“Why hopeful?” asked Leslie.
“Because a fetch costs a lot of magic, right?” Leeds told them. “And what is the primary purpose of a fetch?”
“To disguise the fact that a child is missing,” said Anna.
“And why disguise it, if not to keep people from looking for the missing girl.” Leeds nodded. “If she were dead, a body is easy to get rid of, easier to hide than a living child. The thing is, unlike a living changeling, a fetch has a finite life … animation period. Presumably, if Charles hadn’t forced the issue, it would have continued in her place until the real child died.”
“It could have been left to keep people from looking for the fae who stole Amethyst,” said Charles.
“And that right there is why I didn’t say anything while the Millers were here,” agreed Leeds.
He looked at Marsden. “If Special Agent Fisher is right, and the fae are really letting loose their bad guys upon us, you know what that means.”
“No,” Marsden said.
Leeds sighed. “Who are their favorite prey?”
“Children,” said Anna, a cold chill running down her spine. “It’s the children.”
“We should go to the Millers’ house,” Charles said to Anna as they walked toward their car. They’d borrowed it from the Sanis, and so they’d parked it in the parking lot of a strip mall a mile or so from the day care. It would be stupid to give the Sanis up to the fae, the FBI, or Cantrip with a license plate.
“Can you get their address?” she asked, and was rewarded by her mate’s smile.
“Will they let us in?” she asked.
“Their daughter is missing,” he said. “Now that they’re coming out of the fog of the fae’s spell, they will be looking for help from whoever offers it.”
It was dark by the time they found the right street. Every light in the house was on. Anna thought about how she’d feel knowing her child had been missing for months, hurting and afraid if not dead. And the whole while they’d believed that the fetch had been their daughter.
“It’s important they have hope,” she said, pulling into their driveway.
“We won’t take it away from them,” promised Charles.
Dr. Miller opened the door before they knocked.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“My husband and I are specialists of a sort,” Anna said. “Fae, werewolf, whatever. We get called in. We thought, if you don’t mind, that we might find something here to help find your daughter.”
“She’s dead,” he said heavily. “She’s been gone for months. Twenty-four hours is the usual time frame for recovering kidnapped children alive.”
“Maybe,” Anna said. She’d been wrong, she saw. There was no chance of taking away hope that wasn’t there. Maybe it was cruel to give it back to them, but she couldn’t help herself. “If she’d been abducted by humans, almost certainly. But the fae are funny creatures when it comes to children. Sometimes they kill them, but some kinds of fae take children to keep as their own. We don’t know enough about this one to know what happened to Amethyst.”
“Let them in,” said Mrs. Miller from behind her husband’s back.
Dr. Miller hesitated, then opened the door to welcome them inside. “Don’t hurt her,” he told them earnestly, and he wasn’t talking about Amethyst.
“Life hurts,” Charles said gently. “But we won’t lie to you or to your wife.”
Amethyst’s room was neat as a pin. Toys were organized by size, then by color on the white shelves along one wall. The bed was tidy and Anna suspected she could have bounced a quarter off the bedspread.
“Was she always this tidy?” Anna asked.
Sara shook her head. “No. I didn’t even notice when it changed. She’d get started on something and get distracted. So her bed would be half-made. She’d color part of a coloring book page.”
“She’d have one shoe on,” said Dr. Miller. “Because she remembered she wanted oatmeal for breakfast before she found the other shoe.”
Charles had his head tilted and his eyes half closed, a sure sign he was smelling the room.
“How could I not have noticed?” Amethyst’s mother said. “What kind of mother doesn’t notice that her child’s been replaced by a … a thing?”
“Fae can fog your perception,” said Anna. “If you started noticing something wrong, the fetch would have distracted you.” When Mackie had noticed something was wrong, the fetch tried to kill her.
“Is there something that Amethyst kept close to her?” Charles said. “A favorite toy she slept with? Something that the fetch didn’t associate with too much?”
“Something a dog could use to get a scent to track her with,” Anna supplied.
“You’re going to use dogs?” Dr. Miller frowned.
“We’ll use whatever we can,” Anna said. “Some of our methods are unorthodox—magic. And it would help to have something that belonged to Amethyst.”
“Her bunny,” Sara said. She went to the bookcase and picked out a grubby, one-eared rabbit and handed it to Anna. “Will this do?”
Anna held it to her forehead, as if she were a TV psychic. Her nose told her that if the fetch had touched it, it hadn’t been very often. Children didn’t have as much body odor as adults, but they also didn’t disguise it with soaps and perfumes the way adults did.
“This will do,” she said. “Do you have a plastic bag I can put it in?”
Sara looked as though she wasn’t sure she wanted them to take it.
“I promise we’ll bring it back,” said Anna.
“Go get a bag from the kitchen,” Dr. Miller told his wife gently.
As soon as she was out of the room, he looked at them. “Werewolves?” he asked.
Anna smiled at him. “We’re not psychics. Yes.”
“My wife would be afraid, if she knew,” he told Anna. “But I’ve had dealings with your people, when I was in the army, a lifetime ago. Why are you helping us?”
“Because children deserve to be safe,” Charles said.
Charles and Anna got back to the Sanis’ ranch well after dinner. Kage met them at the front door, making Charles think he’d been watching for them.
“Hosteen is still out riding somewhere,” he said, ushering them inside. “Dad ate better than he has in months and fell asleep. Chelsea has been sleeping most of the day.” Kage continued with his dogged recitation. “Kids are up in the TV room with my mom and Ernestine, watching some TV show about serial killers, zombies, or something equally healthy for them.”