Page 54 of The Elementalist
“Probably. Something tells me Nigel isn’t going to want to draw attention to why he was out there. And it’ll take a couple days before anyone notices a truck went off the side. Maybe even long enough for them to sweep the mess under the proverbial rug.”
Crystal pulled the sheets and blanket up to cover us, and closed her eyes. “Good night, Max.”
The past few days had seen quite a few moments where I expected to wake up from a dream beyond belief.
Falling asleep next to a woman as perfect as Crystal Bradbury was one of them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A Search for Understanding
I paced around my apartment, alternating between worried and grinning at Crystal’s clothes on my bed.
We’d left the hotel a little after eight, stopped by her place so she could change, then headed back to Shadow Pines with a detour to recover her car. My place didn’t have much in the sense of real food, so we also grabbed breakfast from a place across the street and down a block.
She’d walked out the door a few minutes ago with only her invisibility on; hence, the clothing on my bed. Fortunately, the sheriff’s office wasn’t too far away, a little over a mile. That could prove to be a problem if the vampires or whoever is pulling Justine’s strings spotted her. I could only hope she made it there without detection. After all, she certainly appeared invisible to me... and killer vamps should be snoozing about now.
While Crystal headed to check out the sheriff’s office, I called Michael. At present, I could count the number of sources available to get ‘weird’ information on one hand. Presently, that amounted to two. Michael and Crystal. She obviously had no idea why the Farringtons wanted her, other than presumably her being a succubus, so I had one person left to ask.
“Hey, Max. Good to hear you’re still alive,” said Michael by way of answering.
“For the time being… You were right. Only they didn’t come after me. I went after them.”
“Great. I’m guessing it ended well since you’re on the phone with me, unless this is a direct line from the hereafter.”
I chuckled and sat in the chair by my computer desk. Well, it’s technically a folding card table, but it’s my computer station. While sipping the last of the coffee I’d gotten from Benny’s place, I gave Michael a quick rundown of what happened at theold boarding house. For her privacy, I left out that Crystal had accompanied me or that she was anything other than human.
“Holy shit. I kinda heard about that.”
“You did?” I asked, incredulous. “How?”
“Those college kids you found were on the news this morning. They’d been missing a couple days, same old story—hiking and presumed lost.”
“Ugh. If I had a buck for every time that happened in Shadow Pines. Most people around here translate that to ‘never to be seen again.’”
“Right. Only, these kids came back. Claimed they’d been abducted by a couple of crazy hermits or something who’d been squatting in the abandoned boarding house. No mention of vampires, unsurprisingly, but they did wind up in the hospital for ‘observation.’”
Oops. Crystal and I never did go back for them. Guess they managed to get out of that room. I can picture that redhead, Shiloh, breaking the door down. And I had, after all, given her the key to that BMW. Bigger question is if they decided not to talk about vampires on their own, or if someone made sure they didn’t. Considering they haven’t disappeared again, I assumed they decided to keep their mouths shut.
I shook my head. “You’d have to think the doctors would start to suspect something weird was going on around here with all the cases of people being ‘low on blood’.”
Michael laughed. “They probably do… and are made to forget once they ask too many questions.”
“Speaking of questions, I got one for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Shit. You just reminded me I need to drop the truck off at Hank’s. Anyway… do you have any idea why someone would want to capture a half-succubus?”
“Umm, only that they’re an idiot. Those critters are prettymuch impossible to contain. Also, supposedly quite dangerous. I’ve heard of a few reports, but the information is somewhat sketchy. They might be demons, might be something else.”
“Fey.”
“That’s one theory, yeah. I’d recommend you stay the heck away from them.”
I shifted in the seat, stifling a grunt at the soreness in my groin. “Let’s say in theory someone managed to find a way to contain one with, oh, a strange green energy field.”
“You saw this?”
