Chapter 233
I wanted to be as much use to my sister and the rest of the team as I could. If I was going to prove to them that my moving to Kansas City was a good idea, then a little bit of information about Gibbon could go a long way toward that. The fact that Lucy was right next to me, that I felt anchored and safe, made me brave. I sent a question out into the abyss.
“Where is the Jogging Path Killer?” I asked, stretching my mind, reaching for all things Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell. The Eagles. The Museum of Art. “Where is Gibbon?”
Like static on a television, a flickering began to occur in my mind. A station, just out of tune, fighting through the blizzard of gray and white. It was startling, but I dug my fingernails into Lucy’s sofa and pressed on. “Where is he? Where is the Jogging Path Killer?” At first, all I heard were random comments about the Eagle defense and whether or not tickets to the zoo were too expensive. And then, another sensation came over me, something I hadn’t experienced before.
I was no longer alone. I could feel her presence in my mind, even though I couldn’t see her. She was like me—mostly. Cold, lonely, confused. “Who are you?” she asked, her voice sharp, accusatory to a degree.
“A friend.” I hope she’d understand. “I’m like you. I need to find him.”
A flicker of memories flashed through my mind’s eye, disturbing pictures of a dark alley and a shadow filling up all the space between this woman and the closest streetlight. It wasn’t Gibbon she was showing me, as I was certain the memory was much older than his short life as an undead, but she was presenting me with the story of how she became what she was now—whether voluntarily or not.
I settled into her memories for a moment, absorbing them, feeling her terror as the darkness surrounded her, feeling the sharp prick of piercing flesh as fangs met their mark, the despair of her life source leaving her body, before the creature pulled back, leaving her all alone in that alley—all alone and profoundly changed. She was scared. She was still trying to figure out what had happened to her, even after all of these years. My heart broke for her. If it hadn’t been for Jamie and the rest of the LIGHTS team, I would feel the same.
And then she said one word back to me, one simple word, that, at first, left me confused.
“Klondike.”
Not sure I understood, I repeated it to her. “Klondike?” I asked. The static on the television set in my mind picked up again. I was losing her. The roar of white noise filled my senses. “Wait—what?” I yelled. “What is Klondike?”
“Klondike!”
“Cass?” Lucy was shaking me. My eyes flew open to meet hers. I looked at Emma, and both of them were wide eyed, frantic. “What’s going on? What’s Klondike?”
“Were you dreaming?” Emma asked, her forehead crinkled behind the edges of her glasses.
I must’ve said it out loud. “Sorry,” I said, my heart still racing, my breathing uneven. “I just… I think I know where he’s at.”
“Who?” Lucy asked, her hand on my arm. “Gibbon?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “I think I made contact with another Vampire, one in Philadelphia.”
“What’s Klondike?” Emma asked.
I realized now where I’d heard that word before. In all of my research about the history of Philadelphia and the places where Gibbon might be hiding, I’d read about one or two that gave me the creeps, particularly the one I now believed he might be hiding out in. “Klondike was what the prisoners called the cells below ground at Eastern State Penitentiary,” I explained. “The solitary confinement pens.”
Without another word, Emma picked up her laptop and did a quick search. “Oh, wow,” she muttered, turning her computer so that Lucy could view it. “I can see him wanting to hide down there.” The pictures basically showed a dark, musty hole in the ground, decrepit and filthy from time and wear.
“I need to contact my sister,” I said. I could’ve already gotten her on the IAC while we were talking, but I didn’t want to be rude. Both of my friends nodded, and I sent a message to Cadence.
She didn’t pick up. I waited a few seconds and tried again. This time, she sent me an auto-response that she was busy. “Dang it,” I muttered.
“Not picking up?” Lucy asked, tearing her eyes away from Emma’s computer.
“No,” I sighed.
“Maybe text her?” Emma suggested.
“She never checks her phone anymore. Maybe Brandon knows where she’s at.”
My friends nodded. “I’m sure he’ll pick up,” Lucy said, giving me a sly smile, which was intended to make me calm down a little bit. It worked—minimally.
“Brandon—do you know where Cadence is? I’ve got some info.”
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said immediately. “Yeah, we’re in a meeting. What’s up?”
“Can you tell her to let me message her? I hate to interrupt, but I think it’s super important.”
He gave me visuals, and I could see that they were sitting around the table in the conference room, the same one we met at before I had my brilliant idea to go to Philly. He reached around his dad and tapped my sister on the shoulder, and out of the corner of his eye, I could see Aaron checking messages on his phone. Maybe I should’ve texted him.
“Cadence,” Brandon said, “I hate to interrupt, but Cass says she’s trying to get ahold of you, and it’s important.”
My sister narrowed her eyes at him, and I hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble for answering me, but she said, “Okay,” and then allowed me on through her IAC. “Cass? What’s up? We’re in a meeting.”
“I know. Sorry,” I said. “I wish I was there.” I was trying to pay attention to her and figure out what Aaron was doing at the same time. The rest of the table was still talking, speculating, it seemed, about where Gibbon might be.
“Me, too. Is it important?”
Ignoring her insulting question, I decided to focus on the reason I contacted her in the first place. “Yeah, so I was doing my best to try to listen in on the Vampires. And I thought, maybe I should try seeing how far away this stuff works, right? So I really honed in on Philadelphia.” I wasn’t about to get into actually stepping into another person’s brain with my sister at this juncture, so I tried to stay nonchalant about it. “It took a lot of concentration, but eventually, I was able to pick up chatter that seemed to be Philly related—like the Eagles, the Liberty Bell, whatever. Well, then I did something I’d never really done before, and I sent a question out to the other Vampires.”
“That’s daring,” Cadence said. I could see her face through Brandon’s IAC, and she actually looked slightly impressed. “What did you ask?”
“I asked if they had any idea where the Jogging Path Killer, or Gibbon, was.”
Cadence looked a little less impressed suddenly, like she assumed I hadn’t gotten an answer. “And?”
“And, well, at first, I didn’t think anyone was going to answer, like they knew I was a spy or something. But just as I was about to give up, I got one really clear, one-word answer. And I don’t know if it has anything to do with anything or what, but I thought you should know.” There was a chance Gibbon wasn’t there, and I was sending them on a wild goose chase.
She sighed loudly, and I knew then that she thought I was wasting her time. “Okay. What was it?”
“Klondike,” I replied, glad I hadn’t divulged too many details of the trauma I’d just experienced when she seemed to think this was no big deal.
I could immediately tell that she had no idea what I was talking about as she repeated it back at me. “Klondike? Like the ice cream? Or the really cold place in Alaska?”
Her lack of knowledge was annoying, but her inability to trust that I had any idea what I was talking about was even more upsetting. I got a little snippy. “The Klondike is in Canada, Cadence, and I don’t know. That’s all I got.” Her attitude was enough to tell me that she thought I was wasting her time, even though I knew it was at Eastern State Penitentiary. I’d tell Brandon if Cadence didn’t inform the rest of the team. Something told me if she actually did as I asked and told everyone else, Christian, who used to live in Philly, or Aaron, who seemed to always know everything, or someone else, would know where the Klondike was.
Sounding much too much like a customer service manager, Cadence said, “Okay. Well, then, thank you. I will pass this information along to the rest of the team.”
“You’d better,” I threatened. “Brandon will tell me if you don’t.”
“I will,” Cadence assured me, “not that I’m scared of you. Or Brandon.”
“Well, maybe you should be….” Something told me that he would leave me on now that I had infiltrated the meeting. My sister’s attitude was enough to make me want to reach through the IAC and shake her.
“All right, sassy pants. Thank you. Talk to you soon.” I supposed I should be used to my sister treating me like I’m a baby, but I’m not yet. I wasn’t surprised that Cadence disconnected me, but I continued to watch through Brandon’s IAC as she let out a deep breath like I’d wasted her time and said, “I’m sorry. What did I miss?”
“Not much,” Aaron said with a shrug. “I sent Watson a text to see if she could tell me what the museum was, but she said the reports she’s received aren’t very specific since this is out of her jurisdiction, but she’ll try to get that information to me.”
Watson was the name of the detective who’d originally taken Gibbon into custody when he was the Jogging Path Killer, that much I knew. I wondered what museum Aaron was talking about. I knew that the penitentiary was a museum now. The team was close. Why wasn’t she telling them what I’d discovered?
Christian spoke up. “And we looked at a map showing where the shelter is located that the men didn’t show up to, where the professor works, though he and his wife disappeared on a Saturday, and the historian’s home.”
Cadence leaned forward and looked up at the map. I couldn’t see it from here. She asked Aaron another question, and they continued to talk about the map and I assumed victims, from what I could gather. “What about the kids?” Cadence asked.
“What did you tell her?” Brandon asked me.
“I made contact with a Vampire,” I tried to explain succinctly. “She said Gibbon is at the Klondike.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
I waited to answer him, listening to Aaron’s response to my sister, wondering what kids she was talking about. Had Gibbon taken out some children? “We don’t have any idea where they were headed the night they disappeared. They all lived in this area.” He was pointing at the map, but I still couldn’t see it well. “But they could’ve been at a party or another event anywhere in town.”
“None of their parents knew where they were headed?” Elliott asked. Legitimate question.
“No,” Aaron replied. “They all said they were spending the night at one of the other friends’ houses.”
I thought my sister could definitely identify with that. She asked, “So… we just go up to Philly and see what information Watson has without knowing exactly where we are headed?”
“Cass—do you want me to say something? What’s Klondike?”
“I think it’s at the prison,” I replied. “Why isn’t Cadence telling them?”
Before Brandon could respond, Aaron asked Cadence, “What did your sister have to say?”
“Yes, Cadence. What did your sister have to say?” Brandon repeated. I was glad at least a couple of people on the team were taking me seriously. I was sort of flattered that Aaron wanted to know what I had to report. Why was Cadence always belittling my effort? Clearly, she didn’t know I could see her as she turned and gave Brandon a dirty look.
“She said she did her best to contact some Vampires in Philly, but she didn’t know if she was able to get anything important back from them,” she began.
“Did she get anything at all?” Elliott asked.
“Only one word, and I have no idea how it could possibly be helpful,” Cadence shrugged. My mouth dropped open, and I vaguely heard Lucy ask what was the matter. Cadence wasn’t even going to tell them.
“Well, let’s hear it,” Christian insisted. “You never know. I’m pretty familiar with the area.” I’d always liked that guy.
“Unless you’re also secretly Canadian or heir to an ice cream fortune, I don’t think it will matter,” Cadence muttered dismissively. “But I don’t mind telling you. She said, ‘Klondike,’ whatever that means….”
Before she even finished her sentence, Christian and Aaron both said, “I know where he is!” and then stared at each other for a second, almost in a face off as to who had said it first. I breathed a sigh of relief.
