Maddy gave me a confused look. “I smell Kenneth. It’s one of the first times I’ve actually been able to recall a scent. It’s strange.”
“What? That can’t be possible. We watched him die.”
She shook her head and furrowed her brow. “It’s super faint, but it’s there. Like he’d been here at some point in the past.”
I looked at the house and the footprints we’d left in the dust on the porch steps. The idea of scenting someone who’d been gone for that long was incomprehensible to me. Not even the most sensitive shifters had senses that strong. Even if Kenneth had been here right before going back to Europe, it was still nearly a month ago. Just how powerful was Maddy?
I raised a hand to knock. My knuckles sounded like a gunshot against the bone-dry wood of the door. We waited several seconds before knocking again. There was still no answer, so Maddy reached forward and tried the doorknob. It turned easily, and the door swung open. The inside looked as untouched as the outside. Dust caked every surface and heavy cobwebs hung in the corners. It was clear to see that it had been several years since anyone had been here.
Maddy took my hand as we walked across the threshold. There was a single moment where I winced, anticipating some sort of booby trap. Nightmare images of a hidden gun pointing at us, a trip wire leading to its trigger, filled my mind. Thankfully, she stepped into the living room with no repercussions. I let out a little sigh of relief.
“Are you okay?” Maddy asked.
I nodded and chuckled ruefully. “Yeah. I think I’ve seen one too many adventure movies.”
Maddy smiled at me. “I had the same thought. Poison darts?”
I laughed out loud. “Tripwire and a gun. Your idea was way cooler.”
The strain dissipated a bit with our little jokes. It made me less anxious, and I hoped it meant the same for Maddy. The house was strangely untouched. Nothing had been taken, and a few pictures still hung on the wall. Others had fallen, leaving behind faded squares where they’d once hung. The furniture was right where it should have been. It had the look of a place that had been abandoned quickly. Had the royals found this woman? Did she have to run in the middle of the night, leaving everything behind, not even bothering to lock the door behind her? Perhaps.
Maddy sniffed the air and gave a little shake of her head. “I was right. It does smell faintly of Kenneth. There’s another smell, one that seems familiar, but I don’t know why. I can’t really place it. This way,” Maddy said, motioning for me to follow her.
She led me up the stairs. We went slowly, still wary of anything that might jump out at us. The house seemed totally dead, though. Once we were at the top of the stairs, we followed the hallway to the end, where we found a small bedroom that seemed to have functioned as an office. Unlike the rest of the house, which looked untouched, this room had been ransacked. Whoever had been in here had been in a hurry. Papers were scattered across the floor, a couple of filing cabinets had been left hanging open, and several files were strewn in a pile beneath the open doors. A container of pens and pencils had been knocked over onto the floor. It was chaos.
The filing cabinet looked like the best place to look for clues, so I went straight for it. Maddy moved around the room slowly as I pulled file after file out and skimmed through them. They were coated in dust, but everything was still legible. There was no way for me to know what I was looking for, but that didn’t stop me from looking through everything. After the first few, it was obvious they were old medical files of patients Maddy’s birthmother must have had. Every chart had her alias signature at the bottom. Malia Stanford, MD.
I wondered if she’dactuallygone to med school. Had Kenneth gotten her a new identity, plastic surgery, and all the false records needed to enroll? Or had he faked everything? Had this woman been practicing medicine for decades with a fake medical degree and license? I didn’t want to think about that part.
Patterns started to jump out of the file. Every single file was for a shifter patient. All these people were shifters. They also all had birthdays that were within a month of Maddy’s. Slowing my search, I tried to figure out precisely what she was looking for. Maddy was quiet. I should have checked to see if she’d found anything, but I was too consumed with my own search. Then I saw it. On the third page of every file, there was a DNA report. A single line had been highlighted on all of them: a genetic marker search. For some reason, Maddy’s birth mother had been trying to match the markers to something—but to what?
I dug back into the filing cabinet and saw a file that made my breath catch in my throat. Madison Sutton. Maddy's name was tagged on the chart. I yanked it out and opened the file to the third page. Every other report had been circled in yellow highlighter. Maddy’s was circled in bright red ink. Whoever had circled it had been so excited by what they’d seen that they’d put four or five circles around the results and put three check marks beside them. Whatever marker this woman had been searching for, it looked like Maddy was a match.
I turned to show Maddy what I’d found, only to find her standing motionless at the other side of the room, staring into a closet. I took a few tentative steps toward her, and before I could ask what was wrong, I saw what she was looking at. There was an entire wall of the closet that was devoted to her. There were literally dozens of pictures of Maddy. The oldest looked likethey’d been taken when she was a toddler. Maddy’s skin had a more olive complexion back then. She looked a lot more like her biological father in those photos. A photo of Maddy at around seven years old was pinned up next to a yearbook picture of David Samuels. The resemblance was uncanny.
The pictures showed her growing up. Many appeared to have been taken with a telephoto lens from a good distance. Maddy stepped into the closet, and I was able to see more. The entire room was some sort of memorial to her. Maddy didn’t make a sound as she looked at all the pictures. The newest photos were of her at her graduation ceremony. Her birth mother had been there? Or had someone been there on her behalf? Kenneth? I had no doubt that if Gabriella had asked him, he’d have done this for her. Maybe he’d taken most of these photos for her. The entire thing was a strange combination of creepy, sweet, and sad. So many years this woman had spent wanting nothing more than to be with the daughter she’d given up. It hurt my heart to see it. I knew it had to be having the same effect on Maddy. The same effect but magnified a thousand times.
54
MADDY
When I’d opened the closet door, I’d expected to find piles of boxes, maybe some moldy clothes still hanging on hooks. I’d not been prepared for what I found. The pictures were almost too much to take in. I was so flooded with emotions that I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I was feeling. My entire life was plastered on the walls of the closet.
There were pictures of me running track, a newspaper clipping of me coming in second at a countywide science fair in sixth grade, along with the most random picture. It was Abi and me. We were dressed for prom, and we were standing in front of the massive old oak tree that stood in front of the high school. The picture was taken from a different angle, and from farther away, Mom and Dad’s backs could be seen as they took the photos I remembered from that night.
I’d decided to try softball one season when I was twelve, and there was a picture of me swinging and missing a pitch. Beside it was a handwritten note.
You did sucha good job at this game!
One of mypageant pictures was on the far side of the wall with another note pinned up next to it.
Maddy,you are so beautiful. I’m so proud of you. I wish I could tell you in person.
It wenton and on like that. Photos and notes, notes and photos. This wasn’t Kenneth’s doing. It was too personal, and the notes had a feminine quality to them. He’d been here, though. His scent was all over the place. It was stronger in this room than anywhere else in the house.
“Hey,” Nico said softly. I turned to him and saw he was holding a file in his hands. “I found something.”
I took it from him with numb fingers and glanced at it. In my current state, all I could see were random words and numbers. Nothing made sense to me. I shook my head to try and clear it. “What am I looking at?”
