I wanted to stop this car and wrap my arms around her. Tell her everything was going to be alright. Anything to keep the sadness off her face.
Unfortunately, all I could do was get us to the club as quickly as possible. The sooner we handled this, the safer she would be. Even if she had one friend less by the end of it all.
“Park over there,” Julian pointed when the club came into view. “We don’t know what cameras they might have outside.”
I pulled the car over near a gas station a couple of blocks down. Before I even had the car in park, Kyren appeared at my window in a swirl of shadows.
“It’s quiet,” he explained. “I sent a shadow in after the wolf. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but that vampire you snatched you before was there, and they clearly were making some kind of plans.”
Kyren paused and looked at Jack. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Jack licked her lips and nodded. “Yeah, Iris or no Iris, these people have tried to use me to get to my family for the last time.”
“Now, can you call in the calvary?” I asked Julian. “That vampire—”
“Hamish,” Jack supplied.
“Yeah, Hamish,” I twisted my lips at the name, then continued, “already tried to kill Jack once. I think that’s probably cause enough for the Guild to get involved, don’t you?”
“Not usually.”
I opened my mouth to protest when Julian smirked, lifting his phone to his ear.
“But this is the president’s goddaughter we’re talking about.”
“Fawley,” a deep older voice answered the phone, “progress report.”
“It’s what we thought, sir. The vampire, Hamish, is the leader of the rebels. From what we can tell, he’s been using students to infiltrate the school and gather more followers and probably worse.”
“Ah, Hamish Jones. I know him. Nasty fellow,” the president, at least I assumed that’s who it was, replied. “Been trying to pin him down for ages. You’re saying this is the guy who attacked our girl?”
If I didn’t know that the president was Jack’s godfather, I might have tensed at his reference toour girl. But this wasn’t the time to get all possessive and alpha male on someone that was helping us.
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright then, we’ll be there in twenty.” The voice paused for a few moments. “Try to keep Jack out of it, Fawley.”
Julian met Jack’s gaze and snorted. “Little late for that.”
The president sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
The phone hung up a moment later, and we all looked at one another. Then the waiting began.
As the minutes ticked by, the tension in the car grew exponentially. Kyren had gone back to his hiding spot while we waited for back up, but it wasn’t him I was worried about.
Jack’s leg shook. She chewed on her nails, glancing out the window every few seconds to the club.
“Maybe you should text Xinyi?” I offered, trying to distract her.
“Don’t do that,” Julian interjected, poking his head between the seats. “Until we know for sure, we have to assume Xinyi knows about Iris’s involvement. For all we know, Xinyi is part of it.”
Jack wrapped her fingers tightly around her phone. “I can’t imagine she would know about this, but then again, I didn’t think Iris could do this.” She stared down at her phone and sighed. “No, if I message her then she might suspect something. I don’t want to ruin this chance because I’m impatient.”
“Good girl.” Julian patted her shoulder.
Jack rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t start.”
A long ten minutes later, a black van pulled up to the gas station next to us. We climbed out my car and came up to the van, the side door slid open and revealed an older man with wide shoulders. His eyes moved over the three of us with a level of professional assessment.
