Some of the ice in my gut began to thaw at his words. That was Marty to a T, always thinking of ways to help others, even if doing so meant getting himself into trouble. That chivalrous streak of his was going to get him killed one of these days.

  “You shouldn’t have to do this alone,” I said as I faced him. “And… I think we should go to the police.”

  “Going to the police is a bad idea,” Henner said, shaking his head again.

  “Why?” I asked. “It would mean more people on the case to help find the missing girls.”

  “We can’t go to the police, Pops,” Marty said as he faced me. Recently, he’d started calling me ‘Pops’ though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I’d nicknamed him ‘McFly’? I wasn’t sure. Not that I minded… “We signed Ophelia’s contract, remember?”

  I’d conveniently forgotten.

  “Marty has a point,” Henner said with a shrug. “Besides, until we talk to Shelby or Stanley, we don’t know the specifics. For all we know, the girls might have just run away.”

  “While in the middle of making snowmen?” I asked, frowning. “In the winter, when the weather is awful?”

  “The girls didn’t run away,” Marty said, shaking his head. I didn’t think they had either.

  “Darla sensed a presence in the house last night,” I said, thinking this bit of info was still important. I looked from Marty to Henner and both of their eyes were wide.

  “A presence?” Henner repeated.

  I nodded. “She thought it was a ghost, but if it was a ghost, it left just as quickly as it came in and before you ask, no, the potion didn’t call it into the house. Which means it was already lurking outside, which means… it was migratory.”

  “Migratory?” Marty echoed before he frowned at me, as though I’d lost my mind. “Ghosts can’t move. They’re tied to one location…”

  I shook my head. “Most can’t move around, that’s true, but in really rare cases, spirits can possess more mobility than you might think.”

  “Poppy’s right,” Henner said with a brief nod. “Think of the ghost hitchhikers in urban legends.”

  “Right, these types of spirits are more powerful than your average ghost,” I explained. “A lot of them tend to be poltergeists.”

  Horror was beginning to creep into Henner and Marty’s faces as I spoke. Neither was an idiot. They had to see a connection.

  “You think the girls are dead then?” Marty asked me as I immediately began shaking my head. Clearly, we weren’t on the same wavelength.

  “No! That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Oh,” Marty said, still frowning at me. “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I don’t think both incidences are coincidences. I think they’re tied. And that means the girls are in trouble.” I took a deep breath. “We need to talk to Ophelia as soon as possible and if she’s not willing to do anything… then I think we need to go to the police.”

  Marty nodded. “First thing, you need to talk to Roy and find out exactly what he knows.”

  I took a breath. Marty was right and that was exactly what I planned on doing next.

  Chapter Five

  “What do you mean, you can’t do anything more?” I hissed as I glared at my boyfriend. I’d just told him I’d overheard his conversation with Ophelia two days ago and even though he appeared slightly annoyed I’d eavesdropped, his irritation with me didn’t win out over mine with him.

  Irritation because he hadn’t come to me with this information on his own. I’d had to pry it out of him, and he’d only been willing to talk about it once I’d assured him I’d already heard everything.

  I kept my voice low, though it wasn’t necessary. There was no one to overhear but Darla, because Finn was with RJ on a Bigfoot reconnoitering mission, using his new sunglasses. And Darla was nowhere to be seen or heard.

  Roy was sitting on my bed, his large fingers digging into the mattress, rumpling my heavy down comforter. His expression only grew darker with every question I hurled in his direction.

  “I mean exactly what I said,” he grumbled as he looked up at me, er down at me. Even though he was sitting and I was standing, he was still a head taller. “There’s nothing else we can do, Poppy.”

  “So you’re just giving up on finding the girls?” I asked and then shook my head. I didn’t want to just refer to them as ‘the girls’ because doing so was too impersonal. They weren’t just girls, they were, “Emma and Anne.”

  Roy took a deep breath and looked like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t. He just sat there, stretching out his fingers on my duvet before clenching them back into fists again. Clearly, this conversation was grating on him as much as it was on me.

  “What?” I asked.

  It took him another few seconds to open his mouth. “It’s not just the girls who are missing.”

  “What do you mean?” I demanded, frowning at him.

  “There’s been another mysterious disappearance… of a boy named Zane.”

  My heart stuttered, then resumed beating at twice its usual pace. Another missing child? It had only been a week or so since the girls had disappeared. “Zane?”

  “Zane is the son of a friend of Stanley and Shelby’s. And he’s apparently been missing since the girls have.”

  “Were they together?”

  “No, not when the girls disappeared. But, we aren’t ruling out coincidence.”

  “What?” I insisted, throwing my hands into the air. “Coincidence?” How could he think this was a coincidence? Again, a memory of the window blowing open exploded in the back of my mind.

  Roy nodded. “Zane’s run away from home several times. His mother, Louisa Rutledge, is in the process of having her marriage annulled.”

  “What does that have to do with,” I started, but Roy held up a hand to silence me.

  “I was about to explain, if you’d stop interrupting me.”

  “Sorry.”

  He nodded. “Zane, his mother and his father are all werewolves. And Zane’s father left them both a year ago. He hasn’t returned to support his family. So, according to were law, he’s considered a ‘lone wolf’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a man who shirks his responsibility as a father and husband. It’s a mark of shame on the family. When Louisa reported Zane missing, she also told Ophelia that Zane’s been acting out lately and understandably so since his father basically ditched him and his mother.”

  “Poor kid,” I said, shaking my head as I took a big breath and thought about Finn. His father hadn’t stuck around either, and I’d had to raise Finn on my own since he was a baby. My heart went out to Louisa because it wasn’t easy to be a single mom.

  “Anyway, Zane is friends with Emma and the two have run off together more than once. So, naturally, we have to rule out the chance that this is just another example of exactly that.”

  “That’s three kids that are now missing, Roy, and no one has seen them in days. You know how dangerous it is out there… especially in winter.”

  “Because they’re supes, they have more natural defenses against the cold than normal children would.”

  “But, they can still succumb to it,” I pointed out as Roy cocked his head to the side for a second or two before nodding. “They could be hurt or killed…”

  “You think I don’t know that, Poppy?” Roy interrupted, hands digging so hard into the comforter, I expected it to tear and feathers to explode all over my bedroom.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I breathed in deeply. I didn’t mean to place the blame on him, especially when it was Ophelia calling all the shots. But, I also didn’t like the fact that Roy acted like his hands were crossed. He just seemed… defeated. “How old are they?”

  “All under ten.”

  “Well, let’s just hope we find them soon.”

  He nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “Ophelia says she’s done everything she can at the moment. Anyone with scent tracking capability whatsoever has combed the woods two or three times. That’s what I was busy doing all last night. Louisa has been searching since the girls first went missing and Lorcan combed the forest at least twice, though vampire scent is laughable when compared to most shifters.”

  “But Lorcan could sniff out their blood… if they were wounded.”

  Roy looked at me and nodded. “Exactly. And, apparently, none of the children are hurt because he hasn’t detected a damned thing.”

  His bushy brows turned down over his eyes, eclipsing them in an almost impenetrable shadow. His forehead was a mass of deep lines, and his full mouth turned down in a scowl.

  “Nothing?”

  He shook his head. “No scent at all. It was like the children just vanished into thin air. I’ve never… no one has ever experienced anything like it before. We’ve combed the forest in and surrounding Haven Hollow at least four times. We’ve searched the homes of every supernatural creature in town, as well as the town itself.”

  “What if it was a human who might have kidnapped them?”

  He shook his head. “One of the gifts of were parents is the ability to detect their children through scent and if any of the kids were being kept inside someone’s house, the parents would have been able to detect them from the street—even from across the street. And, as I said, Haven Hollow has been combed over repeatedly.”

  “Maybe they’re in another town?”

  He shook his head again. “The wards surrounding the Hollow wouldn’t allow them to leave.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  Initially, I’d thought I could simply whip up a potion to help detect the children’s location, but even though I still wasn’t averse to trying, I was fairly sure my potions wouldn’t compare to a parent’s ability to scent out his or her child. I still planned on trying, but I didn’t imagine my attempts would yield much.

  Roy shrugged. “We’re just going to have to wait and see what happens and continue doing what we’ve been doing. The kids may come home on their own…”

  “And if they don’t?”

  He shrugged.

  I began to pace the confines of the bedroom. Despite this being the master suite, the walls felt too small, the room too stifling, like I was trapped in a cage, and I could only measure the space in increments. Roy’s stare felt like a weight on my back, something I had to carry on the trek from one wall to the other.

  I could feel the words forming in my throat and knew I shouldn’t say them. It wasn’t fair to Roy. But despite my best efforts, the words still came out and they did so louder than I meant them to.

  “That’s not good enough,” I said as I stopped pacing and turned to face him. “You need to go to the police.”

  “Poppy…”

  “What if there’s no scent on the children, because some maniac scooped them up and threw them into the trunk of his car? Or maybe someone figured out a way to drop the wards around the Hollow and they’re now headed for another state?”

  “You don’t just drop wards around Hollows, Poppy,” Roy said, shaking his head. “That’s not how it works.”

  “That’s not my point!”

  “Then what is your point?!” he nearly yelled back at me.

  “My point is that there are three missing children and in case you hadn’t noticed, I also have a child. So, I understand what Stanley, Shelby and Louisa must be going through. And if I had to deal with Ophelia as the only means of finding Finn, I… I wouldn’t.”

  “You know how the rules of this town work.”

  “Screw the rules! Those rules should go out the window the second something of this magnitude happens! Everyone is acting way too nonchalant about this and it’s beyond upsetting!”

  “Might I remind you that Emma, Anne, and Zane all have a history of running off? Emma and Anne aren’t Shelby’s biological children, and Stanley mentioned they’ve had problems with Shelby—fighting her authority as their step-mother. And I told you what was going on with Zane’s family. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the three of them got fed up with their family situations and decided to run away together.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that no one has found them!”

  “We can’t go to the human police,” Roy said, and there was a note of finality to his voice that made a hard, angry knot form in my stomach.

  “Why not?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “Because doing so would be going against Council rules, that’s why.”

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “You don’t understand the importance because… because you’re not from here and you’re not…”

  “What? A member of your supernatural community?” I fired back at him, my words as angry as the heat burning inside me.

  He crossed his arms against his chest and then nodded lightly. “Ophelia is the head of the Council and what she says goes. And she has made it very clear that under no circumstances are we to involve the human police. And I understand why.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, it’s not for you to understand.”

  I frowned and felt an indignant fire beginning to burn up from my stomach. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere—that was plainly obvious just by our body language alone.

  “My hands are tied,” he finished.

  A knot formed in my throat and breathing hurt. I turned toward the window so he wouldn’t see the tears shining in the corners of my eyes. I just… I was so frustrated. I was angry. I was scared—for the children, for the parents… for Finn.

  “I need… I need to be alone,” I whispered, proud when my voice didn’t shake, even though the tears were already coming.

  “Poppy...”

  I didn’t turn around to face him. “Please, Roy, I just… I need some time to myself.”

  I didn’t hear him say anything more, but the bed shifted as he stood up and a few seconds later, the sound of the door shutting followed his heavy footsteps across the floor. Soon they reverberated through the hallway as he walked down the stairs. That was when the tears really started, spilling out and over my cheeks, hot and bitter as I lost the fight against them.

  I collapsed onto the edge of the bed as I thought about everything that had just passed between us. This was the first fight we’d ever had and it was a fairly sizable one. I really wasn’t sure how we were supposed to get past this—or if we even should.

  Roy just… he didn’t understand. He didn’t get it.

  He didn’t understand what it meant to be a parent, how your entire life depended on the health and safety of your child. He didn’t understand how empty those parents had to be feeling right now, how scared.

  Eventually, I buried my face into the satin case of my pillow and cried until I couldn’t summon any more tears. Then I sat up and decided to take control into my own hands. There was no way I was going to just sit by and allow Ophelia to handle this in her cold, calculated way. Because I knew Ophelia didn’t give two damns about the missing children. All she did care about was making sure this didn’t leak to the humans, the ‘mundanes’ as she called them.

  All Ophelia cared about was protecting her own ass, and I didn’t subscribe to that logic. Maybe it was a blessing that I wasn’t part of the supernatural community. Maybe it was a blessing that I walked the line because it gave me certain immunities to their laws that others, within their community, didn’t have.

  One thing was for sure: I was going to the police, whether Ophelia liked it or not.

  And whether Roy liked it or not.

  Chapter Six

  My plans to contact the police and confront Ophelia were delayed by a day, due in large part to Uncle Joey, who managed to cough out a spark of fire, versus his usual smoke. The spark then caught a dust bunny that was stuck to an area rug in the living room. The area rug, in turn, went up in flames and by the time I stopped the small fire with the extinguisher I kept in the hall closet, the rug was charred to a crisp, and a section of the hardwood was charred. The small house fire had effectively put a kibosh on all further plans.

  Great, more I can add to my list of things to remodel, I thought to myself.

  Worse than the damage to my floor was the damage to Uncle Joey’s throat. As a gypsy man, he was only supposed to have a modest talent for magic. Men’s bodies didn’t support the wear and tear of that sort of power well. The only fire breathers I’d ever known were women, and even they had to be careful with their ‘gift’.

  The poor emergency room doctor had been baffled, unable to explain how a man in his sixties had managed to get what appeared to be localized first degree burns inside his throat without any further signs of trauma. We’d just explained that Uncle Joey had a propensity for smoking flaming cigars, but that didn’t seem to assuage the doctor’s concern.

  In the end, Uncle Joey came away from the incident with a round of painkillers, some antibiotics, and a new rasp to his voice.

  Uncle Tobias had agreed to play nurse to his brother and to watch Finn while I returned to my store, Poppy’s Potions. There were still a few days until school started back up again, and I needed that time to catch up on the business I’d lost over the holidays. I had a list of backorders and customers calling for them.

  Regardless, my store, my customers and all their orders would have to wait for another hour at least. I still had one errand to do—one that made me antsy, but it had to be done.

  “Where to first?” I asked Marty, clutching the Wrangler’s steering wheel to keep my hands steady.

  It wasn’t working.

  Fine tremors ran through my hands. I hadn’t slept well in the days following Christmas, plagued by nightmares where I came home from work, only to find the house empty—no furniture and no Finn. No matter where I searched, I couldn’t find Finn, and Darla was trying to tell me what had happened, but I couldn’t understand her because she could only speak pig Latin. To say the nightmares were a bitch was an understatement and a half.