Chapter 449
My panic was interrupted by Tara’s next statement. “By the way, while you were sleeping, one of Holland’s planes took off. We tracked it to Fiumicino.”
“Fiumicino?” my sister repeated. I wondered if she knew where that was. She seemed to. “All right. Did anyone get off of it?”
“Yeah, but no one we recognized. Italian LIGHTS is in pursuit.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’m going to go talk with Ward before I interrogate Stewart. Keep up the good work, Tara.” My sister flipped off her IAC and faded from my mind.
“Why would they be in Rome?” I asked Tara.
“No idea. But we should think about going there, too. It seems like they’re always a step or two ahead of us on this thing.”
“I guess. But then... if Holland knew the portal opened every six hours, why did she bother to put them in there? She must’ve known they could get out.”
“Buy some time? If she would’ve gotten you two last night, it would’ve been worth it. Maybe she doesn’t know we have this book. Or maybe she doesn’t know the cell phones work. Or about Heather.”
There were a lot of moving parts to this equation, but it wasn’t like Holland to be so utterly unprepared. I had to wonder just how much of this she even knew about. The idea had originally belonged to Hines, after all. Could it be that Hines had bungled this, the way he had his serum that he ended up not being around to administer?
I wished I could get to Ward to see if he knew anything about Rome. Could it be that there was a portal opening there? Would he be able to identify it if there were? I could go over to the archives, but I knew just from the vibrations I received when I thought about Ward that Christian was there, and I didn’t want to see him right now. I didn’t want to see him ever. So instead of leaving the comfort of my own living room just yet, I probed into Ward’s mind, gently, not even enough for him to know I was there, and saw he had been able to figure out a long list of portal openings. I didn’t know exactly what they were at this point or how he’d done it, but that was a relief, so I decided to leave his head for now and wait to see what my sister was able to find out.
In the meantime, there was a Vampire in a holding cell who had information about where my boyfriend was, and I wanted to talk to him.
Cale was down there watching him. I knew this from looking inside of Hamish Stewart’s mind for a few seconds. Daniel had left and gone back to California. Christian had been down there waiting for him and tried to dig into his head, but couldn’t get anywhere and had eventually given up. It was Cale who opened the cell for Christian to let him out.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on Hamish Stewart. He had a copy of the book, the same one that Ward was using now, which was fascinating to me. I wondered how many copies there were and was instantly given the answer from Stewart, whether he knew it or not. Three. So I could only assume that Holland had the other one. Whether or not she knew how to read it was another question. I doubted she did.
There had to be someone else who was interpreting the book for her. If we could find out who, then I could jump into that person’s head and then figure out where he or she thought the portal would open next. While there was a chance Ward’s guess would be as good as the other person’s, at least we could compare notes.
Knowing Cadence was on her way over to visit Stewart soon, I decided to take a quick shower in the interim. The warm water felt so good, I almost forgot to hurry, but I wanted to be ready to go in case something happened, so I rushed and dried off and got dressed in a clean Hunter outfit.
My sister turned her IAC back on as I was putting my wet hair up, so I went ahead and attempted to search Hamish’s brain for information about who might be interpreting the book for Holland. It was hard because he knew so many people. He wasn’t thinking about anyone trying to help Holland with anything. In fact, he was cursing the Vampire Queen’s name for abandoning him and putting him in this position to begin with. I couldn’t really blame him there.
Cadence walked into Stewart’s cell, and it was obvious from the second she entered the room she wasn’t there to play. Hamish was pretending not to be intimidated, but in his head I could tell he was terrified. When he told Cadence to go ahead and shoot him and get it over with, she blew his kneecap off. That wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.
I watched as my sister explained that the portal was going to open again in Rome soon, which was exciting to me since Ward had, obviously, figured that out on his own. But then, Holland also knew, which could be dangerous. And we needed to know how she’d found out so that I could see where she’d be headed next. Not that Holland herself was in Rome, but if her people were there, it would be a fight.
Hamish was shot in the other knee and basically scared into peeing his pants—something I didn’t realize Vampires could do—but he was thinking of people who might know how to read the book. I needed a computer, a big one. My tiny laptop wouldn’t do. So before my sister even made her way out of the basement, I shot over to Christian’s lab where Tara and Lucy were working on tracking the planes.
