Chapter 4 #2
Through dripping tears I tell my friends everything.
How the Windsor was attacked, and of Reid’s and my reconciliation.
How I learned Lisette and Fiona were the same person.
About Driscoll’s lies, and Penny’s lure, and finding her at the docks.
About Lyra. About Kitty. I show them the scar on my back—Peter winces, Penny gasps.
I tell them of killing my father’s killer, and Finn, and almost seeing the High Thane, and asking Deacon for help.
About jumping from the window, and Fiona and the Elders, and all the secrets we now must keep.
And then, when I know I can’t hold it in a moment longer, I tell them about Reid.
“He saved my life. He sacrificed himself so I could save Penny…” Reid’s brown curls and vivid eyes and perfect dimples fill my vision. His strength, and his broken goodbye, and his warm hands around my back. “And I…I can’t just—I can’t just let them—”
But I cannot push past the emotion seizing my throat. I think of the way he carried me out of that fire at Maria’s when we defeated the strzyga. How safe I felt in his arms even then. How I wasn’t able to save him in return.
Sophia pulls me into her as my tears become an avalanche. My grief consumes me. It ratchets out in ugly heaves and gasps of breath. Hound wakes up and begins to whine, nuzzling my leg.
“We’re not going to let those fuckers get away with any of it,” Elliot assures me.
“But the Elders,” Peter breathes. “If Viv goes after Reid and someone discovers she was there that day at the docks, they could figure out what she is, what’s happened to her…”
“Forget the Elders.” I sniff. “If I leave campus at all Finn could find me. Or Deacon, or—”
“Then we’ll kill ’em,” Sophia says, arms still around me. “We’re hunters. We don’t back down from a fight. Not when one of our own is in danger.”
“What about the syrabraxa?” Penny asks gingerly, the word still foreign in her mouth. “I know how much Reid means to you, but shouldn’t getting that spell out come first?”
“Leave that to me,” Peter says, a little color back in his cheeks. “I’ve never met a puzzle I couldn’t solve. And that’s all removing this spell is. A puzzle.”
I’m not sure he’s right—some spells have no counterspell, and I already killed the only person who could have freed me from this one—but I cannot afford to be cynical. “All that matters is that I don’t end up in the hands of the High Thane on the new moon before we get it out.”
“Why the new moon again?” Elliot asks, scratching his head. Sophia shoots him a Pay attention look, but he only shrugs. “This is a lot of info, okay? And I may or may not be hungover.”
“The censer—this incense holder thing that the High Thane stole from the Windsor the night before Penny was taken to the docks—is used to protect demons from spells. But it only works on the new moon. If the High Thane uses it before he kills me, he’ll get all the power of the syrabraxa but not the madness that comes with killing the host. Any other time than the new moon—”
“Or anyone else who takes you out—” Peter adds.
“—will mean being driven insane.”
“Nobody’s taking you out,” Sophia assures me.
I nod, but I have a plan for that too. I can’t be the only one thinking it—it’s obvious.
In some ways, it’s what the Elders are already trying to do.
I can see their twisted, murderous logic: If I were to somehow end up in the High Thane’s clutches again, I’d take my own life before I’d let him kill me.
Before he splits open the Chasm and frees all deviants.
But nobody speaks of the possibility and I’m just fine with that.
In fact, as I look around at my cozy, antique-filled Harker dormitory and I scan the faces of the people who have become my family, the faintest seeds of hope begin to take root. And if not hope, at least reprieve. We are here. We are safe tonight. We are together.
“I love you guys,” I say, wiping my damp cheeks. “Thank you.”
“What on earth?” Sophia says. “Who are you, and what have you done with my emotionless little black cat?”
“We love you too,” Elliot says, as if translating for her.
“Wait, I think I got something,” Peter says. I hadn’t noticed he was already on his computer. When we all look at him pointedly, he releases a sheepish smile and adds, “Oh, yeah, of course. Love you all.” My heart twists when he specifically avoids Sophia’s warm eyes. “But look here.”
Peter turns his screen to face us, and I study a list of addresses.
“What are these?” Sophia asks.
Penny squints at the screen. “How are you all reading that? Does every hunter have 20/20 vision or something?”
We all offer apologetic nods for her weak mortal eyesight.
Penny tips her chin down in thought, all of this clearly still sinking in. “No wonder you can always read street signs from a mile away…”
“I figured the best place to start was finding Reid…Or, where the High Thane’s son might be keeping him,” Peter tells us.
“This list is every property in Astera that was foreclosed on. If the Brood have any dens or hideouts, they’re not owned by anybody we could look up.
They’re probably still on the market. May have been for years. ”
“That’s genius,” Sophia breathes. She stares at Peter’s handsome, slender face and watches fondly as he pushes his floppy brown hair back.
“It is,” I agree. “But there’s got to be hundreds of properties on that list.”
“Try thousands,” Peter says, and my heart sinks.
“Then we’ll go to each one,” Sophia says, “even if it takes months, until we find him.”
I don’t say what I’m thinking. That months from now there may not be much left of him to find. Or that months from now there might not be much left of me to do the finding.
That thing in your back will drain you in three months. Maybe four.
I push Deacon’s ice-cold eyes from my mind.
“In the meantime,” Peter says, putting his computer down beside Penny to heft a massive tome from his book bag, “I’ll look into how to detect a cloaking spell. I’m sure the Brood’s hideouts are protected by some kind of defensive dark magic. Might help us figure out which one is our—”
“Found it.”
All four of us whip our heads to Penny, who’s holding Peter’s laptop in her hands. A meek half smile plays at her lips. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“By all means,” Peter says, eyes wide.
I falter for words. “How…”
“One of the demon guys who kidnapped me said something about moving me to the marquee. I’ve been to almost all the foreclosure properties my dad owns and planned to renovate over the years, and there’s only a few I remember being really shady.
A condemned high-rise, a barren plot of land in the Hesperides…
and a Cineplex down in the Fens. I figured it was worth searching for that one to see if it’s on here. And it is.”
Elliot’s thick brows pull together. “The Brood is using your dad’s next real estate project as their hideout?”
“He’s long since given up on that property…It hasn’t had any interest in years. Kind of a perfect spot for the Brood to make their own.”