A Valley of Darkness (A Shade of Vampire #52)(10)

I cleared my throat almost instinctively, tension making my jaw muscles twitch as I tried to keep a straight face. The question took Blaze by surprise. His eyes were wide as he gaped at her.

“Wait, what?” he croaked.

“I would like for you to be my escort tonight…”

He blinked several times, then looked at me, a hint of panic in his expression. I froze, not sure how to react or what to say. He raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for me to say something. I glitched instead.

“Uh, why not?” I said with a shrug.

And then I mentally slapped myself. I could’ve said no. But why would I say no? What excuse would I have given for saying that? That I wanted to go with Blaze to the ball tonight? Ugh. What is wrong with me?

“You think I should?” Blaze asked, blinking several times, as if he were having trouble processing that information. I couldn’t blame him. Even I was having trouble processing everything I was feeling in that moment.

All I could do was shrug again. It was too late to take it back.

He then gave Rewa a faint half-smile and nodded politely, prompting her to light up like a Christmas tree.

“Thank you, Blaze,” she said. “You won’t regret it!”

I am already…

“Okay, let’s go see the next family.” I quickly changed the subject to get my mind off what had just happened.

They both agreed, and Rewa took us to another townhouse. The family we needed to speak to was a couple who’d lost their son a week ago. They lived in the apartment on the ground floor, their windows facing the open square overlooking the plains and the gorges a couple of miles away.

They welcomed us with pale faces and dark rings around their brown eyes. They clearly hadn’t slept well in a while. The husband, Miron, appeared to be in his mid-forties, with graying hair and a sharp face. The wife, Adelia, was short and plump, with pale blond hair tucked beneath a bonnet. Her trembling fingers were trying to sew the hem on one of her lost son’s shirts as she sat in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

Rewa did the introductions, and I jumped right to the key questions, mainly because the couple didn’t seem so keen on small talk.

“When did you last see your son, Miron?” I asked, opening my notebook, ready to write down the essentials.

“Seven nights ago.” He sighed, leaning against a window frame.

“Did he seem angry, or upset?”

“No, he was fine. He was going to the tavern above, on the third level.”

“Did he have any enemies? Someone who might want to do him harm?” I noticed the dull expressions on both Miron and Adelia’s faces. The empty stares. The mechanical motions. I wondered how much of it was the actual shock of losing their son.

“No, everybody liked him,” Adelia interjected, her voice soft and blank.

“Where was he last seen?”

“We saw him leave the house. He was supposed to be back by midnight,” Miron replied.

“Was he meeting anyone? Did anyone else see him?”

They both slowly shook their heads. Something was off. My instincts were flaring up like crazy, but I couldn’t put my finger on what the issue was, exactly. Their answers sounded plain, almost rehearsed.

“Did you hear anything outside?”

All I got was another brief round of heads shaking. I exhaled, then glanced at Blaze and Rewa. The latter was busy gazing at the porcelain figurines inside a modest glass cabinet. My guess was that she wasn’t even paying attention to the conversation.

I didn’t get much else out of the couple throughout the rest of the interview. We left them to their silence and blank stares, and went outside, on the edge of the terrace, to go over their answers. I flipped the latest two pages of my notebook, pursing my lips. There was nothing there I could use, other than the fact that Gale, their son, had gone missing while basically going upstairs to the tavern.

I glanced around and noticed the two wide sets of stairs leading up to that level. Both were unobscured by tree crowns and were in full view. There were dozens of open windows facing the square, so there would have been plenty of opportunities for the neighbors to see something. But if Gale’s abductors were the invisible daemons that had attacked Scarlett, Harper, and the others last night, no one would’ve actually seen them coming.

“There was something off about them,” I muttered.

“They seemed quite… mechanical, right?” Blaze said, his gaze fixed on my notes.

I looked up, glad that he’d noticed.

“Yeah!” I nodded. “Like they’d rehearsed those answers a little too much.”

“They seemed fine to me.” Rewa shrugged.

“I don’t know.” I tried not to frown, analyzing the young Mara carefully. She clearly wasn’t made for the investigative aspect of this issue. She seemed more interested in Blaze and the Spring Ball, which came as a stark contrast to her tearful plea for help back on Calliope. It wasn’t enough to draw any kind of conclusion about her at that point, but I did make a mental note of it. Something told me I’d use it later. “Maybe it was shock. Maybe they’re still reeling from the loss.”

“Could be,” Blaze mused. “We could definitely do some more interviews tomorrow and see if the others have the same muted reactions as the ones we questioned today.”