14
The video call glitched again,freezing Ivan’s face into a pixelated grimace. I dug my nails into the truck’s upholstery, resisting the urge to hurl the phone. He was safe. He was alive. Why did my skin still crawl with the certainty he’d been in that building?
“Backup’s coming,” Bobby murmured to Angel. “From this side.”
We were down a truck. Either the NHV team had missed a few gnomes getting into the motor, or someone had sabotaged it. It wouldn’t start, and everyone piled into ours seeking shelter, equipment, and food.
Angel’s gaze swept over our scattered team. All of us hollow-eyed and twitchy. All missing hours we couldn’t account for. At first, I thought the problem had been all me again. But the entire team had been overcome by something, losing hours while none of them remembered more than vague dreaming. NHVs and HVs alike, all lost in some sort of trance.
All except me.
I sighed, hating the choppy video but happy to see that Ivan was alive, well, and protected in the borrowed apartment. In fact, someone had picked up Grandpa.
“Signal’s shit here,” I muttered as the call reconnected, showing Ivan sprawled across Xavier’s absurdly overpriced couch. Behind him, Grandpa waved enthusiastically.
“The lights, my boy. Looks like a city! Are you near the city?” Grandpa’s voice crackled through the speakers.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Please don’t go outside without backup.”
“We’re fine,” Ivan added. “Sy and Kea are here.”
“You’re on a nickname basis with the murder twins?”
Ivan snorted. “Why do you call them that?”
“Their vibe. Isn’t your generation all about vibes?”
“My vibe says you’re in over your head.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I’m fine. I’ll be home in a few days. You need to be home and safe. Are you keeping up with your school work?”
“Yes,” Ivan snapped at me. “Xavier has been bugging me about it too. Stands in the doorway behind the murder twins and asks twenty questions. I’m fine. We’re fine. Even Peanut Butter.” He lifted the orange cat off the floor and into his lap.
“Good. I’ll try to worry less.”
“You’re the one facing otherworldly beings,” Ivan said. He waved his hands around. “This feels more like a vacation.” Not home. Was the last my wishful thinking? “Try not to get hurt.”
I said nothing about my aching wrist and the stinging marks lingering on my neck. “I’ll do my best.”
“Try harder.”
I swallowed back my worry and ended the call. Angel added another sandwich to my plate, but I pushed it away, too nauseous to eat.
“You need the food.”
“If I eat anything, I’m going to hurl.”
Angel sighed and dug through the cooler as though looking for something else to tempt me. But all our cake was mysteriously missing. Fae dragon thief, or had we eaten it all?
“How about some electrolytes?” Wade offered, holding out an icy bottle of clear liquid to me. At least it wasn’t one of those neon things. “Sometimes after a shift I get really queasy and the minerals help.”
I took the bottle from him with my good hand. Angel twisted off the lid and accepted another from Wade for himself. I took a sip and let it soothe my parched throat. My neck throbbed with each swallow, the marks dark and bruised, like someone had really tried to kill me.
“The wrist looks bruised, a little twisted, maybe,” Tiana said, using a scanner to check over the bone. “No breaks.”
They thought I’d caused it while thrashing from the nightmare-turned-seizure. I knew the truth. It hadn’t all been a dream. My Taser was missing. Lost somewhere in Brandon’s secret observation closet, I was certain. And no one could explain where it went. And a seizure didn’t explain the damage to my neck. Had I somehow choked myself?
“One more time,” Victor prodded from a chair nearby. He had a computer open to both record me and type notes as he went.
