Paying the Piper

Twenty-Eight: Laws to Live By

Something was rotten in the state of Minnesota...and it wasn't just Quentin's Hamlet homework that he wasn't doing. Hannah was missing, and her phone acted like it was turned off. But now that Quentin was with Rhia and they were trying to round up the others to help brainstorm and search, no one was responding. They'd tried calling Ryland and Faye, but each of their phones went straight to voicemail like Hannah's.

"It's too weird."

Rhia agreed, but she wasn't able to focus on much besides her missing sister. "Maybe they're together and want to be left alone," she muttered bitterly.

Quentin understood that her worry was affecting her attitude, but she was going a bit too far. Everyone had had some crazy revelations recently. Ryland couldn't have been any more thrilled to find out the reason he had been born any more than Quentin had been to learn he had a demon to thank for his very life. Rhia didn't know about Ryland's situation, though.

"Your text message went through, though, and was read. At least to Ryland." Faye's phone wasn't the same type to notify if a message was opened and presumably read. "There's no way anyone is going to ignore a message like that." Quentin looked out Rhia's window, which faced the hill. The Potomah Forest. "It's always the forest," he muttered to himself.

"So what are you suggesting?" Rhia's parents had gone out driving to look for Hannah anywhere they could think of. Rhia was staying home in case Hannah showed up there. But with her tapping fingers and jiggling leg, it was clear Rhia wanted, even needed, to go somewhere and do something constructive.

"I'm suggesting we go around here and look."

Rhia flung up her hands. "I've searched the entire bonfire area all morning as if she could have been hiding underneath a blade of grass. There's nothing out there, Quent."

He ignored her tone, knowing it was the concern causing her to lash out. "But have you checked the forest at all?" he asked.

She stared out the window as well, where the hill rose up behind her house. At this point, only conifers had any green left. Most of the other trees had completely dropped their leaves, minus the oaks who apparently had some modesty issues and had to keep their leaves on all winter. But the barren hill wasn't colorful and beautiful the way it normally was in autumn, and it wasn't lush and full like in the summer. It was scrappy and desolate. The perfect place for a demon to make its haunt.

"We said we were going to stay out of the forest," Rhia replied softly.

"But Hannah never heard that warning. She might have gone in."

A scritching on the floor drew his attention, and suddenly a velvety head was pressed under his hand. As instructed, Quentin patted the black lab's head. Jesse knew something wasn't right, and he kept trying to both give solace and seek it.

A sudden thought occurred to him. "Have you tried having Jesse sniff out her scent?" Labradors weren't tracking dogs, but they still had a far better sense of smell than a human.

Rhia sighed. "Yeah, we've tried. He doesn't seem to understand what we want him to do. It was a dead-end."

Quentin went still. He was going to have to tell her at some point. Why not now? He always had it on him. It was another piece of himself at this point. Wordlessly, Quentin pulled out the fox pelt that he had stowed away in his cloak. Rhia watched him draw it out, but her expression did not suitably change to awe and amazement the way it deserved—the way she no doubt would have reacted, if she had known what it could do.

"Maybe Jesse couldn't sniff her out because he didn't know what you wanted him to do." He swallowed. "I would be able to, however."

"What? Are you saying you have a crazy-good nose or something?" She stared at the pelt, clearly unable or unwilling to put the pieces together.