“No. She didn’t remember it until I asked her specifically what she heard. I think because this”—Henry indicated the tracks—“is the obvious place for a car but the tracks just as obviously haven’t been used this spring, the police assumed Grace was…”

“Making things up to get attention?” Tony offered diplomatically.

“Possibly. And you can’t exactly blame them; there’d be no reason to bring an abducted child down here unless you had a car and this”—he waved at the unused tracks again—“this says there was no car. But because we know there was a car involved we need to find another place you can bring in a vehicle. Wait here.”

“Why—”

“Because I’ll be moving quickly and I don’t want you to fall in the river.”

Tony sighed and turned off the flashlight. He couldn’t see the river, about three meters away and down a steep bank, but the sound of rushing water filled the night, drowning out every other sound.

Five minutes. The scar on his left palm itched and he thought about conjuring a Wizard lamp. Ten minutes. When he got his first decent job in Vancouver, he’d bought a cheap watch with a luminescent dial, tired of spending unacknowledged time in the dark. Fifteen minutes. He yawned and nearly swallowed his tongue as Henry’s pale face appeared suddenly out of the shadows.

“Just past those cedars, it’s all bare rock. It wouldn’t be impossible to get something with four-wheel drive and a high clearance along the edge of the river and then back up to Highway Twelve right at the bridge.”

“Just because it ‘wouldn’t be impossible’ doesn’t mean there was a car there,” Tony pointed out as they headed for Grace Alton’s driveway and the car. “I doubt Ms. Alton heard anything over the sound of the river, Henry. That track’s likely got nothing to do with—”

Henry held up a small red boot.

Boot in one hand, laptop balanced on his knees, Tony scrolled through his spell directory. “Here it is. Pairbonding: joining two halves back into a whole. I cast the spell on the boot and it acts like a compass leading us to its mate.” He pulled a black marker from the pack between his feet and slowly drew a rune on the instep of the boot.

“Whatever has the child reeks of old blood, old kills,” Henry growled, driving up onto the bridge. “The stench hides its nature.”

“If it isn’t rogue were, there’s nothing that says some of the smaller giants couldn’t drive. I mean, as long as the car was big enough.” Rummaging in the pack, Tony pulled out a plastic grocery bag of herbs, removed a spray of small red berries almost the same color as the rubber, and dropped it in the boot. “Belladonna,” he explained. “To clear the way. I’m working the sympathetic magic angle. It’s a diuretic, makes you piss, and that’s clearing that way anyway.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Boot balanced on his palm, Tony reached for power and carefully read the words of the spell.

The boot slammed against the middle of the inside of the windshield.

Henry’s nostril’s flared.

Tony sighed, powered down the laptop, and performed a quick Clean Cantrip. “Yes, I pissed myself,” he muttered defensively, cheeks burning. “Like I said, it’s a diuretic but at least the boot didn’t blow up. Or melt. Or break your windshield.”

“But you’re still using too much power.”

“Am not. New spells always need a bit of fine-tuning.”

“Fine-tuning? My car—”

“Is clean. Fresh. All taken care of.” He slouched down in the seat. “Whether they believed Ms. Alton or not, the cops had to have searched the riverbank. How come they didn’t find the boot?”

“I found it by scent down deep within a crack in the rock. The RCMP would have needed to go over the riverbank with a fine-tooth comb to find it, and I doubt they have sufficient manpower even for this given the foolishness of the recent budget cuts.”

“You sound like Vicki. Only with less profanity.”

Although she hadn’t been a police officer for some years before Henry changed her, Vicki continued to take government underfunding of law enforcement personally.

“Speaking of Vicki”—because speaking of the boot or the child or the thing that had taken her would only feed his anger and that would make it dangerous for Tony to remain enclosed with him in the car—“do you think she’d like one of those purple plants?”

“Purple plants?”

“Like all those plants Grace owns.”

“Would Vicki like an African violet? For Christ’s sake, Henry, she’s turning forty, not eighty.”

Reaching across the front seat, Henry smacked him on the back of the head. “Don’t blaspheme.”

Just before the sign for the Nohomeen Reserve, a gravel road led off to the east, into the mountains. The boot swung around so quickly to the passenger window, it nearly smacked Tony in the head. As Henry turned off the highway, it centered itself on the windshield again, bouncing a time or two for emphasis.

“Not exactly a BMW kind of road,” Tony pointed out as a pothole nearly slammed his teeth through his tongue.

“We’ll manage.”

The road ran nearly due north, past the east edge of the Keetlecut Reserve and farther up into the wild. They passed a clear-cut on the right—the scar on the mountainside appallingly visible even by moon and starlight—then three kilometers later the boot slid hard to the left, the rubber sole squeaking against the glass.

Leaning out past Henry, Tony stared into the darkness. “I don’t see a road.”

“There’s a forestry track.”

“Yeah.” Tony clutched at the seat as the car bounced through ruts. “Remember what you said earlier about a high road clearance and four-wheel drive? And hey!” he nearly shrieked as they lost even the dubious help from the headlights. “Lights!”

“We don’t want them to see us coming.”

“You don’t think the engine roar will give us away? Or the sound of my teeth slamming together?”

A moment later, Tony was wishing he hadn’t said that as Henry stopped the car. Except that he didn’t want the engine to give them away. He didn’t want to walk for miles up a mountain through the woods in the dark either but then again Julie Martin hadn’t wanted to be snatched out of her backyard so, in comparison, he really had nothing he could justify complaining about.

He crammed handfuls of herbs into an outside pocket on his backpack and wrestled the red rubber boot into the plastic bag. When he held the handles, it was like a red rubber divining rod…bag, pulling with enough force that it seemed safest to wrap the handles around his wrist. As he leaned back into the front seat for his backpack, it started to rain. “Wonderful,” he muttered, straightening and carefully closing the door. “Welcome to March in British Columbia. Henry, it’s almost one and sunrise is at six oh six. Unless you want to spend the day wrapped in a blackout curtain and locked in your trunk, we need to be back at the car by three. Do we have time…”

“Yes.”

That single syllable held almost five hundred years of certainty. Tony sighed. “I don’t want to leave her out here either but…”

“We have time.”

The flash of teeth, too white in the darkness, suggested Tony stop arguing. That was fine with him except he wasn’t the one who spontaneously combusted in sunlight or bitched and complained for months after he spent the day wrapped around his spare tire and jack. And it wasn’t like camping out was an option. He skipped the Brokeback Vampire reference in favor of suggesting Henry head for his sanctuary and he go on alone. “I’m not entirely helpless, you know.”

“You’re wasting time,” Henry snarled.

The evil that had taken the child was close. The drumming of the rain kept him from hearing heartbeats—if these things had hearts—and the sheets of water had washed away any chance of a scent trail, but Henry knew they were close nevertheless. Vicki would have called it a hunch and followed it for no reason she could articulate so he would do the same.