Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (15 page)

Maeve stuck
with me, her cold spirit encasing us as I ran home. I didn’t know
who to call, or what to do, but I had to keep the kid safe first,
and figure everything out later.

Once I made it
to my cul-de-sac, my arms were shaking, but the sense of relief
that settled over me was substantial. We were home. We were
safe.

I carried him
into my house and laid him on the sofa. He huddled up into the
corner while I went to the bathroom and grabbed a cloth to clean up
his face. When I returned, he flinched at my touch.

“I promise,
kid,” I said. “We’ll be fine. I just need to make a phone call, and
then I’ll make you something to eat. You must be hungry.”

I hid the knife
he had been carrying on top of the bookshelf, made the call, and
went into the kitchen to make some sandwiches and pour a glass of
milk. I laid the food and drink on the coffee table in front of the
kid, but he didn’t respond, not even a grunt. I got some biscuits
and handed him one. He took it carefully, his stumpy fingers
trembling, but he didn’t eat it.

I sat next to
him in silence, not quite knowing what to do next. A knock twenty
minutes later made him jump, but I reassured him before I answered
the door.

“Come in, Mrs.
Yaga. Thanks for this.”

She sat on a
chair across from the child and observed him silently for a few
minutes. To my surprise, she smiled at me. “You attract the lost
souls, too.”

I didn’t have a
clue what she meant.

“The magic will
wear off,” she said. “It’s just a glamour, intended to fool
temporarily. It isn’t permanent. Not enough strength behind
it.”

“Is there any
way of telling if it’s him?” I asked. “If he’s Peter’s son?”

She sighed.
“Ava, why do you think it’s that child?”

“It just makes
sense to me. We’ve been asking questions about him, about a
creature that looks like he looks right now, and then he gets
pushed in our path. And he smells like Peter. His blood… I would
know it anywhere. I know Peter. I just know this is Emmett. He’s
not talking, though.”

“Likely he
can’t. This is the kind of being Peter saw that night?”

I nodded. “Yep.
And we saw a drawing of it, too. We’ve been trying to match it to a
name.”

“You won’t. It
doesn’t exist. This has always been a shroud, a disguise. Whoever
is involved in this really doesn’t want to be found.”

“No, they
don’t. But they wanted Peter to hurt his own child. Why?”

“To distract
him? To punish him? If the child had died, the glamour would have
vanished, and Peter would have seen the truth.
If
it’s his
child. Either way, he would have killed a child, not a monster. I
doubt even he could brush that aside so easily.”

“It means we’re
getting closer to the truth,” I said. “If they’re going this far,
then we have to be close.”

“They might
come back for the child,” she warned. “They won’t stop warning you
away. You won’t be safe while you keep asking questions.”

The boy nodded
off on the couch, so I carried him into my bedroom to lay him on
the bed. When I brushed my hand against his green-scaled face, he
nuzzled against my touch in his sleep. A pinch in my stomach
reminded me that he wasn’t mine to keep.

“Can you watch
over him for a while?” I asked my landlady when I went back into
the living room. “I need to do something.”

“Are you going
to Peter?”

“No. He’s… he
won’t listen right now. At least, not to me. I’m going to the
person who set up the meeting tonight. He has to know something. If
he does, then I’ll get it out of him, one way or another.”

“I will watch
over the boy, but you should think twice about jumping straight
into battles. Is that really the life you want?”

“Do I have a
choice?” I asked, deadly serious. “I don’t see any other way for
me.”

“I once thought
the same,” she said with a secretive smile. “Perhaps your life will
change as mine did.”

“Do you know
what it is I’m going after?”

She shook her
head, her wrinkles deepening. “Nobody does. That tells me enough to
know it is a battle I cannot win. This isn’t some small-time demon
making a few extra euro, Ava. This is a sprawling arrangement that
could take your life if you interfere too much.”

I rubbed my
forehead, feeling a headache setting in. “And if I sit around and
do nothing, I’ll torture myself with what ifs. There are children
somewhere, waiting to be sold. How many have already been sold? All
because nobody gives a crap.”

She nodded
again. “And you see yourself there, with those children.”

I ignored that
remark. “I need to go. Thank you for watching him. I’ll be back as
soon as I can.” I left before she could plant any more seeds of
doubt in my mind. I had to find Moses, and I would poke out his
eyeballs before I returned home without some answers.

The flats were
silent when I finally got there. I heard an occasional burst of
laughter through an open window and an odd wail of a cat, but
mostly, silence. I realised for the first time that the
streetlights surrounding the flats were all broken, every single
one, and I remembered the lights going out before the child
appeared and only coming back on as if to ensure we didn’t miss
him.

Seeing the
lights were still on in his home, I ran up the stairwell to Moses’s
flat. I rang the bell, and as soon as a woman answered the door, I
pushed past her and went straight for the living room. A couple of
men were playing some video soccer game in front of a massive
television on the far wall.

When Moses
caught sight of me, he hesitated before giving me his usual fake
grin. “Where’s your friend?”

I flew at him,
fangs out, my fingers clutching his face as if I were about to pull
it off. “Back off!” I snapped at the others before they could put
their hands on me. At the sight of my true face, they all took a
step back, glancing at each other nervously.

“You set us
up,” I hissed at Moses, relishing the fear in his eyes. “Tell me
what the hell you know before I rip out your heart.”

He swallowed
noisily. “I don’t know anything. I swear.”

My nails dug
into his skin, freeing trickles of blood. The men made a move,
grabbing my arms to pull me away. I struggled against them,
punching and kicking wildly, until Moses shouted at us all to
stop.

“Just chill the
fuck out,” he demanded, making a show of relaxing in his chair.
“Now, what kind of evil bitch are you? Because you sure as hell
don’t look like a vampire.”

“Except for
those fucking teeth,” one of his friends muttered, and they all
laughed nervously.

“I’m the person
who’s going to kill everyone in this room if you don’t start
talking right now.”

“I take it the
meeting didn’t go well,” he said, lighting a joint with shaky
fingers.

“No, it didn’t
fucking
go well. They sent a child to be killed by us;
that’s what
fucking
happened. Where’s the contact? Who is
he? Who does he work for? What—”

“Hold up. I’ll
find him.” He held my gaze. “I didn’t play matchmaker to have some
kid caught up in the middle of it. He’s made a tit out of me, and
I’ll find out why.”

I sat on a
chair and sighed. Getting information out of anyone was a
bitch.

“I didn’t set
you up,” he clarified, leaning forward in his seat. “But don’t go
threatening my people, all right?”

“My friend
almost killed his own son because of you,” I said through gritted
teeth. “I’m not in the mood for
your
threats.”

For some
reason, that shattered the angry tension in the room. They all
muttered together about how terrible that was, and the woman who
answered the door, Moses’s mother presumably, brought me a cup of
tea.

“They’re right
scumbags,” Moses said sympathetically. “That’s exactly the kind of
screwed up shit they get up to.”

I nodded. “Yep.
They kill people and take their kids to sell as slaves. They try to
make parents murder their own children. They’re capable of
anything, and they get away with it.”

“I swear to
you, I’ll find out what happened. But you really need to stop being
seen around here. We don’t want anyone thinking we’re buddying up.
It’s dangerous for all of us if it looks like we’re taking
sides.”

“I hear that a
lot,” I murmured, getting to my feet. “I should get back. Sorry for
the vamp attack.”

He burst out
laughing. “This one’s crazy. Are you a vampire?”

“Nah. I’m just
a mongrel.”

I left his flat
and made it home without incident, and Mrs. Yaga left soon
afterward. I sat in a chair by the bed and watched the kid sleep
for a while. What had he been through? Peter’s kid or not, I
couldn’t keep him with me forever. I had to figure out where he
came from and find a place for him to live safely. My life was far
too dangerous for a child. I wrapped a blanket around me and dozed
off, my dreams full of lost children.

I woke up
slowly, my vision blurring as I tried to make out the figure
standing in front of me. I jumped, gripping the blanket tighter,
and my heart wouldn’t stop racing as I studied him.

A small child,
he looked closer to seven than the nine- or ten-year-old I had been
expecting. His dark brown hair reached his shoulders. He was pale,
his skin free from the scaled glamour of the night before, with
deep black bags under his eyes. He had a cut across his nose,
probably from Peter’s strike, and his eyes made me inhale sharply.
Those eyes were the exact same hazel as Peter’s, but larger, wider,
and free from the anger in his father’s. He was his father’s child,
of that I was certain, but Emmett Brannigan looked so delicate and
ethereal that it was hard to believe.

He stared at
me, unblinking.

I leaned
forward slowly, afraid I might scare him off. “Are you okay?”

“I’m
hungry.”

I leaned back,
startled. His answer was so normal, so ordinary, and his voice so…
childlike. I grinned. “I’ll make you breakfast. Come on into the
kitchen.”

To my surprise,
he gripped my hand with his little one, and my heart threatened to
stop. Blinking back my emotions, I led him into the kitchen and sat
him on the counter while I picked out things he might like to eat.
He recognised cereal, but not eggs. He liked the look of peanut
butter, but preferred the taste of jam. And he drank a cup of milk
without taking a breath, letting trickles of liquid drip down his
chin.

“Want some
more?”

He looked so
surprised that I wanted to cry again. What had he gone through?

“Let’s put on
some cartoons, and you can try some food while I make some phone
calls, okay?”

He didn’t
respond, but he followed me into the living room, his eyes growing
wide with interest when I turned on the first children’s channel I
could find. I cranked up the volume hoping to drown out any awkward
conversations I might have on the phone. He cocked his head to the
side as he watched, the food forgotten, and I hurried back into the
kitchen to call Carl.

I explained
everything quickly, and he promised to do what I asked. Two hours
later, Carl stood in the doorway with bags in his hands, seeming
hesitant to enter.

“He’s not
contagious,” I snapped.

“It’s not… I
know, okay? I know. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do
here.”

“Oh, forget
it.” I grabbed the bag and pushed him out the door. “Go be as
useless as Peter then!” I slammed the door and took heavy breaths
until I calmed down.

I returned to
the living room and sat next to Emmett, still holding the bag in my
hands. “My friend got you some clothes. Maybe you should have a
shower and brush your teeth, put on some clean clothes, and then we
can talk. Is that okay?”

He nodded, and
I blew out a sigh of relief that he actually knew what I was
talking about. I didn’t know where he had been, but if he didn’t
recognise eggs…

I showed him to
the bathroom, turned on the shower, opened the new toothbrush Carl
had bought him, laid out his new clothes, then waited in the
hall.

A half-hour
later, a clean, but still pale, little boy stepped out of the
bathroom, swamped in clothes that were too big for him.

“Sorry,” I
said. “We weren’t sure of the size.”

He nodded.
“It’s fine. Thank you.”

“I’ll fix your
collar.” I moved behind him to twist the collar of the large shirt.
I blinked a couple of times when I caught sight of the skin on the
back of his neck. Sideways S on a circle. A tattoo. Meaning what
exactly?

He turned, his
big eyes gazing up at me until I felt uncomfortable.

“Are you all
right?” I asked, feeling awkward and unsure.

“Yes. Who are
you?”

My face heated
up. Of course he had questions, too. I hadn’t told him a thing,
just picked him up off the street and ran away with him like a
baby-snatching lunatic.

“How about I
make lunch?” I asked, stalling for time. “And then we’ll chat about
everything. Is that okay with you?”

He nodded, and
I left him in front of the television again. It was a good thing I
couldn’t have kids because I was crap at taking care of them. I
contemplated asking Anka for help, but I wanted to keep his
presence under wraps for as long as possible.

“Emmett,” I
called out when I had finished making some sandwiches. “Let’s eat
out back.” I didn’t know what possessed me to bring him outside,
but I was glad I did when I saw the wonder on his face.

“It was dark
all the time where I was before here,” he said. “Are you sending me
back?”

“No! No, of
course not. You’re never going back there.”

“Good. That’s
good. I like this.”