“But why now?!” Alice cried, looking like she wanted to grab the little girl and shake her, but she didn’t.
“Because he wanted to help the police,” the kid said again, talking to her mother as if she was the little kid who wasn’t understanding properly. “Just like I told you.”
I stepped back and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.
“You heard him yell, didn’t you?” Tyson asked, his voice almost breaking as he looked between Tessa and me. “You heard that, too, right?”
I glanced back at Tessa but didn’t answer, skipping right over the question.
“Look, you all need to go back to your house and call the police,” I said quickly. “Lock all your doors, make sure your security system is set, and tell them to come to the Hawthorne house with as much backup as they can spare, fast. Tell them the same people from the museum today have your son.”
“What?” Alice asked, pressing her hands to her mouth in alarm. “This has to do with that? Those people have my son?”
Tyson somehow looked even more ashen-faced now than he had before.
“Look, you just have to let me handle this, okay?” I said gently, giving her shoulder what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll get him back. I’ll go get him back for you right now. You just have to do as I tell you. We’re losing time every second we waste talking.”
“Alright,” Tyson said weakly, nodding in an almost manic way. “Alright.”
He grabbed his wife’s hand with his free arm and began to drag her along behind him at a jog back toward the house.
“Well, go on,” I told Tessa, noticing that she was still standing there on the first step. “Go with them.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked, giving me an exasperated look. “No way.”
“They’ll need someone to look after them while they wait for the police,” I argued, knowing even as I said the words that this was a weak argument.
“They have a state-of-the-art security system,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes. “Plus, if you think you’re going in there all by yourself… well, let’s just say that you would be very wrong.”
I opened my mouth to argue some more, but she cut me off. The Carltons were already out of sight by then.
“Come on. You said yourself that we’re wasting time arguing,” she said, beginning to climb the stairwell again. “Now I’m going up there. The question is, are you coming with me?”
I groaned and nodded and began to follow after her up toward the creaky old house shrouded in mist.
25
Tessa
Tessa found herself half annoyed by Ethan’s protests against her direct involvement in this case and half flattered. The MBLIS agent had always been keen to keep her out of trouble, regardless of the fact that his attempts never worked out for him, but he seemed even more hellbent on it than usual this time. She figured that he must be getting fond of her. She was getting fond of him, too.
Together they climbed all the way up the long, winding steps laid against the side of the sandy cliff. It felt like it was half beach, half mountain at a certain point, and by then, sand had made its way into every nook and cranny of Tessa’s clothing, most notably between her toes.
Normally, this wouldn’t be that unpleasant a feeling, indicative of a long day lounging on the beach. But now, it was an irritating distraction from the task at hand and the little boy who needed their help.
There was no way that Tessa was going to let Ethan leave her out of the action at this most crucial juncture in his search for the Dragon’s Rogue. She was sure that she’d survived worse than this, either in her previous scuff-ups with Ethan or on one of her assignments for her own job, and she had no doubt that she would see worse again. In the meantime, there was a kid who needed saving, and this just might be the most exciting story she had come across yet.
At that point, Tessa was all but convinced that Grendel had once stayed in this house and that he was the subject of all these legends the locals had told them about. She was far more skeptical that his ghost was still hanging around, but it would be too much of a coincidence if the legends weren’t about him.
Ethan, she knew, didn’t dare hope for this much after he’d searched for so long and so hard, only to keep coming up short. The most he would hope for was the real copy of Grendel’s journal un-tampered with, or maybe just a clue to where it might be.
Tessa, on the other hand, didn’t believe in this many coincidences lining up in short succession. That would be far too convenient and far too weird.
It took them longer than they would’ve liked to reach the top of the staircase, bogged down by the fog and the sheer size of the cliff. They didn’t hear any more child’s screams as they went, but almost as disturbingly, they didn’t hear any more clanging sounds, either. It was like everything had just ceased after Miles had dared cry out for help.
Tessa came to a stop at the top of the staircase and reached back to grab Ethan’s hand as he came up behind her.
“I haven’t heard anything in a while,” she muttered, almost afraid to break the tentative silence that had cast itself over the area, bereft of sound but for the crash of the waves beneath them.
“Neither have I,” he muttered, shaking his head and glaring at the house as if he would like nothing more than to punch it in the face it did not have.
“Let’s go, then,” she said, prompting him to come with her gently. “The sooner we get in
