Page 25 of Monsters of Mayhem

“Seriously?” Furlan said. “You don’t use magic or something like that.”

“Oh, there’s magic in the app.” Ratchet gave him a wink. “Some of the best hackers in the world are demons.”

“Where is she?” I ground the words out slow. I was tired of the trivial conversations going on. “We need to find Caroline and if Caroline is out and about with nothing, then for sure he’s going to find her.”

“Checking now, boss,” Ratchet said. His fingers flew over his phone as he pulled up whatever he needed to. They didn’t touch the screen, just let little fire bolts come out of his fingertips as he worked his demon magic.

He frowned at his phone.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Ratchet said in surprise. “Absolutely nothing.”

“I thought you said it worked?” I said.

“It does work and works perfectly well,” Ratchet said.

Tony smiled. “Doesn’t seem to be working too good right now.”

“It means she has her phone switched off,” Ratchet said.

“Laney never has her phone switched off,” I murmured. “That woman was always glued to her phone, no matter what. If she wasn’t talking to some guy, she was playing her video games and destroying castles or looking at Memes or watching TikTok. She is always on her phone.”

We stared at each other blankly.

“Except of course…When she was traveling,” I added.

“She must be on her way to meet Caroline,” Ratchet agreed with a nod. Now we just had to find and track Laney, and she would lead us to Caroline.

“We may have to wait until Laney lands and then we’ll find out where Caroline is,” Furlan said.

I knew the satyr wouldn’t back down even if I asked him to stay off the job. He would stay with us until we had found Caroline since she had gone missing under his watch. There was no other way around it. I hated the idea of everyone just sitting around waiting until Caroline popped up again or until Laney’s phone went back online.

“What if she’s lost the phone?” I said.

“From the way you describe her, I think that’s hardly likely to have happened,” Furlan said.

“Yes, but from the way you described Caroline’s escape, there’s hardly any chance she got off this island. While we wait to see if Laney resurfaces, let’s do a door by door of every house and home and all of Alameda.”

“That’s like over 1000 houses,” Tony ground out.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“We already checked all the witches’ houses,” Furlan said.

“Check them again,” I said, standing up and knowing I couldn’t contain the chaos was brewing inside me even as we spoke. Caroline was out there somewhere, no shoes, no wallet, at the whims of any monster who came along. We had to find her.

“Come on, Ratchet. You and I will start on the south side of the island. Furlan, you and your guys start at the north. We’ll meet in the middle. Something’s got to turn up.”

Chapter 16

We arrived at Eunice‘s house without incident. There was a bit of a buzz going on around the island. I could feel it. There were a lot of satyrs out on the street. In the broad daylight they didn’t look like satyrs. They didn’t show their goat’s hooves but it was easy for me to imagine them by now. Instead, they were roaring up and down the streets on their motorcycles.

“They’re looking for you,” Eunice said calmly.

I wrapped my arms around my waist as I walked, completely self-conscious but forgetting the fact I was invisible. I felt so vulnerable and so exposed regardless. It was a frightening place to be.

“Yeah, let’s get you in here,” she said. She led me down a side street that went back to a small house behind a larger house.

---