21. Saturday
SATURDAY
IN WHICH MAGIC FINALLY WORKS FOR JAMISON
Jamison awoke in the middle of the night, sweat drenching his skin as the remnants of a nightmare clung to his consciousness.
His foreboding was rattling so hard, it almost hurt.
He scanned the darkness of his bedroom, but there was no one there.
The air was quiet around him, and he could almost feel the huge house, still and waiting.
But if the foreboding wasn’t warning him about a threat to his safety, then what would it be warning him of?
He checked his phone to find a slew of missed calls, texts, and emails—all from Dessa. His gaze narrowed on her message, and his foreboding triple spiked.
No.
He called her phone, but it went straight to voicemail.
No, no, no.
He wrenched on his jeans and a hoodie, already running for the door as he read her message.
Apparently, she’d found a lead on the abductor.
But there was no way Dessa would’ve gone out there alone.
She was smarter than that. She had to be smarter than that.
It was more of a prayer than a conviction.
Her texts said she was going to knock on the doors of the other PC liaison offices, but maybe she’d fallen asleep and decided to go in the morning? He grabbed his old switchblade, jumped into his car, and peeled out of the drive, flying through Azalea Springs’ empty dark streets.
The car screeched to a stop, and he jammed it into park before bolting up to the door of AzRIO. He punched in the code and ran in, shouting.
“Dessa!” Through the window, the streetlamps cast a golden glow across her paper-strewn desk, but her seat was empty.
He raced up the stairs next, still calling her name.
“Dessa!” Her apartment was empty too, the door open, and the bed didn’t even look slept in.
He ran a hand over his face, his gut tumbling in frantic somersaults as he vaulted down the stairs and out the back toward her parking space in the alley.
He slammed out of the door and stopped dead. Her car was still there. His curse buzzed at the sight, and he staggered back, his chest heaving as he tried to work through the possibilities.
Both the clan and pack offices were too far to go on foot, and her texts had been urgent.
So where was she? He glanced at the time—4:37 a.m. He’d received the texts less than an hour ago.
Did he start calling around to ask if anyone had seen her?
Not that anyone else would be awake either.
He drummed his fingers on the brick wall, cutting down ideas until there was only one option left—an awful, ugly one he didn’t want to look at.
But it wasn’t until he saw Brad’s gun glinting in the porch light and the pop-stake in the middle of the alley that his foreboding threatened to overwhelm him, and he knew without a doubt.
She’d been taken.
He moved on instinct then, grabbing the weapons and running back through the office to the car.
This time, it was his fingers putting the coordinates in his GPS, not Dessa’s, and he didn’t hesitate for even a moment before racing down the road.
Perhaps he should’ve, but he could only see Julia’s body lying under the sheet.
Strangely though, the painful prickle of his cursed magic faded as he approached the address.
He stopped the car in the road.
That wasn’t right. If the curse worked the way he guessed, the magical warning should’ve gotten worse as he headed toward danger. The seconds ticked down in his head, and the foreboding screamed at him to think faster, faster, faster.
Because if the Vampire somehow knew that she’d figured him out, of course he wouldn’t take her to that address. And if he’d been operating for years, he’d have lots of different places to hide his captives. Or their bodies.
Jamison closed his eyes, leaning into the curse he feared so much. He turned his head in one direction and then another, weighing his options.
There.
He slammed on the gas, following the cursed foreboding and hoping beyond hope that he could trust it. That this time, he could be fast enough.