Page 35 of Be A Detective, They Said. It’ll Be Fun, They Said

The ice broken, we laughed, leaving the SUV and heading into Susie’s Bistro, a cute café with a big picture window, the name of the eatery in pink and gold lettering painted on the glass.

I loved the crisp white tablecloths and the flameless candles on the tables. The small stem vases with fresh flowers in the middle of winter.

Marty leaned into me as we waited in line to place our orders. “You know, has it occurred to you that aside from the dark paranormal web, no one’s said boo at your school about these missing children? You’d think they’d want everyone on high alert at every paranormal school.”

I made a face of disgust. “You know what they’re like in our world. Everything’s a big secret. They probably didn’t want every paranormal parent on the planet to lose their minds and go on a killing spree. You know there are some ancients who strike first, ask questions later. But I can tell you this—I’m disgusted. I don’t know if hearing about these poor children sooner would have helped, but it would have been nice to have options. We might have been a day earlier in following this lead on Neerie.”

Susie herself greeted us at the counter. When she leaned over the marble surface, her smile became a look of concern. “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you mention Mrs. Lincoln. I mean, Neerie. She’s a regular here, every morning, Monday through Sunday. She orders a half-caf Americano and a blueberry parfait. But I haven’t seen her in a few days. Is she all right?”

Here’s where things got sticky. We couldn’t tell her Neerie was missing. Who knows if she’d go to the human police out of concern. We didn’t need that on top of everything else.

I put a hand to her forearm. “She’s a friend of mine—another home-school mom. I was just mentioning a lesson plan I’d like to borrow from her.”

I didn’t necessarily lie, but I didn’t exactly tell the truth.

Susie appeared relieved, the short fringe of her bangs bouncing against her forehead as she nodded. “Oh, phew. After her last visit a few days ago—Wednesday, I think it was—I was worried she was in some kind of trouble.”

Marty’s head tilted. Tucking her purse under her arm, she asked with innocence in her tone, “What makes you say that?”

Susie exhaled, leaning her elbows on the counter, her playful blue eyes, normally cheerful, clouding. “She was on the phone with someone, and she was very angry. I only heard a little bit of the call. I didn’t listen on purpose, but it was hard not to hear her. She was pretty loud when she said—and I know this is going to sound crazy—something about a vampire, a werewolf, and a witch. Sounds like a book or something, doesn’t it?”

She was talking about the missing children. My hands went clammy, my mouth dry, but I managed to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Did she say anything else?”

Susie cocked her head, cupping her chin in her hand. “Yeah. She did. She said, ‘I’m telling you, it’s in the basement.’ Then she said something about kids, and the last thing she said was, ‘I took its picture. It’s real and it’s in the basement. I saw its eyes.’”

We looked at one another, our eyes wide. The alien? Did she mean the alien? She took the picture of the alien, it’s real, and it’s in the basement?

Marty gripped my arm, but she managed to stay quite calm. “How interesting, Susie. Anything else?”

The woman snarfed. “Isn’t that enough? I mean, seriously, vampires and werewolves aren’t real.” Then she flapped her hands. “Anyway, what can I get you lovely ladies?”

As we placed our orders, my head buzzed and my gut clenched. We needed to find out who Neerie had talked to that day.

The morning she disappeared.

* * *

I shoveled my egg and cheese on a bagel into my face as we raced to the school.

“Tottington says there were no outgoing calls on her phone that day. So who the fuck did she talk to before she lost her phone in the woods?”

“I have no idea, vampire. Maybe she deleted the call? Maybe whoever took her deleted it?”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about Neerie’s phone. It seems like she lost it when she was snatched, but if that’s what happened…why wouldn’t they take her phone, too? I mean, it’s evidence, right?”

“There could be a million reasons why, Marty,” I said around my last bite of bagel. “Maybe they didn’t know she had it with her? Maybe she didn’t realize she’d dropped it? Maybe whoever this is doesn’t give a whit about her phone because no one can seem to figure out who’s taking these kids to begin with? We’re paranormal, for Pete’s sake, and no one smelled anything. No traces, no leads, remember?”

Nina swerved into the parking lot of the school as a fresh batch of snow began to fall. “So we think there’s an alien snatching kids and school supplies, Neerie found out and was going to fuck everything up, so it took her, too? And it’s in a basement that doesn’t exist?”

I’d texted Principal Mathers and asked if there was a basement we didn’t know about, but she claimed there was no basement at Paranormal and Gifted.

“That’s the only piece of this I don’t get. What basement was she talking about?”

And then like a ton of bricks, a thought hit me. “The school is only about twenty years old, right? Before they established the school and glamoured it so humans couldn’t see it then renovated it, it was a series of factories. They got in there and connected the buildings for a more cohesive structure. What if…”

“What if there was a basement in one of the factories?” Marty shouted.

Nina pressed a button on the dashboard and called Tottington. “Tater?”

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