Ethan nodded. “So the harpies were a cover, or a way to completely throw the Pack off balance and sneak Aline away. We talked to her right before the ceremony began, so she didn’t leave long before the attack.” He glanced at Jeff. “I don’t suppose there are cameras in the woods?”
“There are not,” Jeff said. “Just around the house. I’ve run facial recognition, but there’s no footage of her returning from the woods to the house.”
Catcher nodded. “So she didn’t sneak back in when the fight was under way, grab a bag, leave.”
“Let’s play this out from the beginning,” I said, walking closer to the screen and glancing at the timeline. “She was living in her house, running errands, saving stuff. She comes to the Brecks’ house. We meet her in the woods; the ceremony begins. The harpies attack.” I glanced back at the group. “Does anybody remember seeing her during the attack or afterward?”
There was only telling silence.
“Truthfully,” Jeff said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I wasn’t looking for her. But no, I didn’t see her.”
Ethan stepped behind me, pressed his lips to my neck. “I love it when you play detective.”
“I’m working,” I said, but I said it with a smile.
“What’s next?” Jeff asked.
“Niera,” I said. “An elf and a mother. She was taken during or after the glamoury magic was used on the elves. And that attack happened during the day after the harpy attack.”
“If we’re assuming these are kidnappings, what could Aline and Niera possibly have in common? What’s the motivation for taking them both?”
“They’re both sups,” Mallory pointed out. “There are plenty of people out there who hate us. Maybe the motivation’s political.”
But Catcher shook his head. “Political means proving a point. There’s no evidence of murder here, nobody claiming responsibility. By all accounts, the attacks were by two completely different groups.”
“Which we’ve decided is technically impossible, since vampires were the second group. If one group was doing this—or one person—who could it be?” I glanced at Catcher, Mallory. “This is old-fashioned magic, right? The kind you do, or make. So that’s sorcerer territory.”
“Yeah,” Catcher said, shifting uncomfortably. “But it couldn’t be anyone we actually know. Baumgartner, Mallory, Simon, Paige, me. That’s the entire crew within the tristate area. And you’d have to be closer than that.”
“Then we’re missing someone, or ignoring them. Are there any other sups who could do this, who may or may not be extinct, or who we think are just mythological creatures?”
No one answered, so I took that as a no. Frustration building, I looked back at Catcher and Mallory. “Okay. So you guys can funnel the power of the universe, right?”
They shared a glance that was intimate enough to make me uncomfortable.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Are there sups who can, I don’t know, work spells or magic that might seem like the good sorcerer stuff?”
“They’d be sorcerers,” Catcher flatly said.
I took that as a no.
Ethan’s phone beeped, and my heart jumped nervously. He glanced at the screen, nodded, looked at Jeff. “It’s the librarian. Can we conference him in?”
Jeff took Ethan’s phone, and when Jeff tapped a few keys, the librarian appeared on-screen, his dark, wavy hair sticking up in disheveled locks, as it usually did. He wore a polo shirt and a new pair of black-rimmed glasses that, however unnecessary, added to his debonair-scholar appeal.
Beside him sat Paige, a woman who was almost ridiculously attractive. Vibrant, short red hair with a Marilyn-esque wave, pale skin, green eyes. She wore a heather gray Cadogan House sweatshirt that somehow, on her, looked elegant.
We’d found Paige keeping a lock on the Order’s archives in Nebraska until Dominic Tate burned the place down. And then we brought her home, with the last few books she’d managed to pull from the flames.
“Librarian. Paige,” Ethan said in greeting.
Paige offered a small wave.
“Liege,” the librarian said.
“Have you identified any connection between Aline and Niera?” Ethan asked.
“Directly? No,” he said. “No information on Niera beyond what you’ve provided, for obvious reasons. Basic biographical information for Aline, but nothing terribly interesting there. No, the key here isn’t Niera and Aline; it’s their disappearances. Long story short, they aren’t the only ones who are gone.”
If the librarian hadn’t yet gotten everyone’s attention, he got it now. Even the low hum of the computers seemed to drop another decibel.
“They didn’t have anything in common except for the fact that they’re supernaturals and they’ve disappeared. So we dug through newspapers and missing persons bulletins in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and . . .” He fumbled through a stack of papers on the table in front of him.
“Minnesota,” Paige politely finished, sliding him a smile. “You always forget Minnesota.”
“I always forget Minnesota,” he agreed. “We looked over those records for the last three years and cross-referenced the records with the North American Vampire Registry, friends in the community, anyone else we could think of to identify whether any of those missing persons were supernaturals.”
“We talked to Merit’s grandfather,” Paige said. “He seemed very eager to offer his thoughts.”
I smiled. “He’s probably ready to jump out of his skin and appreciated the distraction.”
“That he was,” she agreed. “He’s looking forward to seeing you. I told him I’d pass along his love.”
“Consider it passed.”
The librarian cleared his throat. He wasn’t much for chitchat. “We took those missing supernaturals and looked for an associated supernatural event.”
“An attack,” I said, and he nodded.
“No harpies,” he said, “but there are instances of magical attacks with some of those kidnappings. One involved a sudden bout of bloodlust—set off a bar brawl. Another was an indoor pixie attack. Nothing at the scale of the harpies or elf glamour, though.”
“And how many did you find?” Ethan asked.
“That we can confirm, six.”
Ethan blinked at the screen. “Six missing sups with attacks? How has no one noticed this before? Realized this was going on?”
The librarian frowned. “Why would they? Supernaturals didn’t used to talk to each other. Most of this happened before we were out of the closet. Some group attacks you, you lose a member, you probably aren’t going to publicize it.”
Ethan nodded. “What groups did you find?”
“That’s the unusual thing,” the librarian said, crossing his arms on the table and leaning forward. “It’s a veritable Noah’s ark: troll of the non-River variety, sylph, doppelgänger, giantess, a suspected but unconfirmed leprechaun, and an incubus.”
There was a buzz of recognition in my bones. “What about shifters and elves?”
“Neither,” he said. The librarian read the names of the missing in chronological order, and Jeff added them to the growing “Victims” list on our electronic whiteboard, which already included Niera and Aline.
I scanned the list and looked back at Ethan, dread growing cold and heavy in my stomach. “How many of these species live together?”
“Together?” the librarian asked, lifting his gaze to me. “In families?”
“Families, clans, houses, whatever. How many?”
“Incubi tend to live alone. Ditto doppelgängers, trolls. The rest live in small bands—usually family-based structures. But that would be maybe five or six together at most. Nothing even approaching the size of a Pack or elf clan.”
“Or the ferocity,” Paige said, scanning a paper in front of her. “Most of the creatures on the missing list are relatively peaceful, keep to themselves. Incubi and leprechauns can be troublemakers.”