Liminal Spaces and Missing Persons, part one

"Anything?" asked Antoinette. 

Christopher Black tasted the air, then shook his head. "Nothing." He turned, extending his senses as he considered, and then shrugged. "He jogged this far, and then he vanished."

They'd caught a lucky break on this one: the man who'd gone missing had been on the phone with his husband, so they had a good idea of exactly when and where he'd disappeared. 

"He isn't a magus," Antoinette said, thinking aloud as she sometimes did, "and you can follow his scent from his house to this spot. Can you smell anything else?"

Chris looked around. They were standing on a tree-lined sidewalk beside a street in Maryland, watching cars pass them by. It was mid-morning on a Tuesday; Adam Davis had gone missing only the evening before. He wasn't the first mysterious disappearance in this area, but he was the first who'd left any kind of tracks. He checked the air again, looked around to make sure that nobody was watching them closely, and the bent down to sniff at the ground. Antoinette had wrapped them both in spells of look-away and nothing-to-see-here but anything too far out of the ordinary might still attract attention.

 After a moment he rose to his feet again. "Nothing. If something took him, it didn't leave any kind of scent trail -- not even his scent -- and there's no lingering smell of fear, either."

"Would there be?"

"He was jogging and sweating. If his scent changed, I'd expect to be able to smell that."

Jacqueline nodded and then frowned. "The transcript said he told his husband he was going to cut through a tunnel." She looked around carefully. "Do you see a tunnel anywhere around here?"

The road they were standing beside was bordered by a high slope to another road that crossed above it, but there wasn't any sort of passage through.Chris shook his head, thoughtful. "An opening to the Grey?"

"Here?" Antoinette shook her head. "No. Nothing documented, or we'd have been briefed on it." Then she closed her eyes, drew a deep breath and exhaled, settling herself. "Maybe. Yes. Not here... Somewhere close..." She shook herself. "I'll be damned. You're right. It's closed now, but you're right."

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a deck of cards. Chris stepped back as she sorted through them; the High Arcana were mages' tools and mages' business: one of the few enchantments so fundamental that they still worked here in the Mundus. He waited while his partner selected a card, regarded it, and after a few minutes said: "Captain. Sorry to interrupt, but Chris and I have found something and we need a Seeker." She paused. "Yes. We think the missing man found a passage to the Grey and went through it without knowing what it was." She paused again. "I'm not sure, but I doubt it. More likely something made a breach and is using it to hunt." Another pause. "Yes, sir."

She passed a hand across the face of the card. "He's going to see who's available, and get someone over to us as soon as he can."

"How soon is that likely to be?" Chris was both curious and concerned; the missing man was very likely in danger, and possibly dead already. 

"Not too long, I don't think--" Antoinette stiffened and raised a hand. Chris recognized the gesture; it was something the mages did when someone contacted them through the cards. "Hello. Yes. Yes, we're-- all right, come on." She extended a hand, and suddenly two more people were present. The first was a tall, willowy woman with a cane in her left hand; the other was a man: shorter, wiry, and so blond that his hair was nearly white. 

"Thank you for coming so quickly," Antoinette said immediately. "I'm Antoinette Gillespie, and this is my partner, Christopher Black." 

"Chris," he said immediately, stepping back to his place beside his partner.

The taller woman regarded them both for a bare second. "Sherri Fairbourne," she said. She looked at Chern and asked, "Wolf?"

He nodded. 

Her partner smiled gleefully. "Thorin Tanelorn," he said, looking Chris over thoughtfully -- and thoroughly. "Of the Great Cats. Hello, handsome."

"Hello yourself," Chern replied, mirroring something of the other man's mood before letting it fade. He wasn't quite sure what to make of either of them, but if magus Fairbourne was a Seeker, well... that was what they needed right now. He looked back to her, expectant. 

"Thorin," she chided, then turned to look around without waiting for a response. "A passage, or a breach, nearby?"

Antoinette nodded. "I can feel it, but I can't find it. It's closed."

Sherri closed her eyes for a moment, then nodded. "Got it. Just a moment... I don't usually do this in the middle of the Mundus." She took four steps forward, then cut the air with her cane. Chris ignored the ripple of energies that extended from the gesture, instead watching with curiosity as the landscape changed. 

The steep hillside in front of them shimmered and gave way. There was a passageway there now, an arched concrete tunnel that cut beneath the road and let out on the far side. A section of sidewalk rose into place beneath their feet, connecting it with the sidewalk, and now the missing man's scent continued on its way. 

"He went in there," Chris said quietly, by way of confirmation. 

"Who did?" asked Sherri. 

"Adam Davis," Antoinette told her. "Age forty-two, male, five-foot-ten, Caucasian. Went missing around seven-forty last night, was reported about half an hour later by his husband. Cops barely even looked at it, but we tagged it because he's not the first one to go missing around here."

Sherri nodded. "So either we have a natural passage that people sometimes wander into and get lost, or..."

Antoinette nodded. "Or this is deliberate." 

Sherri studied the younger woman for a long moment, then nodded. "How long have you been working for the ministry?"

"Two years, three months," Antoinette kept her voice under control, but from the change in her scent she was feeling defensive and a little scared. 

"And you?" 

Chris wasn't at all surprised that Sherri had turned to him next. The woman was good five years older than they were, and likely had spent all of that time working for the Ministry if she was a Seeker. "Eight months," he said flatly. He didn't like having his qualifications questioned either. 

"Jesus," Sherri said. "They sent babies out for something like this."

Antoinette drew a breath, but Chris cut her off: "Babies who took out a whole nest of vampires, including a master."

Thorin cut in with, "Wait, that was you?" just as Sherri turned to scowl at Chris. 

She hesitated, then sighed. "You're sure you're up to this?"

"No," said Antoinette simply, and Sherri deflated. "But it was assigned to us, so we're doing it."

Chris nodded. "You're better off with us than without us."

Sherri drew a deep breath, then released it slowly. It wasn't quite a sigh; it looked more like... a reset. "You're in charge," she said, as if admitting it pained her. 

Antoinette nodded. "We're going in." She stopped, looked at the man who'd introduced himself as Thorin Tanelorn. "What can I expect from you?" 

Thorin looked over at Chris. "My senses are a little different, and I can't take as much damage, but I should be a little faster-- and I can climb. Not much difference overall, much as it pains me to say it. In the Grey, we'll both be able to shift, so don't let that surprise you."

"All right," said Antoinette. "Sherri, can you lead us to Adam Davis?"

Sherri hesitated. "I think so," she said. "It would be better if I had something to focus on -- a picture, a keepsake, something like that."

"I can follow his scent," Chris said quietly. 

"All right," said Antoinette. "You lead. Sherri steps in if you lose the way; otherwise, she and I keep alert for magical trickery. Thorin, I want you watching our backs: make sure nothing comes at us while we're focused on following the trail." She looked at Sherri Fairbourne, quietly defiant. "Any objections?"

"None," said the older woman, smiling with a sort of soft fierceness. "You're doing fine. Let's go find him."