My angry gaze flitted to Chaos. “There has to be some way. A hint about where she ran off to. Something from a conversation, or hell, I dunno, a text message.” I pulled at my hair so hard a few strands came out.
“She took her phone with her.”
My glare was now aimed at Malice. “Don’t you have your fancy spyware or whatever? Can’t you ping her location evenwith the grid being down? You’re the tech wizard here. Do some wizard shit.”
“With what computer, Sin? What satellite? They’ve crashed into the ocean. Even if everything weren’t dead, the internet may as well be a thing of the past. Those avenues of investigation are closed to us.”
Frustration burned through me. I hated being so helpless. Merri was out there with God knew what chasing her down, and all I could do was sit here and stew. No way. That was not acceptable. “We don’t know how to find her, so we just do nothing? That’s fucking ridiculous!”
“What do you suggest, Sin? That we roam the city streets and call her name like she’s a lost cat?” Chaos asked.
“Maybe. It would be better than just waiting for the world to end.”
No one responded, and all I could do was sigh and flop back in my chair, staring up at the ornate ceiling of the billiards room.
“If we had another witch, we could try a locator spell,” I grumbled after a minute.
“And where are we going to find one of those? The supermarket? The yellow pages? We’re as likely to find a needle in a haystack,” Malice drawled.
“A needle would be easier.”
I shot a scathing look at Grim. He wasn’t helping either. “There have to be some covens around who can help.”
“Where?” Malice demanded, throwing his hands up. “Anyone sane has gone to ground. We don’t exactly have a well-established network to rely on for access to information. So how do we suss out someone who doesn’t want to be found?”
He could have been talking about Merri or the witches.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a lot of experience with people wanting to have nothing to do with me. UsuallyIhave to pushthemaway.”
“Fucking incubi,” Chaos said under his breath.
“You’re just jealous.”
“I’m really not.”
“Stop fighting or I’ll send you to your room,” Grim snarled, fed up with all the bickering.
Frankly, so was I. I was crawling out of my damn skin just sitting around waiting for an answer to fall into our laps. And watching everyone around me sink further into their own personal pity parties wasn’t helping.
“Great idea. That sounds a lot more productive than staying here in this room looking at you three. At least there I can take a fucking nap.”
Without waiting for anyone to acknowledge me, I stormed out of the room and beelined for the stairs. Moving felt good; it gave my body something to do. A way to channel the excess energy pounding through my veins.
“Stop fighting or I’ll send you to your room,” I muttered, adopting a pretentious British accent for the full effect. “Fucking Grim. Who does he think he is, my dad? I’ll go to my room, but not because you suggested it.”
Did I sound like a petulant teenager? Sure. But it was warranted. Didn’t they miss her like I did? Weren’t they sick with worry over our girl being out there alone? Every second that passed was one more opportunity for Lucifer to get his hands on her.
“Fuck.”
Almost of their own accord, my steps slowed as I neared Merri’s door. Without talking about it, the four of us all sort of decided to leave her room alone, like it was some sort of weird fucking shrine. As if keeping the door closed would somehow make her disappearance less obvious. Well, fuck that. It wasn’t working anyway.
I turned the knob and stood on the threshold, my heart aching as I breathed in her lingering scent. It was already fading, and that fucking hurt.
She’d left her bed unmade, the pillow still dented where she’d lain. Exactly as it had been when I first discovered she wasn’t there.
“Dammit, kitten, why didn’t you just give us time to get our heads right?” I whispered as I moved deeper into her space. “Did you leave any clues for me? Anything that might help me get to you?”
I wandered over to the bed, just wanting to be close to something that she’d touched. I ran my fingers over the cool linens, a heavy sigh escaping me as I did. Even though I knew better, that Merri wasn’t magically going to waltz into the room or just appear beside me, I climbed into her bed and pulled her pillow into my arms, squeezing my eyes shut and breathing in as much ofheras I could.
