I started with the Jeep. The driver’s seat was set to accommodate Thatcher’s long legs. I tapped the protective screen of his phone. The two had been listening to music. My heart would’ve broken into bits if I turned on the car and heard even a few notes. Songs on their playlists held memories for me, and memories became tipping points.
I shifted, reached into the back seat, and brought the two backpacks forward. My sons had never given me reason to go through their things. Today was different. Both bags had trinkets attached to the pulls on the longest zipper. Even as my fingers curled around the piece of metal and tugged, my oh fuck light went off.
Trinkets. Trinkets and charms, seemingly innocuous, had dangled from the Pearmains’ front gate the day I went to their orchard to investigate a complaint against their farming techniques. River had collected and bagged the trinkets and given them to me and Tanner to look at.
We’d neglected to follow through. We’d been busy.
I uncurled my fingers. The flat piece of metal was a three-inch-long sword, with an icy blue gemstone in the hilt. Harper’s initials were stamped on the backside. The identical trinket on the other bag carried Thatcher’s initials.
What LARP-loving, MMORPG-playing teenager wouldn’t accept a replica of a sword?
“Pls check the girls’ backpacks etc for trinkets,” I texted James. I included a photo then twisted the swords off their metal loops and tucked them into the card pocket on the back of my cell phone case.
Running my thumb over the lumps, I debated the merits of sharing more with James and decided if this was happening to Leilani, Harper would want to know. We all would.
My thumbs flew as I wrote, erased, reworded, and sent a series of texts. I ended with the promise Wes or I would keep Lei-li, James, and Malvyn as up-to-date as we could.
Relieved, I unzipped the other sections of both backpacks and poked my fingers into every corner of every pocket. Nothing out of the ordinary.
What else did I miss? Probably a lot. If Tanner’s badge, the one he carried when he was working in his official capacity as a Provincial agent, could alert him to the presence of Magicals, I had no problem believing doll-sized metal swords could track Harper and Thatcher’s whereabouts.
Because that was where my thinking took me. Doug hadn’t used a tattoo on our sons as he had on me, but he’d found another way to keep tabs on them, one I wouldn’t notice.
I slid out of the Jeep and closed the door. I’d donned my work boots out of habit. Off they went. I planted my feet in the grassy area near the Jeep’s rear tire, where the leather pieces holding the boys’ amulets and portal stones had fallen, and closed my eyes.
Boot prints, larger than my size eights. At least two sets. Dust rising from the ground, swirling ankles, heels dug in. Following the imprints left by the boots was like trying to mimic a how-to graphic for a complicated dance. Three bodies in movement until the direction of all six feet turned at once and disappeared.
Harper and Thatcher had gone with their father without a struggle?
I opened my eyes, saw my reflection in the rear window of the Jeep, and spun to face the road. The kid behind the counter said the mini-truck had headed south. Brooks Farm was three miles or so away. The property in foreclosure was the same distance.
And most of the farms and orchards on the island had identical white Japanese mini-trucks in constant use.
“What did you find?” asked Wes.
I fished out the trinkets and handed one to Wes and one to Christoph. “These were attached to the zippers on their backpacks. They don’t look like commercial zipper pulls to me. They look handmade.”
Wes snapped a photo. “I’m sending this to a friend who makes trinkets used for spells.”
“I sent a photo to James. He’ll share it with Mal,” I said. “Also, I told them about the boys and Doug.”
“Leave the trinkets in the boys’ car, Calliope.” Christoph worked his thumb over the surface of the little sword. “Otherwise, whoever was tracking them will be able to follow your movements too.”
I took the deepest breath I could and let it out. “I think Harper and Thatch went with Doug willingly. Either that or Doug used a spell that worked very fast.” I described what I’d read in the ground. “I don’t see any sign of resistance. Not here.” I gestured to where we were standing. “Or from the way the kid in the bakery described what he saw.”
“Doug could have used glamour to cloak what he was really doing,” Wes pointed out. Christoph agreed.
“If we’re done here, let’s go to the farm,” I said. “Standing around waiting makes me nuts.”
I leaned over the driver’s seat of the Jeep and dropped both swords into a side pocket of Harper’s backpack.
“If we don’t learn anything new, I suggest we go to Cliff and Abi’s and use their house as our base. There’s at least one portal on the property that we know of, and I wouldn’t mind checking the burial mounds again. They reeked of magic,” Wes said. “Druid and fairy magic.”
I agreed with a nod and buckled my seat belt. The Pearmains’ was where I had first met Tanner and where the Apple Witch had been able to manifest both her human and tree forms. Plus, the bag of trinkets River had collected off the gate was sitting on the floor behind my seat and one of these days I was going to go through it and figure out which of the bits and baubles were magic.
Those earliest days of this protracted adventure felt like a lifetime ago. I pinched
