Paying the Piper

Ten: Cursed

Watching the news Saturday night, Quentin found Faye at last.

He had plunked himself down on the couch with his laptop to do more research into the Potomah Regional Forest, the disappearances, the Potomah Killer, and any other related searches. Rhia would be pleased to know that his gaming had been drastically reduced with all this research he was doing.

In a weird way, he figured that spending all this time researching Faye and related things made him feel a tiny bit more helpful since he had been the one to drive her away to begin with. Maybe he'd uncover something that would end up helping the search for her...or maybe it was simply a way to excuse his behavior because he might uncover something that would convince him that scaring her off was "worth it."

He had so much data to slough through. At least sixty-eight people had gone missing in the Potomah since Faye's birth, as compared to twenty-two in the twenty years before that. The numbers were the easy part to compile; now, he had begun looking through the specific stories and incidents, making a chart of the different factors in each: date, age of victim, circumstances surrounding the disappearance, whether they were found, and if found, whether alive or dead. It was making a massive mess of the living room coffee table and Quentin's head.

So far, he had noticed a trend in the age of the people who went missing. They seemed to get younger the further back he looked. In fact, as he considered dates and his own age, the majority were roughly the same age he was when they had disappeared.

His heart was pounding a little too erratically to continue after that, so he turned on the television.

"Missing Gendormi High School student, Faye Wulfgaar, has been found today," the news anchor introduced the story. "But she wasn't alone. Paul?"

The reported on location stood at the edge of a road, nothing special about it. As he began broadcasting, he gestured to the area behind him, which held normal trees. "Thank you, Tiffany. Here where I am standing is where a driver happened upon Faye Wulfgaar, the high schooler who had gone missing this previous Thursday. She was alert and in good health. However, she had discovered the body of another hiker in the woods. Authorities are still working to identify the body. Details have not yet been released."

As he spoke, the scene changed to show footage evidently captured earlier in the day. Faye sat on the edge of an ambulance, a blanket over her shoulders, a paramedic looking into her eyes. At another ambulance, a body bag was loaded into the back, the black bag obscuring any details of what condition its contents were in.

Police and parents hovered over Faye, nearly hiding her tiny form on the edge of the ambulance. But even when he couldn't see her any longer with his eyes, he could still see her dark shadow billowing up and around, suffocating the auras of everyone else nearby.

Mentally, Quentin steeled himself. It had been easier to believe the best of Faye when she had been far away from him. Now that he was back in her presence, albeit via television, he couldn't forget the intensity of her dark aura and how ill it made him feel. He wasn't surprised to find she had a corpse for company—not that Faye suddenly seemed like a murderer, but rather that her aura drew death and bad luck to her.

Quentin suddenly startled. Faye's aura was of someone cursed. He should have guessed it sooner. Something Marietta had said the cards told her—"The forest wants its child back"—reverberated in his mind. What if the curse was trying to bring Faye back into the forest, and all the other victims, like the one on the news right now, were the traps ensnaring the wrong prey?

Just then, Ryland slammed the door to the garage and walked into the living room. He had a big grin on his face.

Quentin stared, brain trying to catch up to what Ryland was smiling about while it was still spinning from the information racing through his mind.