Page 7 of Transfiguration
“Like the angel?”
That was an old movie for a kid this young. “With Keanu Reeves?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve seen that?” He wondered. Not age appropriate, but what about a bunker in the Nevada desert was?
“Lots of old movies in this place,” she said. She stepped out from behind the crates. She was small, clothes a bit worn and dirty, hair back in a short braid, but didn’t look underfed or bruised, which Con hoped was a good sign.
What the fuck was he supposed to do with a kid? Drop it off at a hospital or something? Police station? How long until they traced her back to him or the missing trafficker? Fuck, this entire mission was going belly-up fast. He’d never once encountered something like this. Maybe he’d call Hart and hope he didn’t get chucked six feet under for not only failing to find the book but stumbling across some kid who now knew too much.
“Kat said you’d come.”
Con’s heart flipped over. “What?”
“She said you’d take me with you.”
He stared at the little girl, her blue eyes sharp, like a child beyond her years should be. “Who?”
“Kat?” the girl asked. “Your sister? She’s stayed with me for a long time. Comes and goes but stays as much as she can. She promised you’d come.”
Con stumbled, slumping against the wall as his vision spun. “Um…” He couldn’t breathe. Was she doing this to him? Or was his world imploding? “My sister is dead.”
“Sure,” the girl said, seeming unfazed. “But I talk to lots of dead people. It’s why they keep selling me around.”
Wait, she was some sort of medium? “Is my sister here now?”
“No. Everyone vanished when you opened that outside door.” She shrugged. “I think some spirits were trapped. Others died here. Sometimes they have replays, heads blown off and stuff, others just don’t seem to have anywhere to go? Kat sang me to sleep sometimes. And told me stories. She hasn’t been by in a few days.”
‘Cause that wasn’t creepy? Stories from ghosts? But if this kid had been dealing with it her whole life, it made sense it didn’t scare her. Was she a Dominion kid? That made little sense. The Dominion kept their girls close. Would they hide one with powers like this? Or sell her to not tarnish their family name? That sounded more likely. Talking to the dead was a forbidden power. The sort of thing they claimed heretics and non-witches bargained with demons to get.
What the fuck did he do now? He couldn’t leave her here. How long before some other trafficker came along? What if they decided she was useful for other things? Had they already?
She was suddenly beside him, a careful hand on his wrist. “It will be okay. Kat says to trust you.”
“My sister has been dead a long time,” Con said. Did she know what he’d become? That he was a monster killing people; even if they deserved it, it didn’t make him all that different from them. The way he’d studied and broken rules of the Dominion, crafted himself in magic the way some of the dark sorcerers of legend had? He didn’t deal with demons, never needed to, but rather he studied the dark corners of those many magic books and artifacts he retrieved before handing them over. Hart knew, and never protested, but Con didn’t think that meant he was the safest place for this kid.
“She said you’ll take care of me, and not let them hurt me anymore,” the girl said. “She said you tried really hard to take care of her.”
Fuck.
FOUR
“Two tickets to Minneapolis. One adult, one child, together please, first or business class, if possible,” Con told the woman behind the counter at the airport. His heart was in his throat as he stared down at the girl at his side. He’d stopped at a Target to get her clothes, and then a trip to the washroom at the airport. At least no one side-eyed him for being a tattooed white guy with a little girl. He’d taken her to the empty men’s room and carefully guided her to the handicap stall, praying it wasn’t gross, then stood sentinel outside it so she could change.
She had chosen leggings with pink swirls and a sweater-dress with short-sleeves that had a rainbow pony on the outside. It seemed a little contrary to her magic of talking to dead people for her to enjoy the girly colors of bubble-gum pink, but Con didn’t comment. Shock made his head a swirl of things, mostly the fact that this kid spoke to his dead sister. He had worked up a long email with a picture included to Maxwell Hart and hoped the master vampire had some idea what to do and how to make this little girl safe. He hadn’t received a reply but didn’t know if Hart was buried in the troubles of the Dominion or something else.
“Bella?” Con asked as the woman behind the counter handed him the tickets. They had two hours before their flight was due out. “You hungry?”
She gave him a radiant smile, what made kids look creepy to him, like part innocence, part malice. He swallowed hard and had to breathe. Rou’s kids did that sometimes, too.
“Can we have McDonald’s?”
“Sure,” Con said, steering her toward the TSA quick pass line. All his fake IDs firmly in place. He’d never traveled with a child before. Kids didn’t have IDs, did they? He couldn’t recall Rou’s kids having any, and they were a little older, but he had never traveled with them either.
The bored man at the TSA check-point examined Con’s tickets and ID for a minute before letting them head to the scanner. Bellatrix, or Bella, as she called herself, put her small bag on the belt and took off her shoes, heading to the big scanner like she had done it a dozen times. Con didn’t think her name was actually Bellatrix. She had left behind the stack of books containing the child wizard and said nothing about having adopted the name of a villain in the series. On purpose? Or coincidence that her actual name corresponded? Con didn’t ask. Hart would get back to him and know what to do. How to find the kid’s family, maybe? Or keep her safe if the family wanted nothing to do with one of the dark magics.
Con followed behind, adding his own bag to the belt, and waiting for her to step to the other side of the scanner before being waved in himself. He always got pulled aside when he flew. It was the tattoos. It did not surprise him when the attendant on the other side motioned him to an area to be wanded, but he worried his lip a little as Bella waited beside the belt for him. Would they ask her questions? Or separate them?