Crowbones

CHAPTER 75

Grimshaw

Earthday, Novembros 4

Grimshaw opened the map that had the colored dots indicating the possible attacks by Crowbones, based on police reports of humans savagely killed who had a couple of small bones removed and had the signature crow’s feet attached to some part of what remained. Some police stations had also mentioned Crowgard dying in the same area—and how several times it looked like they had been killed by other Crows.

“Perhaps these . . . collisions . . . between Crowgard and humans is an experiment,” Ilya said. “Like that professor having a student dress up like Crowbones so that he could observe Aggie, Jozi, and Eddie’s reaction.”

“Maybe it’s an experiment,” Julian said, “but I would lean toward brainwashing—and the use of mind-altering drugs as a way to reward and control. Look at the police reports. Most of the humans who were victims of Crowbones’s alleged attacks and were somehow connected with Crowgard being killed were in their late teens and male. An ideal age for this kind of work if you know how to manipulate someone.”

Crap. Grimshaw had hoped nobody else had been thinking along those lines. Especially because the Crowgard weren’t the only form of terra indigene who routinely brushed against humans.

He didn’t like the way Ilya and Stavros stared at him and Julian now that Julian had brought up a possibility that could trigger another purge of humans if a human was behind the killing of terra indigene.

“You’re not fools,” Julian said. “You must have considered it. But things spun out of human control when the Elders and Elementals closed off any way to escape Lake Silence and Sproing after the first killing—spun out of control enough to have the Sanguinati’s problem solver show up, in secret, to help hunt down whoever is responsible.”

“How were the Sanguinati youngsters chosen for this opportunity to interact with humans—or at least a select handful of humans?” Grimshaw asked. “I imagine there were plenty of youngsters who might like the adventure. Did you pull names from a hat? Or was there something about at least some of them that made the Sanguinati uneasy, that made you all want to observe these youngsters in a different, more contained setting?”

“Or get them away from a bad influence?” Julian suggested.

“Take Lara out of the mix,” Grimshaw said. “She’s a kid and doesn’t fit the profile. I think having Lara stay with a different . . . shadow? . . . and exposing her to Vicki and The Jumble’s residents is like sending a human child to a summer camp experience of working on a farm, for example. It’s an adventure and a chance to meet different individuals. Select individuals.”

“The profile of what?” Ilya asked in a voice that held a cold warning.

Grimshaw ignored the question and the warning since he was certain that Ilya Sanguinati, canny attorney and leader of Silence Lodge, knew perfectly well what he meant. “The boy who dressed up as Crowbones. The boys who blew up the store, intending to kill some of us. The two Crows who were connected with those human boys. Three of the Sanguinati fosterlings. Humans, Crows, Sanguinati. I think what they all have in common is that they’re teenagers.”

Stavros nodded. “And adolescents that age are more vulnerable to influence.”

“And peer pressure,” Grimshaw said. He looked at Ilya. “And wanting to impress someone.”

“That’s true of humans at that age,” Julian said. “Maybe someone is trying to find out if that’s true of other species. Maybe someone is conducting experiments to manipulate behavior.”

Ilya brushed his fingers lightly over the dots on the map and said quietly, “If that’s true, then The Jumble wasn’t the first place where those experiments were conducted.”

Stavros added just as quietly, “But it will be the last.”