Actually, painting the trim wasn’t hard, since I had good hand-eye coordination, but Thomas looked like he needed a bit of humor to nudge him back to reality.
Thomas shook his head, as if waking up. “Where are we going?”
“To the Order.” I had a general idea where it was, but Thomas would know for sure.
“Why?”
“Because time is short. We need to drop off the children with someone who can protect them and take them home, while we get over to the People’s compound.”
Onyx was likely a Master of the Dead or a journeyman. Probably the latter. Masters of the Dead were premier navigators who made too much money and were under too much scrutiny from their power-hungry peers to dabble in human trafficking. But journeymen earned considerably less, and they lived in the dorms, on-base. Onyx had no means of keeping Darin for himself, so he was likely a middleman, an intermediary between the Red Horn Nation and the final buyer.
I seriously doubted that Red Horn people would let Onyx know that I was coming. They had bigger worries right now. Even if they had, he would stay put. He was at his safest in the middle of the People’s base. But I didn’t want him to warn whoever put in the custom order for Darin.
“Are you going to tell me what’s special about your son or do we have to play the guessing game?” I asked.
“He has gills,” Thomas said quietly. “He can’t drown.”
Ah. “Does he transform?”
He nodded.
“Is that something that runs in the family?”
“No. He’s the only one.”
There was a connection between the population and the mythical creatures spawning. If the area had a lot of Irish settlers, you would get kelpies and selkies. If there was a sizeable Brazilian population, the water might manifest an Iara. Some creatures were harmless, but most weren’t, because humans tended to focus on things that could kill and eat them and immortalize them through legends as a warning to future generations. Magic brought those legends back to life, and the more people worried about something, the greater the chance of it manifesting.
Wilmington had a thriving port, which was the reason the city became one of the vital trade centers after the Shift. Shipping by land had become more perilous, and the importance of ports skyrocketed. Not only was the city multicultural, but also crews from just about every part of the world traveled here to unload their cargo, bringing their myths with them. Oceans were deep, and sailors had a healthy respect for them. They believed in aquatic monsters, no matter their mythological origin. It was pointless to try to guess what Darin had turned into. I’d know more when I found him.
“I know you’re worried about your family,” I said. “My husband knows me. He would’ve anticipated what happened and made sure that your and Paul’s loved ones are safe. By now they’re probably all at the fort.”
“The fort that will be attacked?”
“It’s the safest place for them. Trust me on this. I need your help finding the Order and then the People, because you know the city better than I do. If you can get me to the Farm, I’ll take it from there, and you can join your family.”
“Okay,” Thomas said.
3
“…M y second brother, Kody, but we call him Copper, because his hair is red, but Mommy says that all of her brothers had red hair, but it turned blond when they got to be grownups, so Copper is going to be blond for sure…”
The little girl’s name was Nika.
“…And my oldest brother, Rylee, has a German Shepherd puppy, and the puppy is named Kenobi, and his paws are this big, and he’s going to be a big dog for sure…”
There’d been no warning. We’d been walking for about 10 minutes when Nika took a deep breath and suddenly all the words came out. She hadn’t stopped talking for the better part of the hour. Something must’ve convinced her that we were okay, and she was safe, and all the fear and anxiety she’d held in since the Red Horn snatched her off the street was pouring out of her like a geyser.
“…And Kenobi will be a good protecting dog, because Kenobi is a Jedi name…”
They had played the whole series in a drive-in theater during a tech wave, and Nika’s family went to see it. We’d gone to see it too, although their sword fighting made me squeeze my eyes shut a few times.
“For sure?” I asked.
“For sure for sure.”
Once she started talking, the other kids had thawed little by little and were now listening.
“I have a dog,” the oldest boy said. His name was Caiden and he’d insisted that he knew how to ride so Thomas let him have the reins. I kept an eye on him to make sure I had time to lunge for the horse if it got spooked.
“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.
“Yeti.”
“What kind of dog is he?” Nika asked.
“He’s big and white and he has lots of fur…”
The Wilmington chapter of the Order occupied a historic firehouse on the corner of Castle and 5th Avenue, downtown. A handsome two-story brick building, it had a tomato-red door, white trim, and four-story bell tower. Over the years, the bell had gone from useful to decorative and back to useful again. In an age where a magic wave could take out phones any second, the ability to sound the alarm without electricity was priceless.
The knights had made a few modifications, including grates on the huge downstairs windows. The pale metal bars fluoresced slightly if you squinted at them just right. Steel core plated with a thick layer of silver. Nice.
“…And Copper said that he should have a puppy too, and Daddy said…”
Thomas and I took the children off the horses.
Going to the Order hadn’t been the plan, but I had four severely traumatized children on my hands. Get in, get out, don’t mouth off, don’t lose your temper. Low profile. I knocked on the door.
“Come in!” a female voice called.
We did.
The inside of the former firehouse was clean and bright. A single room took up most of the downstairs. The walls were brick, the floor concrete sealed with white. Three desks waited, two in a row on the left, and one on the right. Bookshelves lined the walls, some holding books, the others offering a variety of ingredients, and on the left a metal rack held assorted weapons. There would be more in the armory, somewhere deeper in the building.
The two desks on the left stood empty. A woman in her fifties sat at the one on the right. She looked strong, not just muscular but solid, with a round face, sharp dark eyes, russet-brown skin, and black, curly hair, cut short and streaked lightly with gray. Claudia Ozburn, Knight-Protector and the head of this Order chapter. Curran and I had done a basic background check on who was who in Wilmington, so I knew her by reputation. She was dangerous, smart, and had, reportedly, very little tolerance for nonsense.
Claudia looked at the children, then back at me and raised her eyebrows. The kids went silent.
“We found some missing children,” I told her. “I’d like to petition the Order to return them to their parents.”
“Where did you find them?”
“In the Red Horn’s human kennel.”
Claudia’s expression didn’t change. She reached into the desk drawer on her right, took out a piece of paper, and pushed it across the desk to me. “Fill this out.”