from the folder. “Here we are. Fane Atilio. She’s a sophomore. Hangs out with the Goth crowd, straight-A student, excels in English and history.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“It doesn’t say. The information is sparse on her. It looks like she flies under the radar. She’s never been in trouble, never been disciplined.”
“Is there an address for her?” McKenzie asked.
“Yes, there is. Feel like taking a ride? I’m going to bring a few extra patrols, just in case. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“You bet.”
Thirty-Nine
“I wrote something for you, my love.”
Raven was laying on Fane’s bed, head hanging off the edge, watching her study a book on ancient runes. She looked up, set the book down and crawled across the room to him, tearing her stockings further as she scraped along. When she reached him, she slid her tongue into his mouth, sucked on his upper lip, then sat back.
“You did? What is it? A spell?”
“In a way. For you to have endless beauty, and my love, always. Say it thrice by the full moon, and your deepest desires will come true.”
“Don’t tease, Raven. You are my deepest desire, love. Only you. Let me see it?”
He handed the paper to her. She scooted up alongside him, and he watched her lips move slightly as she read his words.
“‘Ode to Antigone’
Black boils beneath thin pink flesh
Molten emotion devouring rational thought.
Carrion attacks the filial bonds of lust
Which lie exposed, faultless in
Oedipal wantonness, broken by greed,
Damned to an eternal external hell
For another’s unknown sins.
The saving grace of a bleeding hand
Reaches through earthly bounds to
Experience the afterlife.
Hades, Creon, Zeus be damned,
Simple Antigone is drawn beyond
Where a silken sash has unforeseen power:
Haemon’s love cannot penetrate
The bridal tomb but for layer
Upon layer of pounded metal thrust
Through a rib as life ebbs onto
The musty gray floor.
Bound forever in the deathly marriage
Of two minds transgressing mortal thought,
Drawn to immortality in legend,
Farther and deeper that bloodless
Purity bound to bloody passion.”
Fane hugged him hard, wiping tears away from her cheeks. “Oh, Raven. It’s beautiful. You wrote that for me?”
“I did. I wanted you to have something special, just for you. Now that Ember and Thorn are…gone, I wanted to give you my soul.”
She slid back down to the floor at his feet, caressing the inside of his calf. “I’ll take your soul, and damn them. How dare they run off like this? No, I can’t believe they would betray us, Raven. It must be something else. Ember’s parents might have taken her phone away, and you know Thorn is going to be somewhere close to her.”
He slipped to the floor next to her, put his arm around her thin shoulders. He loved to feel the bones sliding under her skin, so close to the surface he could practically see their edges.
“I do know that, love. I have to believe that they are being kept away against their will. The spell we did last night was so strong, the only thing that could keep them away is if they were being held somewhere. I should go, actually-see if I can find out what’s happening. It’s been entirely too quiet out there.”
“Where will you go?”
“Back to my house. I can look into the mirror, see if I can find them.” He stood, and she scrambled to her feet.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
“No. I must do this alone. You know I need all my concentration to scry, and you’re too much of a distraction, my dear. A good distraction, but one nonetheless.”
He kissed her deeply, running his hands along her body. When she put her arms around his neck and drew her to him, he felt that incredible high that no drug could ever bring him close to. She slipped her hand into his pants and brought him to readiness in an instant, running her tongue along the edge of his collarbone as she wormed her way farther and farther down his body.
He stepped out of his pants and guided her mouth to his cock, let the warm ache begin inside his balls as she suckled. When he started getting close, he reached down and brought her to her feet, face-to-face, and took her mouth. He loved to taste himself on her lips. Kissing her, he slid up her skirt. She was wearing his favorite garters and panties, the black-and-silver striped ones. They were crotchless, and she was wet, ready for him. He lifted her off her feet and onto the bed, pushed into her body with a single thrust, his hands beneath her buttocks so he could get as deep as humanly possible. They writhed together, becoming one, building to a climax quickly. No spells, no potions, just their love, exploding between them.
He came back to himself, realized he must be crushing Fane, though she didn’t complain. He sat up, stroking the length of her, then smiled.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he said.
Forty
Northern Virginia June 17, 2004 Baldwin
B aldwin watched Harold Arlen through the two-way glass. Goldman was going at him hard. Arlen just sat shaking his head, repeating over and over, “It’s not me. I didn’t do this.”
Baldwin watched the nonverbal cues, looking for the lie. Looking for the trail Arlen had left for himself, the winding, narrow path back to reality. Back to the broken body of another little girl.
The cues were all there. It wasn’t the obvious things he usually saw when interviewing child killers: the leering face during the interviews, the preening, the giggles. The dead eyes that got lively only when the crime- scene photos appeared under his nose. No, Arlen was much more subtle than that. It was all but invisible, masterfully contained below the surface.
Arlen talked in rapid-fire denials, getting angrier and angrier the longer he was kept in the interrogation room. Baldwin was utterly shocked that he hadn’t asked for a lawyer. There was something wrong with that.
They still had a young girl missing. There were no signs of her whereabouts found at Arlen’s house, no clues where she might be. If he’d stuck to the pattern, she was already dead, though they hadn’t told the parents that.
