Quick Study Read online

  “Well, your ID would be good evidence for you having been somewhere, and so would your weapons and your phone in theory, but the weapons could be used, and the phone could probably be traced, so…” Caroline pointed out.

  “Yeah, what about yours? Nobody going to track your phone?” He grumbled.

  “Well I’m not a cop, Darien. They’re not likely to worry about the human authorities, now are they?” She grinned triumphantly when she pulled her phone out of her bag. “And of corse, I turned it off at school, so they might not have thought to look for it since it never rang. Oh man I’m going to have so many messages.” Her eyes went wide when she looked down at the device.

  “So?” Darien asked.

  “It’s going to start chirping with message alerts like freaking alarm clock,” she said. “I’ll try to turn the volume off before it starts.”

  “Um, here.” Darien looked around and then grabbed a doorknob. He yanked the door open to reveal a closed full of coats and musty odors. “Turn it on in there. The coats and stuff will muffle any other noise.”

  Caroline pulled a face in disgust but had to admit that he had a point. Ew. With a shrug she pulled the door most of the way closed after Darien gave her the number to dial. As expected, once her phone turned on and found a signal, it erupted with text messages and voicemails, mostly from her mom. She glanced over the texts, skimming over the words that went from angry (the school just called, where are you? What do they mean you’re not in class?) to worried (Honey, we’ll come pick you up, okay, just call us.) to frantic (The police are on their way, where are you?!!) It was only just after eleven at night, and the texts had stopped two hours ago. She didn’t even want to think about the voicemails.

  “Are you okay?” Darien’s voice whispered through the small crack. Caroline looked up from her phone and realized that her face was wet. She must have been sniffling, too.

  “My mom is freaking out. And I haven’t even listened to the messages. She called the police, she said.” Caroline’s throat felt thick and she swallowed to try to clear it.

  “Unfortunately the local 911 cops won’t be able to help here. Call Point,” he said. She could hear the grimace in his voice and swallowed again. She nodded even though he couldn’t see her. She dialed the number Darien had given her and after a ring a cheerful voice answered

  “Federal Paranormal Activities Agency, how may I direct your call?” Woah, a real person, not just a computer voice.

  “Um… I… I’m looking for someone named Point?” Caroline suddenly felt in way over her head. Funny how being kidnapped, chased, and bitten by a vampire hadn’t made her feel shy and inadequate, but talking to the night desk at a federal agency made her feel like she’d been called into the principles office for brawling during science class.

  “One moment, I’ll have to transfer you to his cell phone, as he is out of the office.” The cheerful voice on the other end didn’t hesitate or stutter. Almost as if she got calls for officers in the middle of the night from terrified kids every day.

  Actually, she might.

  “She’s transferring me to his cell.” She whispered to Darien. She could see most of the front part of the room from where she stood, huddled in the dusty coats. Moonlight sprawled across the floor and the mountain of boxes that started just inside her strip of view. Darien crouched, digging through one of them idly while she was on the phone, and nodded his response.

  “Point.” The voice that cracked through the phone sounded alert, but Caroline had the feeling that the man had been asleep when his phone rang.

  “Um, hi. My name is Caroline Murphy. Um, Darien told me to call you. We need help.” There was a sound like something hitting a table, and a grunt, then some shuffles.

  “Where are you. Where is he? Does he have any idea what’s been going on out here? There’s a damn manhunt on for him!”

  “What?” Caroline couldn’t help the squeak. “Darien, there’s a manhunt on for you!” She knew her eyes were huge with shock, and Darien’s head whipped up. He took the phone from her hand.

  “What the hell, Point? I got jumped on that damn recon and have spent the better part of today beat to shit and locked underground in one of the abandoned mansions in the hills.” The outrage in his voice told its own story. Caroline watched him scowl as he listened, but could only hear a little bit of Point’s voice, urgent and angry.

  “No. Caroline’s human. She got snatched at the museum. We got out of the cell but there’s a shield ward around the damn place. It’s tuned to all of us. Kappa and vampires included.” A resigned look swept over his face. “Yes, we do. Yes. Me.” He sighed, and Caroline wondered what Point’s reaction would be to the new information. “Yeah, I know the chief has a… yes, I know. Look, we know that Caroline’s parents called in the cops, she’s got about a hundred texts from them. And the Brotherhood for Elven Sovereignty took something from the museum. Yeah, yeah, something besides Caroline, you jerk.” Darien’s scowl depend while Point came to the same conclusions they had.

  “Yeah. Look, we’re going to try to find a way out of here, but any help we can get would be great. Right. Okay, we’ll turn the phone off and be in touch again in an hour or so.” He handed the phone back to Caroline.

  “I’ve been named as a Person Of Interest in the robbery and some other, presumably related incidents that happened this afternoon. They didn’t officially know I was doing recon, apparently, they just knew that I disappeared before everything started going down. The chief got real tightlipped, apparently, and has been having phone conferences all day again.”

  “You’ve been set up.” Caroline gasped. “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, I’m going to suggest that we wait in here for the moment. Doesn’t look like they come back here much. Then in an hour or so we call Point back and make a plan then.”

  “I wish I could call my folks and let them know I’m okay.” Caroline grumbled

  “Me too, but the fewer calls going out the better. The less chance of someone noticing us. Point will send someone over to aid the investigation of your disappearance. And by aid, I mean take over entirely.”

  “Must be nice to be a fed.” Caroline tried to smile. Darien reached out and squeezed her shoulder.

  “I know you’re worried, but we’ll get out of here. And your family will be happy that you’re safe and sound. They’ll understand that it was more important to keep you safe than to call them,” Darien said. She just nodded and twisted her phone in her hands.

  “I will keep you safe, Sunshine. I promise,” he said. She glanced up and caught the earnest expression in his face. His eyes held deadly intention.

  “S… sunshine?” She shivered. The promise of violence in his eyes didn’t suit him, and she was glad when it softened to a bashful chagrin, like he hadn’t meant to say that word. He’d called her that back in the prison cell, too.

  “It’s…” Darien turned suddenly to crouch down and poke into the box again. “It’s what your blood tasted like. I’ve been calling you that in my head ever since.” He mumbled.

  “I…” Caroline had no idea what to say to that.

  She looked down at her arm where she knew he’d bitten her. Her skin there was clean and unmarked, like she’d just rolled out of bed that morning. It had been a horrible day, bad on a pretty epic scale. The girls at school had taken extra glee in the teasing. She knew that she wasn’t particularly popular, but she’d had no idea that her schoolmates had gone out of their way to ensure that, and finding that out had hurt, badly.

  When she’d shuffled into the quiet dusk of the museum she’d wondered what the point was in even trying? It wasn’t like she’d be making friends anytime soon, her personality was just too big a turnoff for anyone to be willing to risk the wrath of the queen bee mean girls at the high school. She just had to wait them out and graduate.

  And then all this happened. The world was full of things far worse than being ostracized at school. She’d known that even yesterda
y, but now…

  Sunshine? She didn’t feel full of sunshine. Maybe it was just because it had been fresh, not canned blood that he thought that? She opened her mouth to say something when Darien’s head whipped up and he shoved her back into the closet.

  The door to the storeroom opened, and there was no place for Darien to hide.

  8

  “We tossed everything back here this evening. All the evidence we didn’t need, all the house junk we don’t want. You know,” said a voice. Shiny. Caroline thought she’d recognize it anywhere by now, that slimy bastard. The melodiousness of his voice didn’t fool her in the least. Every one of his words carried disdain and violence, even when he’d been afraid of Darien, he had been looking down on him.

  “But you left his badge and crap in here, you moron. We need that.” answered a new voice. It was equally melodious— Caroline guessed that meant he was also an elf. His voice held nervousness, though, and frustration. Darien let out a soft growl when he heard the new voice.

  Several men stepped into the room. Shiny came in first, followed by a tall man, casually dressed against the cool evening air with a windbreaker over a sky blue polo shirt and tan pants of some sort.

  “And you lost him. In this house. How you did that is past understanding,” the newcomer was saying. Behind him two guards looked bored. One of them yawned and fingered another of those funny toy guns she’d seen earlier.

  “We’ll find him,” Shiny said. “There aren’t that many places he can hide with that human child.”

  “You left him with a—“ the man cut off abruptly when he turned. Darien still crouched, unmoving, by the box. Whether he’d hoped to hide in his stillness or wasn’t even trying, it didn’t matter. He’d been seen.

  “Darien. There you are, we’ve been looking for you,” the newcomer said. The guards snapped to alert, one with his huge gun full of scribed ammo, and the other with his tiny toy gun, both of them pointed right at Darien.

  “Chief,” Darien growled. “That certainly does explain the spell shield.”

  “Stand up. Slowly. And drop the weapons.” Shiny barked his orders and Darien did as he was told. Caroline held her breath, and watched the scene unfold. Here finger slipped over the phone in her hand and she almost gasped at the idea that zipped through her mind. She thumbed the screen, careful to block the light it cast, and found the app she wanted.

  “—Your whole career like this? You’re giving aid to a terrorist group, you’re obviously setting me up to look guilty for something. God only knows what they have planned, but I doubt it’s a stretch to think it’s criminal. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m getting rid of you, for one thing,” the chief spat his words out. “Aside from that, it’s none of your business.”

  “Shoot him,” Shiny said.

  “Wait, where’s the girl?” the chief held the guards back with a wave. Darien didn’t speak, only shrugged.

  “You…” The chief sputtered. “Your kind are all the same, you bloodthirsty animal. When the world is set right, I’ll make sure none of you are left to bring your disgusting conditions into the light of day.”

  “Why not? A little sunshine is good for me. You can’t believe everything you see in the movies, you know,” Darien said. Caroline could hear the smirk in his voice and grinned to herself. Nice.

  “It will take twice the elf shot to knock him out. He’s had a meal.” The chief turned and stepped out of the room as the second guard squeezed the trigger twice, three times, and Darien jerked. He stepped forward, reaching out to yank the gun from the first guard’s hands and landed a punch to the man’s face that lifted him off his feet and dropped him to the floor.

  He staggered, then, and Shiny used his too-clean boots throw a solid kick to Darien’s chest. As he fell, Caroline saw three tiny darts sticking out from his chest like miniature porcupine quills. She also saw that his skin was pale, turning waxy with it, and almost beginning to look blue.

  The elves waited until they were sure that Darien wouldn’t get up again, then after a few experimental kicks to his unconscious body, they dragged him out of the room and flicked off the lights.

  Caroline thumbed her phone and waited a few minutes in the dark. Then she brought up her recent calls list.

  “Federal Paranormal Activities Agency, how may I direct your call?”

  “I need to talk to Point again. He’s going to give me his damn cell number this time,” she growled.

  “One moment.” The cheerful voice on the other end sounded amused this time. Caroline counted out a full minute in her head while she tried to keep calm.

  “Point”

  “I need your phone number and a way to send you a video. Also, we’re in a lot of trouble,” Caroline said.

  Caroline made sure that her phone was off for the fourth or fifth time. Nobody had bothered to pick up the weapons that they’d made Darien drop so now she had one of those tiny elf shot guns herself, and one of the bigger semi-automatics with their fancy ammo.

  She felt a bit like Navy SEAL Barbie.

  “That elf shot will knock him out, but he should be okay,” Point had said after watching the video. “Damn though, three hits. And he still took out one of those guards? That guy’s a tank. I could see Ollie taking that, but he’s an ogre and almost eight feet tall. You could make three of D out of Ollie. Probably more, actually.”

  “Oh. Um. I don’t really know much about all this stuff,” Caroline said. “I’m kinda totally human here.”

  “Right, sorry. Elf shot is basically like a tranquilizer dart for most of us. One dart will knock out most humanoid paranormals and a pretty wide variety of non-humanoids. Just one hit would take me out, for example, and I’m pretty big, even for a troll. It’s straight up poison for regular humans though, so you need to be very careful.”

  “Oh. A troll?” Caroline didn’t even know what to do with that knowledge. “So what do I do now?”

  “If you’re safe somewhere, stay there. I’ve already sent the video out to the rest of the team and the reaction has been, shall we say, not very positive for Chief Beckett’s future. Internal Affairs has also had some pointed words to say on the matter already, and I do not want to mess with them. We’re getting a rescue operation together right now to get you out of there and arrest the Elven Sovereignty goons. Your job is going to be to say safe and out of the way.”

  “But what about Darien?” Caroline whispered. She thought she’d seen a light flicker in the hallway. The pause on the line ratcheted up her nerves.

  “It’s pretty clear that Beckett wasn’t very worried about his health and wellbeing. They want him to take the fall for whatever it is they have planned. I’d guess that at this point they just wanted him alive long enough to die in an ‘exchange of gunfire’ with the chief in whatever location they’re using for the frame. He’s probably already dead, Miss Murphy. I’m sorry.”

  Caroline had gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached and simply nodded though Point’s directions to stay put wherever she was, and the calvary would be there soon. As soon as he hung up the phone, she had turned it off, then sat back in the closet and thought.

  She knew Darien wasn’t dead. And she had a pretty good idea where he was, thanks to that odd internal compass. The weird directional sense wasn’t very specific, but she’d crept around this house enough now to have a feeling that she knew exactly where he was. It took her only a couple of minutes to shove her phone in her pocket and arm herself.

  And now she was creeping down the hallway back towards the kitchen. The elf shot gun looked for all the world like a modified Nerf weapon. Pretty basic point-and-shoot. She assumed that there was some sort of magical propellant since it had been nearly silent when the guard had fired it, and she was less scared of it than she was of the bigger gun with the magic bullets, so that’s what she had in her hand. The other gun was mostly there just in case. She’d played enough video games to know not to leave a perfectly good weapon behind if she didn’t hav
e to.

  She’d had to leave the second gun though. She just wasn’t that strong, and honestly they were terrifying. It wasn’t like she knew how to shoot one anyway.

  In the kitchen was one guard, lounging back against the work counter like there was no reason for him to pay any attention. Caroline guessed that he knew the scary vampire cop was back in the stupid prison cell and why worry about a ‘mere human’ that may or may not be dead already?

  Caroline aimed the elf shot carefully and gave the guy a reason to worry after all. She watched him with a great deal of satisfaction when he jumped, then slid to the floor. Well, he’d worry when he woke up anyway. When he was arrested by Darien’s teammates. She listened carefully for a long minute, then got up and dragged the elf across the floor towards the pantry they had hidden in not more than two hours ago.

  She had to shake her head at how strange the passage of time had gotten since her last class. It seemed to be crawling by, but rushing at the same time. She took the guard’s weapons and used his own knife to cut his gun’s carrying strap free. She used the narrow strip to tie the guard’s hands tightly behind his back and took a moment to actually look at him.

  He was tallish, she guessed, and his buzz cut hair was indeed blonde. His ears were definitely pointy, but he wasn’t beautiful in any way she could tell. He actually looked kind of dirty and a bit creepy, like the guys who’d stand the street corner near the gas station and holler at women that walked by. Well, she’d had a few vampire myths shattered tonight already, why should elves be beautiful and wise? This guy was clearly just a thug, elf or not.