Chapter 49. Grayson
Grayson
My heart is pounding and I’m moving as fast as my wind spell will take me. I yank open Eloise’s armoire and immediately spot her party outfit, pulling it from the shelf. It doesn’t take me more than a minute of running my fingers along the seams to find what I’m looking for.
Skillfully sewn into the bottom is a tiny bundle of crushed leaves. I pull it out and smell it—goddamn tracking potion.
I move to my bedroom, yanking open my dresser drawer and pulling out my medical kit, rifling around in it for the salve that neutralizes topical herbs.
It doesn’t matter that Eloise showered since she wore this skirt.
Until she rubs this salve along the back of her legs, the tracking residue won’t come off.
The moment I find the tin I shove it in my pocket and fling open the door, slamming directly into Bas.
“Whoa, mate,” he says, regaining his balance and rubbing his chest where we collided. “Just the man I wanted to—”
“I’ll catch up with you later,” I say, lifting my hand to cast my speed spell, but he grabs my wrist, wrapping a thick vine around my hand.
“Slow down,” he says. “I have to—”
“Bas, if you don’t want me to blast you across the hallway—”
“Our friend is here,” he says over me, which is the only thing that stops me.
Sage is here? No effing way. She’d never come onto campus. It’s too dangerous.
Bas retracts his vines. “Come on, I’ll take you to the meetup spot.”
I hesitate, looking down the hall that leads to Eloise. “Okay, yeah, let’s go,” I say, because I have a few choice words for Sage right now.
I follow Bas down the hall and up a flight of stairs to the same lounge we partied in earlier this week. It takes him a minute to open the door and when we close it behind us, I throw up a soundproof bubble.
“What the hell is going on?” I say rapid-fire.
“I could ask you the same,” he replies. “Everyone’s saying Eloise called that Key while you were kissing her? And then you disappear into a hole for two days?”
“Where is she?” I say, referring to Sage.
“She said she’d be here any minute now,” he says, and I pace.
“How is she getting onto campus?” I demand, worried this could go very wrong.
He raises an eyebrow. “Sage said she found a way to avoid being detected with magically treated copper. She said you’d know what that meant.”
I freeze. Sage and I had been working on that spell together, something to mute a magic user’s signature so that we wouldn’t immediately alert the Guardians when we came for my uncle. She must have completed it without me.
Which is the moment I realize I’ve overlooked something important. “How did she contact you?” Bas doesn’t know about the tear and he can’t call her inside the wards any more than I can.
He pushes back his long surfer hair. “She found me when I was parking my car. She shoved a note in my pocket, one that evaporated after I read it.”
A jolt of panic shoots through my chest. “When?”
“Fifteen minutes ago? I literally came straight to find you,” Bas says, and he doesn’t complete his sentence before I’m tearing down the soundproofing spell, which works both ways—we can’t hear out and no one can hear in.
The moment the spell breaks, muffled shouts of Guardians sound in the distance.
I don’t wait for Bas. I grab the door and fling it open, using my wind spell to speed back to the dining hall. But the door is already blasted wide open. Tables are overturned, glass is strewn across the floor, and the entire wall of windows is shattered.
I run, finding Maggie lying across the table. Dread hits me so hard it steals my breath. She has a piece of glass sticking out of her shoulder and blood has soaked her shirt. But Eloise is nowhere to be seen.
“They took her,” Maggie says, clenching her teeth against the pain. “The Lawless took … Eloise.”
Which is all it takes for my heart to launch right the hell out of my chest. How could Sage do this? “Let’s get you some help and I’ll find her. I swear it.”
“Go, ye daft cow. I’ll—”
But there is no time to argue. “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt,” I say in warning before I scoop her up in my arms.
She sucks in a ragged breath and I use my wind spell to speed her out of the building to the cottage at the back of the property—the healers’ hut.
I’m moving so quickly that I nearly run smack into the woman in the waiting room, who takes one look at Maggie and leads me toward a bed.
The healer and her apprentices rush around Maggie, grabbing supplies and pushing me out of the way.
“Go. Find our girl,” Maggie tells me again, and this time I listen. But as I turn, she grabs my hand. “Tell her … tell her I said nothing less. She’ll know what it means.”
I nod, and just as I step away, my cousin Aurora walks in the room. Her eyes widen and I have no time to spin a story, which means, my uncle will definitely hear about this. Damn it.
I cast my wind spell to sprint out the door. I fly past the front lawn, where Guardians scour the property, and to the garage. But I already know they won’t find any signs of the Lawless. Sage is too good for that.
Searching for her in the streets will also be useless. She was always better than me at sneaking around, and I consider myself an expert. However, I do know where she’ll end up.
My tires screech as I speed out of the garage, barreling through town toward Mrs. Kelly’s. I abandon my car near the edge of the forest and cast another wind spell.
Twigs crunch under my boots and branches catch my linen shirt. I don’t stop until I hit the edge of the boundary, finding the tree that leads to the hole in the wards.
And I wait. I wait eight minutes but no one shows.
“Come on,” I breathe, beyond frustrated.
“Where the hell are you, Sage?” Which is when dread starts to set in.
If they took Eloise out of the wards already, I can’t just run to their camp and retrieve her.
I’m going to have to search. They move constantly to avoid my uncle’s raids. Damn everything to hell.