Page 85 of Immortal Unveiled

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Kim sat at the kitchen island in the Stealth Guardians’ compound, her mother’s calendar lying open in front of her. The breakfast rush in the communal kitchen was over, and most everybody was off to do whatever Stealth Guardians did. Only Grayson was keeping her company.

“What are you trying to do with that?” he asked.

“I’m trying to get into my mother’s head. Figure out her logic,” Kim said. Her best friend, Jennifer, would be a great help right now. She loved figuring out puzzles. But with this, Kim was on her own. At least for now.

“By going through her calendar?”

Kim nodded. “She always had a system to everything. Maybe it’ll help me figure out what she did after she left the translator.”

“What time was the appointment with him?”

Kim shrugged. “Let me see.” She leafed to the page that contained the day of her mother’s death. “4pm. Hmm.”

“How long do you think the appointment lasted?”

“If I believe the translator, which I don’t necessarily do, it wasn’t a long meeting since the translator received the page to review in advance. So, I assume that Kilgore told her verbally what he could glean from the text. And that shouldn’t have taken long. Hmm.” Something was off.

“What?” Grayson asked.

“It’s weird. When I got to Mom’s place after the gym that day, she wasn’t home yet. I assumed she’d gone grocery shopping, but I now know that she didn’t. She didn’t bring any shopping home, or I would have seen it later after she’d died.”

“Wait, wait,” Grayson interrupted. “What time did you get home?”

“At about six thirty. I was hungry and checked the fridge, but there wasn’t anything I wanted. I figured Mom was out grocery shopping, so I went to take a shower. It must have been around seven o’clock when I heard the commotion downstairs and saw the demon disappear in the vortex.”

“But you didn’t hear her come home?”

“No, but it must have been while I was in the shower, sometime between six forty-five and seven.” Kim stared straight at Grayson. “The demon must have been following her.”

“From the translator’s office?”

“I’m not sure. It doesn’t take two and a half hours to get home from Kilgore’s office. Not even with public transportation. No, she must have stopped somewhere.”

Grayson pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit the map app.

“I thought GPS doesn’t work inside the compound.”

“GPS works, but magic prevents it from pinpointing the compound. However, I can still get directions from one point of the city to another, like from Kilgore’s office to your mother’s house.” He punched in the addresses, then hit go. “There. That’s the route she would have taken with public transportation. Forty-five minutes max.”

Kim pored over the route the app was suggesting. “So, why did it take her almost three times as long to get home?”

“Did she have any other appointments after Kilgore?”

“Nope. And we know she didn’t stop at the supermarket either.” So, what had her mother done during that time?

“Do you think she would have carried the book with her to Kilgore’s office?” Grayson asked suddenly.

Immediately, Kim shook her head. “If she believed it to be valuable enough to get a translator, she would have put it somewhere safe.” She suddenly knew what Grayson was alluding to. “But after what Kilgore told her, namely that it had something to do with fairy tales and such, she would have realized that she needed to get it to the Stealth Guardians. Which means she would have retrieved it from wherever she’d left it temporarily.”

Grayson pointed to the app. “There are plenty of places you can hide a book for a few hours or a few days and nobody would know. Luggage lockers at the bus station, for example, or even her office. That would have been relatively safe. I mean, they have 24-hour security at the museum.” He pointed to another spot on the map. “She could have gone back to her office, gotten the book, then made her way home.”

“And somewhere on the way, the demon must have followed her,” Kim said. “Probably alerted by Kilgore.”

“Makes sense. But if she didn’t have the book on her when the demon killed her, and it wasn’t in the house, then where did she hide it, assuming she retrieved it earlier?”

Kim shook her head. “She must have known she was being followed, or at least suspected it.” She pointed to the app. “Give me the route from the museum back to her house.”