I set the papers down and rushed to the door. When I saw Cadence’s face, I was both relieved and irritated. “What the crap?” I asked, looking her up and down. She was so tan, she looked like she was born on the beach. Her hair was all wavy, and she had a glow about her like nothing I’ve ever noticed before. She should’ve been smiling and happy, returned from her honeymoon and reveling in wedded bliss. Instead, she looked just as worried as I felt. “Why are you here?” I asked, meaning why hadn’t she called me to let me know she was coming, but it didn’t come out that way, and I realized I needed to focus or she was going to think I wasn’t glad to see her. In actuality, the only time I ever remember being happier to see anyone was when Elliott was at my door after he died—and when I saw Brandon at the hospital after the portal.
“Hi, sis,” Cadence said, giving me a hug and ignoring my snarkiness. &ldqu
“I was able to jump into some of the missing people’s heads to see them being turned. I figured out that there were five or six Vampires primarily responsible for turning them, or turning others who went on to turn a bunch on their own, and Mila’s team has been hunting them down and destroying them. But Mila doesn’t know I’ve been helping.” I added that part quickly, hoping that neither of them was communicating with Hannah or Aurora via IAC while I was talking. The idea that I could get in trouble for all of this wasn’t out of my mind.“Why doesn’t she know?” Cadence asked.“I ended up helping Eliza out, and she just never told them I was working with her.” I could’ve told them, I realized, but Eliza was easy enough to blame in this situation, and she owed me enough that I didn’t mind putting it on her. I couldn’t tell my sister about Christian yet. It seemed like they were going
We were almost to their office building when Aaron stopped in front of me and pulled on Cadence’s arm, bringing her to a halt as well. I braced myself for the inevitable doom of discovery. “Hey—can you get Christian?”Oh. Crap.Obviously, my sister had been talking to someone else because she’s not very good at using her IAC and carrying on a conversation with another person in real life at the same time, so it took her a second. “What? Christian?”A volcano began to bubble in my stomach, on the brink of eruption. No longer worried about protecting his secret, the threat of my own demise had me panicked. If they knew what I’d helped him do, they’d be so angry—at me.“Yeah, I can’t get him on the IAC at all,” Aaron said, putting his hands on his hips and staring at my sister, frustrated.Trying to be the voice of reason, I said, “He’s on vacation,” prayin
“Anyone else want coffee?” Elliott asked, pushing up from his seat. He smiled at me, knowing I wouldn’t want any but also feeling sorry for me for an entirely different reason than the one I was currently focused on. I managed a small smile.“I’ll take a cup, if you don’t mind,” Hannah said. No one else wanted any, so Elliott headed toward the door. Mrs. Carminati has a Keurig out by her desk.“What kind?” Elliott paused with his hand on the knob.“Barista prima, please. No creamer.” Hannah smiled at him in thanks, and I let out a deep breath.“You okay?” Jamie asked me as Elliott left the room and Aaron got up to grab something off of the printer. I could’ve gotten it for him....“Yeah, fine.” He nodded but I could tell by his expression he wasn’t buying it. I was so ready for this to be over.Aurora flew in the door and rushed to her seat.
“Why isn’t this all over the news?” Jamie asked.“I honestly don’t know.” That was a phrase Aaron didn’t say very often. He was looking at me, and I wished he wasn’t. “Cassidy mentioned that a lot of these people may be invisible—homeless, no families, no jobs. But not all of them.”“Could Christian have been controlling the media somehow?” Hannah asked. Again, I wondered why she wouldn’t know the answer to that question. What had she been doing the last two weeks? “Does he have that authority?”“To some degree, but I don’t think he would’ve been doing that. Why would he?” Aaron asked.“Maybe to keep things under wraps until you got back and we could handle it?” Hannah guessed.I almost laughed. She had no idea.... No one else had any idea either, so I asked a question I’d been pondering for days. “Is it po
“Why don’t we see if we can track Christian’s cell phone?” Jamie came between the warring exes again. He was looking at me. “That something Emma could do, Cassidy?”“Uh, probably. I can ask her.” Emma was my best friend, after all. One of them, anyway.“I’ll ask her.” Aaron was still looking at me in a way that made me uncomfortable, and the tone in his voice conveyed that he didn’t trust me to ask my own best friend to track Christian’s phone. I wanted to be offended, but I was also intimidated. And I was beginning to realize he was right in doubting how honest I was being at the moment, though I wasn’t sure how he knew he should be. Was it his supernatural emotion-reading ability, or was there something about my expression?Aaron continued, but his eyes were on Jamie now, and it didn’t look like he wanted to spear his friend through the head, like he did me. “She&rs
Cadence took the middle of the road and tried to stay diplomatic, which was best for the team but still irritated me slightly. “I don’t think it matters now. I can see why you would just help out in this situation, but if it happens again, make sure you tell me, or Aurora, or whoever is in charge, what’s going on as soon as you can, just to keep us informed.” I sucked in a breath, biting back a response. She knew I would’ve told her if she had been here, but what good would it have done for me to tell the other two? “No one is telling anyone else how to use their special powers.” She glanced around the room, and I could see she was trying to make sure the other ladies knew not to mention this again.Then my sister attempted to be funny. “Except Jamie. If one of us tells him to heal us, he better do it.” Everyone else chuckled to be polite, but not me. It was clear she was trying to say I hadn’t done anything wrong wh
They were all quiet, taking in my warning about Daunator’s power, until Aaron asked me, “Do you have any idea what his weaknesses are?”I shook my head immediately. “I’m not sure if he has any.” The team didn’t like that, but it was true.Hannah tried to sound optimistic. “Christian was working on some new weapons. Maybe those will be helpful.” She shrugged her shoulders, like she knew it was just wishful thinking.“I don’t know.” I needed to convey to them that we shouldn’t count on that without tipping them off that I was aware that Christian had already tried to destroy the Vampire. Of course, he hadn’t used his new weapons, but from Christian’s description, it looked like the old one had done next to nothing. “It would have to be something like a nuclear bomb for Vampires.” Christian seemed pretty confident in his new grenade, but since he hadn’t tried
I stared at Elliott for a moment, thinking we needed to have a little chat about what backing someone up meant because he expected Jamie to do it for him but hadn’t given me the courtesy the last few times I needed him to, including earlier in this meeting. “That was before I saw what I saw. Look, all I’m saying is, I understand Aaron’s point.”“Thank you, Cass,” Aaron said, and I should’ve let it go, but my mouth kept moving.“I don’t agree with it.” He stared at me like I’d just insulted him—not a good idea. I tried to soften the blow. It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with anything he’d said, so I continued, trying to explain. “But I do understand it. I think... if we’re going over there, the sooner the better. Whether he’s here or not. A lot of people are getting turned into monsters, of one variety or another. We can stop that.” I hoped he understood
Cadence was glowing, holding both of her babies, one in each arm. I smiled at her and then focused on Josephina. She wasn’t crying now, but her little face was wrinkled as if she might burst into tears at any moment. Aaron had his hand on her back, beaming with pride as he looked at his little family. Jamie and another Healer, Ona, were cleaning up a tray table, but I caught his eye, and he winked at me. I hoped he could tell how grateful I was. If it wasn’t for him and his life saving blue magical healing powers, not to mention his medical skills, Cadence never would’ve come back to life.“Where’s my new favorite lil girl?” Elliott asked beside me.“Hey! I’m your lil girl. You’re going to have to think of something else to call her.” I threw an elbow at him.“Oh, I’m just teasing,” Elliott assured me. “Still, she is definitely lil. And she is my girl.”“I&rsqu
I’ll never forget the day my sister died. Even now, eight months later, sitting outside of Jamie’s operating room with Brandon’s hand in mine, every time I think about what happened that day, I get tears in my eyes. So many things could’ve gone differently, if only one of us would’ve made a different choice. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what I could’ve done differently myself that day, and even though everyone tells me there’s no point in dwelling on it, what’s done is done, it still haunts me sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep at night, when I can so vividly see Cadence hanging there in the air before she plummeted to the ground, the whoosh of power that left my hand just missing its mark.The new Hunter Leader is a guy named Daniel Bower. He came in from California a few months ago. He’s awesome. I’ve known him for a while. He’s the one who helped capture Professor Stewart after th
I continued to beg and plead with her to come back to us. At fifteen minutes, Scarlet’s whispers were loud enough for me to detect what she was saying to Cale. “How long will he give it?”“I don’t know.” Cale seemed agitated and upset, certainly more connected to my sister than Scarlet. “Not yet.”“Please... Cadey, please.” I felt as far and as deep as I could, thinking about how I’d had to go so very far into her brain to plant that dream. The clock continued to tick. Cadence still wasn’t breathing, and Jamie began to sound desperate. At twenty-five minutes, when Jamie said “thirty,” his voice broke. He knew that the chances of her coming back to us now, after this long, were minute at best. He couldn’t give up, though. We couldn’t give up.Aaron blew two breaths of air into my sister’s lungs, and Jamie started counting again.Something was diff
After Aaron finally moved forward, I followed, staying back a little bit. I didn’t want to see her like that. I had never seen a person’s body after they’ve fallen that far, but I could imagine what it was like.Only when I finally did take a few hesitant steps around the trees, Brandon’s hands on my shoulders, she didn’t look like I expected her to at all.Cadence was lying flat on the ground with her hands folded over her abdomen, sort of like Snow White. Her feet were out straight, and her hair was blown out around her. She looked absolutely beautiful. And still. So very, very still.Jamie was doing chest compressions, and when it was time to breathe, Aaron did that for my sister. Some sort of automatic pilot must’ve turned on for him because his movements were very robotic. Jamie would say thirty, and Aaron would breathe into my sister’s open mouth twice before Jamie started counting again.Tears were rolling
“No!” My scream echoed across the mountainside as I watched in horror as my sister fell. I cannot guide what I cannot see, and I didn’t have a chance to get a grip on her before she plummeted. My hands shot out in her direction, but the surge of power I’d sent to grab her went over her head. I saw a streak of blue do the same and knew Jamie had missed as well.Fumbling through Cadence’s stream of consciousness, I tried again, hoping I’d be able to figure out how to get my powers around her before she hit the ground, but she was moving too fast, and without my eyes on her, I wouldn’t be able to get a grip.Part of me wanted to at least jump into her head, to be with her, to let her know she was okay, but then, the thought of what she was about to endure, when she hit the tops of the trees and then cascaded down through them to the earth, I couldn’t bear the thought, and I knew she wouldn’t want me to see it.I
“Brandon!” I shouted, floating over to where he had disappeared. He didn’t answer, and I realized he must’ve fallen all the way in. “Dang it.” I looked around the battlefield. I knew he was safe down there, but I hated that he was in that miserable place. Cadence was firing at Daunator now while Christian moved in, to place the grenade, I assumed, so I thought perhaps she’d be safe for a few minutes. I decided to help Brandon.“Are you all right?” I asked, using my telepathy.“Thank goodness,” he thought, probably not even to me. “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just really dark in here.”“I know. Hold on, and I’ll get you out.”“If I hold on, won’t it be harder for you to get me out?”“All right smarty pants.” I needed to focus all of my energy if I was going to do this
“You okay?” Brandon shouted to me as he moved a little closer to where I was standing. The holes in the ground were not shaking now as much as they had been before, but they were still an obstacle we had to consider. I didn’t want him to get too close because of my tornadoes, but I was glad he was nearby.“Great,” I called back, sending another pile of creatures over the side of the mountain.Aaron was fighting his way through the crowd of black creatures, working his way to Cadence. The path was getting clearer, as far as the minions were concerned, but once he got within about a hundred yards of Cadence’s location, one of the Vampires that had been engaged with our forces closer to the top of the mountain broke off, clearly on his way to intercept the Guardian Leader.Whether he liked it or not, Aaron wasn’t alone now. I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, but Eliza was running parallel to him, fighting off
Moving the black creatures off of the ledge worked well, and I was just starting my second round when I realized my sister had taken off running toward Daunator. Christian had reached him already, a grenade in his hand. I prayed he didn’t get sucked down into another hole. The fact that Cadence was so far away from Aaron was worrisome, but he was busy with the creatures. While Cadence was slowed a few times by the minions sinking their teeth into her arm or grabbing at her heels, for the most part, they seemed to be letting her through, which seemed like a bad sign to me. Did Daunator want her to fight him?A blast of light illuminated the mountain, and then a wave of smoke obscured my view of Christian and Daunator. He’d thrown a grenade, the old kind, the ones he knew wouldn’t work. When the smoke cleared, Daunator’s laughter echoed through the air, and Christian went flying twenty feet in the air.Paul’s voice came over the IAC as I tos
Christian’s eyes widened. “Get out of here? We can’t. We have to get Daunator.”“We will. But for now, we need to go back and regroup. The most important thing is that you’re safe now,” Cadence explained to him.Christian was starting to freak out again. “No, Cadence, you don’t understand. We can’t just leave from here! We can’t just let him go!” His eyes were wild, and he reached forward and grabbed my sister’s shoulders. That lasted about half a second before Aaron grabbed him and pulled him off.“Listen, Christian, I agree. It’s important we come back and end this, but you need medical attention. And a good visit with Hannah.”And a shower, I thought to myself. But I was staying out of this one for the moment. I felt a stirring in the ground and a shift in energy somewhere further up the mountain. The argument was about to be moot.“No,