I needed to vent some steam in the worst way.
My son emerged from behind the wall with an unfamiliar boy in tow. Conlan was large for his age, with my dark hair and his father’s gray eyes. The boy next to him was about the same size but probably a year or two older, maybe 9 or 10. Thin, dark haired, with bronze skin and brown eyes, he seemed like he wasn’t sure what would happen next. A bit jumpy.
Conlan stopped in front of me. “Hi, Mom. This is Jason. He is Paul’s nephew.”
Paul Barnhill was our general contractor. Jason gave me a hesitant wave.
“Can we have some sandwiches?” Conlan asked.
When it came to making friends, my son took his cues from his father. Food first. And he knew where the fridge was and had been making his own sandwiches since he was 2 years old.
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you. Jason’s brother was kidnapped.”
Ah. So, it wasn’t about the sandwiches.
Conlan turned to Jason. “Come on.”
The two of them went inside. Grendel, our mutant black poodle, trotted out from behind the wall, gave me a lick on the leg in passing, depositing a small army of foul-smelling bacteria on my thigh, and bounded after them.
Food had a particular significance to shapeshifters. They didn’t share it with just anyone. Conlan brought Jason to me, made sure I saw Jason’s face, made sure that I knew he was about to make him a sandwich, and then informed me that Jason had a problem. A problem I now wanted to know more about, because Jason wasn’t some abstract child my son casually knew but someone he accepted and wanted to share a meal with.
“Kidnapped” could mean a lot of things to a 9-year-old boy. The first night after we moved in, a half-naked Conlan informed me that Grendel had been kidnapped by pirates. I grabbed my sword and ran to the shoreline, to find Grendel in a boat tied to a beached tree, floating 5 feet away from shore and barking his head off, while a Jolly Roger my son drew with wall primer on his black T-shirt flew overhead. But we lived in unsafe times. Real kidnappings weren’t uncommon, especially if the victim was, in Ms. Vigue’s words, “vibrant” enough.
The fort around me vanished, and for a painful second I was sprinting down the street, ice-cold from fear, desperately searching the ruins around me for the spark of baby Conlan’s magic and wishing with every fiber of my being that I would find him before his would-be kidnappers did.
I sighed and went to look for Paul.
FINDING PAUL TOOK a few minutes because our new house was unusually large.
I circled the third stack of lumber in the middle of the courtyard. Around me the walls of Fort Kure loomed against the sunshine, blocking the view of the beach. Local legend said that some harebrained millionaire came to view historic Fort Fisher and was rather underwhelmed, because only a small portion of the original defense installation remained. He conceived Fort Kure as a “companion attraction” to the historic landmark, a sea stronghold on steroids that would give the tourists all the citadel thrills Fort Fisher was missing. For unknown reasons, the millionaire had bailed when the construction was 2/3 complete.
Once finished, Fort Kure would become an ultra-secure dwelling, a hybrid offspring of a medieval castle and a modern citadel. My husband took one look at the absurdly thick stone walls, the tower, and the Atlantic spreading as far as the eye could see and fell in love. His gray eyes had gotten this slightly deranged light, and he had taken my hands in his and said, “Baby, we would be crazy to not do this.”
I said yes because I loved him. And because we needed to get out of Atlanta, where everyone knew who we were and what we were capable of. If we stayed there, Conlan would never experience anything resembling a normal childhood. Okay, so “normal” was a stretch, but at least here he would be treated as just another shapeshifter kid, not the son of a former Pack leader, a wonder-child capable of miraculous things. Bottom line, we’d needed a secure base, so we bought Fort Kure at a steep discount and proceeded to sink loads of money into it. The walls were done, so was the front gate, and the rest of the house inside was coming along. Slowly. Very slowly. If everything stayed on schedule, it might be habitable by fall.
I found Paul by the gift shop, which we planned to convert into a stable. He was talking to a man I didn’t recognize, and he seemed upset. Paul didn’t get upset. He was an optimistic guy who looked at a collapsed wall with an attitude of “I can fix it” and frequently did. The man he was talking to was about ten years older than Paul, which put him in his late forties. They had to be related—both had the same bronze skin, dark curly hair, and aquiline noses.
“…Can’t.”
“I know,” the man said.
“If I give you that money, I can’t make payroll. The work’s already done. I must run the payroll. I can’t ask my people to work for free.”
“I know,” the man said again. There was a brittle finality to his voice. He had resigned himself to “no” but was too desperate to not try.
Paul dragged his hand through his hair. “Look, I’ve still got Dad’s truck.” He dug into his pocket and pulled a keyring out. “I never got around to fixing it. Take it, sell it for parts. It won’t bring much, but at least it’s something…”
Paul saw me. His mouth clicked shut.
“Hello,” I said. “I’ve met Jason. He says your nephew was kidnapped.”
The two men stared at me.
“This is my brother, Thomas,” Paul said finally. “Someone took his son. We’re trying to scrape together enough money to try to buy him back.”
“Do you know who took him?”
“Yes,” Thomas said.
I waited. Paul nudged him.
“The Red Horn Nation,” Thomas said finally.
“Who are they?”
“A local gang,” Paul said. “They control a lot of South Wilmington. Mostly they deal in drugs, but they steal kids too.”
“How big are they?”
Paul frowned. “Fifty people? Maybe more.”
A nice round number. “Are they holding him for ransom?”
“No,” Thomas said.
“Have you tried the cops?”
“These are dangerous people,” Thomas said. “The cops won’t bother them unless there is evidence. I don’t have evidence.”
“Then how do you know who took him?”
“There were witnesses.”
And if those witnesses went to the police, bad things would happen to them. Right.
“How old is your son, and when did they take him?”
Thomas didn’t answer.
“Darin is 16,” Paul said. “They took him five days ago. Why is the age important?”
“Because little kids are usually sold to sexual predators or to families who want a child. Teenagers are sold to someone who will keep them confined. Transporting them is risky.”
Darin was probably still in the city.
“You were gathering money, so you know where they are,” I told Thomas.
He nodded. “They have a house.”
“Good.” I pulled the rag off my head. “Wait here. I’m going to change, and we’ll go and get your son back.”
“You don’t understand,” Thomas said. “They are…”