Mark Del Franco - Face Off

“I’ve been waiting for you, miss,” he said. He held his hand up. Laura hesitated, then realized what he expected her to do. She pressed her palm against his, and the barrier shivered around her. She stepped through to the vestibule.

“Mariel, tell him to let us in. If something has happened in there, I need to know,” Genda said.

Ignore her, Terryn sent.

“Let me see what this is about, Genda,” she said. To avoid any argument, she entered the building. Inside, an older woman, conservatively dressed, stood at the open door of her apartment. Another shield barrier blocked her from leaving. “Are you the police? What’s going on? Why am I not being allowed to leave?”

Mariel glanced up the stairs as she made a calming gesture. “Please stay inside, ma’am, until we clear up the situation.”

“Am I in danger?” she asked.

“Please get inside now, ma’am. This will be over shortly,” she said.

She mounted the stairs. The barriers were saturated with Terryn’s essence. As she reached his floor, she charged her hands until they glowed white. Pausing on the landing, she listened. On the next floor up, someone shouted to be let out. She stepped to the apartment door.

Terryn? she sent.

He opened the door. Fury flowed off him in waves, his wings glowing dark indigo, with shots of white flashing through them. From the main door, the living room, dining room, and kitchen were visible. Everything was immaculate. Puzzled, she took two steps in and stopped. “What happened?”

He shook his head. “InterSec security called me as soon as they got here. She was gone when they arrived.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’? Guild security was here.”

“They weren’t here.”

She jerked her head up. “What? They were supposed to transition to our team.”

“InterSec took over at nine. The Guild left at eight. Brinen coordinated everything with Aran. The Guild insists they had orders to leave at eight, but Aran says that the security order said nine.”

“Well, where’s the order?” she asked.

Terryn paced into the room. “Aran said it’s blank now. Some kind of safety spell erased it. I don’t care about that right now. What infuriates me is that the Guild didn’t inquire where the InterSec unit was. They left her here alone. They left her here, and she’s gone.”

The anguish in his voice tugged at her. Seeing Terryn emotional was a rare event. Seeing him distraught was unheard of. She held her hands out. “Okay, let’s step through this. This apartment doesn’t look tossed. Did you straighten up?”

“Of course not. Everything remains as it was when I arrived. Her keys are on the counter. Her handbag with all her identification is on the bed.”

“We need to get a team in here, Terryn,” she said.

He paced beside her. “Not yet. I need you to look at it. I don’t trust anyone else.”

“Is that why you locked the building down?” she asked.

Terryn glanced sharply at her. “Of course.”

She stopped his pacing with a hand on his arm. “Terryn, you’re technically holding your neighbors hostage. You need to drop those barriers.”

“She could be trapped in the building,” he said.

She grabbed him by the arms. “Terryn, calm down and listen to me. You know your neighbors. You’ll only bring charges down on yourself if you don’t release them. If Cress is in the building, we’ll find her, but you have to let those people go.”

He stared at her, breathing shallowly, then closed his eyes. Tendrils of blue essence whirled out of him, danced to the floor and out to the hallway. Several doors slammed and footsteps could be heard running. “I’ve modified the shield so that they can leave through the front door. No one gets in yet.”

She was about to argue but decided that was good enough for the moment. “Let me see the bedroom.”

He led her through the living room. She had been to dinner at the apartment but had never seen the bedroom. The riot of color on the walls, swirls of red and yellow and orange, surprised her. Every available surface—dresser tops, the head-board, windowsills—was covered with odds and ends—small dolls, teacups, a collection of fabric tassels over the windows, and stacks and stacks of magazines. The contrast to either of their organized offices was startling. As if seeing the room through her eyes, Terryn smiled nervously. “She likes to collect things.”

The leanansidhe were hoarders, most often of their victims’ belongings. Cress might not have acquired her treasures through the same path, but she obviously still had the impulse. Despite all the clutter, the room did not look ransacked.

“I’m getting faint human body signatures in here,” she said.

“Human? No humans have been here,” he said.

She sharpened her sensing ability. Except near the door, the room read blank, as if all the essence—including the normal ambient residue of a fey dwelling—had been drained from it. A chill went over Laura. “She used her abilities in here, Terryn. For some reason, she absorbed all the essence in the room.”

“But she didn’t need any. She . . . I give her essence every morning,” he said.

Laura averted her gaze from his discomfort at the admission. The nature of their relationship intrigued her. She knew that Cress absorbed essence from Terryn. Cress had done the same thing to her recently. Even though it was to save her life, Laura shivered at the memory. A hunger had lurked behind Cress’s touch that had filled her with revulsion.

“Then why would she . . .” Laura stopped and faced the door. A faint pattern of purple essence splattered across the wall by the door. “She fired essence, Terryn. She fired at someone in this doorway.”

She stepped closer. “It’s so faint, though, as if it was reabsorbed again.” She looked at the bed. “But it didn’t go back into the room.”

She circled the bed, assessing the edges of the essence void. A faint, sickly sweet odor filled her nostrils. “I smell chloroform.”

“She was drugged?”

Laura bent closer to the bed. “Looks that way. Someone figured out how to subdue her long enough to use chloroform. I’m not sensing any other essence discharge here.”

He narrowed his eyes. “She’s alive, then. They wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble if they were going to kill her.”

Laura examined the area where she smelled the chloroform, but, again, nothing seemed out of place. Her gaze fell to the nearby dresser, covered with stacks of playing cards, and she noticed that while the top surface hadn’t been cleaned recently, there were clear spaces in the dust. The spaces caught her eye because they were in distinct stripes, not scattered as if being touched with hands. Visually following the clean lines, she noted several cards had rippled areas. She touched one. “This is damp.”

She ran her hand over the quilted bedcover. “More dampness. They stunned her, Terryn. That would be the only explanation. They used a liquid stun gun. Someone tried it on her a few days ago.”

“What are you talking about?” Terryn asked.

She compressed her lips. “She thought it was a mugging, but I think it was a failed kidnapping. She didn’t want you to worry.”

“Worry? Why not? I might have been able to prevent this if she had said something,” he said.

Laura gave him a stern look. “No, you couldn’t have. We had Guild and InterSec security here, Terryn. They screwed up, but you wouldn’t have protected her any better.”

“I could have stayed with her . . .” he began.

“Which is exactly why she didn’t tell you. She didn’t want to disrupt Draigen’s visit over a mugging. And at the time, that’s what it looked like.”