“I guess,” she muttered under her breath.
Simone stepped into the clearing, dressed in joggers and a sweatshirt. “Nothing unusual in my area.”
Noting our body language, she stopped. “Everything okay here?”
“It’s fine. Evie likes to ask a lot of questions.”
I rolled my eyes and came to standing. “Thalia is like a cactus. One of those inedible ones that has no use other than to poke you and piss you off.”
“Hey!” She picked up a stick and threw it at me.
Simone grinned and plopped onto the ground beside the seer. “I’ll take over babysitting. I heard Garrett howling, so he must have found something.”
I waved and took off through the woods.
My land pulsed with harmony,even through the cold weather. As I ran, I touched leaves and limbs, my feet squishing through damp leaves and loam.
Caelan met me when I was almost there, stepping into my path, his eyes glowing.
Shit. That was never good. I slowed down and approached. “What happened?”
He held out his hand. “You’ll want to see it for yourself.”
Caelan tugged me through a dense area of trees and brush, holding up limbs to allow me to duck through. When I reached Garrett, he was in human form, holding a flashlight in his teeth and flipping through a small, damaged notebook.
He looked up at me, his expression somber. Without a word, he stood and handed me the flashlight and notebook. Garrett never voluntarily touched me, but he placed a hand on my shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
I glanced back at Caelan who watched me with an unnerving intensity. “What is it?”
“Gianna’s blood was on the notebook. I can only assume she was still alive when they carried her in and she either dropped this on purpose, or it fell out of her pocket. Nadia must not have realized what Gianna had until it was too late.”
“I don’t understand why a notebook would make you two look like my life is over.” I didn’t know Gianna before Caelan, and I had only seen her a few times before a Chimera took over and tried to marry him to wrest power of his region away and putit under Chimera control. What could she have written in this tiny thing to make Caelan look at me like this?
“Just…” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Take a look, please.”
I found an open spot and sat cross-legged on the cold ground, my hands trembling as I opened the bloodstained cover. The feeling of holding belongings from someone whose existence had been so thoroughly erased as if she’d never existed made something clench tight inside me. The first page had bloody fingerprints smeared down the cream color of the paper. Several pages had been torn out, half the contents gone as if someone had done so in a hurry. My heart sped up as I flipped to the first legible page.
There is evidence there is still one left—a male, somewhere in Europe. He is elusive and rarely seen, and when we get close, he disappears as if he’d never been there. It’s maddening.
We need to open discourse if we hope to save our kind.
Frowning, I looked up at Garrett and Caelan, still not understanding what was going on. Swallowing hard, I bent my head to keep reading.
Odd power pulses are being reported all over Europe which leads us to hope there may be more than one still operating. We still can’t find the male. He might be onto us. If so, hope dwindles for a conversation. Their kind are known to respond with violence first and are not known for peaceable relations with any other form of paranormal.
A horrible feeling began to churn in my gut.
One of our shifters spotted him in a bar with a dark-haired woman. Human, possibly. Though he seems quite taken with her.
My fingers shook. I tried to turn the page a few times before my fingers cooperated.
We lost him. Again. He knows we’re following him.
The next entry had a date coinciding with the time I was in Scotland. Hot, angry tears pricked the backs of my eyes.
We tracked him to a field. There are signs of a struggle and blood that is decidedly not human. No signs of a body, though it’s doubtful the woman with him survived such a horrific attack.
“Gods,” I whispered.
