****
It was getting late, so Ian and I split the girls up and questioned them separately. Ian’s contract with the Blades made it legal for him to question suspects and witnesses as long as he had a Blade agent or Guard officer present, so he and Rangel took Maria Reece to the front porch while I stayed on the back porch with Shani Lin.
I stood in front of her while she sat on a porch swing, rocking back and forth and fidgeting nervously.
“We were at this bar, Pinky’s something, but there was no action so we decided to head over to the Blue Vein.” The girl sniffed.
When she said the name of the bar they went to after Pinky’s, my eyes immediately went to the girl’s arms. Sure enough, there were several small scars on her wrist. The other arm had similar scars on the wrist and inner elbow. They were tiny and innocuous enough if you didn’t know what you were looking at, but I did. The Blue Vein was a notorious sucker hangout. It seemed Farah and her friends liked to get high by having their blood sucked. I wondered if it was a passing fad for them, if the scars I could see were all they had, or if they had started out getting bitten in places that weren’t easily seen and had progressed to not caring if the scars were visible. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be long before the girls were completely absorbed by the sucker culture.
Shani noticed my eyes on her wrist and pulled her hand behind her back. “It’s not what you think. We aren’t addicts. We just like to have a little fun, get a little high on the weekends.”
That may be true, but the fact that the girls routinely frequented sucker bars added another possible layer to the case. Farah’s disappearance might not be related to the others at all, or there could be a possibility they hadn’t yet looked at in the other cases.
“Miss Lin, did you know there are slave traders who look for strong, young women like you and your friends to sell to rogue vamps in the Outer Zones?” I asked, my voice unemotional.
She blanched, and the tears started again. “Are… are you saying that is what happened to Farah?”
I sighed. “No, I am not. We don’t know what happened to Miss Purcell, but we will follow every lead. What I am saying is that every time you and your friends go into a sucker bar, you are putting yourself at risk. Every time you allow an addict vampire to bite you and suck your blood, you are putting yourself in danger. All it would take is for you to let the wrong vamp bite you. All they’d have to do is suck a little too much, just enough to make you pass out. You could wake up far from Nash as a slave. Then you would have no control over who bit you or how much they took. You would be lucky if you weren’t killed by them taking too much. Though, if you ended up sold as chattel to someone in No Man’s Land, you’d be luckier if they did kill you quickly.”
Her eyes were wide now, and she was trembling so hard it was a wonder I couldn’t hear her teeth chattering. I felt a little guilty at terrifying her, but only a little. If she were scared, maybe she would think twice before letting an addict vamp bite her again. I might have been a little too brutal with the truth, but I hadn’t lied. The danger was very real.
I put my hand on her shoulder and tried to sound a little nicer. “Look, there is nothing to indicate that is what happened to Farah. I can promise you we will do everything we can to find her. But, you do need to know the real danger you and your friends put yourselves in. Getting high just isn’t worth the risk of what could happen. Just be careful and think it through, please.”
She sniffed and wiped the tears streaming down her face with the back of her hand. “I… okay. I’ll think about it. I swear.”
I had no doubt she would think about what I’d told her and would stay out of the bars for a night or two, but I had no idea if it would have any lasting impact. I nodded at her. “Okay, let’s continue. You were headed over to the Blue Vein.”
“Oh, yes. The street was crowded, and there was a line to get into the bar. We were just about to the front of the line when Farah said she saw a hottie that had been looking at her in the last bar, Pinky’s. She said he waved her over, and she was going to talk to him. She said if she didn’t catch up to us by the time we left, to just go on home and she’d see us in the morning.”
“Did you see who she was talking about?” I asked.
“Of course not. She knew I would have tried to snake her if she pointed him out,” Shani said with a teary laugh.
“What?” I was thoroughly confused.
“It’s a game. We get points for every hottie we go home with, or out back, or wherever, if you know what I mean.”
I did know what she meant, and it made me a little sick at my stomach, but I stayed quiet and let her continue.
“We get extra points if it is a paranorm of any race, double points if it is a shifter, since they are so rare in the city. We also get double points if we snake a guy out from under some other girl, triple if it’s one of us. Farah is ahead of both Maria and I, but a triple score would have put me way in the lead, so there is no way she would have pointed him out to either of us. I think he might have been blond though. Farah likes blonds. What? It’s just a little harmless fun,” she said, obviously seeing the horror on my face.
Harmless fun? These girls were completely oblivious to the danger they were putting themselves into. It was one thing for adults to engage in consensual sex, but these girls were playing games with their lives. My hopes of ever finding Farah alive plummeted. The girls engaged in so much risky behavior that anything could have happened to Farah. It was pure luck the other two weren’t alongside her wherever she was. I bit my tongue to keep from laying into the girl. It wasn’t my place to lecture her. Besides, I doubted it would help. I’d seen out-of-control kids before, but I’d never heard of something like the game the girls played.
“Okay, Shani, I think that’s it. Thanks for talking to me. Please let the Blades know immediately if Farah gets in touch with you, okay?” I said, ready to end this conversation.
“Okay.” She got up and started to go inside, but stopped when she reached the door. “Do you think our game is the reason Farah is missing? Do you think the hottie did something bad to her?”
I sighed. “I truly don’t know. But what you girls do, letting vamps bite you, going off with strange men, you must know it isn’t safe. I know that must be a part of the thrill, the danger. But danger isn’t fun; it is, for lack of a better word, dangerous. I think you know that. What happened to Farah may have nothing to do with the way you three party, but the odds are that if you don’t stop, one day, I’ll be standing in your parents’ home, asking them when they last saw you.”
I tried to keep my tone sympathetic, though I knew my words were brutal. To my great surprise, Shani didn’t burst into tears again. Her face was sober and tear streaked as she nodded at me, then she opened the door and disappeared inside.
I stood there for several minutes, giving her time to retreat and giving myself time to compose myself. My job was never pretty, but what I’d heard here today just made me heartsick. I took a few deep breaths, and then headed back through the house to find Ian. I was ready to go home, it had been a long day, and we had a long night ahead of us.