Justice Calling

Chapter 4

Ezee, Levi, and Harper were waiting for us in my apartment over the store. I led Alek up the back steps. Three red ­eyed faces greeted us as we came into my small living room. The apartment is a long, narrow one-bedroom unit, with a single bathroom. The living area is dominated by my purple velvet couch and a fifty ­five inch LED TV with about every console you can name set up under it. I mostly use my Xbox 360, but some days nothing will do but to kill my thumbs playing Armada on my Sega Dream cast.

A girl needs options. To me, video games are like shoes. But with more pixels and a plot.

Ezee and Levi had Harper, still bundled in Ciaran's red sweater, between them. As we came in, they each took one of her hands and all turned their faces to us, expectant.

"So," I said with a weak smile. "You want the good news or the bad news?"

"Mom's dead, there is no good news. Unless on the way to the vet you ran over the guy responsible." Harper glared at me, her green eyes puffy and glittering with tears.

"Actually, she isn't dead. That's the good news. And kind of the bad news, too." I grimaced. That hadn't come out in the sympathetic, gentle way I'd rehearsed in my head.

"She's not dead? But, I saw her. She was...how?" I could almost see the hope like will­o ­the­wisp lights turning on in Harper's eyes. I just prayed it wasn't a false hope I was giving her. How much worse would this get if Alek couldn't find the magic-user who did this and make him or her undo it?

"Magic," I said. "She's under some kind of spell holding her in her animal form and keeping her frozen like that."

"Why the hell would someone do that?" Levi said.

"Good fucking question." I shook my head and looked at Alek. He had come to loom beside me, standing too damn close for my comfort, but I wasn't about to inch away. It would have looked pretty obvious.

"I will ask when I find him, "Alek said with a tiny smile that made me think about screaming rabbits and blood spraying on whitewalls. Not a nice smile, really.

"I don't care why," Harper yelled. "Just find him and make him undo it."

Ciaran knocked at the backdoor before entering into the tense, now quiet room. He was out of breath and excited. "I have the paperwork. Here." He held out a manila folder.

I took it and spread it open on the narrow black coffee table after clearing away the remotes and controllers. The photocopy of the ID said the guy who sold Rose was named Caleb Greer, age thirty-­two, with an address in Boise, Idaho. Brown hair, brown eyes, five ­foot ­eight, one hundred and fifty pounds.

"He was thinner than that photo. If his ID hadn't put him at over thirty, I would have thought he was a college student," Ciaran said.

"He probably is," Ezee said. He leaned forward, looking at the paperwork upside­down. "I mean, how likely is it that some middle ­aged dude from Boise drove all the way out here to sell a stuffed fox? It's more likely a fake or stolen ID."

"I have his signature on the sale, and his fingerprints, there, see? I do everything above board," Ciaran said. He folded his arms and pressed his lips into a line, muttering in Irish about idiot dogs.

"So what, we just go start knocking on dorm room doors until Ciaran recognizes someone?" Levi asked.

"If that's what it takes," Harper said. The hope in her eyes had turned into anger.

I resisted making a comment about anger leading to hate and hate leads to the Darkside, but the tension and level of predatory desire to kill were pretty palpable in the room. While it made a lot of sense in a"someone did something awful to someone I love" way, unleashing the hounds, so to speak, on the mostly normal population of Juniper College seemed like a pretty bad plan in actuality. For all we knew, some kid had found the bespelled Rose on the side of the road with a "free" sign on her and figured they could score a little extra cash.