6:4
“Well, this is frustrating,” Gwen stood against the wall of Nona’s double-wide, doing her best to remain as invisible as possible. She did not need that woman’s raptor stare focused on her. No, sir. No way.
Kim, who was doing her equal best to remain a small and inconsequential target, muttered. “We have to try.”
“No sign of a struggle. Kid just disappeared. And we know it.”
“It makes the family happy when an investigator tries. Dan has said half of what he does is being a sympathetic figure with a listening ear.”
“Well,” Gwen tracked Dan’s methodical movements around the double-wide, “He’s sure trying.”
If you’d told Kim a trailer could look this nice she’d have never believed it. She was glad her small home couldn’t see this place or it would probably have severe trailer-envy. Seriously, up to now she’d thought her house was pretty nice. Kind of rocking that cozy ‘herb witch in the woods’ thing with its flagstone-floored kitchen and rustic heart pine flooring throughout the rest of the house.
But this place. Yeah, so glad her cute and cozy house could not see the floating kitchen island with its extension for chairs that made it into a breakfast bar sitting on the ceramic-tiled floor. Or the living room – you couldn’t call it an “area” considering it had to be at least 17 feet long – with a small built in-wall fireplace raised up to a height that made it a piece of art with its dancing blue flames. The thick carpet with its rose pattern probably cost more than Kim’s furniture. All her furniture.
Anyone who used the term “trailer trash” seriously needed to take a tour of this place.
Dan walked the area, crouching to look under furniture, while Siobhan walked beside Nona. Kim did not envy her. At all. That lady was scary.
They’d fought monsters. They’d been overrun by a sea of rats. They’d had things or people digging into their brains. Not as scary as this little woman with her condor eyes making a lie of the crunchy-granola image she presented with her full skirts and head scarf with her white hair falling like a waterfall down her back almost to her waist. Those eyes said, “sleep and I’ll eat you.” And, yeah, that was not something Kim needed to experience. No. Nope. She’d just crouch here with Gwen and try to fade into the impressive woodwork.
“The bathroom is nicer than my house.” Patti sidled up to stand next to Kim.
“Betting the closet is nicer than my house.”
“It is.” Ben pulled down the blind with one finger to look out the window. “There’s a walk-in in the Master.”
Ivan looked up from the cream-colored couch he and Prairie were sitting on. “Seriously. Would you guys sit?”
Kim shook her head in the negative. “No. The idle get eaten.”
Dempsey leaned back in the chair facing the couch Ivan and Prairie were sitting on and sipped from a cut-crystal glass.
“Where did you get that?” Patti asked.
Dempsey pointed at a drinks cart at the end of the couch.
“That could be poison!” Kim exclaimed.
“Tasty poison.” Dempsey shrugged and took another sip, clinking the ice in the glass.
“This place is about twenty-five times nicer than my home.” Patti muttered to Gwen.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Kim replied. “Seriously, alchemy pays well.”
Ben released the blind. “Yeah. Alchemy.”
“So, am I the only one who got a real sense that Nona and Siobhan were measuring each other for cement slippers?” Sass nodded, either agreeing with Patti or shaking something from its ear. Who knew.
“I didn’t realize alchemy was such a cutthroat calling.”
Ben turned to give Kim a look. “What’s the dark side of alchemy?” At her shrug he expanded, “Neuroceuticals.” Another shrug. “Drugs.”
“Siobhan makes drugs?”
Ben shook his head, conveying his judgment of Kim’s naivete. “Siobhan makes drugs.”
“Uh,” Gwen said, “Good ones.”
“There really is a fine line between medication and drugs,” Prairie said in her quiet, gentle way. “Sometimes it’s simply if they are used or abused.”
“That is good insight, girl.”
Prairie jumped as Nona came up behind her, turning quickly.
At Nona’s, “What do you do?” Prairie said, “I’m a nurse.”
Nona narrowed her gaze. “And something else.”
Prairie lofted her chin. “It’s impolite to probe at a person who hasn’t given consent.”
Kim and Gwen both drew back so the back of their heads hit the wall. Ivan stiffened next to Prairie, ready to defend, but it proved unnecessary as Nona chuckled and patted Prairie on the head.
“You’ll do, girl. You’ll do.”
Dan, who had been standing near but not too near Nona, announced. “I can’t find anything to suggest who took the girl, Lllora right?” he turned for confirmation from Nona who looked to Siobhan who looked back at Nona with raised brows and jerked her chin towards Dan.
Nona cocked her head to Siobhan, screwing her lips to the side, then turned to Dan. “My daughter’s name is Llora. She is a good girl.”
Dan nodded, not commenting on the additional statement. It always seemed when someone was missing, child or not, those left behind needed to establish they were good or just or any other term they could use to imply ‘innocent’, thereby expressing the confusion they had as to why that individual was taken. The information was almost never relevant, and often contradictory to unbiased reports of the person’s character, but Dan never dismissed the opportunity to establish rapport with the family. Rapport could be the difference between learning details that could lead to the recovery of a missing person and not recovering a person at all.
“I was unable to find anything that will help in finding your daughter.”
“I could try.” Prairie started to rise, but before she could Dempsey placed his glass down on the side table between his chair and the matching one next to it and said, “This is where I can help the group.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small bag from which he withdrew a deck of cards. Their edges were gilded and deckled, speaking of manufacture in a different age. The care with which Dempsey handled them suggested a considerably different age.
“So. We need to find a girl.” He looked to Nona Stroga who gave no indication that she’d read this as a question or if she had that she would answer. As he listed off the information he very gently shuffled the cards. “She has been missing for two days. She was last seen here.”
Nona’s hand gesture suggested move on. This was all established.
“She is a small girl?” Another look to Nona. Another hand gesture.
“Young?”
“Not so young. She is nineteen.”
“We are looking for a nineteen-year woman. She is small in stature. She has long hair?”
“She has long hair.”
“Her name is Llora. Her mother calls her Rapunzel. It is a name given in love.”
“What the fuck is he doing?” Patti whispered to Gwen.
Gwen whispered back. “No clue. Weird Dude stuff?”
“Her hair is brown.”
“Her hair is blonde,” Nona corrected.
“Her hair is blonde,” Dempsey echoed. “Her eyes are blue.”
“Brown.”
“Brown,” Dempsey repeated, continuing to shuffle the cards. “Her hair is blonde. Her eyes are brown. She is small in stature. She has been missing from this place for two days. Her name is Llora but her mother calls her Rapunzel with love. She likes cheese.”
“She does- Why do you need to know that?”
Dempsey shrugged, cards moving in the same hypnotic rhythm, “The cards need what they need.”
Nona narrowed her eyes on the cards in Dempsey’s hands. After a long drawn out moment she nodded. “Llora, my little Rapunzel, likes cheese.” She turned to Siobhan and threw up her hands. “Who does not like cheese?”
“Suspect people,” Siobhan answered immediately.
Dempsey continued without pause. “Llora wants to be a botanist.”
“Llora wants to be what I want her to be.”
“Llora’s mother wants her to be something more. Llora wants to be a botanist.”
“He is good,” Nona hissed to Siobhan whose only commentary was to eye Dempsey and his moving cards. He was good. She wondered idly if it was his Magick or if he was just a really good cold reader.
Something told her it was the latter. Not just because reading minds was not a Magick she had ever encountered; though there were rumors of it just as there were rumors of Blood Magick there was some suggestion the whole “Jean Grey go crazy with voices in her head thing” was a cautionary tale told initially by those who had witnessed the phenomenon first hand. More because Dempsey struck her as a guy who was really good at reading a room or a mark.
The constant flow of cards between Dempsey’s hands stopped precipitously. As he lowered the deck towards the coffee table between his chair and the couch five cards leaped from the deck and laid themselves out in an arch. From the left they read Queen of Swords, Wheel of Fortune, Eight of Swords, Four of Cups, The Tower.
Nona gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth. Dempsey looked up from the cards and a small smile tweaked the corner of his mouth.
“Sounds like you are familiar with Tarot Cards.”
“Enough to know the Tower card, in any spread, is a bad omen.”
Dempsey’s smile widened. “But these,” he tapped his broad finger on the Queen of Swords, “are not a Tarot deck. This is the Triumph Deck.”
Nona leaned in, her reluctance to talk to anyone not an alchemist apparently pushed to the back of her mind. “Meaning?”
“It predates the Tarot but what’s more relevant is that this is a deck of divination. Some say *the* deck of divination. Everything reading is unique.”
His features flattened in concentration. Then he tapped the Queen again. “This card is Llora. Young. Female. Light hair. Independent.” His finger moved to the Wheel of Fortune, resting on the alchemy symbols for mercury, Sulphur, water, and salt in the middle wheel. “The building blocks of life, the four elements, represent Llora’s Magick, which, ma’am,” he looked at Nona. “regardless of what you’d wish is Alchemy.”
Nona peered at the cards with interest now. She moved around the couch and took the empty seat next to Dempsey. Regal as a queen, a Patchwork Queen, she shook out her skirts, lifted her chin, and stared down her nose at the cards. “What else?”
Dempsey rested his finger on the Eight of Swords which showed a woman bound and blindfolded. “The Eight of Swords. Seems pretty clear to me.”
Moving on to the next, “The Four of Cups. This card needs to be taken in conjunction with the first card. The Queen of Swords represents Llora but it also has this,” he moved his finger back to the first card and tapped a tree in the bottom left. He then moved back to the Four of Cups and ran his finger over the tree prominent on it. “Llora is somewhere with trees. Likely a forest. And,” he tapped his finger on the three cups standing in the bottom left of the card, tracing the hourglass shape of each. “That forest is three hours from here.” He frowned. “By cart or foot I’m not sure.” He slanted a glance to Dan. “Do you have maps that can pinpoint forests in that range?”
Dan nodded.
Dempsey paused, cocked his head, then moved his hand back to the Eight of Swords. He traced his finger over the bottom of the card. “There is a body of water near. Not a river or a stream. Probably a lake. Maybe a pond.”
Driven by her stupid curiosity Kim wandered closer, hovering over the side of Dempsey’s chair. “How do you figure?”
He looked up to acknowledge her, then back to the cards. He traced the lower arch where the cards fanned out. “The bottom of the cards tell a story. The tree here,” he tapped the Queen, “the water here,” another tap, this time to the Eight of Swords, “and the cups here. Cups are associated with the element of water. So trees and water.”
“And this,” he moved his finger over to The Tower, “is where she is held. A tower, potentially on a mountain or a hill that is above a body of water in a forest three hours from here.”
“And the falling woman?” Kim asked.
“Irrelevant.” When Nona stiffened, Dempsey added. “To this reading.”
He tapped the finger of his free hand, resting on his leg, against the side of his knee. A tell. Kim followed the movement with her eyes while carefully keeping her face and her ‘attention’ pointed towards the cards.
“Well,” Ivan clapped his hands together, drawing the attention of the group from the cards which Dempsey moved to carefully replace in their bag. “We have a place to start.”
He rose then turned to offer Prairie a hand up. She eyed the hand then got to her own feet, causing Ivan to frown. Shaking his head, he turned his attention to Nona.
She ignored the hand he offered, leaving it hanging long enough that it got awkward. Prairie stepped into the gap, bowing her head to the older woman. “Thank you for allowing us to enter your home. It’s lovely.”
Nona eyed her, the moment not as long as she’d left Ivan hanging, then nodded. Her gaze strafed to Siobhan where she stood behind the couch with Dan. “Find my girl and I will reward you.”
“We don’t do this for reward,” Siobhan demurred.
“And yet, I will not be in your debt.”
“Let us leave such talk until you have your daughter back.”
Nona gave Siobhan a long look. A long look. Then nodded. “Kevin will escort you out.”
As the group headed for the door to the side of the couch, Siobhan slanted a glance back to see Nona seem to shrink into herself. Hand clasped in her lap, shoulders curved forward, she lowered her eyes to the floor. There was something of abject desolation in the posture, the core that had shored Nona up crumbling from the inside, her foundation gone and the edifice she projected collapsing. Siobhan shied her gaze away from the private moment, slipping out the door after her friends.
Kevin was waiting for them outside of Nona’s home and he escorted them to the gates. When they were within sight of them he stopped and looked at Siobhan who had dropped to walk beside him.
“Can you really find her?”
Dan answered for Siobhan. “We aim to.”
Kevin gave Dan a look that hinted at the man he would become someday. Determined. Strong. Unflinching. “Aim high. She’s worth it.”
Ben came up beside Kevin, bumping him with his shoulder, dispersing the whisper of tension that had built around his words. The kid had Magick. What Siobhan couldn’t be sure. “We got you, man.”
Gwen very gently rested a hand on Kevin’s arm. And what little tension he’d retained after Ben’s bump dispersed completely. “It’s okay. You can let go. We really do have you.”
Kevin blinked eyes that had a suspicious gleam to them. “Thank you.” Shaking himself, he squared his shoulders and called through the gate in a voice that only cracked a little. “Let them through!”
The gate closed behind them, cranked shut by the guards. Ivan hurried to walk beside Prairie. “So, why didn’t you do your thing in there?”
Prairie shrugged, darting a glance over her shoulder to look at where Dempsey walked towards the back of the group and about three steps apart from it. “Because he needed to.”
“Since when you able to read people?”
“I’m not. Not really. I just know what it’s like to want to fit in and maybe you don’t but maybe you could if someone gave you a chance.”
“Damn girl!” Ivan threw an arm around Prairie’s shoulders and squeezed her up to his side. “You are too sweet.”
Prairie squirmed and poked him in the side to make the point she wasn’t there for the grabbing, then snuggled up to Ivan. “I am not sweet.”
“Nope.” Ivan looked dead ahead, rather than look down at Prairie and let her see his grin. “You are not sweet. At all.”
From behind them Patti watched the exchange, an indulgent smile curving her lips. Sass stuck its head out the window of its house and peered sideways and up to look at her. “What?” Patti murmured to the mouse. “They’re both sweet. Like I might just go into diabetic shock they are so sweet.”
“Yeah,” Gwen said, moving up to walk beside Patti. “So gross.”
Patti smiled at Gwen. “Ick.”
“Puke.”
Then they both sighed.
Up ahead Dan had pulled a map out of his pocket and was trying to read it while walking.
“Here,” Kim reached in and held the side closer to her so Dan could spread it out. “I’ll watch our steps.”
Dan grunted, his gaze focused on the map. Ben came up on his other side, matching his pace to theirs so he could look at the map too. They consulted in quiet voices, pointing out possible locations within a three-mile radius.
“How about this one?” Ben poked the map with his finger.
“No water,” Dan replied, “See?” He ran his finger around the area, showing no markings for water of any kind. “Not even a stream.”
Siobhan fell to the back of the group and sidled over to Dempsey. “Thanks for what you did in there.”
“What I did?”
“You gave an old woman hope.” She cocked her head. “Made us look like we were competent and capable of finding her girl.”
“You mean we aren’t?” Sarcasm lifted Dempsey’s brows like a balloon.
Siobhan’s chuckle had a bitter note. “Sometimes I question it.”
“You handled her well.”
A smile quirked the corner of Siobhan’s mouth. “I haven’t been in that world in a while. It’s amazing how quickly you fall back into the patterns. I apprenticed with Cade. Not,” she waved a hand in dismissal, “that the name would mean anything to you but in alchemy circles he’s kind of a big thing. Half stage magician, half the real thing. So much saying one thing, meaning another, getting people to look in the direction you want them to.”
“Most people don’t see that side of alchemists.” Dempsey shrugged. “Unless you know the guys I know. Then you don’t really see the kindergarten, kitchen witch, let me bake you cookies types.”
Siobhan smiled. “You might be surprised what’s in those cookies.”
“Probably not,” Dempsey’s droll tone spoke volumes.
Siobhan lifted her brows and gave him a visual assessment. “Probably not. How many alchemy brownies did it take before you stopped accepting cookies from alchemists?”
“Two.” Dempsey smiled. “I was young once.”
Siobhan sighed. “Most times it’s like that was a different world, a different me.”
“Hey, Dempsey?” Gwen turned to holler. “Do not mess with my friend.”
“Or Prairie will cut me into tiny pieces too small to be identified?” Dempsey raised his brows. “I got the memo.”
Gwen pointed her finger at him. “Make sure you read it. Twice.” Then she did the I’m watching you with her fingers gesture and turned back to talk to Patti.
“Your friends are weird,” Dempsey said to Siobhan.
“Yeah.”
“But loyal.”
“Yeah.” Siobhan’s smile was genuine as she swept her gaze over the group ranging in front of them. “It’s kind of nice.”
“Hey, Dan?” Gwen called forward.
“Yep?”
“Wait until I ask a question before you give your standard answer!”
“Yep.”
“Ugh!” Gwen threw her hands in the air. “While it’s a great day for a walk and all have you picked a direction yet?”
“Yep.”
Before Gwen could voice her disgruntlement, Dan followed up his ‘yep’ with, “We picked out three possible locations and then narrowed it down to this one.”
“Which one?” Gwen jogged up so she could look over Dan’s shoulder. He was taller than she was, making the move insufficient to allow her to see the map. So, she ducked her head under the arm he was holding out to stretch the map for reading, poking her head up close to the paper and jogging slightly to keep moving at the pace Dan set.
Rather than leave her in that predicament, Dan stopped. It might have been better if he’d somehow telegraphed this in some way to Gwen, but alas the memo did not get sent. Or read. And she walked smack into the map which Dan and Kim had to let go of or risk ripping.
“Argh!” Gwen extorted, fighting free of the map.
“Can I have that?” Dan asked, all calm like.
Gwen curled up her nose and her upper lip, kind of like a myopic gopher. “Whatever!”
Dan took the map from Gwen and smoothed it out, then pressed a finger to a spot. “Here is the one we decided was best. See,” he ran a finger over some circles on the map, “an elevation which is likely a large hill or mountain. And here,” he tapped another area with concentric circles a short distance away from the ‘mountain’, “a lake.”
“So?” Gwen asked. “What are we waiting for?”
Ben eyed the sky which had switched from dusk and was edging into night. “Maybe we want to wait?”
“Maybe we don’t?” Siobhan stopped a short distance from the map wielding mass and crossed her arms. “A woman is being held. Has been for two days. And, don’t,” she pointed a finger at Ben, “say ‘then she can go another day’.”
“Uh,” Ben got a mulish look. “I was not going to say that.”
Siobhan didn’t uncross her arms and her expression remained sharp. “Good to hear.”
“Good.”
Siobhan walked over to the map, looked at where Dan pointed, and nodded. “Does everyone have what they need?”
Everyone made noises like they did. No one was prepared to have that gimlet stare on them. Especially after watching Siobhan effortlessly navigate the chum-filled waters Nona Stroga swam in.
Siobhan pointed forward in what was probably an Easterly direction and the rest fell in line like baby ducks following their momma from a storm. A momma duck with shark’s teeth.
Kim smiled at the image. Duck. Duck. Ahhhh! What in All That Is and Will Ever Be is THAT?
Her chuckled carried her as she dropped into line like a good little duckling.
Enter The Woods 