Chapter 447
I swallowed the lump in my throat. A solution had come to me, a way to fix the problem of leaving someone behind in the portal. Slowly, I said, “So if we want to bring everyone back, we also have to put someone in there.” A thought entered my mind, and my eyes swiveled across the table beyond my control. “Someone we can do without.”
Christian’s eyes doubled in size. “Don’t look at me, psycho.”
“Why not?” I countered. “This is all your fault.” It suddenly occurred to me that if Christian hadn’t been such a total jerk face, Alex wouldn’t be dead.
“How is this his fault?” Cale’s question was innocent enough, but even thinking about how to answer it had me irritated. I consider popping out of my chair and coming at Christian again. I wondered who would try to stop me.
Clearly, Cadence would, as her hand was already on my arm. “Calm down! We’re not putting Christian in the portal. We’ll put someone else in there, though.” If Cale was irritated she hadn’t answered him, he didn’t repeat his question. I considered sending him a response through my IAC, but I was interested in how Cadence would answer that question. Who deserved to go in the portal more than Christian? No one.
“Who?” Ashley asked. Now, she was glaring at Christian, too. “If you ask me, you should shove in the responsible party.”
“Hey, I didn’t make the portal open! I didn’t cause this!” Christian yelled.
I was beyond outraged at him now, not taking any responsibility. “No, you just conveniently forgot to mention that you’d seen information about the portal in that book when Aaron asked you!”
“I don’t read Scottish Gaelic! Especially not from hundreds of years ago!”
“Yeah, well, you knew enough!” Aurora actually scooted her chair away from him.
Visions of the three of us jumping him all at once came to mind. I thought we could get him pretty good before the others could pry all of us off of him.
“It doesn’t matter!” Cadence screamed. She looked at Cale, so my eyes went there, too, and I realized he was caught up now. Cadence had her arms spread out like she was a referee. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done, and as angry as we can all be that Christian didn’t mention this, or that no one else caught it, Christian did not put them in there. But we know who did.”
“So you think we can find Holland in time to shove her in there?” Ashley asked, though she was still staring intently at Christian.
“No,” Cadence admitted. “But we have Stewart. He can get a little taste of his own medicine.” I thought he was a good alternative if Christian couldn’t go in. “If any of the other Vampires we took for questioning don’t want to cooperate, they can go in, too.” Cadence said it with an air of finality, and we all seemed to accept her decision. “It beats housing them here.”
“What if they escape someday and come out to hunt us down?” Ashley looked slightly less hostile now.
“There’s not a Vampire in that group I’m remotely frightened of,” Cadence replied. “But before we get into all of that, you guys realize how complicated this is going to be, right? Not only do we have to figure out where these obscure spots are, but we have to help them confirm it on the other side. And that could take days.”
“We don’t have days.” I’m not sure what my point was, except I was desperate to get them back. “We’ve already lost one of them. None of them are safe over there, not even Elliott.” If Alex could die, so could Elliott.
I was telling my sister something she already knew. “We’ll work as quickly as we can. Ward, do you have any idea where any of these places are?”
“A few. I need to do some more research, though. Hannah said there are some other books from the time period written in the same tongue in the archives. Perhaps I can do some comparisons.”
Cadence nodded, taking a deep breath. She was so tired, I could tell she was struggling to think straight. Me, too. “All right. If the two of you can work on that, I’d appreciate it. Cassidy, can you write up a text to send to Brandon’s phone that says the gist of what we’ve discovered here? Don’t mention Stewart going in yet. I think we need to talk a little more about how that will work before we bring it up. We’ll let them know, though, that we’ll be sending someone in so they can all get out.”
“Sure,” I said, picking up her phone and thinking about the best way to word all of this so it wouldn’t be confusing. Hard to do when I was already a little confused myself.
“Let me look at it before you send it.” I nodded at Cadence, but it was a little irritating she couldn’t trust me to do what she’d said. She continued with her assignments. “Cale, will you go over to Christian’s lab and check on Tara and Lucy? That’s where they are isn’t it?” She looked at Christian, and he nodded. “See if they need anything and if Tara is doing okay. If they want you to, stick around and help them with their assignment. I think that would be the best way you can help us. Who do we have on the ground in the area where Holland’s planes are?”
Hannah replied, “We moved Mila’s team there.”
“Right. I want a contingency at the airport, so if the planes move, we move. If Holland gets wind that we’re trying to track the portal opening to a specific location, she’ll be there, too.”
“On it.” Hannah nodded reassuringly.
Cadence continued. “Christian, check in with Daniel Bower. When Hamish gets here, I want you to talk to him first.” I couldn’t help but look up from my phone, stunned. Why him? I could get into that freak’s head a lot better than Christian. Cadence explained her thinking. “Let him think you’re in trouble over this, too. Which maybe you are. If he’ll confide in you, maybe I won’t need to be the hammer. In fact, maybe you need to be in the cell. Maybe you could mention the threat of portal time?”
I saw fear in his eyes. He was actually contemplating the idea that my sister might do that to him. I sort of wanted to laugh. All he said was, “Okay.”
“All right. I have to sleep now. I am, after all, more like a human than most of you. Cassidy, you need to sleep, too, even though you don’t think you need to. Ash, you guys will be of no use to anyone if you don’t rest.”
I wanted to protest my sister’s insistence that I go get some sleep. I was exhausted, but sleeping was not on the agenda, not until I had Brandon back. There was no reason for me to say it to my sister, though. Ashley looked like she didn’t want to go to sleep either, and in fairness, she had slept a lot since this all went down. She’d fallen asleep on the floor of the office yesterday, after all.
Cadence looked around again and then pushed up off the table to standing. “Thanks, guys.”
“Cadence,” Aurora began, her voice even and quiet. “Your mom has called me at least a half dozen times wanting to know if you’re going to call her.” I realized I hadn’t called her back yet either.
Cadence sighed. “Call her for me? I just can’t talk wedding right now.”
If my sister didn’t have to call her, did I? Aurora said she would, but I started to feel really guilty. Cadence had at least spoken to them yesterday, but I hadn’t called my parents at all.
“Amanda Keen is here. She’s staying in Elliott and Brandon’s apartment.” Hannah didn’t look at Aurora at all as she spoke, like maybe she could pretend she wasn’t listening.
My sister looked flabbergasted at one more thing. “All right. I’ll meet with her later. I’m sure she’ll want to do something to help, but I have no idea what that might be.”
“She’ll want to be there with us when Brandon comes home.” Hannah smiled sympathetically, and Cadence nodded. I appreciated her wording. When, not if.
No one else interrupted, so Cadence headed for the door, and I followed, typing out the message I’d constructed as I went. We were about halfway to the apartment building when I handed her the phone. She read it over and said, “Looks good.” I wished I could sneak a personal message to Brandon in there before she hit send, but that hardly seemed fair. She pressed the button, but it didn’t go, which wasn’t surprising. She made sure it was set to keep trying until it could get through and then put her phone away.
My mind immediately went to Alex, now that there was nothing to distract me. The words of that last text were so strange. It was like he knew he was never going to see me again. “I know that’s what he wanted,” I said as my sister wrapped her arm around me. “He would be so happy to be dying, he was probably smiling the whole time.” I had to fight back my tears. “It doesn’t make it any easier.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t. Alex saved my life. He was a great guy. It’s no wonder they made a musical out of his first life.”
“I just keep hoping when the portal opens, he’ll walk out, too, like it was all a misunderstanding. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Cadence’s voice was solemn. “I know you don’t want to sleep, but you should.”
“I know.” Intellectually, I knew she was right. I just couldn’t imagine how I was going to do it. There was so much I needed to do....
There were only a few people out, which was good. No one spoke to us, but I saw the look in their eyes, the fact that they felt sorry for us, and I hated it.
When we got to the apartment building, Cadence asked, “You wanna come up to my place?”
I considered it for a half second, but I realized if I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to go do something else, she’d stop me. Besides, I just wanted to be alone. “I think we’ll sleep better if we don’t have to listen to each other cry.”
Cadence nodded in agreement, and we climbed aboard the elevator in silence. My floor came first. I hugged my sister and told her I loved her. When the door closed on her, I felt more alone than I ever have in my entire life.
