“So, um, can I do anything to help with the whole situation with your parents?” I asked. “I assume they’re going to officially cut you off then.”
He sighed. “Probably? Unless it was just a threat, but they have no reason not to go through with it. I was always more of a disappointment to them anyway, they’ll probably be glad if I’m not in their lives anymore.”
I frowned. “You’re not a disappointment. If I was there, I’d give you a hug, so please just, uh, give yourself one for me?”
To my relief, he laughed. “Thank you, Nicky.” His voice was warm now. Apparently he was far more touched by my offer than by his parents’ disapproval. “Can I take a rain check?”
I didn’t know what that meant, so he had to explain that to me, following which I agreed that yes, I could give him an in-person hug when we saw each other next.
By the time we wrapped up our call and I rejoined the others, I was smiling happily, which none of them missed.
“Ooh, if I didn’t know already, I’d guess you just talked to Rhys,” Lola teased. “You always look like that after you talk to him.”
Bonnie eagerly joined in. “Are you going on another date soon? Have you been over to his house yet? Didn’t you say he had his own place?”
“Let’s all go!” Lola suggested. “We could just show up and surprise him, I bet he wouldn’t mind as long as we brought Nicky with is – he barely is aware of anything else when Nicky is in the room.”
“True,” Bonnie agreed, a teasing smile on her face. “He’s all heart eyes and following Nicky around like a puppy. A giant puppy.”
“Enough,” Dana interrupted, “you’re making the poor boy blush. Come on,” she took me by my shoulders and rescued me from the other two, who were grinning unrepentantly. “Lola’s going to take us by her campus for open house. We don’t want to be late for that now, do we?”
I was grateful for the change of subject because, while none of what they said was wrong or bad, it was a little embarrassing and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. With Lola around, though, I suspected I’d get used to that kind of teasing sooner or later. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
But at least Lola accepted the topic change and began describing her university to us as Dana drove over there, complete with a history of the school that I doubted we needed to know – or at least I hoped we didn’t.
The campus was larger than my entire town had been and I was once again a little overwhelmed with how much things had changed since I’d been a kid, but I could see how excited Lola was and that made me happy for her. One thing I did take away from the tour, though, was that I wasn’t ready to attend university any time soon, or if I did, maybe I could find a smaller place. I was pretty sure if it was me here instead of her, I’d probably get myself lost repeatedly and have to be rescued in order to get home each day.
So maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t decided just what to do yet. Maybe it would give me time to get used to this era before jumping into things unprepared.
~~~~
I was sitting next to Rhys, resting my head on his broad shoulder, a smile on my face every time I moved my hand a bit and felt my bracelet move or looked down to see it. Rhys had given me a bat charm for my bracelet – he said it was in honor of Dana, since she was half vampire, but I figured it also kind of represented him, too. And it touched me that rather than be bothered by my particular fashion interests, he was willing to buy something like this for me and saw no problem doing so.
Even if we weren’t soulmates, I was pretty sure I’d be falling for Rhys. Knowing that we were just made it that much easier.
“Okay.” Lola dumped out the board game on the coffee table and handed us all playing pieces. “We’ve gone over the rules, any questions? Not from you, Nicky,” she interrupted before I could raise my hand, “you and Rhys are playing as a team so he can explain stuff to you.”
“Oh!” I looked up at Rhys. “You don’t mind?”
He looked embarrassed but happy, so I knew the answer before he said it. “Not at all.”
Relieved, I smiled back at him and then settled back with my head on his shoulder again, watching as Lola began dictating everyone’s starting position.
As we started the game, I had three main takeaways. First, Dana was ruthless and absolutely impervious to Lola’s begging expression – which normally broke her easily – while playing board games. Second, I had no idea what was going on, except something about buying stuff and moving pieces and paying money and it was confusing. Rhys was patient and tried to explain, but Lola was not patient and would move on to the next person while he was still whispering to me what was going on, and by the time he finished, he wasn’t sure what had happened with the others’ turns, so we both ended up kind of out of the loop. At least he still seemed to be having fun anyway, so I didn’t apologize, but I made a mental note to try to read the rules in advance next time so maybe we could both focus on the game a little more.
The third thing I noticed, though, was that Bonnie was very distracted. She’d seemed excited when Lola called her earlier to ask her to come over to play board games and hang out, but now she was almost worse than Rhys and me for not paying attention.
“Are you okay?” I asked her abruptly, when I noticed that she’d apparently made some mistakes while playing – mistakes that might be expected of a newbie like me, but not of her. “You seem really distant tonight.”
The others all paused and looked at her, concerned.
Bonnie sighed. “I’m fine.” She fidgeted with her playing piece, apparently well aware that she wasn’t exactly convincing anyone. “Really, I am. It’s not about me. It’s one of my neighbors, one of the humans? One of their kids disappeared today. They frequently run down to the end of the street to the park I mentioned to play on the playground. There’s usually an adult or two from the neighborhood who keeps an eye on the kids, but apparently the adults didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but when the kids went to leave…the four-year-old wasn’t with them. They’ve searched the neighborhood, the school, everywhere they could think of. The police were called and everything, and I sort of felt bad just leaving them even though I know I can’t do anything and I should just leave it to the police.”
Lola set her own piece down and scooted over to Bonnie’s chair, briefly touching her arm. “That sounds awful and scary. Do the police have any ideas?”
“Not when I left, at least. From what I heard, the adults who were keeping an eye on the park said they didn’t see anyone suspicious. You know, strangers hanging around, that sort of thing. But they don’t have family members who would kidnap them, either, like parents that are split up.” Bonnie looked a mixture of frustration and sadness. “I knew in my head that humans deal with stuff like this, too, but I guess I forgot – I’m so used to supernaturals having wars or whatever and that being the main risk we face. I forgot that humans can have bad stuff happen, too. And I know,” she threw me a tired look, “I shouldn’t blame Avenglade or go back to thinking ‘oh no, this wouldn’t happen in a supernatural community,’ because I can’t actually say it wouldn’t. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter, you know? It’s not a supernatural, but someone I know is still in danger and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Let the police do their thing,” Dana offered comfortingly. “They’re good at what they do. Meanwhile, support the family. They might need meals cooked for them, that sort of thing. You’re good at coordinating stuff – work with your neighbors to make sure they have food taken care of, look after the other kids if they need, and maybe even have someone else with them while they’re waiting to hear. Sometimes having a less-involved third party present can help keep people grounded.”
We all offered our support, to the extent we could, but as Bonnie left that night – a little earlier than expected, because she wanted to get back and see if there had been any news – I wished we could do something more. Something more than just offer empty words and hope that we couldn’t back up.
Unfortunately, when we came over to visit Bonnie later that week – Rhys in tow because he was sweetly concerned about the situation, too, and he planned to drive me over to my session with Henry afterwards – she didn’t have good news.
“The police have no leads.” Bonnie looked tired and stressed as she poured us some hot tea. “They’ve looked into potential predators in the area – nothing. They’ve checked out security cameras down the street – nothing unusual. The adults who were watching the kids still are convinced they don’t remember any strangers there – no unusual cars, no strange adults lurking, that sort of thing.”
I paused while stirring my tea. “What if…it wasn’t an adult? They’re only looking for adults out of place. What if there was a kid there? A kid might follow another kid.” That was even true for supernaturals. Supernatural kids tended to be extra wary of adults they didn’t know, human or supernatural, but kids? Kids they would trust easier.
Bonnie looked at me in surprise. “Well…I don’t know. I don’t know if they asked about that. Huh. Strange kids – I bet they wouldn’t even notice,” she mumbled. “Even if there were unfamiliar kids present, the adults who watch the park have it set in their head to keep an eye out for adults, you know? Maybe teens, but another smaller kid? Probably not. But would a kid really do something to another kid?”
Rhys made a face. “Unfortunately, they can. I’ve seen my fair share of awful cases in family court – which is responsible for prosecuting juveniles, not just dealing with divorces or custody issues and that kind of thing. Some kids can be capable of awful things, although sometimes they don’t realize the consequences of what they’re doing. But sometimes,” he paused, “in this kind of case, that would sound more like a predator using a kid to get another kid. That can happen.”
Bonnie thought about this, then frowned. “I wish I was the kind of shifter who could track them, but realistically, they probably took a car or something. I’ll talk to adults who were on watch duty that day – maybe they would remember seeing another kid. Maybe.”
As Rhys and I left a short time later to get to my meeting with Henry, I tried to think of any other way to help after I buckled myself in.
“I don’t suppose you’d have access to the police file?” I asked, without a lot of hope.
Unsurprisingly, he shook his head. “We’re technically considered part of the police force and have police training, but no, I don’t have access to the files. However,” he added, almost reluctantly, “I know people in the department and could probably talk to them.”
I looked over at him, surprised. “You don’t want to?”
“They wouldn’t think I have a good reason.” He sighed a bit. “The officers in that department can be a little…elitist. They don’t like us bailiffs, and don’t appreciate the authority we have in the courtroom. They take advantage of any opportunity they can to disrespect us because they don’t see us as real police officers – even though we have to keep up with the exact same training as they do. I don’t think they’ll tell me anything even if I asked.”
“That’s okay, then,” I answered immediately, kind of hating how he looked sad that he couldn’t fulfill my request. “Don’t talk to people who will just be jerks about it. Maybe if your brother gets into the police force, you can ask him in the future.”
Rhys cheered up a bit. “He’s liking his first classes.” School had started for Lola and Drew, although they weren’t attending the same university. “He likes the idea of us having dinner at least once a week, and tells me about his classes. I think he’s happy to have someone to talk to who doesn’t judge him like our parents – I just accept and support, not try to change him. I regret now not making an effort before now, although our parents probably wouldn’t have allowed it even if I’d tried. Anyway, he still wants you to come to one of the dinners some night.”
I’d wanted them to spend the first few dinners with just the two of them, sort of getting to know each other better and figuring out where they stood with each other now that their parents were no longer able to prevent them from being close, but since they seemed to be making good progress with their relationship, I hoped we’d get to meet soon, too.
“I’d like that.” I leaned over to give his cheek a quick kiss as we stopped at Henry’s place. “Thanks for the ride! Let me know about dinner, okay?”
I hurried off, happy about Rhys’s blushing face, and went to meet Henry and work on my somni magic.
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