Page 68 of A Silent Prodigy for the Lycan Princess

Mr. Simon ponders a bit over her words before he nods. “Yes,” he says. “Let’s hope she is.”

“What type of child was she?” I ask.

He beams. “She was a ray of sunshine. Always laughing and smiling and telling us stories. She easily befriended everyone.”

I remember the article I read and try to think of things that may have made her a target. Maybe her befriending everyone was her downfall? But then, I doubt they kidnapped only chatty people.

“She wasn’t scared of anything,” he continues. “Just of thunderstorms, and she hated carrots.”

“Who doesn’t?” Leila chuckles. “She sounds like a lovely child.”

“She was so creative,” he says. “Always spinning stories for the younger children, and when she started school, she began to help the younger ones with their homework.”

“The day she disappeared,” I say quietly. “What happened?”

“Nothing particular, and that’s what’s driving me crazy,” he mutters. “She was twelve, you know? It was two weeks after her birthday, and then one day, someone rang at the door with a delivery. The nanny and I were preoccupied with something else, so Meg said she would answer the door…and never returned.”

“She was kidnapped from here?” I ask, shocked.

He nods sadly.

While I’m still recovering from my shock, Leila asks another question. “Was there a place she frequented?”

“No, most of the time, she was in the orphanage or at school.”

“Did she have visitors?” I ask. “Or friends who stayed with her sometimes?”

“Most of her friends were from the orphanage,” he says. “As for visitors… not precisely for her, but during Christmas, we’d sometimes have young people visiting, you know, foreign students who didn’t have the money to travel home. Some of them volunteered for our Christmas programs and came here to bake cookies with the kids and helped with making ornaments.”

“Do you have any documents or photos of that?” Leila asks.

“Actually, yes, I think I do,” he says. “But they are all in the archive, and the archive is a mess.”

He wasn’t kidding. Once he leads us to the archive, hidden somewhere in the basement, the door opens up to a huge dusty room with shelves full of documents. “We are currently digitizing it,” he says. “But there is only so much time and effort we can put into it.”

Leila and I exchange a gaze. “I guess we could help,” Leila says. “But not here.”

I know what she thinks. There is only one person able to sort through these documents in a timely manner, and that’s Arden. Maybe Gustave could too.

Mr. Simon looks at us thoughtfully. “Are you truly doing this for a project for college?”

“We want to find Meg,” I say quietly.

“Why?”

“Because she isn’t the only person who disappeared, but she might have been the first,” I say.

“Whoever is doing this is still active,” Leila says. “And it’s time to stop them.”

“Are you from the police?”

“No,” I say.

“Then, where are you from?”

“Let’s say we are from a secret organization,” Leila says. “It’s better to keep it at that.”

“That sounds shady in a way,” he mutters. “You are not in legal trouble, are you?”