“You did,” John echoes. To Hiram, he asks, “When?”
“It’s been a few days.” Hiram adjusts as Antaris leans heavily against him, staring at the phone. “He has Sight. He’s had it since Grace ... They think the stress of it manifesting early is why he stopped speaking.”
“I should have known.”
“I thought the same thing,” Hiram admits. “I missed a lot of signs, but that’s okay. We’re working with him now.”
“Oh, you’re not—”
“Going to take it from him? Never.”
“Good, good.” John pauses and asks, “Is he still there?”
“Yes.”
“Antaris ... your mom is so proud of you.”
The boy clutches Hiram a little tighter, a little longer, even after the call ends. He wanders off to find Veda outside watering the herb garden.
Their tender little bubble of happiness bursts when Hiram’s phone rings again.
“Hiram, there’s been an incident ...”
The hotel is on the edge of town. FCD investigators swarm the grounds, reporters are on-site, and the only reason Hiram isn’t turned away by a spell-happy enforcer, who looks fresh out of the academy, is Francisco calling him through.
“I thought you were in Portland,” Hiram says.
“I was, but Marlene said I needed to come back and get that bitch, so here I am.”
Hiram feels the same way.
Investigators part for them like the sea, granting them a narrow path to the shit show. Reporters close in at once, flinging questions he doesn’t hear, though the sheer volume of them confirms it’s bad.
Hiram starts mentally preparing—for what, he’s not sure. It doesn’t matter. Nothing could have prepared him for the scene.
For one harsh second, Hiram thinks his father is splayed across the driveway like a ritual sacrifice. But the details—the clothes, the shoes, the lack of a watch—hold his grief at bay. That, and the spider lilies pushing through the cracks in the concrete. He hasn’t seen his uncle Phillip since childhood, but his mother used to say how much he resembled Barrett.
“Ariadne got to her father,” Francisco explains.
“Why is hehere?”
“From what I’ve gathered, in my absence and with Gabriel on desk duty, our superiors found your uncle and brought him in to put him under protection. Somehow, she found him. They’re interviewing everyone who knew his location—”
“And the magic,” Hiram murmurs, staring. “I’ve never smelled anything like it.”
“The scene analysts believe she performed Sight Unseen again. But this time she didn’t bother to cover it up with a wasting curse or conceal her Imprint.” One grim thought ricochets in Hiram’s mind as the medics carefully cover the body in preservation sheets.
Ariadne has only one option left to get her Sight back. And she’s waiting at Hiram’s house.
“We need to call Gabriel.”
They get back in Hiram’s car to make the call, filling Gabriel in on what’s going on. Dread settles in the depths of Hiram’s stomach. There’s no telling if Ariadne learned something while she posed as Marlene, Seren, Everett, or even Veda and held on to it for the right moment. “We need a way to get ahead of her.”
“Let’s meet at your house. I have an idea.”
Francisco groans. “The last time you had an idea, I ended up waist-deep in shit searching for smuggled deactivated amulets.”
“I was right, though! They were there, just somewhere else on the farm,” Gabriel says.
