His face broke.
Relief. Shock. Then fear, fast on its heels.
He started toward me, dragging my mom with him.
Twobble saw me next.
His eyes went huge.
“Maeve!” he squeaked, voice cracking. “You’re alive! I mean, of course you are, I knew you would be, we had aplan, except then everything went very explodey and your broom threw a hissy fit and—”
He skidded to a stop when he saw Gideon, still hunched on his knees next to me.
His mouth snapped shut.
Skonk made a small, distressed sound and stepped half in front of Twobble, like he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to protect or attack.
Ardetia’s brows drew together, her gaze flicking from Gideon’s chain-burned wrists to my face.
Nova’s eyes narrowed, weighing a hundred factors I couldn’t see and cataloguing them all.
Limora’s grip on her cane tightened by a fraction.
The Silver Wolf’s ears flattened.
None of that hit as hard as the one simple, undeniable absence.
I scanned their faces again, as if I’d somehow missed him.
And Stella.
No Keegan’s half-shifted form standing beside my dad. No tall, too-broad shoulders in the fog. No familiar, unhelpfully handsome glower.
No elderly vampire serving tea.
“Where…” My voice came out paper-thin.
I swallowed, tried again.
“Where is he?” I asked, hearing the crack in my own words.
No one answered.
Not immediately.
My mom’s eyes darted to my dad’s.
His jaw flexed.
Nova looked down, briefly, then back up, her gaze sharp and assessing on me, like she was mentally calculating how much I could take before I broke.
The Silver Wolf whined, a low, pained sound, her gaze shifting away, toward the heart of the square.
Something inside my chest twisted.
“Where is Keegan?” I asked again, louder, the question scraping my throat raw.
The fog seemed to press closer, listening.
