Chapter 159
This assured me there was something else they weren’t telling me. I didn’t know where to look and was having trouble staying focused on what they were saying as I wanted to demand information about what had happened with Giovani, but I did hear my sister say, “Jamie, I’ve been on a hunt, and it was fine, remember? As soon as I get a few minutes, I’ll let you do it. But I really think it’s fine. So long as I don’t get dropped from any great heights.” Once again, she was glaring at her fiancé, and I began to think she needed to let that go, although I would probably also not be happy if someone threw me out of a moving airplane.
Aaron didn’t acknowledge her comment. Instead, he inhaled deeply and then said, “I’ve been talking to Eliza--a lot--this evening, and she seems to think that Giovani has left the country. She’s got people looking into where he might be headed, but she doesn’t really have any idea. Did you both get a chance to look at the note she found?”
I realized that last question was to both of the other conscious people in the room and not to me, and I wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t get distracted by the fact that I was out of the loop. Giovani was on the move and had left a note? Aaron had been talking to Eliza? So even she was involved in this?
Jamie’s voice cut through my thoughts. “I read it, but I’m not sure I have any idea what he was trying to say.”
“It seemed very nonsensical,” Cadence agreed.
Unable to stand it anymore, I tried to keep my voice even and asked, “What did it say?”
Cadence glanced at Aaron for a moment. I didn’t think they were actually talking, but she did seem to be looking for confirmation that it was okay to tell me. “It was really strange,” she began, squinting in thought before looking me back in the eyes. “It said, ‘Tell Miss Findley I said missed me, missed me…. Do you know what comes next? I will see you soon.’”
I agreed, that was odd, but Aaron’s correction interrupted my processing. “Actually, it said, ‘I await your arrival,’ which makes it even more odd. What makes him think you are going to travel to wherever the heck he is?”
“True,” Cadence agreed. “I don’t know where he is, or I would go there.”
Jamie offered, “Maybe that’s some sort of a clue.”
I went over the entire riddle in my head again. What would a crazy Vampire be trying to tell us? I decided to break it down. “So… missed me, missed me--now you’ve got to kiss me?” I said slowly, assuming that the old rhyme was what he was alluding to there.
“That’s what most of us were thinking,” Aaron nodded. “Which wouldn’t really mean kiss, I assume. Since he’s a Vampire, I would think he’s talking about biting--a Vampire kiss.” Looking back at Cadence, he added, “But it would do him no good to bite you.”
She seemed to agree that Giovani wouldn’t want to kiss her. But--having never fought a Vampire before, I had no idea how they went about defeating Vampire Hunters. “He couldn’t kill you by biting you?”
Cadence tipped her head to the side in consideration. “I guess he could, technically, but he couldn’t turn me. So why say that? If he’s trying to say he wants to kill me, aren’t there better ways to say that than a schoolyard taunt?”
I agreed the rhyme was very peculiar. What was he trying to say?
“That’s so bizarre. That’s a really old rhyme. We used to say it when I was a kid,” Jamie agreed, nodding.
“When was that?” I asked. I had an idea of how old he was, but I didn’t really know how long ago we were talking about.
Jamie replied, “Well, I was born in 1868, so… a long time ago.”
“Wow.” Even though I’d seen pictures of him from the turn of the last century, I couldn’t imagine almost being a witness to the Civil War. “I can’t really wrap my mind around that,” I admitted, shaking my head. “I mean, I know you’re even older, Aaron, but still….” He raised his eyebrows at me, and I felt really silly again, all of a sudden. I hadn’t meant it as an insult. Apparently, these old people didn’t like to be reminded of their age. “Anyway,” I dragged it out like it had six As, “the whole letter makes no sense. There’s got to be more to go with it. Something is missing.”
“I agree,” Aaron said, nodding, his slight smile assuring me that he wasn’t holding my comment against me. “With the part about there being more, not that I’m old.” He winked at me, and I felt my face go red. “But until Eliza can figure out where he’s actually headed, the whole point is kind of moot. We can’t arrive where he’s at if we don’t know where that is….”
Suddenly, I remembered my phone ringing earlier and thought about my friends at home and how Emma had spotted Giovani the first time. “Oh, actually, that reminds me, Lucy called a little bit ago.” I dug my phone out of my pocket and continued my train of thought. “They’ve been looking at that footage. Maybe she knows something.”
I ignored the obvious IAC conversations going on around me and FaceTimed Lucy, thinking Emma might be there, too. Lucy answered very quickly, Em beside her on Luce’s bed. “Oh my gosh, Cassidy. I thought you’d died.”
One of these days, I thought Lucy would start to consider her word choice a little more carefully. Today was not that day. “Uhm, it’s been, like, forty minutes. What is it?”
Lucy started talking so quickly, I was struggling to keep up. “So, Christian gave us access to their site that livestreams the footage out of the airports, right? So, we’ve been checking it, and we saw Giovani at Heathrow!”
