Page 53 of Magic Claimed
“Okay, any way you can figure out whether she had any in common with Jeremiah?”
“Who is Tabitha?” Monique glanced from me to Logan, brows lowered with what almost looked like suspicion.
“She’s my neighbor,” I confessed. “She’s about Jeremiah’s age, and according to her mom, she went missing last night. We’re trying to figure out if there’s any connection.”
“I don’t remember him mentioning anyone named Tabitha.” Her lips pursed and her forehead creased in thought. “But he had a lot of friends at school.”
“He might have known her by a different name,” Logan suggested. “An online name.”
As he tapped away at the website, I glanced sideways at Ethan. He was standing off to the side, scanning the room with an absent gaze.
“See anything?” I asked quietly, and sensed Monique holding her breath beside me. It wasn’t necessarily a safe question—he might respond with anger or dismissal—but it seemed worth the risk.
Ethan was silent for a moment, his head tilted like a bird’s as he continued to survey the room’s contents. Given his generalair of disinterested nonchalance, I wasn’t sure he would answer, but—after a long pause—he did.
“I see a boy who didn’t have to be a grown-up. A boy who felt… safe.”
His words punched me in the gut. “How can you tell?”
He was running his fingers along the headboard of the bed—back and forth, as if anchoring himself. Anchoring his thoughts. “Wasn’t afraid to be messy,” he said slowly. “Wasn’t afraid to waste food. To reveal what he loved.” He reached tentatively towards the rumpled bedclothes and pulled out a ragged stuffed animal—worn and stained and missing an eye.
“He didn’t hide it.” Ethan held it up and regarded the lumpy, misshapen toy thoughtfully from behind the curtain of his dark hair. “He wasn’t afraid someone would try to take it away from him or tell him he was too old to need comfort.”
Monique whirled around and set her face towards the door, one hand clapped over her mouth, her shoulders shaking silently.
“We’re going to find him,” I said, as much for myself as for Monique, but for Ethan and Logan most of all. They’d been in Jeremiah’s shoes once, but it seemed likely no one had cared enough to find out what had happened to them.
“I think they played a lot of the same games,” Logan announced, drawing my attention back to the computer. “Mostly the super popular ones. But there’s another one I’ve never played. I remember Tabitha talking about it. CalledThrough the Portal to Everwhere. It’s pretty new.”
The Portal…
I looked over his shoulder. It seemed like a fantasy game, but the graphics were rough and pixelated, the motions jerky, and the sounds a bit jarring. There was a chat box on the right side of the screen, with words scrolling across it as the players interacted.
“Any way of knowing who Jeremiah might have been chatting with? Or whether he was in contact with Tabitha?”
Logan shook his head. “I can access his friends list, but I won’t know if Tabitha is one of them. Not without knowing her username.”
Drat. I was going to have to talk to my neighbor again after all. And hope she didn’t try to have me arrested for asking suspicious questions. The chances of her telling me anything were probably nonexistent, but I had to try.
Realistically, though, what were the odds that these two missing kids were actually connected? Kids went missing all the time. Didn’t they?
I had no idea how many were ever found, or how often anyone figured out what really happened to them. How many were runaways versus how many were kidnapped, trafficked, or involved in custody disputes.
I couldn’t help them all, but these two… No matter how unpleasant Tabitha’s mother might be, the kid didn’t deserve to be forgotten. No one did.
“Okay. This is good. It might be a lead. We need to do a little more looking into this game, and find out whether Tabitha and Jeremiah knew each other, even just by their usernames. Then we can…”
Suddenly my vision went black, and I staggered, barely catching myself against the desk.
I gripped the edge, fighting for balance as the sharp wooden corners dug into my palms. For a moment I would have sworn I was hearing voices, struggling against hands holding me down, holding me together, pulling me apart…
Maybe I should have actually eaten something today.
A bright light suddenly seared across my inner vision, followed by a ringing in my ears and a strange surge of energy. Power crackled behind my eyelids, accompanied by a storm of thoughts and feelings that made no sense.
What was happening to me?
“What’s wrong?” Logan’s voice was muffled, but I could hear his worry.
