Page 51 of Magic Claimed

His answering eye roll was a truly spectacular example of its kind, so I turned back to Ethan.

“No matter what you decide, we do need to leave soon. We’re moving out so Faris can fix the water damage, but we’re trying to keep it on the down low to avoid the neighborsfinding out.”

If the woman across the hall got wind of it now—right after she’d accused us of abducting her daughter—she would probably start screeching again about how guilty we were.

“Are you also going to be looking for Tabitha?” Ethan asked in an oddly casual tone. “Or does your compassion only go so far?”

“Who’s Tabitha?”

“The girl across the hall?” Logan supplied, in a tone that suggested I was unbelievably dumb for not knowing that. “She’s a little older than me. But what happened to her?”

“She’s missing too,” I admitted. “Hey, I thought you said you only know like one person outside the family.”

He suddenly seemed fascinated by the toes of his shoes. “I don’t, like,know herknow her. But I’ve seen her. We’ve talked a few times.”

Huh. Was that a blush starting to appear?

“How do you know she’s missing?”

“Her mom thinks we had something to do with her disappearance,” I admitted.

Logan’s brows lowered, and I could tell he was starting to be genuinely worried. “How long has she been gone?”

“Since last night. But her mom didn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary. She was in her room, and then she was just gone this morning.”

Just like Jeremiah.

Playing online games…

Monique had mentioned Jeremiah spending all his time online, chatting with friends and playing games. It seemed so unlikely that these two cases could be connected, and yet, whatif they were? I couldn’t sit here and claim I cared about human exploitation if I was only willing to help one and not the other.

But how could I find out more about Tabitha without being forced to talk to her mom again?

“Logan, do you know anything about what kind of online games she might have been playing?”

His gaze dropped, and I could have sworn he looked a little guilty.

“I might.”

“I’m not going to be mad,” I reassured him. “I just want to figure out if there’s any way we might be able to help her. Tabitha’s mom said she’d been playing online games and talking about magic.”

“There’s a website,” he confessed. “It’s also an app, and I have it on my tablet.” He cast me a furtive sideways glance. “Gio told me about it, and Kes okayed it. There’s lots of different games. Some are scary, but some are just kiddie games. We get on and play with each other. I’m safe, and I don’t use my real name or anything.”

“Did you ever play with Tabitha?”

He shook his head. “I wanted to ask her for her username, but…” He shrugged.

Okay. It still seemed unlikely, but we couldn’t overlook the possibility that the two missing kids were connected just because it seemed farfetched.

“Then I want you to come with me too,” I told Logan. “I need to find out whether the missing boy had any connection to this same gaming website.”

He bounced up onto his toes and punched the air. “Yes!”Then he settled back down, shoved his hands in his pockets, and shot Ethan a bit of a side-eye. “You coming or not?” he challenged.

“I’ll come,” Ethan agreed, with an annoyed look that made him appear little older than Logan. “But only so I don’t have to walk.”

THIRTEEN

While Kira droveus to Mesta Park, I texted Monique to let her know we were on our way. The boys sat in the back seat—Logan almost bouncing with excitement, while Ethan gazed out the window, his head leaning against the glass as if he might fall asleep at any moment.