by Gloria Craw
“It’s possible they don’t know he’s gone yet,” Katherine said. “He’d been spending most of the day locked up in his room. They decided to leave him alone, thinking space was what he needed.”
“We’ll call them as soon as we figure out our next move,” Spencer assured me.
I opened the door and let everyone in. “After what Alex’s has seen, how can we send him back?” I asked.
“That’s why I came along,” Luke said with a modest duck of his head. “I can help with my joining.”
I’d forgotten about Luke’s joining. It wasn’t one of the usual ones, and there was no official name for it. Spencer called him the eraser because he could take memories out of a human’s mind.
“Can you erase twelve hours of his life?” I asked, thinking it unlikely.
“I’ve never tried to take more than a few minutes’ worth of memories at a time,” he admitted. “It will take me a while, but I think I can do it.”
“Great,” Spencer said, clapping him on the back. “Go get packed because you’re coming with us. Alison’s fake funeral is tomorrow, and we were planning to fly back to Vegas for it, so our jet is fueled and ready to go. We’ll get Alex in the car and be on our way in short order.”
I went to the sofa, where my brother was sleeping, and gazed down at his bruised face. My heart ached as I thought how terrified he must have been with David. I’d just wanted him to have a normal, happy life…but he couldn’t with me as his sister. Sebastian longed to make me suffer, and he’d keep going after the McKyes to do it. They would never be safe while he was alive.
The rescue party was ready to leave for the airport in less than half an hour. Spencer and Ian laid Alex across the backseat of the car, and I covered him with the duvet from my bed. Running my fingers across his freckled cheek, I whispered, “Let Mom and Dad help you through this, Alex.”
Katherine hugged me. “He’s young and strong,” she said before getting in the passenger seat of the car. “He’ll get through this.”
I desperately hoped she was right.
Spencer gave me a thumbs-up sign and handed me his umbrella. “You did a wonderful thing tonight,” he remarked. “It will never be forgotten.”
I didn’t care in the least about becoming a dewing legend. I just wanted them to get Alex safely home to my parents.
“We’ll call you with an update when we can,” he said, sliding behind the steering wheel.
Huddled under the umbrella with me, Ian put his arm around my shoulder as they drove away. He was waiting for Luke to bring his car around, and they’d head to the airport as well.
“I’ve decided to stay in Vegas until the end of the school year,” he said. “I’ll keep close tabs on Alex for you.”
Relieved that he’d be there if my brother needed him, I gave him a watery smile. “Thank you,” I replied.
“When I join you in Sweden,” he continued, “you’re going to tell me exactly what happened when you disappeared from the Pradnium tonight.”
“Every detail,” I agreed.
He rested his forehead on mine for a moment. “Go to The Gull tomorrow afternoon around four,” he said. “Call me. I’ll let you know how Alex is doing.”
I nodded as Luke pulled his car to a stop beside us. Ian gave me a gentle kiss and got in. Standing alone in the rain, I watched until the car’s taillights disappeared in the darkness.
I met Phoebe just inside the door of the Arx. She was lugging a suitcase almost as big as she was. “How is Theron?” she asked, setting it down.
“He’ll need a lot of rest,” I replied, “but I think he’ll be back to normal in a day or two.”
“He could have died, couldn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes,” I responded, reliving the horror of the idea for a moment. “He had to hold a lot of energy to keep the portal open for me. It sort of stretched him out like a used balloon.”
She chuckled. “I’ll remember to tell him that analogy when I see him again.”
Pointing to the suitcase, I asked, “Are you helping your uncle and aunt take their stuff to the car?”
She shook her head. “This is my bag. Turns out, I’m not the Truss clan chief after all…Sebastian still is. So, I’m leaving with them.”
“But he doesn’t want to be chief,” I objected.
“Apparently he has to formally renounce his position in front of the Truss elders before I can take his place.”
Though Sebastian had said he wouldn’t interfere with the Truss, it was obvious by Phoebe’s lack of optimism that she thought he would. I was worried about it, too. It was his nature to seek authority and power. Being a clan chief provided him with both.
“So long as Sebastian has a heartbeat, we’ve all got a problem.” I muttered.
If Phoebe heard me, she didn’t comment. “I guess this is good-bye,” she said.
I hugged her. “It’s good-bye for now,” I replied. “You’ll be back before you know it.”
Returning to my suite, I stood by the window and watched the ocean waves roll in. The rain had stopped, and moonlight was shining through breaks in the clouds, turning everything shades of gray and white.
I took a deep breath and considered my to-do list. I’d completed the ceremony to become Laurel clan chief…check. I’d attended my first roundtable…check. I’d brought a branch back from the afterlife that would be our salvation…double check. The only thing left to do was hunt down and take care of the master of evil.
Finding him wouldn’t be as difficult as I’d first imagined. David was locked up on the main level of the Arx, and he would know where his father was. I’d have to take extreme measures to get him to tell me, though, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Turning away from the window, I went to get the box with the Laurel dagger in it from my room. It was time to have a heart-to-heart with my fellow thoughtmaker.
Most of the clan chiefs were staying around for a few more days, but they’d put Logan and Claire in charge of David for the night. Logan was sitting on a chair by the storage room door. “How is he?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” Logan replied. “He’s been in and out of consciousness. My guess is, he’ll be a lot stronger tomorrow.”
“Did the chiefs say what they plan to do with him?” I asked.
He shook his head and replied, “I don’t think they’ve figured it out yet.”
“Remember when you said I could come to you if I needed help with something?” I asked.
Logan gave me a bit of a smile and said, “Sure do.”
“Well,” I replied, shuffling my weight from one foot to the other. “I need some uninterrupted time with the prisoner.”
Logan’s eyes flicked to the box in my hand and narrowed. “What’s in there?” he asked.
Odds were David would make enough noise for him to figure it out, so there was no sense lying. “It’s a knife,” I replied. “A very sharp one.”
He considered for a moment. “I trust you won’t do anything that isn’t absolutely necessary,” he said.
“I won’t,” I assured him.
“Okay then,” he replied, unlocking the door.
Burned and bandaged, David was lying on a mattress on the floor. Tall shelves, holding household odds and ends, lined the walls. The only light came from one overhead bulb.
He watched me with hatred smoldering in his eyes as I came into the room. “You had a small moment of victory, Laurel,” he said in a scratchy voice, “but this isn’t over.”
“I know it isn’t,” I agreed with a sigh of resignation. “It won’t be until Sebastian is dead, which is why I need you to tell me where he is.”
A small smile curved the corners of his lips. “I’ll die before I’ll tell you,” he replied.
“I doubt it,” I replied, taking the Laurel dagger out of its box.
His eyes widened. “What are you going to do with that?”
“A trick I learned from your uncle Maxwell,” I responded, sitting next to him. “He taught me
that when a dewing’s bones are regenerating, they can’t use their joining. Too much of their energy is automatically rerouted to healing. He cut off two of my fingers to prove the point.”
Blinking, David tried to inch away from me.
“I’m guessing you won’t be able to push me out of your mind when I cut off a couple of yours,” I said. “Believe me…I don’t want to do it. If you’ll tell me everything I need to know, I won’t have to.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was a warm spring evening, and people were out in droves, enjoying the weather. I’d borrowed, or rather stolen, a black baseball cap with an embroidered skull and crossbones on it from Theron’s room before leaving the Arx. I was wearing it to obscure my face on security cameras, but paired with my black hoodie, jeans, and Vans, I looked a little sketchy in the upscale D.C. neighborhood. Since I was getting more than my share of suspicious glances, I straightened my posture, took my hands out of my pockets, and tried to appear harmless as I hurried down the sidewalk.
The houses I passed where huge and set back from the road a good distance. Most of them had quaint, black-iron fencing, circular driveways, and one or more flagpoles on the lawn. Only half of the flags flying were American. The others were from other countries around the world.
I’d made good use of Google as I waited for my flight out of Cornwall. I’d learned that a lot of foreign interest groups rented houses in the D.C. area where Sebastian’s old mansion stood. Though they weren’t aware of it, he’d been neighbors with the same people he’d bribed and blackmailed.
From my conversation with David, I knew Sebastian was living in his old house again. The Truss clan had put it up for sale, but he simply bought it back under a different name. David said they had plenty of money in private accounts the Truss hadn’t been able to trace.
That Sebastian had doubled back to his old haunting grounds was surprising. Equally surprising was that he’d likenessed since our fight in the casino. The psycho had taken me there in hopes I’d pair with him, claiming his hybrid DNA made it possible to choose his life partner. I felt sorry for whomever he’d settled his attentions on after I refused.
I checked my watch and did the time conversion for Vegas. The open house following my funeral was likely winding to a close. I imagined people from my mom’s gym putting leftover vegan casseroles in the fridge and smiled a little. She had good friends. She’d lean on them for support in the difficult weeks and months ahead. I hoped Ian would be able to break through some of Alex’s defenses and help support him, too.
Glancing at the heavy doors of one of the big houses I passed, I wondered what Sebastian’s security system would be like. Thanks to Theron’s training, I could pick just about any lock. If it was alarmed, getting in would be more difficult but not impossible.
On the flight back to the States, I’d given a lot of thought to how I would handle the master of evil. Dewing weren’t easy to kill. So long as our mind energy was intact, our bodies could come back from almost any injury. Crushing the mind after inflicting a mortal injury, something termed finishing, was the only way to be certain of death. Since essence energy was used to crush another dewing’s mind and I could only use mine to defend myself, I had a problem.
My plan was to hurt Sebastian bad enough that he’d be unable to fight or resist when I hauled him off to Spencer. Spencer had been looking for an opportunity to crush Sebastian’s mind for years and would probably consider it the best gift ever.
I had the element of surprise on my side. So far as Sebastian knew, things had gone as he wanted at the Arx. I used thoughtmaking to make David explain how he was supposed to report back when he’d finished business with the chiefs. It turned out to be a simple text, saying they had agreed to his condition and including an address to send the journal to.
When I sent the text on David’s phone, Sebastian responded with one word, Good. Apparently homicidal maniacs didn’t chat much.
I stopped at a street corner so a car could pass and felt the first tinglings of a dewing vibration. After a moment of concentration, I realized there were three signatures…and one of them was alarmingly unexpected. Crossing the street at a jog, I hurried two houses down to Sebastian’s mansion. A car was parked along the curb in front of it. I looked through the window and cursed under my breath. Phoebe’s wallet was on the passenger seat.
She could have been working with Sebastian the whole time she was at the Arx. She could have made up the story about the dewing in her clan dying from a virus to scare the other chiefs, nudging them toward accepting Sebastian’s offer. If that was the case, she’d come to tell him his plan failed.
My instincts suggested something else, though. When I first met Phoebe, she hated Sebastian for what he’d put her clan through. I didn’t doubt her sincerity at the time, and I didn’t now. Having such a dramatic change of heart about him was unlikely. I did a mental rewind and reviewed her behavior at the roundtable as she learned Sebastian was still alive. Her shock had been genuine. I was sure of it. Which meant she’d figured out where he was living, and she’d come to get assurance he’d renounce the clanship.
She was going to get herself killed.
Turning away from the car, I ran up the ungated driveway. I had pins in my pocket to deal with the lock, but I didn’t need them. The front door had been left open a crack. Wondering whether I should take it as a good sign or a bad omen, I peeked inside.
The place was empty of furniture, and all the curtains had been drawn. It looked deserted, but I could feel the three signatures coming from the back of the house. Letting myself in, I followed them down to a room at the end of the hallway.
Sebastian was sitting in a red, high-backed chair by the fireplace. In spite of the warmth of the day, there was a roaring blaze in it. Orange light from the flames danced across the puckered scars on his face, giving the illusion that his skin was crawling.
His eyes were alight with evil enjoyment as he looked at Phoebe, whose hands were tied behind her back. A short, round woman with course, black hair and unruly eyebrows held her by the arm. I recognized her as one of the dewing who’d been working for Sebastian at the casino in Vegas. She had taken me up the elevator to his suite, where he’d made his likeness proposal.
I drew back into the shadows as Sebastian spoke. “It shows real gumption coming here by yourself,” he said. “It also shows real stupidity. Did you think I’d promise to renounce the Truss chiefdom simply because you asked me to?”
Phoebe had to be scared, but her voice was as sure as ever. “You left the clan in shambles,” she said. “I didn’t think you wanted the job back. Keep the money you took from us, just turn leadership over to me.”
He laughed. “I do like money,” he replied, “but I also like power.”
“You used and corrupted your own people,” she remarked. “If there’s a shred of decency in you, renounce your claim to the clanship. You’ve done more than enough harm.”
He laughed. “I never intended to relinquish control of the clan for good. I said that to allay the chiefs’ fears, but now that they’re hooked on the idea of hybrids, and I’ve been assured the Laurel will see her brother die, I’ll contact the elders with the good news I’m back.”
“No!” she yelled. “You’ll return us to the way we were. You’ll destroy us with your pervert hybrid mind.”
“My dear,” he replied, “you’ve been listening to the Laurel, haven’t you?”
“I wish she had killed you,” Phoebe said.
“I must admit, I’m a bit taken aback,” he drawled. “The girl who would be Truss chief and the chief of the Laurels striking up a friendship… It’s unexpected.”
“Yeah well, I’ve seen a lot of unexpected things recently,” she replied, “and none of it changes the fact that you’re the worst thing that ever happened to our clan.”
“You do have spirit,” he remarked with a hint of admiration. “Breaking you will be more fun because of it. You can hit her a few times, Asher
.”
The woman holding Phoebe wound up and slapped her across the face. Before she could do it again, I rushed into the room and bowled straight into Asher’s stomach. Then I aimed my fist at the area of her jaw just below her right ear. Ian called it “the sweet spot,” if you wanted to knock someone out with a single hit. The punch connected perfectly. Asher’s eyes rolled back, and she fell in an unconscious heap on the floor.
I heard Phoebe mutter, Alison, as I ran at Sebastian. I only got a few steps before his energy hit me in the chest. For a moment, I thought my lungs would collapse, but I used my own energy to push, equalizing the pressure. I reminded myself I just had to get close enough to overpower him physically and took a stumbling step forward.
He sent another wave of energy at my stomach, and I doubled over with pain.
“Stop!” Phoebe yelled.
There was a shift of energy in the room, and she sent her essence at him. His eyes widened as he felt her power, but her aim was off. Withdrawing some of the energy directed my way, he sent it at her. She stumbled back, grasping her head.
Sweating with the effort to keep Sebastian’s essence at bay, I assessed the situation. His energy was incredible, but it wasn’t as strong as when I fought him in the casino. Apparently, being trapped under a pile of burning rubble had taken a toll. His energy would wane even more the longer he had to hold us off. I figured Phoebe and I could take him if we worked together. She needed a little time to regroup, though.
Fortunately, it wasn’t my first rodeo with Sebastian. His biggest weakness was his ego. He thought he was the world’s greatest catch and the smartest dewing who’d ever lived. It was time to unleash my inner snark.
“I’m surprised, Sebastian,” I said. “You told me you could choose your own likeness, and you bestowed the honor on her.” I pointed to the unfortunate-looking Asher, who was showing signs of coming back to consciousness. “You must both be disappointed.”
His eyes lit with rage, and he sent a wave of energy at my head. I’d anticipated his target and equalized the pressure before it knocked me over. “You left me no choice,” he snarled. “I couldn’t get out of the fire myself. I likenessed with that hideous lump so she’d save me.”
