19. Mia

Chapter nineteen

Mia

I stared at the house of horrors from the car as I sipped my coffee. I didn’t want to go inside but knew I had to. We had taken on the responsibility of locating the families of the deceased and arranging for them to take possession of the bodies so that they could have closure with a proper ceremony in whatever way the families honor their dead.

We killed Parote three weeks ago, and at first, the process had been slow as Hollis sifted through all of Parote’s files to match the patient numbers to the victim’s real names. Then we had to hunt down the families, which, given they were all paras, wasn’t so easy in some cases. Our kind tended to belong to one of two groups. The first group planted roots and usually stayed in one place for generations. The second group didn’t stay in one place for too long. Given the vulnerability of his victims, most of them belonged to the second group.

However, about a week ago, a couple showed up at the house, searching for their daughter. Word was spreading about what we were doing, and families with missing members were urged to come see us. They began to arrive in droves, and we had to bring on more volunteers to help manage them all.

Unsurprisingly, many of those volunteers consisted of family members who had already gotten their closure and returned to us lost and needing a purpose.

“Sitting out here isn’t going to make it go any faster, Mia,” Evangeline said from the passenger seat.

“I know,” I sighed. “I’m just not looking forward to another day of crying.” I knew what I was doing was important, but it was also exhausting and somewhat depressing. “Let’s do this,” I said, trying to manifest the energy it would take to get through the day.

Evangeline and I crossed the street and walked past the already long line of people outside to see if we had any information for them. I kissed Rome and Aiden as I passed them. They and a few other volunteers collected the information from those outside. They fed it directly to Hollis and Theo in the basement, who cross-referenced the information against Parote’s files. Evangeline’s men pitched in when needed but mainly hovered around as security. One was always in the room with us as we spoke to the families and delivered the bad news in case anyone got violent. So far, it had only happened once.

We had done some much-needed sprucing up and had a makeshift room built on the other side of the glass on both floors. That way, we could meet in a more cozy room and wheel the bodies in from the floor without subjecting the family to all of the bodies at once.

There was another duo that handled the meetings upstairs. Two mothers who had lost their only children to Parote. They met at the house and became friends, and then decided to come back and help us so that we could process more families faster. They were two of the sweetest women I had ever met and quickly became the den mothers of the house.

“We’re ready for the first family, Jett,” Evangeline said. He nodded and left the room, returning shortly with a husband and wife.

“Mr. and Mrs. Calvert?” I asked. “That’s us,” the husband said.

“Please take a seat,” Evangeline said, pouring each a glass of water.

“You’re looking for your daughter, Josephine, correct?” I asked when they sat.

“That’s right,” Mr. Calvert replied. “She’s here, isn’t she? You wouldn’t be meeting with us if she wasn’t.”

“She can’t be here,” Mrs. Calvert cried. “She just ran away. Josephine does that sometimes. She’ll come home to me. My baby always comes home to her mama!”

“She’s here, Grace!” her husband growled out. “We have to accept it.”

I blinked back tears and sipped coffee to try to clear the lump in my throat.

Evangeline patted my leg under the table and reached across it to take Mrs. Calvert’s hands. “I’m so sorry, Grace, but we located Josephine’s body.”

I pressed the button under the table, signaling our volunteers on the floor to roll the gurney into the room. When the door opened and they saw it, Mrs. Calvert cried even harder. This was always the hardest part, though I wasn’t sure yet which was worse, showing them the body or informing distraught people that, unfortunately, we didn’t have a body for them, only records indicating that they had passed.

I stood and walked around the desk to the gurney and pulled the sheet covering the body back so they could confirm the identity of the body.

A hoarse cry tore from Mr. Calvert’s throat as he fell over Josephine’s body. “No! My little girl. Not my little girl!” He looked up at me with rage in his eyes. “Who did this to her?!” He charged me, backing me into the corner, and I held my hand out to stop Jett from intervening.

“He was a human named Henry Parote and he was experimenting with paras to develop a drug that would give him abilities. Your daughter is one of hundreds who trusted him to help them. I also watched him torn apart piece by piece and delivered the killing blow myself. I have the DVD if you want to take a copy home.”

That part usually deflated the angry ones. Knowing that they could take Parote’s death home with them where they could watch it over and over again always did the trick. He backed off and went to comfort his wife, who was crying over the body.

“I would like that, yes,” he said gruffly. “And sorry for cornering you like that. We appreciate what you’re doing here. I know it can’t be easy.”

“No apology necessary,” Evangeline replied, handing me a DVD to hand to him. Jett looked like he strongly disagreed with that but kept his mouth shut.

“We will prepare Josephine for transportation at no expense to you if you leave an address with us where you would like her brought,” I said, returning to my seat. Evangeline and I had decided at the start of this that we would cover all expenses to return the bodies to their families. And for the ones who didn’t have any family, we covered the costs for their cremation and spread their ashes somewhere peaceful, depending on what they were.

“Thank you,” Mr. Calvert said, scribbling an address on paper and guiding his distraught wife from the room.

“I need you to stay behind the table, Mia,” Jett said when they had left. “If something happens to you, your men will use my hide as a throw rug.”

I ignored him. If stepping from behind the desk helped ease their pain, I would continue doing so.

By the end of the day, we had reunited twenty more victims with their families and made arrangements to send them home. I was sitting with my head on the table, attempting to decompress from the day before I went home, when I felt a searing pain in my head.

“What’s wrong?” Evangeline asked when I hissed from the pain.

“My head hurts suddenly,” I replied. It only lasted a few more seconds, and my heart started to race at the message left in its wake.

REPORT TO HEADQUARTERS IMMEDIATELY! – FFF

“Oh, fuck.”