“He’s obvious as hell, but the Council tries to cover it up whenever there’s a changeling because God forbid anyone realizes they’re not actually competent when it comes to policing the really scary variants. I just set my parameters to scan for cases where more than five children went missing within a one-month span in a rural area, since that seems to be his thing, and then narrowed it down by the cases where the bodies were never recovered.”
“So where was he before?” Colt asked.
“Some mid-sized factory town in Kansas. Oh, and judging from the patterns, I think there’s only one changeling in North America, at least for the last fifty years or so. Bonus: he’s not old. I’d estimate he’s around our age.”
“How do you know that?”
“Math,” Ronnie replied. “Based on my profile, the killing sprees started around twenty years ago, and he seems to go around the country in kind of a figure-eight pattern, looping back to where he started every three years or so.” He paused, looking at them both. “Now that you’re allowed to be impressed by.”
Andrew walked over, leaning in to look at Ronnie’s screen. His eyes narrowed. “Is that the police database? Did your uncle give you access to that?”
Ronnie snapped his screen shut. “My point is, this thing hasn’t been alive all that long. Not unless he just decided not to eat for about thirty years and got a hankering for kids who have some weird connection to Colt all of a sudden.”
“Thanks, Ronnie,” Colt muttered. He knew Ronnie was bothered by the killings, but when he was geeking out about numbers, his somewhat callous nature had a way of showing, and he was hoping to convince Andrew they were more human than he thought.
“Any word from Jason?” Ronnie asked.
Colt was relieved Ronnie seemed to have been filled in by Stan and Susan, though he wasn’t sure how much they’d told him. “None yet. The drop’s not until tomorrow night.”
“Shit,” Ronnie murmured. “That’s got to be driving you nuts.”
“You have no idea. There’s no way you can track his current location, is there?”
“I’m good at stats, Colt. I’m not a wizard,” Ronnie said, reaching back to pat his shoulder. “Try to get some rest. If you’re going up against a changeling anytime soon, you’re gonna need it.” He stopped and sniffed the air. “Do I smell bacon?”
“That would be the ghoul in the bathtub,” said Andrew. “You wouldn’t happen to know what it is, would you?”
“Depends. What’s it look like?”
“Usually, it looks like a middle-aged man who works at a second-rate law firm,” Andrew replied. “Right now, it looks like a charred corpse that sets things on fire with its skin.”
“Ohhh,” Ronnie said, grimacing. “That’s a fireball.”
“A fireball?” Colt asked dryly. “Please tell me that’s one of your pet names.”
“Nope. Just what they call ‘em. They’re not common enough to get a better name.” He glanced over at the door. “How’d you kill that thing?”
“We didn’t,” said Colt. “I incapacitated it. The changeling wants it alive, to trade for Jason and Richie. The drop is tomorrow at midnight.”
“That’s… weird.”
“What’s weirder is that this ‘fireball’ is Christopher West.”
Ronnie’s eyes widened. “That’s not possible. He’s on the Council.”
“That’s what I said,” Colt sighed. “According to him, he doesn’t follow the rules, he just makes them, or some other edgy bullshit like that.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t kill him. Those things explode when they die, or so the story goes.”
“That would’ve been helpful to know,” Andrew snapped, shooting another glare at Colt.
“Why is he here again?” Ronnie asked, pointing his thumb at Andrew. “His vibe is very not chill, and he’s stressing me out.”
“He helped me get to Christopher. Kind of. They’re country club buddies.”
Ronnie looked at Andrew with renewed disgust. “Right.”
“I think I am gonna try to get some rest,” Colt admitted. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, but if he had to go so long before coming face-to-face with the changeling, he wouldn’t stand a chance at saving Jason or Richie.
“Here, take these,” Ronnie said, pulling a pill bottle out of his bag to toss it to Colt. The pills inside rattled in Colt’s hand when he caught them.
“What are these?”
“They work like a sedative on both ghouls and humans. They’re the ones my dad—” He froze, looking over at Andrew. “…prescribes to his patients for totally legal and non-ghoul-related purposes.”
“He’s right,” said Andrew. “You need to sleep as much as possible, and we still need to arrange