over the phone. “Your father wore a black dress shirt and your mother put on a pale green skirt, right?”
“That’s what my siblings told me, too,” I said, biting my lip.
“Great,” he said, sounding almost relieved.
There was nothing great about finding my parents’ clothes while he couldn’t locate them. The way he’d said it sounded as if he’d found my parents’ remains.
Anger flashed in me, and fear suddenly blocked my airway. A part of me didn’t want to question him further, for fear of hearing the worst, but I had to push through to get to the truth.
“You found only their clothes and nothing else, right?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice even as dread beat in my throbbing head. “What does it mean, then, Detective?” He didn’t answer, but I pursued, my voice rising. “Will the discovery of their clothes lead to my parents? Who left the clues for you?”
He hesitated, his pause longer than normal, as if he had to cover his phone to hide background noise. I didn’t hear anything other than a faint shuffling sound. I mulled over if he brought a team with him. I had hundreds of urgent questions that needed to be answered.
“Thank you for informing me, Detective Dallas. I appreciate it. When can I come to the police station to discuss the matter with you?”
“Right now.”
I peeked through the half-moon window in the basement. Gray-gold light sliced through the summer sky.
“I’ll leave my house now.”
“I’m not at the precinct,” he said.
Of course. He wouldn’t be at the station at dawn. No cop worked that hard.
“I’m at the site—possibly the crime scene—where we found your parents’ clothes,” he said. The mention of the crime scene plunged my heart to ice. “You need to come right now to identify your parents’ clothing and we’ll talk more, Miss Greene. I’m shooting you the address.”
He hung up. The next second, the address came through.
I rushed to my bedroom and grabbed a pair of jeans out of my laundry basket. I had no time to put on something cleaner and more presentable. Shoving my bare feet into a pair of sneakers, I hurried toward Emmett’s bedroom. Lately, he’d been kicking out Cassidy to the twins’ room and had the entire bedroom for himself.
I hadn’t expected Emmett to be a bully. Maybe I needed to talk to him about his recent behavior. Maybe he should see a shrink. I was sure the expensive health plan Rydstrom provided us would cover the treatment.
I pushed open his door. “Emmett—” And I stopped short.
My brother was pumping his fist up and down his dick frantically while he browsed through comic porn in his bed. His junk was kind of small—well, compared to the Fae kings, every other male’s dick appeared unimpressive.
Emmett froze, his hand stopping moving. His junk went limp.
I cursed, wishing I could unsee it all.
My brother’s face turned beet red. “What the fuck, Evie? Do you ever knock? Ever heard of privacy?”
“Cover your Johnson!” I barked. “There’s a blanket. Use it. And we don’t have time for your little embarrassment. I have to go see Detective Dallas now. None of you go to school today, and don’t leave this house. Change of plans. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
I slammed his door, but it bounced back. I ignored his swearing and hurried downstairs.
The first stage of Fae invasion had started when they unleashed Pestilence into the human world to thin the populations. I’d agreed to Rydstrom’s proposal of hiding my siblings in his safe house in Elfame. While I remained a target, the Dawn Queen would likely soon move against my human family.
The Night knights would secretly take my siblings to the Court of Night tonight after the Fae kings returned from the Summer Solstice parlay convened by the Dawn Queen. Rydstrom had refused to attend it originally, but Baron insisted that they all needed to go, so they could see what was in the queen’s cards and thwart her schemes.
I’d pondered what Baron and Rydstrom would do to the Winter King when they confronted him for mistreating me. But I tried not to dwell on it. My plate was already full.
After returning from the meeting with Detective Dallas, I’d have the talk with my siblings and explain to them that there was a supernatural realm out there and that our enemy was a powerful fairy queen. To convince them, I might have to ask a few knights to drop their glamour and show