Summoning the Night (9 page)

He snorted. “When I was fifteen, you weren't even born.”

I stuck my tongue out, then fought him off while pressing the photo to my breast as he tried to pry it out of my hands again. “Stop! This picture makes my heart flutter. Can we take it with us, please?”

“There's several photo albums' worth of the same thing at home,” he said.

“You promise?”

He nodded and gave up the fight, returning his attention to the pile of papers in front of him. “I can't believe Jupe hasn't forced them on you already.”

“Any from the time you were in the seminary?” I asked.

“That sexy Jesus thing again?” he teased without looking up. “You're a filthy girl, you know that?”

“I'm being serious.”

He grunted, then answered after a time. “Maybe. My hair was short in the seminary.”

I tried to imagine a devious nineteen-year-old Lon with short hair, playing at being pious. What a shock it must have been for his instructors to realize what Lon really was.

I slipped the photo into the stack of bulletins as he stared at a photocopy he'd found inside a file folder. A strange look bloomed on his face. “Read this list and tell me what's wrong,” he said as he handed the piece of paper to me.

It was a wrinkled copy of a handwritten journal entry dated October 29, the year the first group of kids was taken. A few things were illegible, crossed out. Seven names were written in bold caps. “Jesus. These are the original kids' names. Do you think this is a copy from Bishop's journal? I thought Dare burned all that stuff.”

“Could be. What about the last name on the list?”

“Cindy Brolin . . .” I read. “Wait, that's supposed to be—”

“Janice Grandin.”

He was right. According to old newspaper articles we'd perused in the banker box Dare had given us, Janice Grandin was the last kid taken, not this Cindy person.

“The other names are all the same, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Did you know Cindy Brolin?”

“No. I didn't know any of the kids. I went to private school. Back then, all the missing kids were from the public school.”

A reverse of what was happening now. After a few moments of staring at the piece of paper, I noticed something. “Janice Grandin was taken on October thirty-first. This was dated two days before.”

“Huh.” Lon pushed the box away and looked at me, his brow knotted. “If Cindy Brolin was originally on the Snatcher's wish list, what happened to her?”

Moved out of town.

Cindy Brolin apparently left La Sirena shortly after the original seven teens disappeared. Lon made some phone calls to the La Sirena police, but they didn't have a crumb about this mystery girl in their records. She was never part of the original investigation, and there was no mention of her in any of the newspaper clippings—nothing online either.

We almost chalked her up as a dead end until a broader search uncovered one Cynthia W. Brolin listed at a downtown address in Morella. Before my 4:00 shift the following day, Lon followed me into the city in his SUV and parked at my house. We took my car and headed downtown.

Morella is a sprawling, flat city. La Sirena's coastal cliffs are only about ten crow-flying miles to the west, and the Santa Lucia Range cradles the land to the southeast. On a clear, smog-free day, you can see beautiful crinkled mountain peaks stretching around the city in the distance. Most days, however, all you see is concrete and steel.

Cindy didn't live in the best part of town. On her street, we drove past abandoned storefronts plastered with sun-bleached posters for psychic phone readings, two sketchy
Circle Ks, and a rim shop with barred windows and doors. If I thought the Metropark garage near Tambuku was bad, the one attached to her high-rise apartment building was downright sinister. It reminded me that I needed to rework the temporary wards on my car. And maybe it was time to start investing in something more longterm on the underside of my hood.

We found a space on the second level. After parking, I reached over Lon's knees to the glove compartment box and pulled out a silver plastic angel that fit in the palm of my hand.

“A wind-up parking goddess?” Lon read from the discarded packaging.

“She doesn't wind anymore. I stripped out her insides and stuffed her with powdered angelica root.” On the flat base was a simple warding sigil. Nothing fancy, but effective. I dug out a piece of gum from my purse and chewed it until it was soft. Mumbling a quick spell, I pressed the chewed gum, now chock full of Heka-rich saliva, over the sigil. A brief wave of dizziness passed over me. I exhaled slowly until it passed, then stuck the newly charged angel on my dash. “It won't last long,” I explained, “but I'd rather not get my car out of impound after hoodlums decide to take it on a joyride.”

Lon narrowed his eyes at my low-rent magick and made a little noise of appreciative surprise. “You're kind of turning me on.”

“Just wait until you see what I can do with a balloon and some consecrated Abramelin oil,” I said with a wink.

His low laughter reverberated through the garage as we exited the car.

In the '70s, Cindy's building had probably been a swinging bachelor's dream home. Orange shag carpet lined the lobby and cracked mirrored tile ran down the center of the
walls. Whatever it was in its glory, it was just depressing and dirty now.

Cindy's apartment was on the sixteenth floor. Lon and I exchanged leery glances as we paused in front of her door, listening to the sounds of daytime TV roaring from the apartment to the right, and an angry domestic dispute in the one on the left. Stale cigarette smoke and rancid cooking oil permeated the hallway. A dark spot the size of a basketball stained the carpet near our feet.

After ringing the doorbell twice, the door finally creaked open. Female eyes peeped through two cheap chain locks.

“Cindy?” I asked.

“Yeah?” Her voice was wary.

“Hi,” I said brightly. “My name is Cady and this is Lon. We're from La Sirena Historical Preservation. We're writing a book about the history of schools in La Sirena, and we've been tracking down alumni for interviews. We were wondering if you had a few minutes to talk to us about La Sirena Junior High?” Probably not the best lie we could come up with, but it was better than our original plan, to pose as cops.

As if it would help prove our story, I held up a copy of the society's book about coastal farming in the 1800s, taken from Lon's library. Why Lon owned it, I had no idea. He owned a lot of strange books—and I'm not talking about the ones on demon summoning, either; his avid interest in irrigation and composting was far more peculiar, if you asked me.

Confusion swept over the sliver of Cindy's face peeping through the door crack. “I haven't even stepped foot in La Sirena in thirty years.”

“Even better,” I chirped, smiling as big as I could. “You'll have a different perspective. We've talked to about ten people so far, and the interview only takes five minutes.”

“I don't really remember much—”

“You'll get credited in print,” I suggested.

“No. Sorry.” She started to close the door.

“Or you can be completely anonymous,” Lon offered quickly.

The door stilled.

“It would mean a lot to us if you could help us out,” I added. “We drove all the way out here.”

She blinked at us for several seconds, giving my silver halo a suspicious glance, then shut the door and slid both chains off the locks. When the door reopened, a thin woman with dyed red hair, a dark green halo, and leathery skin stood in front of us. Dressed in a blue Starry Market shirt with a red name tag, Cindy gestured for us to come inside.

Her small apartment was cluttered with small porcelain figurine animals with big eyes: owls, cats, and dogs lined cheap brass étagères along the walls. Two variegated spider plants hung from beaded macramé holders, blocking the view from a single dirty window.

“Hope we're not catching you on your way to work,” I said, nodding at her name tag as we sat down on her couch. “We'll only be a second.”

“No, I'm just getting home. I usually work nights, but I had to pull a double.”

“Night shifts for me too,” I said, hoping to make some sort of connection. “My day job is a night job—bartender.”

This seemed to put her at ease. She nodded and sat down. “Working nights is exhausting.”

“Sure is,” I confirmed.

“So what do you want to know?” she asked as she whipped out a red leather cigarette pouch. After popping the clasp, she paused and asked an obligatory, “You don't mind?”
before tugging her lighter out of a small pocket. We didn't, but I was surprised by the scent of tobacco smoke. Not many Earthbounds preferred it over valrivia.

After a prompt, she talked reservedly about the elementary school she attended as a child. We weren't really interested in that, of course, but I encouraged her to reminisce, trying to loosen her up. But once we moved on to junior high, any progress we'd made immediately receded. I worried that we'd never get to the Snatcher, so I pushed a little harder.

“You were attending junior high when your family moved here to the city?” I asked.

She paused, then nodded. “I was fourteen at the time. Ninth grade.”

“When was that, year-wise?”

“Early eighties,” she said, dropping her eyes. “Can't remember exactly.”

“I bet it was hard to leave friends behind.”

She shrugged. “I didn't have a lot of friends.”

“Me either when I was that age,” I said. This was true, but my attempt at solidarity didn't even register. “So . . . why did you move?”

She blew out a cone of smoke and ran her fingers over a crocheted doily that covered her chair's armrest. “My father got a job in Morella.”

“Do you happen to remember the month you left?” Lon asked.

Cindy gave him a strange look, then crossed her legs and blinked rapidly. “It was in the fall, I think. Why would that matter?”

“Just judging from your age”—which was the same as Lon's? Dear God, he'd fared better—“you may have lived in
La Sirena during a well-known child abduction case. Do you remember hearing about the Sandpiper Park Snatcher?”

Lon pressed his thigh against mine in warning, but I could already tell by the way Cindy's shoulders tensed that I'd pushed too far. She sniffed a couple of times, then wiped away a bead of sweat from her brow. “What does this have to do with historical . . . what did you say you belonged to?”

“Preservation Society. We're interested in how the cultural climate of the town influenced the experience of attending school there.” Pretty good improvisation, I thought, but not enough to quell her nerves. Her countenance shifted from wary to full-on suspicious.

Lon immediately took over the interrogation, attempting to calm her with a softer voice. “All of us have memories that we'd prefer to forget, but sometimes good things can come from remembering the past—even the bad parts. Your memories might help someone today. Were you aware that two kids went missing last week in La Sirena?”

Her breathing stilled momentarily. She blinked several times. “No, I hadn't heard. I don't keep up with La Sirena anymore.”

“The police think it might be the same person taking kids again,” he said.

The hand holding her cigarette shook. Ashes fell onto the crocheted armrest, but she didn't notice. We all sat in silence for several seconds, then Cindy suddenly stubbed her cigarette and stood. “Look, I'm sorry, but I can't talk anymore. I've got to go to work, so you need to leave.”

“But you said you just got home from work—”

“I'm tired!” she shouted. Her hands were shaking badly now, and she backed up to the window.

“We didn't mean to upset you,” I said quickly. “We don't have to talk about that. Let's talk about something else.”

She shot me a steely look. “Get out, or I'm calling the police.”

Lon picked up his farming book, handed me my purse, and pushed me toward the door. Clearly he was reading Cindy's emotions and knew that we weren't going to get anything else out of her. He dug inside his jacket pocket and retrieved a small blue business card. “If you change your mind and want to talk—”

She refused the card and pointed toward the exit. “Get out. Now.”

The door slammed behind us right as we made it into the hallway. Locks clicked and chains slid into place. We stared at the door for several moments, then walked to the elevator in silence.

Disappointment and frustration flooded my thoughts as I watched a hobbled elderly woman using a walker at the opposite end of the dim hallway. Cindy definitely knew something about the original abductions. More than something. “You read her feelings. Tell me what you think,” I said.

Lon pressed the elevator button and pocketed his business card. “She was scared out of her mind. Someone wouldn't be that afraid just casually remembering a town terror from childhood.”