The two neighbors jerked, had that look of panic when they realized what he was saying.
“Calmly,” he said again. “You helped the police by providing information and now you should go back inside your houses.” He looked at the woman. “And get your dog inside.”
Osgood stared at him, all the color leaching from his brown skin.
“You good?” Julian studied the rookie once the neighbors had headed back to their houses.
“Is one of . . . them . . . here?” Osgood asked.
“Maybe. That’s not our concern.” Until it was their concern—or until one of them was dying because he had miscalculated the reason for terra indigene presence.
Julian started up the driveway, then stopped, looked toward the corner of the house where he sensed that presence, and said quietly, “We’re going to enter the house by the back door. It would help the police—and Miss Vicki—if anyone who tried to escape out the front door was contained so that Chief Grimshaw and Ilya Sanguinati can question them.”
No answer. He didn’t expect one. But his sense of place gave him strong feelings that within the boundaries of this house and yard, any and every human was on dangerous ground. He just hoped whatever watched them understood about containing in a way that meant still alive. And he hoped no one thought to ask him how Vicki figured into apprehending this woman. He just used her name in the hopes of getting interested assistance instead of a violent response.
With Osgood beside him, Julian headed around the house to the back door. He hadn’t heard Ellen Wilson since they’d pulled up to the house. Now the ranting began again.
“You stupid boy! You stupid, stupid boy! I told you. Didn’t I tell you? And now look what you’ve done, after all the years I invested in you!”
The glass storm door was closed but the kitchen windows and the wooden door that provided entry into the kitchen were open despite the brisk temperature. Julian drew his weapon, quietly opened the storm door, and rushed inside. Then he froze for a moment as he took it all in.
Theodore, on the kitchen floor, eyes staring, flecks of foam around his mouth. A broken cookie jar on the floor next to him, cookies broken or crushed around him.
“Osgood, call the EMTs,” Julian said as he went down on one knee to see if he could find a pulse—although the smell of voided bladder and bowels was evidence enough that he wouldn’t find one—his eyes never leaving the red-faced, wild-eyed woman. “What happened?”
“I told him I made those cookies for the neighbor’s nasty little dog,” Ellen Wilson shrieked. “I told him he wasn’t allowed to eat any of them. I told him! But he snuck in the kitchen and gobbled some, the greedy pig. And now look. Look! Years of effort ruined. Now I’ll have to find another one and spend all those years training it until it’s old enough to be useful.”
Find another one? Julian stared at the woman and thought, Oh gods. What has she done? How many children has she “found” over the years? And where are they?
“EMTs are on their way,” Osgood said.
Julian nodded. “Read Mrs. Wilson her rights and handcuff her.”
“You have no right!” Ellen Wilson shrieked. “Get out of my house—and take that with you!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Julian saw Osgood stare at the woman, then at the dead boy. And he saw the rookie harden just a little more as her words sank in and he realized why this woman was treating the boy who was supposed to be her son like a broken tool that was easily disposed of and replaced.
“It’s your fault, you know,” Ellen Wilson snarled, spitting the words at Julian while Osgood put the cuffs on her. “If all the visitors had been allowed to leave, none of this would have happened. But you just had to go and muck up everything because you’re just so stupid.” She looked at Theodore and started laughing. “Yeah. This one was stupid too. Stupid and too willful to live. All those little acts of defiance. Like eating cookies when I told him not to. Not like my other boys, my lovely monstrosities.” Her eyes fixed on Julian, full of hate. “But I lost them too—because of you.”
Monstrosities.
Julian thought about the four teenagers who had come to The Jumble looking to cause trouble. “Your . . . experiments . . . were killed when they tried to blow up Chief Grimshaw and Ilya Sanguinati?” He wondered if three of those boys had killed the fourth. Because they wanted to? Or because she had told them to?
“Dead now.” She looked irritated. “Then again, when I sent them to the cabins, they had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, and they still killed the wrong man, so they weren’t that useful anyway.”
She blinked, looked at Julian—and started raving again about Theodore being a greedy boy.
Julian holstered his weapon and pulled out his mobile phone as he followed Osgood and Ellen Wilson to the patrol car. The presence, whatever it had been, had left. Thank the gods for that.
Seeing the EMTs arrive, he waved them toward the back of the house. “Wayne? We’ve got a problem.”
CHAPTER 83
Vicki
Moonsday, Novembros 5
Victoria?” Natasha sounded furious. “Viktor just attacked Lara. I stopped him before he did much harm, but I had to stay with her, and he got away. I think he’s heading for your side of the lake. You have to be careful.”
My brain stuttered for a moment. “Viktor? But he’s . . .” So solid. So polite. So helpful. So dependable.
Aren’t those all the things an enemy intent on infiltrating a protected place would try to be?
“Are you hurt?” I asked, since that was the important question. “Have you told Ilya?” Next important question.
“Ilya needs to find the traitor and protect our allies,” she snarled. “I and the other Sanguinati will defend Silence Lodge.” She hung up.
Okeydokey. I put the receiver back in the cradle.
Natasha didn’t say she wasn’t hurt, but she wasn’t going to tell Ilya about the attack, because he would go rushing back to Silence Lodge to protect his mate—which sounded reasonable and romantic, except Natasha was one ticked-off vampire right now and probably would bite him for showing up, and that bite wouldn’t be one he enjoyed.
But she didn’t actually say I couldn’t tell Ilya. On the other hand, she might think telling her mate was a betrayal of girl friendship or something.
So I called Grimshaw. “Hey, Chief.”
“Vicki, this isn’t a good . . . ,” Grimshaw began. A pause before he continued in Wary Official Police Voice. “What can I do for you?”