Dark Waters (Elemental Book 1) (2 page)

My bills were paid and there was food in the fridge,
so I was doing well. In fact, I could afford to be very selective in the cases
I accepted. I had already known about the paranormal community, but I kept my
mouth shut and stuck to human cases, particularly those that were mundane to a
fault. They were predictable and I never had to worry if my client was going to
turn me into a frog or eat me.

It was only by my exceptional skills in overhearing
information that I was able to learn anything about Logan Hunt’s university. I
always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, thanks to my natural
instincts and inquisitive nature. Even on strictly ordinary cases, I would find
myself wandering behind an abandoned warehouse and stopping when I heard hushed
voices.

Most people— most humans— knew nothing about the
paranormal beings they shared this world with. I knew there were four factions
of paranormals; wizards, vampires, fae, and shifters. I also knew they placed
secrecy highest in priority, which meant any human that knew about them was a
threat or a pawn. I didn’t like either of those options, so I kept my knowledge
to myself.

So how did I, a human, end up attending a paranormal
university?

It began as a restless sensation. I always trusted my
instincts and they were telling me to get my ass out of town. Since I was in
the middle of a case, I pushed the warning aside. Apparently, stopping an
elementary-level hacker was worth more than my life.

I started to wake in the middle of the night full of
adrenaline, as if I had been running or was in danger. I felt eyes watching me
when I was alone. After three days of this, I had had enough. I went to my
office, put up my closed sign, locked the door, and started to turn off my
computer. The plane ticket in my pocket to Hawaii was one-way.

The door opened and the bell tolled over it. I looked
up from my computer screen, startled, because I knew I had locked it. The man
who entered was tall, dark, and thin in an ominous way. He strolled into my
office without looking around, dropped a thousand dollars in twenties on my
desk, and said, “You are going to help me find my daughter.”

Had it been for anything else but a missing child, I
would have told him I was unavailable. I never asked how a person found my name
because I knew my clients were low-key about it. The way I saw it, if someone
found me, they needed the best and were willing to pay high fees for it. I
stayed out of most shady deals, but my clients were often embarrassed about
what they needed me to investigate.

“How old is she?” I grabbed my notebook, ready for
him to tell me about his seventeen-year-old who ran off with her boyfriend. I
was contracted for runaways more often than I cared to count, but if the kid
was legal, there was nothing I could do for the parents. Some parents didn’t
take that well, and this man struck me as the overbearing, stubborn,
unreasonable type.

“She is six.”

I looked up from my notepad. Overbearing, yes, but he
didn’t strike me as a mobster. He wore black pants and a black, high-collared
shirt tucked into his pants. No place for a gun, no gang signs, no visible
tattoos. His short black hair was clean, not greasy or matted. His deep set,
dark brown eyes were cold, but I could attribute that to his situation. He had
high cheek bones, light skin, frown lines on his forehead, and a crescent scar
from the right edge of his mouth to the sharp edge of his chin.

My instincts warned me to watch myself. “You should
go to the police with this. If she was kidnapped or lost, the police have a
better chance of getting her back. They have more people and resources.”

“This is a family matter, Mr. Sanders. I do not want
this getting into the media.”

“So a family member took her?” I always turned down
cases involving custody battles. I saw the child as a victim no matter how they
turned out, and I didn’t want to be privy to that. If the child’s life was in
danger, it was a different matter, but that was never the case.

“No, she was kidnapped. I will pay twice your usual
fee, plus expenses, and this,” he pushed the stack of twenties at me, “is a
bonus to give my case priority.”

I almost told him I had no cases at the time, but I
figured it would make up for the money I wasted on my plane ticket. I wanted to
reject the case, but I had the feeling he wasn’t going to the police no matter
how much danger the child was in.

“What is your name and how can I contact you?”

“My name is John Cross. My daughter is Reagan Cross,
and she was last seen at her elementary school. I will contact you when you
have found her.” With that, he turned and walked out of the office.

I sighed.
Give me a tomato and expect me to make
lemonade.
How he expected me to find his daughter without even giving me
the name of her school, I don’t know, but I was paid well for a reason; I was
good at my job.

Reagan Cross was not a common name, and I knew she
was in pre-k to first grade. Location meant nothing; John could have traveled
hundreds of miles to find me. First I searched John’s name on Google and found
nothing, not even a Facebook page. There were others with the name, but none
with the appropriate picture.

I searched for
Reagan Cross
, and
Honor Roll
.
How a first-grader got on the honors list, I don’t know, but there she was, so
I had the name of her school. Since my car was in the clutches of my ex-wife, I
borrowed my friend’s spare car and drove three hours to the small town. First I
got a motel, because I didn’t know how long it would take. Knowing the best
place to get information around this kind of town was at the local diners, I
walked down the main street to the school and found a diner right across from
it.

The town was quaint to a fault; it was the type where
a young couple would have car troubles, be forced to stop for the night, and
were never seen again. This was the type of town where people would come
together to cover up their dark secrets.

The waitress smiled at me as soon as I entered and
asked if I wanted a booth or a table. When I said a booth, she looked behind me
and asked if it was just one.

“Yes,” I said happily. Just one was plenty for me.
With a single menu and roll of silverware, she led me through the cramped
little dining room. We were passing an empty booth when my instincts warned me
I was about to miss something. “I want to sit here,” I said quickly. She looked
a little startled, but not offended, so I sat down.

“No problem. What can I get you to drink?”

“Coffee and a water.”

“I will be right back with that.” She set down the
menu and silverware before disappearing into the kitchen. There were only a
dozen other customers, since it was too late for lunch and too early for
dinner. Still, it was a lot for one waitress to handle and I didn’t see anyone
else.

“They found Toby,” a woman in the next booth said to
her friend.

“That dog is a menace. He always barks at the
neighborhood kids.”

“That’s how they found him. Reagan missed the bus
again and was walking home. Toby was barking at her from the alley behind the
school.”

This was the reason my instincts directed me to sit
here. I was always in the right place at the right time when I followed my
instincts.

“Where is Reagan? She hasn’t been into class the last
two days. I tried calling her home, but the line was disconnected.”

I looked out the window at the school and wondered
which way she went. There was a forest surrounding the town, so I would start
my search there. Of course, I hoped I didn’t find her; nothing good ever
happened in a forest.

When the waitress came back, I ordered a burger and
fries without looked at the menu and waited about ten minutes. Neither woman in
the booth next to me said anything else helpful. One of them was Reagan’s
teacher, and Reagan was apparently the brightest student she had. I felt bad
for the other students in the woman’s class if she was constantly comparing
them to Reagan.

I scarfed down my burger, which was about as good as
diner burgers got, and headed straight to the forest. I considered getting my
gun from the motel, but I figured time was more important than having a weapon.
My judgment had never let me down before.

I searched for an hour before I came upon a rundown,
abandoned house. It was a one-story thing that was barely more than a cabin.
The front porch had rotted and collapsed and weeds were growing up through the
wood. I tried the door, but water damage had sealed it permanently. I would
have passed it by if my instincts hadn’t screamed that something was wrong.

A sharp chirp broke the silence and I jumped a
little. I took my cellphone out of its holster on my belt and checked the text
message.

I see you changed your number again. I ran low on
money this month, so you need to pay my electric bill.

I cursed quietly; Regina was somehow always able to
get my number, no matter how many times I changed it. I deleted the text and
put the phone back in its holster.

When I circled the house, I found no other doors, but
I apparently didn’t need one; there was a hole in the living room wall from a
tree that fell on the house. Mindful of sagging places under the molding red
carpet, I tested every step gently. Brown water dripped from the incurved
ceiling as I tested each of the four doors. Only one of them opened. Inside was
a set of stairs leading into absolute darkness. It was the smell, though, that
made me hesitate. There were few things, in my opinion, as bad or distinctive
as the odor of rotting flesh.

I unbuttoned my over shirt, took it off, wadded it,
and held it to my nose. Unmanly, maybe, but gagging wasn’t going to help
anyone. I took the penlight out of my pocket and headed down the steps
carefully. There was not a drop of blood until I reached the bottom step, which
was soaking in it. The basement was concrete, so it hadn’t been exposed to the
elements like the rest of the house, but the fact that it was meticulously up
kept was as obvious as the two-inch deep pool of blood. There were the severed
legs and arms of multiple bodies, symbols all over the walls written in blood,
and a little girl.

Reagan Cross was very much dead with two distinct
punctures on her neck that were impossible to miss. I realized at that moment
that this wasn’t a human case and I was in over my head. I didn’t deal with the
paranormal beings because they made their own rules. Vampires were especially
unpredictable and untrustworthy.

Sickened by the sight, I went back to the motel. Once
the adrenaline started to come down, I tried to call the police, only to find
that my cellphone was missing. The last place I used it was at the house.
It
must have fallen out of the holster there or on the way here.
I didn’t want
to ask anyone to borrow their phone because I couldn’t risk questions. I had to
keep it quiet. Knowing there was no other way, I returned to the decomposing
house in the middle of the forest, down into the basement…

And it was clean. The blood and bodies had all been
removed, the symbols written in blood all over the walls were washed away, and
my phone was placed carefully on a metal stool in the middle of the room. It
was a warning. I drove back to my apartment that night without stopping once
even for gas. I didn’t call the police.

I expected threats or even outright attempts on my
life after that, but I heard nothing from my client or those responsible for
the girl’s murder. There were no bombs on the car, though I carefully checked
each time, no horse heads were presented to me on my pillow, and I no longer
felt like I was being watched.

Instead, I got a letter from someone else. It wasn’t
in the mailbox or slipped under my door, but set directly on my desk. Although
I was skittish as I opened it, nothing exploded and I found only a letter, a
hand-drawn map, and a check for five thousand dollars.

I read the letter, still clutching the check in my
left hand. The letter was written by hand with a spidery script in green ink.

Dear Devon Sanders,

I am well aware of your reputation for solving
problems in a timely, efficient, and discreet manner. I have an assignment for
you I believe you will find interesting and worthy of your talent. Logan Hunt,
headmaster of the paranormal university, Quintessence, has reason to believe his
school has been infiltrated.

Mr. Hunt is desperate to discover who is stealing
their confidential information and for what purpose. To do this, he suggests
you attend the university undercover as a student. Mr. Hunt alone will be aware
of your true identity and purpose at the school, and will admit you as a
wizard.

You will receive a payment of five thousand
dollars each week, room and board for the duration of the semester, and any
necessary ‘protection’ from previous dealings with unseemly characters of the
paranormal community. This includes members involved in your most recent case.

I need not tell you how important it is for you to
keep this secret from the human population. I chose you first and foremost for
your discretion and inconspicuousness. If you are willing to accept this case,
go to the university before the first of the semester, which begins on the
first of September.

Best Wishes,

V. K. Knight

They had me at “protection.” Thus, I found myself
rushing to get the last bus to a small town in Maine. It was early autumn and
the New England countryside was starting to shed its summer coat.

Oddly, the map did not give me the actual location to
the esoteric university, only the nearest town which was, quite frankly, a
ghost town. The bus driver gave me a severe stare as I exited, as if I was
entirely out of my mind. I assumed he actually skipped this stop normally and I
wasn’t exactly surprised.