Demon and the Fox - 25. Family Emergency

Gabriel looked out his living room window. One hand rested against the white window frame, and the other held a warm oatmeal bowl. The sky was a vast cloudless expanse stretching over the city. Normally, its pure blue shade would lift Gabriel’s mood. He was leaving for his morning jog soon, and that was always nicer when the weather was beautiful. But Gabriel’s stomach was in knots, and he couldn’t eat much of his breakfast.

Sasha had been missing for a week.

And Gabriel had called the cops—of course he’d called the damn cops—but Sasha was eighteen now. The sad truth was that the cops didn’t care. They pretended to care, asking questions, taking notes, and saying they were doing everything they could.

Gabriel stopped by the kitchen to toss his bowl in the sink. He wasn’t hungry. He went to change into his microfiber running shorts and a thin t-shirt, and stormed out of the apartment.

It was a nice day outside; sunny without being too hot. Gabriel wasn’t the only jogger out there. He made one of his usual runs without putting any thought to it; East on 34^th and then North on 1^st Avenue with the tall gray and brown condo buildings, and lush green trees lining the street as he reached a small park where an old man sitting on a bench was feeding squirrels.

If he listened to himself, Gabriel would stay at the apartment all day, all night and wait while hoping for his adoptive brother’s safe return. But he would just end up driving himself crazy. He needed to keep moving, to cling to his routine.

Still, his workout didn’t bring him the usual quietude of mind. Gabriel just kept thinking about the people he had already called, bouncing their names back and forth in his head to figure out if he forgot anyone. He’d called Sasha’s three band mates; they hadn’t seen him. In fact, they were angry at Sasha for missing practice, and they wanted to kick him out of the band again. Then Gabriel called Hazel, who assured him neither she nor Nick had heard from Sasha. Then the school, of course—well, they’d been the ones to call Gabriel when Sasha didn’t show up for class.

At the back of his mind, Gabriel couldn’t help but think about Sasha’s scholarship. If Sasha was safe and just being rebellious for some reason, skipping school while staying over at some new friend’s place without even telling Gabriel about it—which was probably the scenario the cops thought most plausible—then Gabriel would be utterly pissed off. Because if Sasha failed his classes, or if his attendance rate was too low, he could lose the Stanford scholarship. Gabriel was sure they had plenty other good swimmers, or athletes on a waiting list they could give it to.

Gabriel crossed the street at the green light and started to make his way back. He couldn’t do a long workout this morning. He had to get to the office early.

When Gabriel slipped back inside his apartment some thirty minutes after leaving, he fired up the coffee machine, took a quick shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, and then padded back toward his bedroom, wanting to go select some work clothes for the day. But he stopped.

The light was on in Sasha’s room, and the door was ajar. Heart rate picking up, Gabriel pushed it fully open.

“Sasha?”

But he wasn’t there. The room was messy, but that was no different from before. Books and clothes littered the floor in piles. The drawstring bag Sasha used for his swimming trunks, cap and goggles was in one corner. A stash of converse shoes of all colors of the rainbow heaped in another.

One thing was off, though. And when he saw it, Gabriel stepped further inside the room and dropped one knee to the hardwood floor.

Lilya’s books. Her spell books, witchcraft books, journals, and the journals of her ancestors. They had been messily tossed to the floor. Gabriel looked up. In the closet, on the top shelf, not one book remained. That was where Sasha usually kept those, in very neat rows. No matter how messy the rest of his bedroom got, Sasha always kept his mother’s books nicely stacked on the top shelf. He would never have thrown them to the floor and left them like that. Not unless, Gabriel thought with a pang, something was really wrong.

Feeling jittery even though he hadn’t even had any caffeine yet, Gabriel stalked across the apartment to the living room. He found his cell phone, which he’d left on the coffee table with his briefcase and latest copy of the Financial Times.

Was Sasha trying to do something stupid? Some kind of crazy spell? What if his eagerness to do magic got him killed the same way it had his parents? Lilya and Stephen had thought they were better than that. They’d thought their magic couldn’t possibly backfire. They were wrong. And Gabriel would forever feel guilty because of his adoptive parents’ lack of restraint. All he could do now was protect Sasha. Lilya wouldn’t want her son to die the same pointless, cruel way she had.

Gabriel brought the phone to his ear. “Yes, hi. I can’t make it to the office today… I know, I’m sorry. I hate to miss work,” he said, and he meant it, “but this is a family emergency.”