Page 41 of Valley of the Shadow
Baojia hugged her from the side. “Some things don’t change.”
“Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean—”
“Oh!” Jake interjected as Sarah was climbing back down to her seat. “Mom, can we see your fangs?”
“Oh!” Sarah bounced up and down. “Let me see, let me see!”
“Told you,” Baojia muttered.
Natalie felt weirder than she had in weeks. “Uh… Sarah, stop bouncing on the furniture and I’ll show you my fangs.”
Sarah stopped bouncing immediately. Both kids leaned into the camera until all Natalie could see were the tops of their heads.
“Okay.” She swallowed hard and tried to will her fangs to come down. “Okay, I’m still figuring all this out, so—”
Baojia ran a finger along the inside of her thigh, and her fangs popped down immediately.
“Whoa! So cool!”
“I like them, Mama! You have nice fangs. They look really sharp.”
“Uh-huh.” She gave Baojia a dirty look, but he was biting back a laugh. “Thanths, guyth.”
Sarah put a hand over her mouth and giggled. “You talk funny now.”
Jake was smiling too. “That’s so weird, Mom.”
“Thanks.” She swallowed hard and stretched her mouth until her fangs retreated. “I’m still getting the hang of it. Glad to know I’m weird.”
“The weirdest.” Jake’s eyes were dancing, just like his father’s. “Miss you, Mom.”
“I miss you too.”
Six months later…
Baojia openedthe front door just as Natalie threw her notebook against the wall and screamed into a pillow.
“Gaaaaah!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Kids are good, thanks for asking. Isabel says hi and she thinks Adriana would make a great nanny. They’re going to call her tonight to see if she can come down and meet us.”
“That is great news!” Natalie threw down the pillow and stalked toward him. “This is driving me crazy.”
“What is?” For the most part, she’d been adjusting adequately. She still didn’t trust herself to be around humans, which showed she had good judgment, but she was venturing more and more outside, so she wasn’t in danger of becoming a hermit.
“Tommy keeps emailing me these leads. This is the second one in as many weeks. And I know there’s a story here that connects with the Ostenhouse case—”
“That was the trafficking one last year, right?”
“Yes! But remember there was the one guy…” She snapped her fingers. “Yukov. Lukov, something like that…”
“Sokolov?”
“Yes! That guy. And SFPD could never find enough evidence to get the DA to charge him, and then he’s international, right? So he walks.”
“And disappears.” Baojia sat on the edge of the couch. “I heard about him somewhere in Belarus, but after that—”
“He disappears.” She threw up her hands. “Poof. And now I’m hearing that there are girls on the East Coast who are disappearing with the same MO. The exact same MO, Baojia. And I can’t do anything about it.”
