Page 23 of Wake the Dream

Daniel knew something, of that Kieran was sure, and his gut told him coming to Claw had been the right move. Now he needed to put the pieces together and see what happened from there. Unfortunately, his brain refused to cooperate. He sat in the car staring off into space and trying to figure out what he would say to Illaria when he finally decided to give her a call.

He dragged himself back into the station to log his report of the day, keeping his back turned away from Osgood’s office. Still, eyes came on him the second he stepped foot in the bullpen. The noise level dropped and Kieran shifted, distinctly uncomfortable.

“Look at what the cat dragged in! You been out in the weather?” was the snarky comment from a pencil pusher who worked part-time. Her desk sat on the outskirts of the room on the opposite side from his. Two outcasts, only she had a better chance of being promoted, even with five eyes on her head.

Kieran hadn’t even bothered to learn the woman’s name. That probably made him a bad team player. Still, she fell in with the rest of the crowd when it came to ragging on him. He was her path to the higher rungs.

“Worse. I’ve been at your sister’s house,” he replied easily, slipping into his chair across the room and staring at the black computer screen in front of him. A layer of dust decorated the monitor. He swiped a palm to clear it. Step one, solve this case. Step two, overtime to clean up his space. Step three...he had no clue. “Now let me do my job.”

He allowed the rest of the noise to fade into the background, including the outraged squawk from the harpy across the room. Not a literal harpy, although he knew one who lived in town. Somewhere. And that harpy was probably far less annoying than what’s-her-face there.

Although his intuition told him to probe further into Yelena’s dichotomous personality, Kieran wasn’t sure where to start on that front. He stared from his screen to his notebook and back to the screen. Notebook again. Tried to get his brain to focus on putting the story together. The story of where Yelena had gone. As it stood now, Shula had been the last person to see her, and unless he wanted to waste his time tracking down whatever manner of scum had frequented the club that night and flash the missing Fae’s photo, he had no clue where she’d gone afterward.

From his training, he knew the first seventy-two hours to be crucial in the investigation of a missing person. They were getting dangerously close to the mark, and instead of moving closer, he had a gut sense and a whole lot of nothing.

His high dissipated. Back to square one, it seemed.

Chapter 7

Illaria

Illaria couldn’t sitstill. After Kieran dropped her off, she spent the rest of the day moving restlessly from one end of the house to the other with nothing productive to show for her efforts. Her boss at the gallery tried to call her in to cover a shift. Illaria had ended up hanging up on him.

Raw energy skittered inside her, threatening to gnaw her bones and suck the marrow. She stared at Yelena’s room from the doorway of her own. When the chasm inside of her became too much to bear, she took off for a flight.

Wings exploded from her back with a painful jolt. She pushed away from the backyard, the cool air rustling through her hair, stretching her wings to their fullest extent and pushing her muscles to their breaking point. She had to go farther, faster. Had to escape whatever black cloud of memories swirled around the house and turned it into a vortex of misery.

The town looked different from that height. It spread beneath her in a labyrinth of meandering streets, with no rhyme or rhythm. Towering trees rose into the atmosphere, mist swirling among the upper branches. There was darkness and daylight, mystery and magic. A few abandoned buildings punctuated the expanse of the forest surrounding the town center, ramshackle roofs poking through the firs and conifers. Only she saw them, forgotten and lost in time.

She had no words. The empty hole inside her grew larger, blacker, until it left no room for feelings. Nothing in the world could fill her again until Yelena returned home safely.

Illaria landed after exhausting her muscles to the point where they trembled. Feet stumbling, she fell toward the door with a gasp, her hands slamming against the bricks of her house.

What if Yelena never came back, she thought for the thousandth time.

Shaking fingers grabbed her cell from the counter and dialed in Kieran’s number. No answer. Typical. Typical man who couldn’t be trusted to be reachable.

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