Page 33 of Seer

He stopped and spun around, putting his hands on his hips. “Well, excuse me, Mr. Expert, but I’m still learning this shit.”

I winced. “Sorry, you’re right. It’s something kids ask a lot, so most of us are pretty knowledgeable about it. Bloodsucking demon myths are believed to have been started thousands ofyears ago to explain how bodies appear as they decompose. Modern vampire stories are just fiction. Think of them like unicorns and dragons.”

“Well, damn. There go my hopes of meeting a unicorn.” He threw his hands up and turned back around to start walking again.

Shit.

“I can check about the fog, though. Maybe some of the Wonders will know. We have a Discord server.”

Cal laughed, but the sound had a bitter edge to it. “Of course you do.”

The path curved and broke out into a clearing with a bench and a sign ordering us to pick up after our dog.

Cal moved to the side of the path opposite the bench and gazed around. “This is it. This is where she was sitting.”

I pulled my phone out. “It’s 9:43am.”

Cal pointed back the way we’d come. “That’s the direction whatever it was came from. Annie ran toward those trees.” He pivoted to point to the trees at the far end of the clearing.

“Okay. I guess we wait.” I went over to the bench and sat down at one end. It was long enough that even if Cal sat in the middle we wouldn’t touch.

Our magic probably would though.

I relaxed when Cal sat at the other end.

He unlocked his phone and started typing and muttering. “Fog killer? No—that’s something else. Fog monster? No, that doesn’t work.”

“Cal?”

His head came up and he blinked at me. “Yeah?”

“Um, are you sure the fog was part of the, er, killer? My mom says she can’t see people’s faces in her visions if she doesn’t know them. Could this be similar?”

He started to reply then shook his head a little and started again. “My visions are like hers. I couldn’t see Annie’s face because I’ve never met her or seen her photo. But I could see her clothes and her lunch bag very clearly. The fog wasn’t there at the start of either of my visions, but in both cases it showed up after Annie and the first victim got scared and started running away.”

I rubbed the side of my face. “Like it was chasing them.”

“Yep.” He went back to his phone.

I looked around at the trees, clocking the various birds and squirrels. There was no change in the insect noises between where we were sitting and the parking lot. The breeze carried the expected scents of woodland flora and fauna, along with the car exhaust and concrete of the road at the edge of the park. And of course, I could still smell Cal. Dammit.

“Okay,” Cal said after several minutes. “There are some stories or myths about creatures who can turn into fog. Um, is there like a list of all the kinds of Wonders?”

I shook my head. “Not definitively. Different species settled in different parts of the world. We’re all aware of the more common varieties, but, for instance, the Bigfoot legends in the Pacific Northwest could be sightings of bears, or bear shifters, or something else entirely. We won’t know unless one of them comes forward.”

He rubbed his forehead. “I guess I’ll have to start a Google Sheet.” He dropped his hand and frowned at me. “But in that case how are you so sure vampires don’t exist?”

I stifled an impatient sigh. “Legends about bloodsucking demons are well-documented and have different origins in different cultures. Most folk stories based on actual Wonders tend to originate only in the region where that species of Wonder settled when they arrived from the Elven dimension. And the Wonders themselves all agree there aren’t any vampires. It’s just a myth.”

“Yeah, yeah, like unicorns and dragons. Fine, got it. No vampires.” Cal held up his phone and opened his mouth to say something else, but the park went silent.

Absolutely still.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

I stood up and spun in a circle. My eyesight sharpened and my hearing became more acute. But combat mode didn’t help. I couldn’t hear anything except the faint noise from the road in the distance. I didn’t detect any unusual scents.

Cal got to his feet as well. He held up his phone to record. His breath was coming fast but he stayed quiet as I cast around for clues.