I glanced at the spot he was pointing at. Besides the running clock were the words: Meeder, Germany. “Is that a town?” I asked.
“Hang on, I think so, but let me check,” Luis said, pulling up another window and doing a search. A moment later, Luis laughed and pointed at the screen. “It is. It’s a little town in the middle of nowhere.”
Sinthy leaned in, looking at the screen. “I need an exact location. Once I know the building, I can figure out where in the structure Gabriella is being held. I can divine her location.”
Luis pulled up a map program and zoomed in, slowly scrolling across the town. There were several large buildings andbusinesses, but nothing looked big enough for the massive lab we saw on the video feeds.
Tiago nudged Luis. “Zoom out a bit. I doubt they’ll have this place in the middle of town. I bet it’s on the outskirts.”
Luis did as he asked and found a massive building on the edge of some farmland on the outskirts of the town. “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Luis murmured.
Clicking on the address, he did a search and pulled up what the building was supposed to be. The name popped up on the screen, and I chuckled. Those cocky assholes.
“Royal Time Seed Lab,” Luis read. “Internet says it’s supposed to be like a Monsanto kinda thing. Breeding specialty crop seeds for commercial farmers. I seriously doubt that. Let me cross-reference this with my research on the royals’ holdings.” A few clicks later, Luis grinned to himself. “Yup, they own this place. This has to be it, guys.”
“Okay,” Sinthy said. Bring the video of Maddy’s mother back up. I need to watch her and form a connection. I don’t want to teleport into that place and be on the wrong end of the building or something.”
Luis did as she asked, and Sinthy leaned in close, staring at Gabriella. The rest of us sat there, trying to be quiet, even though we had no idea what she was doing. Sinthy’s breathing slowed, and I had the strange feeling she was trying to match her breathing to that of Gabriella in the video. Suddenly, the young woman’s eyes changed. Instead of the beautiful green they’d been an instant before, a cloudy film seemed to cover them. The eyes were completely gray, like two stones pulled from a river. Then without warning, she blinked and stood back up. Her eyes, once again, were their normal color. She nodded to herself. “Okay, got it. I should be able to get us at least on the same floor, possibly outside the door, but this isn’t an exact science.”
“Okay, I’m ready,” Nico said.
I grabbed his shirt and yanked him over to me. I kissed him hard. After a few seconds, he pulled away to catch his breath. “Easy. I promise I’ll be back. Don’t worry about us. Whatever Viola did to her, we’ll fix it.”
99
NICO
My stomach was doing backflips. I was about to teleport for the third time in a day. Sinthy didn’t seem worried, but I couldn’t shake the internal fear that human and shifter bodies weren’t designed for this. Luis was working on pulling up a live feed of the facility to see if we were successful, but he was having no luck.
He sighed. “Best I can do is this five-minute delay. That software isn’t able to crack that last firewall.”
“Not a problem,” Sinthy said. “You won’t be able to see us anyway.”
That sounded foreboding. “Huh?” I asked.
“I’m going to cast a cloaking spell on us before we teleport. It’s something my mother developed a couple of decades ago when security cameras started becoming more prolific. It cloaks us from all electronic monitoring. You won’t be able to see us in the cameras. That also means whatever security team monitoring them in the building won’t either.”
“Well, holy shit,” Tiago muttered.
“Um, is that gonna hurt or anything?” I asked. Teleporting was uncomfortable, and the idea of more spells being cast over me was a little disconcerting.
“You may feel a little tingle, like static electricity running over your body. The spell only lasts about ten minutes. After that, it’ll dissipate, and you won’t know anything happened.”
Luis walked over to a printer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here,” he said, handing the printout to me.
“What’s this?”
“Blueprints. Basically a map. I found them on an old municipal server for that region. It’s from when it was built about twenty years ago, but it should be accurate. In case you guys don’t end up right where you want to be, I circled the area that looks like where Gabriella is being held. You can find your way if you get into a snag.”
“No faith in the witch?” Sinthy asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
Luis rolled his eyes. “I have faith, but like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared.”
Sinthy tilted her head to the side. “Fair enough.”
Sinthy and I stepped away from everyone. Maddy released my hand at the last moment. I wished I could take her with us, but it really was too dangerous. Sinthy draped an arm over my shoulder and started murmuring to herself. After a few seconds, I felt a weird tingle going across my skin. The cloaking spell must have been complete. Sinthy took my hand. “Ready?”
“I think?—”
