“Could be. What about the last name on the list?”

“Cindy Brolin . . .” I read. “Wait, that’s supposed to be—”

“Janice Grandin.”

He was right. According to old newspaper articles we’d perused in the banker box Dare had given us, Janice Grandin was the last kid taken, not this Cindy person.

“The other names are all the same, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Did you know Cindy Brolin?”

“No. I didn’t know any of the kids. I went to private school. Back then, all the missing kids were from the public school.”

A reverse of what was happening now. After a few moments of staring at the piece of paper, I noticed something. “Janice Grandin was taken on October thirty-first. This was dated two days before.”

“Huh.” Lon pushed the box away and looked at me, his brow knotted. “If Cindy Brolin was originally on the Snatcher’s wish list, what happened to her?”

Moved out of town.

Cindy Brolin apparently left La Sirena shortly after the original seven teens disappeared. Lon made some phone calls to the La Sirena police, but they didn’t have a crumb about this mystery girl in their records. She was never part of the original investigation, and there was no mention of her in any of the newspaper clippings—nothing online either.

We almost chalked her up as a dead end until a broader search uncovered one Cynthia W. Brolin listed at a downtown address in Morella. Before my 4:00 shift the following day, Lon followed me into the city in his SUV and parked at my house. We took my car and headed downtown.

Morella is a sprawling, flat city. La Sirena’s coastal cliffs are only about ten crow-flying miles to the west, and the Santa Lucia Range cradles the land to the southeast. On a clear, smog-free day, you can see beautiful crinkled mountain peaks stretching around the city in the distance. Most days, however, all you see is concrete and steel.

Cindy didn’t live in the best part of town. On her street, we drove past abandoned storefronts plastered with sun-bleached posters for psychic phone readings, two sketchy Circle Ks, and a rim shop with barred windows and doors. If I thought the Metropark garage near Tambuku was bad, the one attached to her high-rise apartment building was downright sinister. It reminded me that I needed to rework the temporary wards on my car. And maybe it was time to start investing in something more longterm on the underside of my hood.

We found a space on the second level. After parking, I reached over Lon’s knees to the glove compartment box and pulled out a silver plastic angel that fit in the palm of my hand.

“A wind-up parking goddess?” Lon read from the discarded packaging.

“She doesn’t wind anymore. I stripped out her insides and stuffed her with powdered angelica root.” On the flat base was a simple warding sigil. Nothing fancy, but effective. I dug out a piece of gum from my purse and chewed it until it was soft. Mumbling a quick spell, I pressed the chewed gum, now chock full of Heka-rich saliva, over the sigil. A brief wave of dizziness passed over me. I exhaled slowly until it passed, then stuck the newly charged angel on my dash. “It won’t last long,” I explained, “but I’d rather not get my car out of impound after hoodlums decide to take it on a joyride.”

Lon narrowed his eyes at my low-rent magick and made a little noise of appreciative surprise. “You’re kind of turning me on.”

“Just wait until you see what I can do with a balloon and some consecrated Abramelin oil,” I said with a wink.

His low laughter reverberated through the garage as we exited the car.

In the ’70s, Cindy’s building had probably been a swinging bachelor’s dream home. Orange shag carpet lined the lobby and cracked mirrored tile ran down the center of the walls. Whatever it was in its glory, it was just depressing and dirty now.

Cindy’s apartment was on the sixteenth floor. Lon and I exchanged leery glances as we paused in front of her door, listening to the sounds of daytime TV roaring from the apartment to the right, and an angry domestic dispute in the one on the left. Stale cigarette smoke and rancid cooking oil permeated the hallway. A dark spot the size of a basketball stained the carpet near our feet.

After ringing the doorbell twice, the door finally creaked open. Female eyes peeped through two cheap chain locks.

“Cindy?” I asked.

“Yeah?” Her voice was wary.

“Hi,” I said brightly. “My name is Cady and this is Lon. We’re from La Sirena Historical Preservation. We’re writing a book about the history of schools in La Sirena, and we’ve been tracking down alumni for interviews. We were wondering if you had a few minutes to talk to us about La Sirena Junior High?” Probably not the best lie we could come up with, but it was better than our original plan, to pose as cops.

As if it would help prove our story, I held up a copy of the society’s book about coastal farming in the 1800s, taken from Lon’s library. Why Lon owned it, I had no idea. He owned a lot of strange books—and I’m not talking about the ones on demon summoning, either; his avid interest in irrigation and composting was far more peculiar, if you asked me.

Confusion swept over the sliver of Cindy’s face peeping through the door crack. “I haven’t even stepped foot in La Sirena in thirty years.”

“Even better,” I chirped, smiling as big as I could. “You’ll have a different perspective. We’ve talked to about ten people so far, and the interview only takes five minutes.”