Page 47 of Back in the Hunt

Nelson nodded as he tugged on an earlobe. “It was hideous—the creature and the sound. My ears are still ringing,” he muttered and Nox thanked Merlin for a tumbler full of whiskey.

“It’s taken on a few banshees and won, I think,” he told Merlin, earning a gasp from Everly.

“How do you kill a banshee?” he asked shakily.

Nox waved it off. “You have to trap her with a spell and stab her with gold or beat her with something made of iron. But why would you? Banshees are relatively harmless. They’re harbingers of death and nothing more. Barely even magick.”

“To see if it could,” Merlin suggested. “And because it might gain the ability to find the dead before they are dead,” he saidwith a pointed look at Bryn and then at Arawn. “So it can stay one step ahead of a hellhound, possibly.”

There was a wry snort from Arawn. “It’s just saving us time. Let it show up again while we’re working,” he said as he held a fist out to Bryn.

He bumped it, nodding. “Huge Douchebag might have trained it to pick on weaker fae, but it would take a millennia for that demon doll to acquire enough strength to hurt us. It’s punching way above its weight, going after a sun god or hellhound.”

Fletcher cleared his throat, waving from the door. “I went to grab my laptop. I was waiting until after breakfast in the morning for show and tell, but I think I found our anti-Everly.”

A loud breath whooshed from Merlin. “Thank gods,” he said, his voice wavering as he hurried to the decanters. “Let me pour you a drink, sir. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to hear it. I still wouldn’t put it past Hugh to kill a changeling child, but the magnitude of this particular horror is not as great as I had feared. And it is a newer creation of Hugh’s, not something he cultivated and killed for its qualities or talents.”

Bryn’s face twisted. “There’s that, I guess. If you needed a bright side.”

“That might be theonlybright side,” Fletcher warned while tapping the keyboard’s trackpad and turning the laptop so it faced everyone. “Meet Edmund Chester. Born on April 14th 2014 and died late in ‘20 or early ‘21.”

“Whoa!” Nox sat up quickly, spilling his drink and almost tipping off the sofa as he waved at the laptop. “April 14th? Give me that!”

“That’s the boy!” Merlin said excitedly as he went to the board for a piece of chalk and Fletcher danced around Bryn and Arawn with the laptop.

“What’s so important about April 14th?” Everly asked, his soft, flat voice rising and Bryn nodded.

“Why is that a big deal?” Bryn asked Nox.

His jaw hung, his eyes glistening as he read. “Tell them, Merlin,” Nox said weakly.

Merlin nodded slowly, before giving himself a shake and clearing his throat. “Historians and astronomers were off in their calculations when they settled on April 16th. It was actually the 14th when Odysseus slayed Penelope’s suitors in Ithaca—over one hundred young men from prominent political families. Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865 and the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912, both on April 14th. One of the deadliest of the Dust Bowl, the Black Sunday storm swept across Texas and Oklahoma on April 14th, 1835. In 1999, NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of Albanian refugees and in 2019eleventornadoes struck the US. Once again, both events occurred on April 14th. It is the unluckiest day in the history of the recorded world, not Friday the 13th, and those that believe in the old ways will tell you that April 14th is the last day of the Month of Alder, when the fae are at their strongest and wildest and most given to mischief,” Merlin explained somberly, his voice trailing off for dramatic effect and the room was quiet as everyone shared wide-eyed looks.

“I was born on April 14th,” Everly announced.

“Well…” Merlin’s glance slid from Everly to Nox and the piece of chalk in his grip crumbled. “I’m sure that lots of good things happened too,” he said weakly.

Nox made a dismissive sound from the sofa. “We canceled any curses that were upon him and there’s a reason why Douchebag’s changeling is theanti-Everly. Its intent is pure malevolence and it’s being manipulated by its creator. You can feed a changeling banshees so it’s cold and twisted and longsfor death, but it will starve without love. There’s no love up at Hugh’s,” he said, dismissing Merlin’s concern.

“There’s no love,” Everly repeated and nodded slowly. His dark eyes were so big as he watched Bryn.

“Love you,” Bryn mouthed back in case Everly was confused about just how different he was from Edmund Chester.

Nox pushed out a hard breath as he scrubbed his hair. “There was no autopsy because Chester waspoorand they had a full confession.” He passed the laptop back. “I’ve seen enough of that and that sad creature’s life story. Douchebag would have thought he’d struck gold when he searched for orphans who died on April 14th and came across Chester.” He sat back, pinching the bridge of his nose and hugging his glass for warmth or protection. Possibly both. Nox was still pale and his teeth would chatter every now and then. “His mother gave him up when he was three. She swore he wasn’t her baby but no one would listen. She left the child at a bus station with a suitcase and she was never seen again.”

“What happened to Edmund after that?” Everly asked, but Bryn had the urge to cover his ears, not wanting him to hear what came next.

“This might get dark, Ev,” Bryn whispered and he nodded.

“I’m scared for Edmund but I might need to know and it seems like enough peopledidn’tknow when he was alive,” Everly said with an unusual edge to his voice and Nox sighed heavily.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” he agreed. “Edmund was sent to his next of kin, his mother’s uncle, Liam Kelly, a devout Christian. He told the police he sent for priests to perform exorcisms and kept the child in the basement because he believed that Edmund was a lustful demon,” Nox said with a loaded look around the room. “A few months later, the house had to be evacuated because of a gas leak in the neighborhood and repairmen foundEdmund’s body in the basement. He had been dead for weeks, according to the report.”

“What happened to Kelly?” Everly asked angrily, making Fletcher hiss.

He tapped the closed laptop, looking worried. “Kelly had been moved to a long term care facility while he was awaiting trial but they found him in a rocker with his tongue ripped out and his eyes were gone. That was four months ago,” he said and Merlin hummed.

“I believe that’s when the known changelings began disappearing.”

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