Mercedes finally opened the second folder and laid three photos out in front of me. These were not at all grisly, but somehow they made me feel worse than the crime-scene snaps. A trio of smiling school photos beamed up at me. They looked to be from thirteen to fifteen, judging by the grade-level markers on each photo, and there was no trend otherwise. One was Hispanic, one East Indian and one white. The group was split between the sexes—two boys and one girl.

“They went to different schools,” Cedes explained. “Lived in different neighborhoods as far out as Queens. We don’t know for sure if they’ve been taken by this son of a bitch, but we’re running on that assumption right now. They all disappeared in the same three-day period earlier this month, and none of the families have been contacted for ransom.”

I restacked the photos so all I was left with was the grinning face of a shy-looking brown-skinned boy, then I pushed the pile back to the detectives.

“Is that everything?”

“That’s what we know.”

“It goes without saying we would appreciate the utmost discretion in this matter,” Tyler said, his voice loaded with warning.

Me, be anything less than subtle? What a shocking allegation.

“My name is Secret, Detective Nowakowski.”

His mouth formed a thin line, but there was a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen in a long time. To counter the rising tide of mirth, he lowered his thick black brows into a scowl.

“We appreciate you coming,” Cedes said, and offered me her hand. We shook politely like professionals, and then Tyler and I did the same.

“Whatever I can do,” I promised. “I’ll help you find this monster.”

Chapter Five

Back at my apartment, visions of sugarplums were no longer dancing in my head. Instead I was having a hard time shaking the images of the smiling young teens in those school photos. I’d dealt with a lot of nasty crap in my time, but it took a real monster to snatch kids.

Scratch that. Most monsters I knew were too principled to do something so despicable.

Mercedes wanted to believe this was a paranormal killing, because the only other option was to think a human being was capable of dismembering people and snatching teens for the same nasty fate. Unfortunately, in my experience, I found humans were just as able to do monstrous things as the real monsters were.

I kicked off my boots and padded around the apartment. Desmond wasn’t home. He’d called from work while I was at Keaty’s to tell me about some sort of lobby disaster in the plans for Lucas’s new hotel in Singapore. Apparently redesigning the columns was going to eat up a good chunk of his evening, which left me all alone with my dark thoughts.

On the living room floor, Rio the kitten was having a blast with a strand of tinsel. She was no longer the tiny ball of fluff Brigit had brought home. In six months she’d grown into a sinewy white rope of cat with a diamond starburst of gray on her forehead. She looked more like a little fur demon than ever and acted the part. Kicking at the tinsel with her back legs, she teased it with a menacing, “Brreow.” Then she began to gnaw on it.

“Oh, Rio, no.” I snatched the tinsel away from her, making a face at the slobbery wetness, then disposed of it in the kitchen trash. The last thing I needed to be festively adorned in this apartment was the cat’s poop.

With the tinsel gone, she took up her favorite hobby—attempted manslaughter. She weaved between my ankles while I walked, trying her damnedest to make me do a face plant into the Christmas tree. When I picked her up, she began to purr loudly.

“You’ve won this round.”

A knock at the door interrupted a world-class belly rub, and I got the evil cat death stare from hell when I put her back on the floor. If anyone doubts me when I say cats are demons, they’ve never owned one. I avoided her retribution by stepping over her and pulling the door open.

She got one look at my visitor and vanished under the loveseat with a hiss.

“What did I ever do to her?” Holden asked.

“Beats me. I can’t even blame it on you being a vampire. She loves Brigit.”

“I bet she likes your pet dog, too, so there’s no accounting for taste.”

I wrinkled my nose at him but stepped aside so he could enter the apartment.

“Speaking of dogs,” he continued. “Where is yours?”

“Desmond is working late.” I shut the door behind him, and we stood close together in the front entrance.

Holden was busy assessing the new décor of my living room. “Dear God. FAO Schwarz’s window display has exploded in your apartment.”

I held back a laugh because his reaction was so similar to my own. Instead I chided him. “Don’t be such a Grinch.”

He gave me a quizzical look. I was always astonished at how a two-hundred-year-old vampire could be so out of the loop on pop-culture references. The Grinch wasn’t even modern pop culture.

“A Scrooge,” I said, finding something more his century.

“Ah.”

“Thanks for coming so fast. It’s not like you to actually check your voicemail.”

“What can I say? I’m at your beck and call now.”

“Jump,” I said with a smirk.

“What?”

“You’re supposed to say how high?”

Holden didn’t look amused. He buried his hands in his coat pockets and stared at me. Ever since I’d saved his life, his moods shifted from teasingly cheerful to downright sullen at the drop of a hat. I was used to the brooding side of Holden. It was the turn towards the manic that tended to throw me. Could vampires be bipolar?

“You said you needed me for something.”

“I’m going hunting.”

“Secret…”

“As long as I have someone from the council with me, Sig can’t complain about it. And I’m not hunting vampires.”

“What are you…we hunting?”

I told him about my meeting at the police station and the details Cedes and Tyler had provided me about the murders. Holden was as stony as ever, but he didn’t interrupt me at all, which meant he was at least taking me seriously.

“Does it sound like anything you’ve ever heard of before?”

“When I still lived in Dorchester, before I came to America, there was an Irish family living in the village.” He leaned against the wall and removed his hands from his pockets. “This was when I was still human. The mother would tell stories some nights, and if you were quiet enough, you’d be able to hear her clear across town when the windows weren’t shuttered and the wind was low.”

Vampires never got straight to the point. Their stories tended to be Dostoyevskyian in length, and even the most trivial tale could be drawn out for ages. I bit the inside of my cheek and resisted the urge to ask him to get to the point. He noticed my reaction and sighed.

“Long story short, she would tell her children that if they weren’t good, a wicked fairy would come and take them away in the night.”

“But fairies don’t eat children. And they certainly don’t chop them up. Not to mention the current corpses are adults.”

“True, but most humans don’t know the difference between a fairy and other low fae. I wouldn’t put it past a troll to snatch kids.”

“A troll wouldn’t have the finesse or presence of mind to send body parts to the cops. And I’ve never seen a troll, let alone one in Manhattan. I doubt there’s one lurking under the Bow Bridge, smacking his chops for tourists in rowboats.”

Holden frowned. “Have you considered the obvious?”

“That it’s a human?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the most sensible answer, actually. My biggest question is how a human could get the stockings into a busy newspaper office or drop one on a desk in the middle of a police station.”

“A witch, perhaps?”

“Maybe. I’d need to see the stockings to know if there was any lingering magic smells on them. And after so long, even that wouldn’t guarantee a solid answer. I only know what Grandmere has shown me, and she doesn’t use black magic. I don’t know if I’d recognize it.”

“So, if we don’t know what we’re looking for, what are we hunting for?”

“Answers.”

He snorted. “Good luck finding any of those in this city.”

I slipped my boots back on. When I stood we were almost eye level and he was closer than I remembered him being before. My breath stuck in my lungs. He caught the sides of my jacket at my waist, and with aching slowness did the zipper up one metal tooth at a time. When he reached my breasts, his upwards journey came to an abrupt end. I placed a hand over his, and we stood staring at each other.

“I’ve got it,” I said, hating how breathy my voice sounded.

For a minute he refused to let go of the zipper, until I pried his fingers loose. His hand hovered before he dropped it and took a step backwards.

“It’s cold outside,” he said.

“I think maybe that’s a good thing.”

He looked up, perhaps searching for something to say, and laid eyes on the dangling cluster of mistletoe Desmond had hung in the entrance. Before Holden could get any wise ideas, I grabbed his wrist and hauled him out of the apartment. Maybe the mistletoe wasn’t such a great decorating touch after all.

Chapter Six

Holden and I walked south from Hell’s Kitchen, through Chelsea, until we were in the West Village. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I’d called Nolan, and he was searching through Keaty’s computer files for me. Now I had nothing to do but search my memory and wander aimlessly until something became clear.

I hated having no plan.

That was what brought us—after a long stroll—to Battery Park and the southernmost tip of Manhattan. The trees were bare, giving the space a ghostly, skeletal-limbed eeriness. We walked through the park to the riverside path, and I leaned against the railing. The city lights turned the sky a bruised purple color.