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I touched the bed. My head grew light and I took a deep breath. She hadn’t slept here last night.
I raced down the stairs to the house phone and hit the voice-mail button. No messages. I grabbed my cell phone and touched the screen. No texts. No voice mails. Nothing.
I swallowed around the cold rock growing in my throat. With trembling hands, I hit her name on my cell phone screen. She was fine. It had gotten late while she was studying so she’d stayed with Wendy. Or maybe they’d gone to a party and she was passed out on the floor somewhere. I’d kill her when I found her.
The phone rang a few times, and then a computerized voice came onto the line, informing me that the person I had called was unavailable and could I please leave a message.
Eyes burning, I took a deep breath. “Hey, it’s me. ” I was going for light and airy, but even to my own ears I sounded like I was on the edge of tears. “Where are you?
Call me as soon as you get this. ” I hit end and concentrated on my breathing. I had to stay calm. She was fine, and calling her friends while hysterical wasn’t going to make her happy with me. But the possibility that something was really wrong was too frightening. I couldn’t be worried about embarrassing her.
I hit Wendy’s number and concentrated on the sound of the ringer in my ear. Four rings, six, finally Wendy’s voice came onto the line. My stomach lurched.
Voice mail. Personalized with a message from Wendy, but voice mail all the same.
“Wendy, it’s Marisol. Tell Elaine to call me ASAP,” I snapped.
She was fine. She had to be.
Chapter Two
I flung the door open and strode into Vasquez’s office.
Ignoring the two uniforms already seated in front of his old metal desk, I asked, “Where are we at?”
Vasquez nodded at the uniforms. “Grady and Parks are headed out to canvass the library. ” He gave them each a picture of Elaine. Her DMV photo had been blown up, and the portrait looked fuzzy and unreal. The officers got up from their seats.
“Her hair is different. ” I swallowed hard, trying to rid my voice of its strangled tone. “I don’t have any photos of the new cut, but it’s shorter than in that one. Shoulder length around her face and shorter in the back. ” My hand shook as I waved it around my face. At their blank looks, I added, “Like Missy, the new receptionist. But blond. ”
Their wide eyes narrowed in understanding, and they nodded in unison before heading out the door.
I leaned against one of the guest chairs and met Vasquez’s hard gaze. “What else have you started? Did you get the missing person report filed?”
“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours. Hell, Marisol, you don’t even know if she’s been gone twelve. ”
I struggled to keep my voice even. “You know that every second she’s gone makes it more likely we won’t find her. ”
His mouth was drawn in a hard line, but worry creased his brows. “I know. But she’s a college student. How do you know she didn’t just meet some guy—”
“She wouldn’t do that! She…” My nails dug into the vinyl lining the back of the chair. Telling Vasquez about her past wouldn’t help me. He’d just assume the worst of her, more so than he already did. A boy in her high school had decided that Elaine was fair game because she was a succubus. He’d attacked her, and lost his life for it. Elaine was still more than a little fearful of men showing any interest in her, but Vasquez might see things differently.
Might decide that because she’d killed before, she was some sort of criminal.
Vasquez got up from his desk and walked slowly around it. He reached for his office door and I blinked at our audience. Every eye in the station was directed at us.
I swallowed a sob, and Vasquez slammed the door shut.
“Look, Whitman, I know you’re worried—”
“Please! Jesus Christ, Vasquez! What if she were your sister, or your daughter?”
Vasquez frowned and considered it. I met his gaze with my own and refused to look away. I pushed my worry and fear and dread into my expression, hoping he would understand. Finally, he looked down.
“All right. We’ll send out some more officers. But we can’t put everyone on this. ”
I sat down heavily. “What about Claude? Is he back in town?” The vampire could help. He had great senses, sure, but even more than that, he had resources in the vampire community. Ones he might be willing to tap for a colleague.
Claude had never shown me anything but respect, and his good-hearted nature had shown through his actions more times than I could recall. He’d help.
“Desmarais is out of town for at least three more days, on personal business. He specifically asked not to be bothered, and he told me he’d be unreachable anyway. I’m not tracking him down to help find your sister—who in all likelihood is playing hooky. ”
“Fine. I’ll take Astrid. ” I pushed up from the desk.
“No. I’ll send out a few more officers, but I’m not taking Holmes off a murder investigation. ” He raised an eyebrow. “Where am I sending the officers?”
I stopped, halfway between sitting and standing.
Where should they go? One set of uniforms was already en route to the library where Elaine had supposedly been studying.
“The campus,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“See if anyone outside the library saw anything. And there’s a pizza place not far from there they liked to go to after studying. ” I rubbed my temple, remembering the time I’d picked Elaine up from the restaurant. She’d looked so happy. Finally.
“Name?” Vasquez asked. I looked up at him. “The pizza place?”
“Oh. It’s, um…” My mind went blank and I forced back tears. What the hell was the name of the pizza place?
“Never mind,” Vasquez said. “We’ll find it. Go talk to her friends. ”
I nodded, unable to trust my voice.
Wendy Larson didn’t answer her door, so I moved on to the other friend of Elaine’s I’d met, Teresa Robertson.
Teresa’s address put her in a downtown apartment building, and I parked directly in front, ignoring the No Parking signs guarding the curb. I trotted up the steps and scanned the list of names on the front of the building, then pressed firmly against the one that read Robertson.
Unlike Wendy and Elaine, Teresa was a normal. The fact that she chose to spend most of her time with a couple of otherworlders surprised me, but she was a nice girl. And she didn’t seem to mind that Elaine was a succubus or that Wendy was a siren. Part of a generation where OWs had always been a fact of life, Teresa was a bit more open to the idea of otherworlder friends than older normals were.
“Yeah?” The young woman’s voice was staticky over the line, but I recognized Teresa’s deep tones.
“Teresa, it’s Marisol Whitman, Elaine’s sister. ”
There was a pause, and then she said, “Elaine isn’t here. ”
I took a deep breath. It had been a reach to think I might find her at Teresa’s, but I’d still hoped. “Can I come up and talk to you? It’s important. ”
“Yeah, sure. ” The door buzzed and I yanked it open and stepped inside. What passed for a lobby in Teresa’s building was small, and covered in brown carpet that carried obvious stains. The small mailboxes that had been incorporated into one wall were the only things that broke up the room. A stairwell rose at the end of the narrow room, with a hallway next to it leading to the first-floor apartments.
I walked up the stairs to the third level and knocked on the fourth door on the left. Apartment 308.
Teresa opened the door almost instantly. Eyes wide, she stepped back and let me in. The small apartment was a studio style. The bed sat in one corner of the large room and a couch sat against the other wall. A small television was sitting on a dresser next to the bed, right across from the couch. A tiny kitchen was off to one side, with a bathr
oom across from it. The apartment was small but tidy. No sign any crazy party had happened there lately, and no sign of Elaine.
“Is everything okay?” Teresa asked.
Teresa looked like a deer in headlights, and I suddenly realized that I’d only met her once, when Elaine brought her to the house for a study session. I pasted on a smile and did my best to make it soothing instead of forced.
“I hope so. When was the last time you saw Elaine and Wendy?”
“Last night at the library. We headed out together, but they went to the south parking lot and I took the L. ”
“Elaine didn’t take the L?”
“No, I think she was planning on it, but—”
“So she left with Wendy? Did they talk about going anywhere else before they headed home?”
“No, it sounded like they were going right home. ” Her eyes were still wide, like any moment she expected me to pull my gun.
“I’m sorry, Teresa. I’m not trying to scare you, but I haven’t seen Elaine since yesterday. She didn’t come home last night. ”
Teresa grasped her hands together and tugged her fingers nervously. “She didn’t come home? That’s not like her. ”
I nodded, doing my best not to yell that I was well aware the behavior was very unlike my sister.
“They didn’t say they were going anywhere else. I’m sorry. I just assumed they went home. ”
“Why didn’t you ride with them?” Wendy’s apartment was less than a mile from Teresa’s.
Teresa shrugged. “I was going to my boyfriend’s. He lives up north. ”
I paced in Teresa’s small room. From the end of the bed to the end of the living room. Back and forth. Teresa watched me, nervously chewing on the inside of her cheek.
Halting in midstride, I pivoted to face her. “Nothing unusual happened at all yesterday? I need to know everything. Start at the beginning, from when you met them at the library. Every detail you remember. Every.
Thing. ”
Teresa took a deep breath and began her story.