me, and I felt uneasy. “What took you so long?” she asked. “Edden said he called you.”
“I was at my mom’s. It takes three times as long as it should to leave.” I exhaled loudly, not seeing Mia anywhere. “It’s over? Where’s Mia? Was Remus with her?”
Jenks clattered for my attention, and he pointed to the human side of the food court. My lips parted, and I blinked. The fussing child should have clued me in even if the man standing protectively over the slight, elegant woman hadn’t. Damn, she looks midthirties, not three hundred, I thought as I took in her slight, almost fragile- seeming frame next to the average-looking man as he held a baby bundled up in a pink snowsuit. The toddler was probably only hot, and I wondered why he just didn’t take the snowsuit off her. Not a scrap of skin was showing apart from her face and her hands, gripping a sticky lollipop. Disappointment that my amulet hadn’t worked filled me, then I shoved it aside.
Apart from his ever-moving eyes, Remus looked entirely unremarkable in his jeans and cloth coat. Not ugly, not attractive, maybe a little tall and bulky, but not overly so. That he could have beaten up Glenn looked doubtful, but knowing how to hurt a person and the willingness to use that knowledge, coupled with surprise, could be deadly. To be honest, he looked harmless-until I saw his eyes follow an FIB officer, hatred in the way he clenched his jaw, an almost eagerness to hurt reflected in his gaze. And then he dropped his attention and shuffled his feet, becoming a janitor standing over a woman way out of his league.
“Why are they just sitting there?” I asked, turning away before they felt my eyes on them. “Did the warrant fall through?”
Jenks slowly rose from Ivy’s shoulder to see them better. “No, Edden’s got it, but both of them are quiet right now, and he doesn’t want to do anything until he gets more people out of here. I’ve been listening, and the I.S. doesn’t care that Mia’s killing humans.”
A pang of worry made me stiff with tension. “Are they covering it up?”
“Nah. Just ignoring her. Everybody has to kill to eat, right?”
He said it with just the right amount of sarcasm, and I knew he didn’t agree with their policy. Everyone had to eat, but eating people wasn’t polite.
Jenks’s wings fanned, to send the smell of soap to me. He was wearing his wraparound robe instead of his usual work clothes, making him look exotic, and I wondered how Bis was doing watching the church by himself. “I think she and Remus think they are going to slip out with the humans,” he said as he landed on my shoulder.
Ivy laughed softly. “I call dibs on the big one.”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to read Mia’s body language from across the large room. “They have to guess we know who they are. I mean, we’ve been to their house. I think they’re waiting because we are.”
Ivy smiled, showing a slip of teeth, potent after Farcus’s play for my blood. “I still call dibs on the big one.”
“Rache,” Jenks said, his voice concerned. “Look at Mia’s aura. Have you ever seen anything like that?”
Taking a slow breath, I willed my second sight into play. All witches could see auras. Vampires couldn’t. Weres couldn’t. Some humans could, gaining the ability from hybridizing with elves. Pixies saw them all the time whether they wanted to or not. If I tapped a ley line and worked at it, I could see the ever-after layered over reality. This far out from the center of Cincinnati, it would likely only be stunted trees and frozen scrub. When I’d been in my early teens, I’d spent a lot of time overlaying the ever-after on reality until a trip to the zoo cured me. The tigers had known what I’d been doing, and they’d started for me as if they could walk through the glass to reach me.
I didn’t look at auras much. It was illegal to screen employees by their auras, though I knew for a fact some food chains did. Dating services swore by them. I was of the opinion that you could tell more about people in a five-minute conversation than by looking at their auras. Most psychiatrists agreed with me, whether they were human or Inderlander.
Exhaling with a long, slow sound, I turned back to the cluster of humans. Blues, greens, and yellows predominated, with the accompanying flashes of red and black to give evidence of the human condition. There was an unusual amount of orange in a few people’s outer fringes, but everyone was upset, and it didn’t surprise me.
Remus’s aura was a nasty, ugly red with a sheen of purple and the yellow of love at its core. It was a dangerous combination, meaning that he lived in a world that confused him and that he was moved by passion. If one believed in that kind of thing. Mia’s…
Jenks clattered his wings, shuddering almost. Mia’s was not there-sort of. I mean, it was there, but wasn’t. Looking at her predominantly blue aura was like looking at the candles of a protective circle when the candles existed both here and in the ever-after. It was there, but sort of displaced sideways. And it was sucking in everyone else’s aura with the faint subtlety of the incoming tide filling a tidal pool. The baby’s was exactly the same.
“Look at Remus,” Jenks said, shifting his wings to tickle my neck. “His aura isn’t being touched at all. Even by the baby’s, and he’s holding her.”
“That might explain why he’s still alive,” I said, wondering how they managed it. I’d been told that banshees didn’t have any control over whose aura they sucked up along with ambient emotions, but clearly that wasn’t the case.
Ivy stood beside us with her hip cocked, looking miffed that we were discussing things she couldn’t see. It was with an unfamiliar enthusiasm that she straightened and smiled, saying loudly to someone behind me, “Edden. Look, she finally made it.”
I dropped my second sight and turned, finding the squat, muscular man almost to us. “Hi, Edden,” I said, shifting my bag up higher and unintentionally making Jenks take flight.
The captain of Cincinnati’s FIB department shuffled to a stop, his khakis and starched shirt saying he was in charge as much as the badge pinned to his belt and the blue FIB hat he had dropped on his graying head. The gray seemed to be heavier now, and the few wrinkles deeper.
“Rachel,” he said as he extended his hand and I shook it. “What took you so long?”
“I was at my mom’s,” I said, watching the cops behind him start to gossip about us, and he raised his eyebrows knowingly.
“Say no more,” he said, then went silent when a Were walked past, limping and with a nasty gash on his forearm.
“You gotta keep ’em separated,” Ivy murmured, then turned to us, her expression sharp. “You really think having those two in with the humans is a good idea?”
Edden put a thick hand on my shoulder and turned us away, moving slowly to the cluster of FIB officers by the kiddie rides. “I’ve got three plainclothes with them. We’re getting people out one by one. Nice and easy.”
I nodded, seeing the cops in there now. Ivy seemed less than convinced, and at her sigh he held up a hand. “We’re waiting for social services to get here to take custody of the kid,” he explained. “I don’t want charges dropped because of a sympathy plea if it goes to trial.”
His voice was grim, and I remembered that these were the people who’d put his son in the hospital.
“That’s great,” Ivy said, her eyes on the group, “but I don’t think it can wait any longer.”
Jenks spilled a yellow sifting of dust, and Edden and I turned. Remus watched from under lowered brows as two more bystanders were escorted away for “questioning.” As we watched, his voice became loud, almost echoing. Holly started crying in earnest, and Mia took her, holding her close, clearly peeved.
“Edden, do something,” I said, ready to go over there myself. Missing baby wagon or not, Remus had put an experienced FIB agent in the hospital. I didn’t like unaware innocents surrounding him. And if I could tell who the plainclothes were, so could Remus. He was a child of the system, all grown up and made deadly. Like raising a wolf among people, society had turned something already dangerous into twice the threat.
Edden looked at the three officers in with the humans and, frowning, he bobbed his head in a meaningful way. Immediately the female cop got between Remus and the last few people. Two hefty-looking men in identical coats went for Remus, one angling to get him away from his wife and child, the other pulling his cuffs. It was way too soon, and Remus lost it.
Shouting, Remus jabbed a fist out, almost scoring on the smaller FIB agent, who stumbled back. Remus lunged after him, smacking an elbow viciously into his head, then grabbing the hand of the dazed officer and twisting it to force the man to the floor. Remus knelt on his shoulder, and at a snap of cartilage, the downed officer cried out in pain. My gut clenched. It sounded like Remus had just dislocated the man’s shoulder; Jenks vaulted into motion, Ivy leapt at them, and suddenly-I was standing alone.
“Jenks, no!” I cried out, heart pounding at the thought of Remus’s hand smacking into the small pixy. But he
