JUNE MILLER POV
The popcorn I'd eaten earlier felt like a lead weight in my stomach. I'd been sitting on my bed for three hours, staring at a text thread that ended with Becky saying: "Leaving work now, gonna grab a snack. See u tomorrow, Goldie-chaser."
That was four hours ago. Becky lived a ten-minute walk from the diner. Even with a detour for snacks, she should have been home, showered, and tucked into bed by 11:00 PM. It was now 1:30 AM, and my calls were going straight to voicemail.
"Come on, Becky, pick up," I whispered, my thumb hovering over the call button for the twentieth time. "Don't do this to me. Not with everything going on."
The "wool" air from earlier felt like it was inside my room now. Every shadow in the corner seemed to pulse, and the news reports about the disappearances kept looping in my head. Seven missing. No struggle. Just gone.
I couldn't sit there anymore. I grabbed my phone and dialed the only person I knew who wouldn't tell me I was overreacting.
"Brandt, wake up," I said the second he picked up. "Becky's missing."
"June? It's two in the morning," Brandt's voice was thick with sleep, but the moment the word missing registered, I heard him sit up. "What do you mean missing? Maybe she stayed over at her sister's?"
"She would have texted! She knows I'm freaked out about the coast thing. We have a plan, Brandt. We always check in. I went to her apartment—her car is there, but her lights are off and she's not answering the door. Something is wrong."
"Stay there," Brandt said, his tone turning serious. "I'm picking you up in five."
Brandt arrived in his beat-up hatchback, his face pale under the streetlights. We drove straight to the Neon Skillet, the diner where Becky worked. The parking lot was empty, the "Closed" sign flickering a dull, buzzing red. We circled the building, Brandt shining his phone light through the windows.
"Everything looks normal," he muttered, shaking his head. "Tables are wiped, chairs are up. She definitely left."
"Then she's between here and her place," I said, my voice trembling. I looked toward the old church district, the direction of her shortcut. The mist was thicker over there, a sickly, translucent gray that seemed to swallow the light. "We have to go to the police, Brandt. Now."
The Jorgen City Police Station was a fortress of fluorescent lights and the smell of stale coffee. We burst through the doors, heading straight for the duty sergeant behind the bulletproof glass.
"I need to report a missing person," I blurted out, my hands shaking as I fumbled with my phone to show her Becky's picture. "Her name is Becky Sanders. She disappeared four hours ago on her way home from work."
The sergeant didn't even look up from her paperwork at first. She was a tired-looking woman with "thirty years on the force" written in the lines around her eyes. She finally sighed and peered at the photo.
"Four hours, honey?" she asked, her voice flat. "Is she a minor?"
"She's nineteen," I said. "But you don't understand, people are disappearing! The news said—"
"The news likes to sell fear," the sergeant interrupted, finally leaning back. "Nineteen is an adult. She could be at a party, she could have met a guy, or she could just be tired of her phone. We don't file missing persons reports until twenty-four hours have passed. That's the policy."
"Policy?" Brandt stepped forward, his jaw set. "Seven people have vanished in two days. You're telling us we have to wait twenty hours while whatever is out there does something to her? We need a search party! Check the cameras in the old district!"
"Look, kid," the sergeant said, her voice hardening. "I have three officers on the floor and fifty calls in the queue for noise complaints and petty theft. I am not authorizing a search party for a nineteen-year-old who's been 'gone' for the length of a double feature. Go home. If she's not back by tomorrow night, come back and we'll talk."
"She's not at a party!" I screamed, slamming my hand against the glass. "She's my best friend! I know her! Something happened to her in those woods—or that church—or—"
"June, let's go," Brandt whispered, grabbing my arm as two other officers started looking our way.
"No! They have to help!"
"They aren't going to help, June," Brandt said, his voice low and urgent. He pulled me away from the desk and back toward the exit. "They're scared too. Can't you see it? They're sticking to 'policy' because if they admit Becky is part of the pattern, they have to admit they can't stop it."
We stood on the sidewalk outside the station. The city felt cold, alien, and massive. The police weren't coming. The 'prodigies' were probably asleep in some fancy hotel. Nobody was looking for Becky except a girl with teal hair and a boy in a rusted hatchback.
"What do we do?" I whispered, a tear finally escaping and tracking through my makeup. "Brandt, we can't just wait until tomorrow night. She's out there."
Brandt looked toward the skyline, then toward the dark, misty silhouette of the old district. "We don't wait. We go back to the shortcut. If the cops won't look, we will."
I looked at my phone. No new messages. No calls. Just a picture of us at the mall, smiling and holding ice cream cones.
"Wait," I said, a sudden memory flashing in my mind. The gold eyes. The man who felt like a sun. "The guy at the cinema."
"What guy?"
"The one I told you about! The 'Prince.' Brandt, the air near him... it felt different. It felt safe. If the Council and the police won't help us... maybe we find the people who don't belong here."
"June, that's crazy. He's just a guy you bumped into."
"He's not just a guy," I said, my voice gaining a desperate kind of strength. "I'm going to find him. I'm going to find 'Goldie.'"
As we got back into the car, I didn't know how I was going to find a stranger in a city of millions. All I knew was that the dark was closing in, and the only light I could remember was the glow in those gold eyes.