Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
During the third hour of the search, a mournful howl rolled through my land. Garrett had found something.
Caelan shifted in a flash of light and reached for the bag of clothes I carried. “He’s to the west. Do you want to wait here with Thalia or come with me?”
Thalia was engrossed in her brightly lit, flashing cellphone.
“We can’t leave her here?” I asked.
“Garrett would lose it. When Simone gets back, you can follow.”
His tone sounded hesitant almost, which was unusual for him, and he kept giving Thalia side-eyed glances.
“I can hear you,” Thalia said, a note of exasperation in her voice.
“Why are you under such a tight guard?” I asked.
She lifted a slender shoulder in a careless shrug. “I’m a seer. A really good one, apparently. I can’t be left unattended lest I faint and hurt myself. Or something.”
Not once had she looked up from her cell phone.
“Is that the only reason?” I murmured to Caelan.
He pressed a kiss to my cheek just as Garrett howled again. “Gotta run. Follow when Simone gets back.”
Without waiting for a response or answering my question, Caelan took off at a jog.
I sat down close to Thalia. “What are you playing?”
“Tetris. They monitor my phone and won’t let me have anything with messaging capability.”
My jaw dropped. “What? Why?”
“My father doesn’t want me to get involved with the wrong crowd.” A small smile played on her face.
“You aren’t a prisoner.” Was she?
Thalia laughed. “I can’t drive or hold down a normal job. I’ve been in prison since the first time I had a vision.”
I rested my head on my chin. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand why Garrett monitors your cell like that. You don’t think that’s weird?”
“Garrett isn’t the one monitoring it.”
I waited for her to elaborate, but when she didn’t, I nudged her with my foot. “Not a big talker? You seem different from when we went shopping.”
“Because that was fun and this is lame.”
Thalia wasn’t a teenager, so her word choice was odd. “How old are you?”
“Not sure anymore. Twenty-something, I think.” She still hadn’t looked up from her phone.
“You don’t know how old you are?”
“It doesn’t really matter. My lifespan will be quite long.”
“You don’t celebrate your birthday?”
“No one is usually around to celebrate it with me.”
Thalia was difficult, but she was also stunted in a way. Cliona had her faults, but when she couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of me, she’d dropped me with loving parents. Human parents who celebrated a child’s birthday every single year.
“You don’t know what month it is?”
“July, I think. No idea what day.” She finally looked up.
“Why are you so interested?”
“Everyone should celebrate their birthday. If they want to. What’s your favorite kind of cake?”
“Lemon.” She frowned. “No. Italian Creme.”
“How about next July, you and I celebrate your birthday?”
Thalia studied me for a long moment. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“I was nice to you the first day I met you. Maybe I’m just a nice person.”
Thalia laughed. “Garrett can’t stand you.”
Ouch. This girl had a way of barbed speaking. Her words peppered against me like stones almost every time she opened her mouth. “He and I have a complicated relationship.”
She snorted. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
Alright. I’d had enough. “Is there a reason you’re being such a bitch right now?”
Thalia’s eyes widened. “Well, I—I—?”
One of my eyebrows rose. “You what?”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “Moving around a lot makes it hard to make friends.”
“So you push anyone who’s nice to you away so you don’t get hurt when you leave again?”
Her behavior made a lot more sense now.
“I guess,” she muttered under her breath.
Simone stepped into the clearing, dressed in joggers and a sweatshirt. “Nothing unusual in my area.”
Noting our body language, she stopped. “Everything okay here?”
“It’s fine. Evie likes to ask a lot of questions.”
I rolled my eyes and came to standing. “Thalia is like a cactus. One of those inedible ones that has no use other than to poke you and piss you off.”
“Hey!” She picked up a stick and threw it at me.
Simone grinned and plopped onto the ground beside the seer. “I’ll take over babysitting. I heard Garrett howling, so he must have found something.”
I waved and took off through the woods.
My land pulsed with harmony, even through the cold weather. As I ran, I touched leaves and limbs, my feet squishing through damp leaves and loam.
Caelan met me when I was almost there, stepping into my path, his eyes glowing.
Shit. That was never good. I slowed down and approached. “What happened?”
He held out his hand. “You’ll want to see it for yourself.”
Caelan tugged me through a dense area of trees and brush, holding up limbs to allow me to duck through. When I reached Garrett, he was in human form, holding a flashlight in his teeth and flipping through a small, damaged notebook.
He looked up at me, his expression somber. Without a word, he stood and handed me the flashlight and notebook. Garrett never voluntarily touched me, but he placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
I glanced back at Caelan who watched me with an unnerving intensity. “What is it?”
“Gianna’s blood was on the notebook. I can only assume she was still alive when they carried her in and she either dropped this on purpose, or it fell out of her pocket. Nadia must not have realized what Gianna had until it was too late.”
“I don’t understand why a notebook would make you two look like my life is over.
” I didn’t know Gianna before Caelan, and I had only seen her a few times before a Chimera took over and tried to marry him to wrest power of his region away and put it under Chimera control.
What could she have written in this tiny thing to make Caelan look at me like this?
“Just…” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Take a look, please.”
I found an open spot and sat cross-legged on the cold ground, my hands trembling as I opened the bloodstained cover.
The feeling of holding belongings from someone whose existence had been so thoroughly erased as if she’d never existed made something clench tight inside me.
The first page had bloody fingerprints smeared down the cream color of the paper.
Several pages had been torn out, half the contents gone as if someone had done so in a hurry.
My heart sped up as I flipped to the first legible page.
There is evidence there is still one left—a male, somewhere in Europe. He is elusive and rarely seen, and when we get close, he disappears as if he’d never been there. It’s maddening.
We need to open discourse if we hope to save our kind.
Frowning, I looked up at Garrett and Caelan, still not understanding what was going on. Swallowing hard, I bent my head to keep reading.
Odd power pulses are being reported all over Europe which leads us to hope there may be more than one still operating.
We still can’t find the male. He might be onto us.
If so, hope dwindles for a conversation.
Their kind are known to respond with violence first and are not known for peaceable relations with any other form of paranormal.
A horrible feeling began to churn in my gut.
One of our shifters spotted him in a bar with a dark-haired woman. Human, possibly. Though he seems quite taken with her.
My fingers shook. I tried to turn the page a few times before my fingers cooperated.
We lost him. Again. He knows we’re following him.
The next entry had a date coinciding with the time I was in Scotland. Hot, angry tears pricked the backs of my eyes.
We tracked him to a field. There are signs of a struggle and blood that is decidedly not human. No signs of a body, though it’s doubtful the woman with him survived such a horrific attack.
“Gods,” I whispered.
I kept reading, dread growing in my body until it was rooted there permanently.
The last couple of entries were the most chilling of all.
We must find the Chimera if we are to save our fertility and our way of life.
A normal shifter won’t introduce the power we need to survive into our bloodline.
There’s a woman in Joy Springs who looks strangely like the one our brother swan spotted in Scotland, but she shows no signs of the Chimera curse.
Her presence could be a coincidence, but it is unlikely.
We will monitor the situation. If we cannot find the male, the woman is an even better choice. We’re testing the blood for traces of the Chimera curse.
And the last entry.
Evie Quinn is the last living Chimera. Approach with extreme caution.