They had to know she was trapped somewhere beneath the Aquarius.
Delia flattened herself against the wall, trying to stand as steadily and quietly as she could. She didn’t know if this was going to work, but she had to make the attempt anyway.
Caleb, I’m being held beneath one of the towers of the Aquarius hotel.
Chapter Thirteen
Caleb stared at Ty, who looked imperturbable as usual, standing there in the middle of the earthen chamber, the map they’d just discovered in his hands. “Delia can’t be a river guardian, or whatever you want to call it. She has a life in Las Vegas.”
The other man’s shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly. It sure seemed as if he didn’t care whether Delia was forced to uproot herself from everything she knew and everyone she loved just so she could babysit the Colorado River and make sure a bunch of demons didn’t turn it into their personal playground.
“I don’t think that’s anything we need to worry about right now,” Pru cut in. “We need to find her first.”
“And stop whatever Sellers is doing,” Ty agreed. “But at some point, someone will need to step in and pick up the reins so the river doesn’t remain unguarded. It’s too powerful…and too vulnerable…to trust that fate will protect it.”
“Okay, fine,” Caleb said. The first order of business was to find Delia. After that, well, they’d figure it out as they went.
“We should go back to the hotel,” Prudence said. “I want to look at this map next to a modern one to see if these stars make any sense.”
Considering they didn’t have any other real plans of action, her suggestion appeared to be the best thing to do for now. Ty guided them out of the chamber with its four guardian witch’s knots, along the narrow corridor that connected it to the basement at Alba Sanchez’s home, and eventually back upstairs.
They locked the back door behind them and got in Caleb’s Range Rover. The drive over to Harrah’s didn’t take very long, less than ten minutes, and they made a quick detour into the gift shop to see if they could find any maps.
Luckily, the shop had both guidebooks with maps and even the old foldout kind — “great for when your nav craps out on you,” the clerk helpfully said — so once the three of them were back in their suite, it was a simple enough task to get out the hand-drawn map Ty had found in the hidden chamber and lay it out on the table in the dining area next to the one they’d just bought.
The twists and turns of the river were easy enough to follow, so it didn’t take too much work for them to line up the maps and take note of the correspondences.
“There’s one right up by the dam,” Pru said, a slender finger tipped with chipped green nail polish tracing the line of the Colorado River. “And another at the park.”
“Both power spots,” Ty responded, his expression thoughtful. “I think whoever made this map was calling out the places where their protective spells would be the most powerful.”
“And another on the Arizona side of the river where there’s that little carve-out with the island,” Caleb added.
Pru leaned over the maps, dark eyes intent as they scanned the two side-by-side documents. “And a big one right beneath the Aquarius Hotel.”
No wonder Caleb had felt buzzy and strange when he’d entered the place. At the time, he’d simply thought it was the power of the river acting on him, but now he knew it must have been something much more than that.
“With the final one down at Big Bend State Park,” Ty finished.
Pru straightened and pushed a lock of dark emerald hair away from her face. “Great, so we know that these are power spots, and we know where they’re located. What are we supposed to do with any of this?”
A very good question. Although Caleb knew he had a particular set of gifts — and understood that Ty probably possessed many more, even if he hadn’t yet revealed all of them — none of this was going to help them locate Delia.
Unless, he supposed, they went to one of those “power spots” and somehow used its energy for a form of divination. He hoped Ty knew how to do something like that, because he sure as hell didn’t.
Even as the half angel opened his mouth to reply, Caleb instead heard Delia’s voice.
Caleb, I’m being held beneath one of the towers of the Aquarius hotel.
Immediately, he responded, Delia, are you all right?
No answer. Somehow, he got the impression that she’d used every reserve of energy she had to get out that one blast of thought.
It had been enough, though.
He looked over at Pru and Ty, both of whom were staring at him, their expressions mirroring a sort of identical concern that might have been almost humorous if the situation hadn’t been so dire.
“I know where Delia is,” he said.
