Free Miles to Go by Laura Anne Gilman Page B

approaching an older couple walking past them. They spoke for couple of minutes, and then Danny held up his phone as though showing it to them. The woman laughed, and the man nodded, and took out his own phone, entering something on the keyboard. They spoke a little more, and then Danny was coming back, his body language saying he had something, a direction, a scent to follow.
    Oh yay. She forced herself to sit up straight, pretending that she was ready to go, not a burden at all.
    oOo
    Shadow looked even more like a shadow, like someone had taken an eraser to her sharp edges. If I had an inch of compassion and any sense whatsoever, I’d throw her into the car and go back to the city, leave her there and come back tomorrow, alone.
    I was pretty sure that her reaction to that wouldn’t be pretty. And she’d be right. She was wrecked, but she’d been the one to see the missing kids, and she had a right to be in on it. If she wanted.
    “Light Bay,” I said.
    She lifted her gaze enough to look at me. “What?”
    “The only town around here that has a Hamlin Court, according to the Internet, is the town of Light Bay. It’s about fifteen minutes north of here. You game?”
    “Yeah. I… Yeah.”
    She wasn’t. But she wasn’t going to admit it, either.
    “C’mon, tiger,” I said, reaching out a hand. “Get to the car and you can sleep the rest of the way there.”
    I ended up half-carrying her the rest of the way. She’d gone silent and loose, like a little kid sullen with exhaustion, and only pride was keeping her upright. I didn’t remember if this was normal for Talent – the ones I hung with tended to be, well, tougher than this.
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah.” It was more of an exhale than an actual word, but she was buckling herself in, and her eyes were open. “Genevieve says that pulling wild current is harder than man-made, and the storm was pretty far away. I don’t think I should have done it.”
    “So why did you?”
    She shrugged, and looked out the passenger side window. “I don’t… it’s not like it is for everyone else. I don’t always have a choice.”
    I started up the car and pulled out of the parking spot, careful to avoid the gaggle of drunk teenagers trying to cross the street in front of me. “The visions?”
    “They come when they come. All I can do is…” and she waved a hand lazily in the air, “ride it.”
    She seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “That sucks.”
    Her laughter was bright, unforced, and an unexpected surprise, even if it didn’t come with a smile. “Everyone else says I’m rare, or special. I spent my whole life wanting to be special. But yeah. It sucks.”
    7
    Shadow fell asleep in the car. She slept like a little kid, her head lolling forward, snoring faintly. I kept the radio off, and drove through the night. I took route 35 up, rather than getting onto the Parkway, and had to focus on where I was going. Even so, my mind wouldn‘t let go of the case, and the echoes that every case invariably, inevitably, stirred.
    Every case I take, when kids are involved, I hope to hell that they’re runaways. Runaways, there’s a reason they left. You can deal with reasons, whether it’s getting them help, or getting them out of that situation and into a healthier one. You don’t always get a happy-ever-after, but you get a better-for-now.
    And most of my cases are runaways. Just not all of them.
    This one could have been – three teenagers ditching a bad situation or boring relatives for something they hope will be better, in the relative wilds of the summer shore. Fatae teens were dumb as human ones. Even with Ellen seeing people in death’s way, it could have been accident, or random chance…but it didn’t feel like it.
    These kids had been taken.
    There were three reason why teenagers are abducted, as opposed to the myriad of reasons little kids are abducted. None of them were good. Some of them were worse. The fact that these kids were fatae