Free Into the Woods by Kim Harrison

onto a slick, steep road, captivated by his air of secrecy. “Before the Turn? What did they do to you?”
    Pierce tilted his head to give himself a dangerous air. “A murder most powerful. I’d have no mind to tell you if you’re of a frail constitution, but I was bricked into the ground while breath still moved in my lungs. Buried alive with an angelic guard ready to smite me down should I dare to emerge.”
    “You were murdered!” I said, feeling a quiver of fear.
    Robbie chuckled, and I thwacked his knee. “Shut up,” I said, then winced at Pierce’s aghast look. If he’d been dead for a hundred and forty years, I’d probably just cursed like a sailor.
    “Sorry,” I said, then braced myself when the bus swayed to a stop. More people filed on, the last being an angry, unhappy woman with more of those fliers. She talked to the bus driver for a moment, and he grumbled something before waving her on and letting the air out of the brakes. Leaning back, he shut his eyes as the woman taped a laminated flier to the floor in the aisle, and two more to the ceiling.
    “Take a flier,” she demanded as she worked her way to the back of the bus. “Sarah’s been missing for two days. She’s a sweet little girl. Have you seen her?”
    Only on every TV station, I thought as I shook my head and accepted the purple paper. I glanced down as she handed one to Robbie and Pierce. The picture was different from the last one. The glow of birthday candles was in the foreground and a pile of presents in the back, blurry and out of focus. Sarah was smiling, full of life, and the thought of her alone, lost in the snow, was only slightly more tolerable than the thought of what someone sick enough to steal her might be using her for.
    I couldn’t look anymore. The woman had gotten off through the back door to hit the next bus, and I jammed the flier in my pocket with the first one as the bus lurched into traffic.
    “I know who has her,” Pierce said, his hushed, excited voice pulling my attention to him. The lights of oncoming traffic shone on him, lighting his fervent, kind of scary expression.
    “Driver!” he shouted, standing, and I pressed into the seat, alarmed. “Stop the carriage!”
    Everyone looked at us, most of them laughing. “Sit down!” Robbie gave him a gentle shove, and Pierce fell back, coat flying open for a second. “You’re going to get us kicked off.”
    “I know where she’s been taken!” he exclaimed, and I glanced at the passengers, worried. The driver, though, already thought he was drunk, and everyone else was snickering about the peep show.
    “Lower your voice,” Robbie said, shifting to sit beside him. “People will think you’re crazy.”
    Pierce visibly caught his next words and closed his coat tighter. “He has her,” he said, shaking the paper at Robbie. “The man, that . . . beast that murdered me to death. The very creature I was charged to bring to midnight justice. He’s taken another.”
    I could tell my eyes were round, but Robbie wasn’t impressed. “It’s been almost two hundred years.”
    “Which means little to the blood-lusting, foul spawn from hell,” Pierce said, and my breath caught. Vampire. He was talking about a vampire. A dead one. Crap, if a vampire had her, then she was really in trouble.
    “You were trying to tag a vampire?” I said, awed. “You must be good!” Even the I.S. didn’t send witches after vampires.
    Pierce’s expression blanked and he looked away. “Not good enough, I allow. I was there on my own hook with the belief that pride and moral outrage would sustain me. The spawn has an unholy mind for young girls, which I expect he satisfied without reprisal for decades until he abducted a girl of high standing and her parents engaged my . . . midnight services.”
    Robbie scoffed, but I stared. Figuring out what Pierce was saying was fascinating.
    Seeing Robbie’s disinterest, Pierce focused on me. “This child,” he said, looking at the