the bear hug that was coming. If Christie was a variant ghoul, she’d be a tank. “Look at you, buddy. You look like a linebacker now. Didn’t get much taller though, did ya?”
“I’m five-ten,” Colt mumbled.
“Ah, I’m just teasin’ ya,” Christie said with a hoarse laugh, elbowing him. “What’re you doin’ around here?”
“I asked him to come,” Anette said quietly. “He’s friends with the sheriff. He thinks maybe he can put in a word, but I wanted him to hear Ken tell it.”
Christie’s easygoing demeanor shifted, and she looked Colt over in confusion. “Since when are you buddy-buddy with the law?”
Christie was a staunch Libertarian, and she had about as much affection for authority as a cat had for water. “It’s a long story. But I’m here to help.”
“Well, Ken’s over there, but good luck,” she said, running a hand through her graying hair. “He’s been drawing the ‘suspect’ all morning, and it’s the same story over and over.”
“What do you mean?” asked Colt.
Christie leaned in to whisper, “Kid swears he saw Peter Pan standing by the bunk bed. That Richie just floated down from the window and ran off with him to Neverland.”
Colt looked over at Anette, and from the somber look on her face, he could tell it wasn’t just another example of Christie’s dark humor.
“I’ll uh, talk to him. See if he tells me the same thing,” he said, wandering over to the table. Ken didn’t look up from his drawing.
“Hey, pal. I’m a friend of Christie and Anette’s. Mind if I sit here for a sec?”
“It’s a free country,” the kid mumbled.
Colt snorted, sitting across from Ken at the table. He leaned in, glancing at the drawings. “Are you an artist?”
Ken finally looked up with the weary expression of a forty-year-old who hadn’t slept in weeks and had the dark circles under his eyes to prove it. “If I was an artist, you really think I’d draw dogs with sticks for legs?” he demanded, partially crumpling a paper as he held it up.
“Right.” Colt cleared his throat, not all that surprised by the kid’s extensive vocabulary. It wasn’t uncommon for kids in the foster system to act more mature than they should’ve been, and Colt would’ve guessed Ken had probably been through a hell of a lot before ending up with Anette and Christie. “So why all the drawings if art isn’t your thing?”
“They’re sketches,” Ken replied matter-of-factly, scribbling a light-brown mess of hair on top of his current subject’s head. “I thought if I made a picture of the boy who took Richie, the police officers could find him. That’s what they do on the news.”
“The boy? That’s who took Richie, a kid?”
“No,” Ken said firmly, picking up the box to select another crayon. “He looks like a kid, but he’s not. He’s very, very old.”
“I see,” Colt said thoughtfully. “And what was this boy’s name?”
“Peter Pan.”
Christie gave him a See? look from across the room, where she and Anette were pretending to watch the news.
Colt blinked. “What makes you think it’s Peter Pan?”
“He said he was. Plus, do you know any other kids who fly in through windows in the middle of the night?”
“No. No, I guess I don’t. So Peter, he uh, came into the room?”
“Yeah,” Ken said, tilting his head to eye his drawing before he decided it needed more blue around the neck. Colt squinted and decided it was a scarf. “He wanted to take us back to Neverland.”
“And that’s where he took Richie?”
“Yup.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“Because Anette and Christie told us not to talk to strangers, and I listen.”
Colt couldn’t help but smile. “Good for you. Listen, I’m gonna do whatever I can to help find Richie, but I need you to tell me if you remember anything that could help. Maybe something this kid said, anything that would give us a clue about where Neverland is?”
“He didn’t say much. He sang a song, but there wasn’t really words in it.”
“A song?”
“Yeah, that’s what woke us both up. It was a creepy song. Richie got all weird when he heard it.”
“Weird how?”
“You know. Duuhhh,” Ken droned, making a blank, entranced face.
“Right. Do you remember how the song went?”
Ken hesitated. He hummed a few off-key bars before he shrugged and gave up, but it was nothing Colt recognized.
“Can I see your drawing, if you’re finished?”
Ken looked at it again before passing it to Colt. The ghoul’s heart sank as he saw the monstrous face staring back at him. It was no