neck, squishing KitKit between us. “Thank you, Aunt Jane! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I glanced up from the floor to the Kid, sitting at his table, working, and shamelessly listening in. He shook his head at me slowly, perplexed, baffled. Or maybe amazed. It was pretty brilliant of me.
I opened my cell and checked my e-mail to find one waiting from Del. In it were three addresses, all of them out of the city, west of the river. I dipped the cell at Alex, indicating I was sending him info. He nodded, and I hit SEND. “Directions, sat maps, anything you can get,” I said to him. “We have a couple of hours before sundown and we need to be done before nightfall.” Or Molly might not make it.
He nodded once and bent over his tablets. I caught another glimpse of black and gold graphics, dark and bold, which seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before, and I shrugged, pushing my way off the floor. I lifted Angie up in my arms and headed up the stairs, the kitten hot on my feet, managing the steps with clumsy determination. “So. I’m guessing that you’re supposed to be in your bed for a nap,” I said to her, “and that EJ is in his bed asleep, and your daddy’s exhausted from healing Bruiser and he’s in his bed. Would I be right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She crooked a tiny hand around my ear and whispered, “Don’t tell Daddy.” I felt a tingle of magics from her words, a compulsion that she was not supposed to know how to use.
“Stop that,” I whispered.
Angie jerked back, her eyes wide. She covered her mouth with the fingers of one hand. “You felted that?” she whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered as I reached the second-floor landing. “I felted it. Don’t do it again.”
“Okay. I promise.”
I squinted at her, seeing her magics recede into her fingers. “Hey, can you use that on your parents?” If Angie’s eyes had gotten wider, her eyeballs would have popped out and rolled around on the floor. “If I ever see you using that on your parents, I’ll turn you over my knee and spank the living daylights outta you.”
Angie’s mouth went as wide as her eyes. “You would hit me?”
I paused on the landing, my feet coming to a complete stop, considering my godchild and wondering just how mischievous—and how dangerous—she was and might become as she got older. In a normal voice I said, “If EJ was about to touch a hot stove, would your mama and daddy grab him and spank his bottom to keep him safe?”
“EJ wears trainer-diapers,” she said, her face going mutinous. “He wouldn’t feel it if they spanked him.”
“Don’t dodge the question, Angie.”
Her bottom lip poked out and her eyes narrowed to slits. She huffed a breath, thinking. “Mommy and Daddy would spank him.” She frowned hard. “And they would spank me for doing magics.”
“And would you deserve it for sneaking around and doing things they told you not to? Things you knew they would disapprove of?”
Angie took her arms off my shoulders and crossed them, her curls bouncing, and I was reminded of an old black-and-white movie with a little girl actress. Shirley somebody. Mutinously, as if the words were dragged out by pincers, she said, “Yes. I would deserve it.”
“I’m proud of you, Angie,” I said, letting my face soften.
“Why?”
“For taking the high road. The hard road. For being honest and for having . . . honor. Not many people in this day and age have honor.” The corners of her mouth pulled down farther, quarrelsome and confused. “And I have honor too,” I said. “Which is why, because I’m your godmother, if I see you using magics without the knowledge and permission of your family, I’ll spank you.”
Angie huffed, watching me.
I smiled fully. “I’ll spank you to keep you safe and alive, the same way I’d spank EJ to teach him about hot stoves. The way Beast would swat a kit to keep it from falling out of the den and to teach him to stay away from the mouth of the cave.”
“Spanking babies is wrong,” she stated. But she uncrossed her arms and waved them in the air in front of us. And I felt the magics that had crisscrossed in front of us and under my feet vanish. I hadn’t even noticed them until she dispersed them. I heard Big Evan roll over in bed. Angie had been keeping him asleep while she healed Bruiser. Good heavens. What was this child gonna be like in ten years?
“Soon I’m gonna be smart and all growed up and using my magic,” Angie said, anger darkening her face. “Damn it.”
Without even thinking about it, I swatted her. It didn’t hurt her, but it got her attention. I schooled my face to neutrality. When had my godchild started cussing? I had to talk to Molly about this. But Molly isn’t here. “I won’t beat you. Yes, beating kids is wrong. But now you’ll have a time-out and no movies and no dessert after dinner. Because you knew what you were doing was wrong. And you know language like that is not accepted in my house.”
Tears welled up in her gorgeous eyes, wavering and pooling. Horror and guilt welled up in me, but I swiped the kitten off the floor and into Angie’s arms, gathered the little girl and her new pet close, and carried Angie to her bed, laying her on top of the covers. Emotion made me gruff. “One-hour time-out. No dolls, no TV, no nothing but the kitten.” Tears rolled down her cheeks and I forced my voice to soften. “I love you, Angie Baby. I love you with all my heart.”
“I hate you,” she said to me, and rolled over, presenting me with her back.
“No, you don’t. And if I die tonight, saving your mama, it’ll be too late to say I love you.” With that, I turned on a heel and left the room, going back down the stairs. Some life lessons are hard. They just are.
Big Evan followed me down the stairs, his face creased in sleep. Instantly I was reminded of the time I saw him sleeping and I shook my head, trying to make the picture memory go away. “What?” he asked. When I just shook my head again, he said, “I’m hungry. Who wants food?” and moved sleepily to the kitchen.
“Jane?” Alex called softly from the living room. “I found footage of Molly leaving the hotel.”
Big Evan was instantly awake and standing behind the Kid. I didn’t even see him move. Sometimes Evan was just plain scary.
On the Kid’s largest tablet was a still shot of an empty hallway. “Put it up on the big screen,” Eli whispered from the doorway. We were all talking quietly, to allow Bruiser to stay asleep.
The empty hallway appeared on the wide-screen TV, looking blurred and pixilated. “This is why it took so long to find in a search of security footage. Nothing really shows up when you’re looking fast, with multiple screens running at once,” Alex said. On the screen, a blur appeared, like four swishes of color caught on old-fashioned, regular-speed film when something fast happened. But it wasn’t fast, it was just swishy. “That was them leaving.”
“Magic,” Evan said, frustration in his tone. “Someone hid them leaving.”
“Yeah,” the Kid said, something odd in his voice. He tapped his screen. “This is the vamps arriving.”