Chapter 22

“What do you want to do, Henrik?” I asked.

There was a point to all of this. I knew it. Henrik wasn’t much of a talker, so for him to go on for this long meant he was on to something.

“They’re in the city,” he said. “It would take too much to find another safe spot outside the city. Until they do, they have to be within the city limits.”

“Seattle’s not small,” I told him. “Knowing they’re in the city when we can’t track them won’t mean a thing.”

“I can try,” Billy said, sounding indignant.

“Tracking Millie won’t work,” I said. “We could try tracking just legions. I know where most of the Orphans work.”

“I can get that information,” Henrik said, taking his phone out and tapping on the screen. A second later the dial tone came on and Reggie’s voice followed a mere moment after that.

She recited each place of work and Henrik wrote them down quickly. The second she was done she said, “Why? What have you got going on?”

“We’re just going to continue looking. Stay at work. I doubt anything will shake out.” The unhappy note in his voice was quite real. We were scrambling for a plan C and it wasn’t nearly as promising as plan A or B. We found ourselves to be surprisingly lost without the ability to track.

“Should I come back?” Reggie asked. “I can leave Jen and JR with the contractor.” She almost sounded hopeful. Guess her contractor didn’t have any good news for her. I knew she had the money to make the renovations, but that didn’t mean forking it over was going to be pleasant.

“No,” Henrik said. “You can send out another search party when you get home, tonight,” he said, already planning for when this failed.

“Okay…” she said. “Who’s going out?”

Loki shifted around uncomfortably. I decided to jump in before the two of them started arguing. Reggie was the Head of our Family and Loki the Head of his. Neither of them would be comfortable with the other dictating what we did. I, however, wasn’t the Head of anything. So I could boss everyone around.

“I am,” I said with surety. “I’ll go with Billy.”

“Just Billy?” she asked.

I almost rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll go with Billy and—”

“Me,” the tiny faerie hybrid spoke up. Her name was Sunbeam, I believed. Ironically, I was sure. Her hair was charcoal gray and she had dressed in a black dress and gray stockings with black flats. Her eyes were ice blue and popped against her dark makeup. There wasn’t anything sunny about her. Even her skin was super pale, but I didn’t think that was from a lack of sun. There was an almost…ill sheen to it. It was possible. Sometimes faerie hybrids got the worst of both worlds instead of the best.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the vampire Loki brought with him stiffen. Best get this rolling. “All right, Reggie,” I said. “Time for us to go. See ya later tonight.” Henrik hit the end button before she was finished with her farewell.

Shade, the stiff as a board vampire, had his eyes locked on Sunbeam. Since Sunbeam was like five foot two and Shade looked only an inch or two shorter than Loki, I figured that wasn’t a good thing. Unlike the tiny faerie, Shade lived up to his name. His hair was black with a blue undertone and his eyes were such a dark brown they were almost black, like mine. He was dressed head to toe in black as well. His skin was somewhere between pale and tan.

Sunbeam leaned forward and looked Shade in the eyes. There wasn’t a word spoken between them. Despite this, after a handful of seconds Shade relaxed and eyed me. As if trying to figure out if he could trust me. He looked about as happy as a cat in a swimming pool.

I’ve had enough of all the power plays. “We should get going,” I said, walking around the table and toward the door. In doing so, I brought myself closer to Loki and I was extremely aware of the fact. Perhaps some time apart would do me some good. Something weird was going on. He wasn’t pinging on my radar the way Debienne did, so I didn’t think he was plotting something. I was just…hyperaware of him.

And I didn’t like that.

“What about us?” the young spell-caster, Wynn, asked. “Are we supposed to just stay here?”

“Someone has to watch the children,” I said. “We can’t leave them on their own in the house.”

He didn’t look happy about that. For a second I thought he’d let it go, but I was wrong. “We’ve been brought here to help. Why aren’t you utilizing us the way you should be?”

A door opened and closed upstairs.

“Wynn,” Billy said. “She really just called me. I brought the rest of you along just in case.”

“There’s only three of you,” he continued. “What if you get outnumbered?”

Billy and I look at each other and both of us smirked. However, Wynn’s arguing was starting to have an effect on the other men. Loki looked thoughtful and Shade was getting tense again. I could see all the muscles in his body getting ripcord tight. Henrik, the smart man, was backing away from them. There wasn’t any amusement on his face, but that’s only because he’s very good at hiding it.

“If we get outnumbered, we’ll make a run for it. If we’re outnumbered and the child is there, we’ll snatch her and make a run for it,” Billy said, as comfortingly as she could.

It wasn’t that we were getting cocky. Really. Billy and I had been trained to fight. Not like other legions have been, but extensive, brutal training. We knew when to run and when to stay.

Wynn opened his mouth, but it wasn’t his voice that spoke the next sentence. “We’ll go with them,” Alain said from the stairs.

Tingles ran down my spine because Alain was too close to me. I shifted around until no one was behind me and gave Alain a look that said all. Since he had always been a bit stubborn/slow, I also said, “You can’t go. You were injured four days ago.”

“I’m not even limping anymore,” he growled, truthfully. The lack of a limp didn’t mean that leg was stable, though. Before I could point that out, he continued. “They have my daughter and I’m sick of being stuck in this house while you people fail to get her back.”

Ella rubbed his shoulder, but didn’t apologize for his remark.

I had to remind myself three or four times that they weren’t in a great place right now, emotionally. Biting their heads off would only make everyone, including me, feel bad. Once that sunk in, I managed to talk like a civilized person (even though I’m not). “You’re more a liability right now than an asset. Do you want to risk your daughter because you got impatient in your healing?”

He growled something and stepped forward in a threatening way.

I raised my eyebrows. “Do not think, for a moment,” I said in a low voice, “that I won’t put you on the ground if you come at me.”

Alain froze where he stood, staring at me like it was the first time he’d seen me. He took in a deep breath and looked down at Ella, who was staring up at him with her big blue eyes. When she nodded, just a little, he glanced back at me.

“Okay. Okay…you’re right. We’ll stay here.”

My eyes narrowed. Alain wasn’t accommodating. Instead of staying here, he’d decided we were overreacting and thus got his daughter kidnapped. That’s the kind of man he was. Not the kind to give in to a girl he found too “young and impulsive”. Unfortunately, short of tying him to his bed, there wasn’t much I could do but trust him.

“Then let’s go,” I said to my companions. Alain and Ella made their way up the stairs. Before leaving the house, I looked back at Henrik and pointed to my eyes and then up the stairs. He nodded without waiting for me to complete the motion. He didn’t trust them any more than I did.

Henrik handed me the list and I left with Billy and Sunbeam.

When we were in my truck— Billy in the front with me and Sunbeam in the back —the tiny girl spoke up. “Sorry about Shade. And Wynn…”

“They’re getting impatient,” Billy said with a shrug. I glanced at her sideways and she smiled slightly and continued, “Or at least, Wynn is getting impatient. He’s not used to being unnecessary in any kind of conflict. He’s gotten lots of training with his magic from someone who sought out all the dangerous spells.”

“Ah,” I said.

The gate opened the rest of the way and I pulled out and then parked, watching it close in my mirrors. My caution probably wasn’t needed, but I’d lived the kind of life where caution was intelligence instead of paranoia. Once it clicked shut behind me, I said, “All right, Billy. Where are we headed?”

She took a deep breath and held her hand out in the air. Her eyes, which were a medium blue today, lost their focus and I watched her fingers twiddle in the air, as if she felt something. Tracking worked differently for every legion that had it.

I had the list of workplaces out on my thigh. Now that I was staring down at it, I could picture each building clearly. The only one I didn’t know was where Lixa worked. The girl had had enough jobs that I’d stopped trying to keep track. Her attitude got her in trouble more often than mine did.

Billy began naming where legions were. Each one she listed off was a place of work, and she’d drop that particular line. Sunbeam stayed quiet in the back while we worked. I barely remembered her until I saw her shiver in the rearview mirror. I had shut the truck off while Billy was tracking. There was no way of know how long it would take and the cold didn’t bother either of us.

Apparently, it did bother Sunbeam. I was turning the truck back on and adjusting the heat when Billy rattled off another legion’s distance from us. I glanced down at the list on the paper and stopped. I looked over all the buildings and didn’t think any of them were that far from us. I told Billy as much, following it up with, “But it could be where Lixa works.”

“Let’s check it out,” she said. “Better than sitting here.”

After five minutes of driving, I heard Sunbeam’s phone buzz. Billy was still in full tracking mode, so she didn’t hear the girl’s exasperated sigh, but I did. I heard it quite clearly. The sound of fingernails tapping on a screen followed. Then a sound of pure disgust and what could only be a phone thrown against the seat.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“I’m being pestered,” she said. “He’s asking how it’s going and if I left the truck and if I brought my bag.” She had. The black messenger bag blended in with her outfit, but I had noticed it getting pushed to the side earlier, while Billy and I were going through the list of businesses.

“The bag?”

“I have a weapon in there,” she said, not sounding any less annoyed than she had before.

I smiled and hoped she couldn’t see it in the mirror. I could hear her phone continuously vibrating.

“You gonna answer that?” I asked.

“No. He can stew.”

When I glanced in the rearview mirror, I saw her blush and then duck her head. “I mean…”

“No worries,” I said in the face of her shyness. “I understand.”

She smiled. The smallest upturn of her lips. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I hadn’t seen her do so since meeting her. She hadn’t come off cold or sad either. Then again, I don’t come off as cold or sad, but most of my smiles are used to illicit responses from people.

The phone buzzed for a full two minutes and then stopped.

“Huh,” Sunbeam said curiously. “He usually keeps going for a lot longer than that.” There was some shuffling around. Her putting her phone away.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. When Billy said, “Stop. Here,” we found ourselves parked outside a café. The one where Lixa worked at to be precise. I could see through the window and to the counter. She stood behind the register, looking at a man like she wouldn’t mind jumping over the counter and strangling him. Her freshly dyed hair popped against the boring backdrop of the café. It was the only bright spot in the whole place.

“Dammit,” Billy said, leaning back against her seat.

“Try again?” I said.

“Might as well,” she agreed and held her hand out in front of her. We began to sift through the list of legions again. We were halfway through when the back of my neck started to tingle. I looked over my shoulder and out the rearview mirror. The flow of traffic didn’t offer much information and all the cars in view were empty. Patrons of the café.

I squinted through the back windshield until Sunbeam squirmed and asked what I was doing. Then I turned back around and told Billy to find the next legion. Just in case, I threw up my own senses, looking for an anomaly. Nothing too close to us. The only legion within sight was Lixa.

My instincts were telling me that something was off. Even if I couldn’t figure it out, those instincts weren’t usually wrong. Being homeless for two years has a tendency to teach someone how to use those instincts. When there was no other protection, you take what you can get.

I snatched my phone off and sent a text to Henrik, asking him how everything was going.

Billy gave another distance and I checked the list once more. “Nothing,” I said. “And now I know where Lixa works. Let’s check it out.”

I pulled out of the parking lot and into the flow of traffic. The further we got from the café, the better I felt, which told me there was something I missed out by the café. That didn’t sit well, but I kept driving anyway.

“Here,” Billy said.