Chapter 147: Double Vision

[Evander].

Axel pulled me to the side after the meeting, making some kind of excuse about wanting to contact his grandmother, which I know is absolute nonsense. He can speak with her whenever he wants through his ring. As the previous guardian, she and her grandson, the newest guardian, are always in contact.

This means this is about something else entirely, something that he doesn’t want Gideon to hear.

Gideon seems oblivious to the ruse. He barely lifts his head from the map, to say goodbye. He is too entranced by the map, his finger moving up and down over the spot that Axel had marked with the pencil in the center of the more elaborate configuration. Axel and I take a walk outside. The night is starting to fall, but the streetlights keep the city in perpetual twilight. It is never truly dark in LA.

As soon as we are far enough away, Axel turns to me and whispers. "Gideon's been compromised. I saw Vincent staring out through his eyes at the end of the meeting."

"I wonder how long he's been serving as Vincent's eyes," I muse aloud. "And why we hadn't noticed until now. If he's been in his mind this whole time, I feel he should have revealed himself in little ways before now."

"We weren't looking for it," Axel shrugs. "We've all been so entangled in finding Rosie, that we didn't have a chance to notice. But there's no mistaking it, not after Slone. That was Vincent in that room with us, not just Gideon."

"Do you think he is aware?" I lean my head a little closer. "Do you think he is a willing participant?"

"We can't be sure of anything anymore," Axel looks down at his feet before looking up to the sky in exasperation. "Slone caught us by surprise too. I think that maybe he was planted there for us to find. Why else would Vincent have kept him alive when he took Rosie? He needed Gideon to be his eyes and ears."

I thought back to when Vincent blinded me for just looking in his direction. He was in the same room with Gideon long enough to whisk away a comatose patient. That meant several minutes of opportunity to do whatever he wanted with Gideon and all he got was a sore head.

I am not usually prone to violence, but right now I want to punch something until it shatters. How could I not notice that Gideon was under Vincent's thrall this whole time? Was Vincent also influencing his actions?

I search my memory for any recollection of Gideon suggesting something that led to our failure or otherwise doing things that made our job more difficult. I can't think of a single one. So either Vincent's influence is a lot more subtle, or his actions are not his own.

"What do you think we should do," I turn to my cousin. "I'm assuming you have an idea of what we should do next, and it is different from the plans we have made inside."

He gets really quiet. We are standing in a park in the shade of a giant oak tree. Leave it to a dryad to find one of the few trees in LA to lean against. He needs the trees more than he admits. He must feel so lost in the middle of the city, so disconnected from his roots this far from his territory. This trip has forced him to grow and change in so many ways.

In many ways, all of us have had to grow up quite a bit.

"We sneak in," he suggests. "You and me. We have the local wolf pack waiting as reinforcements. I say we sneak out now, while Gideon is distracted. We need the element of surprise if this is going to work."

"But that doesn't give us any real time to plan," I point out. We might be able to move at the speed of a blink, especially if we know where we are going, but that doesn't mean it is wise for us to do so, especially if the place we are going is a known warlock's lair. "We need a real solid plan or we will be easy prey."

I cannot help but think about all the dead pixies. They had only been trying to help us find Rosie. If we had just understood what Vincent had planned a little bit better, we could have avoided those needless deaths.

"I also don't feel it is a great idea for us both to take off," I express my concerns. There are so many ways this could go wrong. "It doesn't matter how distracted Gideon is by that map, he's going to become suspicious the longer we're away, and then Vincent might try to take over more of what is left of Gideon."

The thought of losing Gideon seizes my heart. We've only been lovers for just over a month, but we've been friends for decades. I'm not sure that I could survive losing him to Vincent, especially without Rosie here to comfort and soothe the pain.

Axel sees the shift in my stance and pauses. "But Rosie..."

"I love Rosie too," I look into his eyes and I know he can see the truth there by the way his expression softens. "But I also love Gideon. I want to try and keep them both safe. I want to have them both back when this is through. So far, Vincent has left Gideon's mind intact, but if he suspects that we know, he may take over completely."

"Evander." He places a hand on my shoulder. "We'll get them back."

"You can't promise that," I sigh, not wanting to get my hopes up only to have my heart shattered. "But I appreciate you for trying."

On the way back we begin to strategize. We need to find an adequate distraction for Gideon and his coven. We have no idea how deep Vincent's involvement goes. If he got to Gideon, with the way they all share auras during a spell, he likely has hooks into all the other coven members as well. Possession, even a minor one, is like a virus, an infection, that can spread from one host to the next. Had our intimacy not waned since Rosie's departure I might have worried for my soul as well. Just by loving him, I am vulnerable.

In the end, I'm afraid I might need to use that love to trick him, to contain Vincent's influence. Distracting him might not be enough. I may have no choice but to trap him.