Previously on Without Villains…
October Sky has breakfast with her favorite cousin only to discover there’s more missing kids, this time ones he knows. When she consults her tarot deck, she’s given a warning to reach out to someone who can help.
Meanwhile across town, Victoria is worried that her wife may not be as okay as she claims, but word of the war has her pulled in other directions.
The Kins City County Building looked like any other state or city official building I’d ever seen. It was concrete on concrete with some weird assed sculptures of gargoyle? I think. I wasn’t sure. They were weird and unremarkable at the same time.
I was a clerk, and I floated between court and deputy, which was odd, I know, but when staffing had shortages, desperate did what desperate needed to do, and I was good at this. I could keep things straight. I understood and followed the rules, and my instincts generally led me to do things the right way.
Really, my job was “interesting” in the sense that I got to read some pretty interesting stories. However, it was just paperwork and dealing with Yolanda Lawson who was my boss and someone who didn’t always appreciate the way I did things.
So, I avoided her most days.
I was good at it.
As I went through the file of a civil dispute to make sure everything was correct, a light flared inside me, my hand tugging toward my purse that was still strapped across my body. It wasn’t that I thought anyone would steel my wallet. It was more the fact that my tarot cards were in that purse and I didn’t want to lose them.
Glancing around, I made sure that the three people on the floor were otherwise busy. Mitchell was talking to Maureen, and while they were on the other end of the row of desks from me, they were within line of sight. While reading tarot wasn’t against the law because it was seen as a game, playing games was against the rules.
So, I just kept working on filing.
Lemon vs the County, where Jill Lemon filed a small claims case about water quality. The forms were in order, and I almost closed it, but I stopped. This was the third case about the water I’d seen? Was it the third?
Well, yes. That I’d seen.
Reading through, she claimed that the water was discoloring her bathroom fixtures and that her dog had gotten sick. When she had it tested, there were high traces of minerals and chemicals that shouldn’t be in there. Jill Lemon claimed that the county knew about it and was doing nothing.
Glancing at my coworkers to make sure they were still talking—which they were—I opened the database and searched for other water-related cases.
There were eleven.
I pulled their case numbers and then went through their files. As I read, I searched for other things that weren’t directly water related because I was starting to see a pattern, though, I didn’t know what it was.
My cards kept tugging at my gut.
I kept ignoring them. Mitchell had gone back to his seat, finally, mostly because Yolanda had ambled her large body down the aisle and glared meaningfully at him before continuing her walk out the door. By the time she made it back with her lunch in hand, everyone was back at their computers working.
I was interesting in the information.
There were fourteen wrongful illness claims spread over the past six months and focused mainly from Sturwood, though, there were two from Littleton. There were four tort claims for property damage, claiming that the water was eating away at equipment. There was one wrongful death, a woman who claimed her daughter got cancer from the water. Two breaches of contract that led to the water treatment facility, but I wasn’t quite sure what the connection was. And one environmental complaint against the water treatment center. Maybe that was the reason I thought the breach of contracts had relevance? I didn’t quite understand.
The tug in my belly was hard to ignore as the afternoon wore on, so I glanced around. Seeing no one, I set up a binder to hide my hands and pulled my deck out of my purse.
I shuffled them silently, focusing on that pull on my belly, inviting Spirit or the gods or whoever to share their message.
The card I pulled was Empty Well, which was interesting since I was looking into water. This deck had two cards that dealt with water at all, so it made sense that it would have me pull one of them here. Which meant that the message was about the water.
That was good. Okay. I could work with that.
Usually when I pulled this card, it meant that someone was tapped out, energy-wise, or that they’d made themselves small for the sake of others.
This didn’t feel like the same meaning to me. The message in the card was different this time. The well was dry. Follow the water which run deep under the earth.
Follow the water.
Follow… the water.
Why?
I pulled another card and Will-o’-the-Wisp appeared, reminding me of the hidden mysteries buried inside.
Of me. They were hidden mysteries buried inside of me and irritation flared—again—because this card kept popping up in all of my readings, no matter who I was reading. My deck was trying to tell me—
What? That I could read cards without the deck? Who did that? Witches. That’s who. And guess what happened to witches here?
I didn’t actually know because no one talked about it. Not with the war going on. Yes. The war was somewhere else right now, but sometimes, things were still scary here.
I heard Yolanda’s shoes squeaking as she moved, so I stashed my cards, shoving them inside my purse and then reading the page I could see in the binder I’d used to hide my hands, then glared at the form in front of me as if I was working.
She made grunting noise as she continued to walk by.
Releasing a pent up breath, I moved to put the binder away, but my hands went back to my purse and instead of grabbing all the cards, my fingers pulled one. Out of the middle of the loose deck because I’d put them away badly.
The Dream Thief. Again. The little monkey face stared at me, but this time, he wore a familiar face; Mayor Walton.
I knew this one had a different meaning this time, too. There was no coincidence that the monkey wore the mayor’s face, so instead of warning me of the seductive convenience of comfort and relative safety, I understood it to mean something a little different. A person of power was manipulating the system to make us feel comfortable because when we were, our guards were down.
Putting the card away, I stashed the binder, finished up the original water claim, and got up. I didn’t want to talk to Mayor Walton. I didn’t think he’d listen to me or make time for me. But Victoria Armstrong? His chief of staff? She felt approachable and high enough to be able to do something.
So, I went to the elevator and took it up to the fourth floor where the mayor’s support staff was. This floor was… well, grander, I guess, than the clerk’s level which was clean and kind of utilitarian. Here, bright wood paneling reflected the overhead chandeliers. The reception desk was also made of wood and all the signs were embossed metal that stood out from the walls.
It just felt like I was in the wrong place.
But I went to the front desk and told the gal there I was with the clerk’s office and that I needed to talk to the chief of staff. She pointed me to the right and I walked down the wide hall that emptied into a wide room of busy desks.
We couldn’t get help. We had four people doing the work of twelve and the mayor got a full staff? How was that fair?
I stopped at a smaller version of the front desk and waited until a short woman with dark hair pulled into a bun, her glasses perched on her perky nose with a gold chain attached them and draped around her neck walked up to me a tight smile. “How can I help you?” she asked.
Now that I was here, I had no idea what had come over me. Being here was stupid. I was stupid. This was dumb and such a terrible— “I need to talk to the chief of staff. I have some information she might find useful.”
The woman nodded politely and stepped behind her desk. “What would you like to talk to her about?”
“The water.”
With an eyeroll and a frown, the woman’s hands stopped. “Do you have more information?”
“I do.” Not. I did not, but I saw a pattern.
The woman nodded as if hearing my internal dialogue override the words I’d said out loud. “Come back when you have actual information.”
“Actual—”
“Proof,” the woman said, giving me an expectant look like she was chiding a child.
“I’m from the clerk’s office.”
“And she’s read the reports.”
And that was it? “What about the missing kids?” I asked, remembering my promise to Mateo. I mean, I had promised and it was something I could do. It just probably wasn’t going to go anywhere.
“What missing kids?” the woman asked, her expression grim.
As if I actually had her attention. Okay. I dug out my cousin’s note and handed it to her. “These kids.”
The woman opened it and looked. “What do you want us to do with this? I can barely read these names.”
“Well, they were written by a ten-year-old.” I took the note back, but the names were perfectly legible. Mostly. “I can re-write it.”
The woman clamped her lips together, then shook her head and took the note back. “We’ll take a look at it.”
“They’re all kids from school,” I said, “and they’ve all disappeared.”
“That’s highly unlikely,” a smooth male voice said from behind me.
I felt all the blood leave my body as I turned to look Mayor Walton in his bright blue eyes. “Mr. Mayor.”
“Do you know any of these kids?” he asked with a pleasant-enough-smile.
“I know someone who does.” I glanced at Victoria Armstrong, the tall woman beside him in her yellow dress suit. She looked confident and able to take on the world from her place two steps behind Mayor Walton.
“We’ll look into it,” he promised as he turned to walk away.
My gut lurched and a pulsing yellow light flared behind his right ear like the gold of the Dream Thief’s earring. “Are you just saying that so people trust you?”
He stopped and turned back to me, surprised. “What did you say?”
I didn’t know. What had I said? Why was I speaking? What was I speaking. “Are you just saying enough to make everyone comfortable while you trick them?” Why was I still speaking? “Sir.”
A chill expression crossed over his face and he glanced at Victoria. “Make sure she’s taken care of.”
Victoria narrowed her gaze and then gestured for the door. “Step into my office.”
That was exactly what I’d asked for, but why did it suddenly feel like I was a mouse stepping into the mouth of a crocodile?
* * *
Victoria hadn’t seen Wendell Walton react like that in a long time, so she was intrigued to hear what this slight woman had to say. She took the folded note her assistant offered her and walked into her office, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Taking a seat, she crossed one leg over her knee and studied the note. There were twelve names on this list. They didn’t all have surnames. At least one of them was a nickname. She doubted anyone would knowingly name their child Nacho. “What is this?”
The woman fidgeted where she stood, clutching at the strap of the brown purse she had draped across her body. “Kids who disappeared last night.”
“And you know this how?”
“My cousin goes to school with them?”
“Is that a question?”
“Uh, no. Uh, he is a kid and he does go to, uh, school, and they did disappear.”
“And he knows this. He called them.”
“Well, I mean—yes. No. Yes? I mean, I don’t know.” She looked around as if she was just now thinking this through. “I had breakfast with him this morning. And he had the list.”
“Which means,” Victoria said as a chill settled over her chest forcing her to school her expression to show just a tiny bit of concern but not too much, “that they probably disappeared the night before.”
“Yeah. Um, that would make sense.”
Victoria set the note on the desk and leaned back in her chair. “Would you sit?”
The other woman chuckled, stopped, bit her lip and then lurched in way into the chair as if she was a mouse snapped into a trap. She swallowed.
“Why are you so nervous?”
The woman shook her head. “Nervous? I’m not—I—” She stopped talking.
Victoria let her, giving her the time she needed to collect herself.
“I’m used to being invisible,” the woman said, finally. “And I’m good with that and it works good for me.”
It was hard to imagine this woman being invisible. She was pretty with full brown hair and high cheekbones and a flattering body. The woman should turn heads, not fade into the walls. But personality made a bit difference. This woman dressed to blend in, wearing all black except for a beige shirt under her grey cardigan. Nothing about her said “notice me.”
“Okay.” Victoria could work with that. “What’s your name?”
“My—my name? Oh, yeah. Right. Yes. Well, I’m October Sky Martinez Blaze.”
“What do I call you?”
“Oc—Sky.” She smiled and looked down. “Sky.”
“Are you sure?”
The woman frowned and nodded. “Yup. Sky… Marinez.”
Victoria didn’t understand what was going on with the name, but she also didn’t care. “I will have people look into the names. Have they filed missing person reports?”
Sky shook her head, looking up. “I don’t know, but probably not. The police don’t care about… these people.”
“Ah.” These people had to be paras. “All of them?”
“I think so,” she said in a soft voice. “I don’t know.”
“Are you?”
“Para?” Sky flashed a smile and then slumped forward. “No.” She cleared her throat and tried that again with a lower pitch. “No. I’m just a clerk.”
“Just a clerk. Why are you on my floor?”
Sky’s brown eyes latched onto Victoria’s and her mouth opened to speak, but no words came out.
Sighing, Victoria kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot to the small fridge, pulling out a bottle of water. Offering it to Sky on her way by, she sat in the chair beside the woman, relaxing her stance, lettering herself appear more human. It wasn’t often that this was the best approach. She didn’t get to work with real people, usually men in power. Sometimes women, but mostly men who saw emotions on a woman as weakness.
It felt nice to relax and be a person. “I’ve got a lot of names of kids who have been disappearing. I didn’t know they were paras, but I suspected.”
Sky put the lid back on the water bottle and leaned forward. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve got people looking into it. But so far, we haven’t found much.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, Sky.” And that was the irritating thing. She should know something by now. There were just so many names, but like this list, they weren’t complete. “No one wants to share information.”
“They’re scared.” Sky settled into her chair with an air of defeat as she stared out the window behind Victoria.
“They are. But if there was someone who could talk to them, get them to share more information…” She let the thought drift off.
Sky frowned and took in a breath. “I’ll try, but I actually wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Okay.”
“The water?”
There were several water cases in the civil court, so Victoria was aware of some of them. They were enough to get her attention, though they’d all been dismissed. “What about it?”
“I’m seeing a pattern, but I don’t know what it means? I only know that we need to dig deeper.”
“Are you volunteering?”
Sky shook her head with a scoff. “No. No. I’m a clerk. I can read files.” She frowned and then closed her eyes, reaching into her purse and pulling out a card.
A tarot card. A familiarity smoothed the sharp edges of Victoria’s nervous system as the card disappeared again. Her momma had used tarot cards to help guide their future and they hadn’t been wrong.
“I’ll try to look more. Yes.” Sky nodded, zipping her purse closed and then gripping it tightly. “But, um, you, uh, need to be careful? There’s—” She shook her head. “Someone is going to offer you something soon you really want. Don’t take it.”
Victoria nodded. That could be anyone, but she had a feeling she already knew who. Wendell was going to tell her he was running for Senate and she hoped he’d give her his endorsement for mayor. But this woman an incite that few others had.
And she needed an upper hand. She needed… something.
“I need you to come clerk for me.”
Sky’s eyes widened. “What?”
“If you’re clerking for me, no one will ask questions on why you’re looking to things.”
Taking the lid off the bottle, Sky chugged the remainder of the water before twisting the lid back on. “Sure. Yup. Sure—yup. Yeah. This is going to be great.”
It might be exactly what Victoria had been looking for, but she just hoped that October Sky Martinez Blaze had enough backbone to actually help because even with the might of her own steel will, there was only so far they could go.
And their city desperately needed help.