Page 52 of Magic Claimed

Monique met us on the front porch, looking a little unsure as the four of us piled out of Kira’s car. Possibly even a little hostile as she looked at Logan and Ethan.

“Did they know my son?” she demanded, scanning them from head to toe as if assessing the situation for potential threats.

“No,” I assured her. “But they may have some insights that I wouldn’t. I was hoping we could take a look at Jeremiah’s room again, to see if there’s anything we might have missed.”

She nodded once, sharply, her nostrils flaring. “Whatever it takes.”

We made our way upstairs in silence, and even Logan seemed subdued as we filed into the mostly untouchedbedroom. The bedding was still rumpled, clothes were still on the floor, and the trash can was still full, but the dirty dishes had disappeared.

“They fingerprinted the dishes,” Monique said, her voice trembling a little. “And then I washed them.”

“I’m sure that was fine.” The dishes couldn’t help me, but the computer on the other hand… “Would it be all right if we take a look at the laptop?”

She stiffened, but only for a moment. “I want to say no, but… We can’t afford privacy anymore. Do whatever you need.”

I turned to Logan. “I need you to see if you can find anything that would tell us what online games Jeremiah might have been playing.”

He looked a little scared, but sat in the chair and opened the laptop, tapping on the keyboard to reveal a password prompt.

“Uh…”

“Here.” Monique leaned over his shoulder and typed in a short sequence of numbers. “The password is my birthday. We agreed that I would always know it so I could be his online accountability.”

Clearly, they’d loved and trusted one another, and I was beginning to feel more and more certain that she was right—her son would never have just left without saying anything.

Logan pulled up a browser window and fumbled as he tried to figure out the trackpad mouse. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I haven’t used one of these since I was little.”

I drew in a sharp breath, wondering whether he would say anything else, but he simply continued to work, as if oblivious to my reaction.

“It’s okay,” I murmured. “Take your time.”

I’d always wondered about his past. The fae had only taken kids who were unlikely to be missed for long, or had no families to pursue justice for them, so I knew his childhood must have been far from perfect. But he almost never talked about it. Neither did Ari, but I suspected that was because she didn’t really remember much.

“My dad had a laptop,” Logan said in an odd, somewhat wistful tone, while never taking his eyes off the screen. “Sometimes he let me play on it while he was in meetings. Before the police came and took him.”

Definitely not a happy story then.

“Okay, here’s his last browser window.” There were three open tabs—one for social media, one for a movie streaming service, and another…

“Hey, this is the same one I’m on!”

The screen suddenly filled with an alarming number of what looked like pop-up ads and streaming videos, almost instantly scrambling my brain and crossing my eyeballs.

“Uh, what are we looking at?”

“These are all games you can play,” Logan explained. “This one is my favorite. It’s calledUltimate Countdown. Basically, you have a team of people, and your job is to collect all the pieces of a puzzle and put it together before time runs out.”

“So, you’re playing with complete strangers?”

He rolled his eyes at the hint of disapproval in my tone. “You can play with friends if you want to. Some games let you make a private room. But with some, you need a whole team to make the game work.”

I scanned the different games as he scrolled down. There were so many. “Do you think Tabitha was playing some of these, too?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah, she was.”

“Do you know which ones?”

He listed four or five, all of which sounded like incomprehensible gibberish to me.