Cash was safe, for now, but that didn’t mean much now that we were separated.
“What direction?” I heard the driver shout.
“Head East,” Mike told them, his gaze dropping to me. “Well, my darling, it’s time for you to sleep. This should feel pretty familiar.”
His fist connected with the side of my head, sending it ricocheting into the metal floor of the van.
Then everything went black.
Twenty-Four
“Run!” I shouted as my stone sleep melted away from my body, giving me full use of my body again.
The sunlight above blinded me as I tried to regain my bearings of where I was.
I was still in the parking lot in front of the Wharf, but it had been completely cleared out and taped off with yellow caution tape.
The sun was high overhead which was odd, because when the stone sleep overtook me, it had been completely dark.
Immediately, I began to pat at my chest for the crossbow bolt that had been lodged there. Most likely it had disintegrated with the healing magic of the stone sleep. They must have used a fucking diamond tipped bolt in order for it to penetrate my skin, which meant that the men that had surrounded me and Daphne had been well-trained.
“Cash?” A female voice came from behind me.
“Daphne!” I turned with a roar, looking for my mate, but only found Effie standing by herself.
She looked exhausted, all of the light in her green eyes that I’d seen last night was completely gone now.
“Where is she?” I asked, my legs nearly buckling underneath me. “And how long was I out for?”
“About twelve hours. Farrow called the police and they called us,” she said, answering my first question.
“And Daphne?” I needed her to be okay. I could tell she wasn’t close, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t just at the shop waiting for me to wake up.
Effie nibbled on her lower lip and shook her head. “They took her before Farrow could stop them.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, the world around me wobbling as I tried to calm my inner panic. Leaning down I put my hands on my knees and pulled in another lungful of air before shouting, “Fuck!”
“We’ll get her back,” Effie reassured me, placing a hand on my back. “Besides, she’s not alone.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked with confusion.
Effie jerked her head in the direction of the Wharf. “Come with me, everyone is busy at the shop, I only left because my magic sensor was tripped when you woke up.”
We hurried through the crowd of people who seemed to all be staring at me as we passed. I sure hoped they considered themselves lucky to have seen my stone form because gargoyles rarely showed it to anyone outside of their clans. It didn’t matter though, I didn’t care how many people saw me if it meant I could get Daphne back safely. I’d stone sleep in front of a million fucking people if that was what it took.
The waiting room at Monstrous Ink was buzzing with people when we walked in. There were several police officers, both monster and human, huddled in circles where they spoke quietly to one another. They were probably busy trying to decide who took point in this kidnapping.
“There you are,” Dallan said from behind the desk. “It’s about time your ass woke up.”
He was kidding, but whatever he saw on my face made the Cthulhu rethink his next words. “Sorry, bad joke. Come on and see what we’ve got so far.”
“We’ve been trying to track Daphne’s location for the past few hours, it took me a bit to get all of the ingredients for the spell,” Effie explained, her expression odd as she led us up the stairs to her apartment.
“If you’re trying to do a tracking spell, why were you the one to come and pick me up?” I asked once we made it to the top of the landing.
“Because she’s not the one casting the spell,” a voice I hadn’t heard in nearly a decade said from inside of Effie’s apartment.
The man standing over a map on the kitchen table looked a lot like Effie. They both had similarly sharp facial features, with high cheekbones and slender noses, but instead of Effie’s green coloring that she’d gotten from her tree nymph mother, the man had a head full of dark hair that was slicked back away from his face.
