When Donovan twists around in the front seat to face me, his eyes are wide with genuine confusion. “Max, I’m telling you, I was unconscious. I woke up in the catering kitchen with a concussion and a face full of floor tile. I. Wasn't. With. Her. Icouldn'thave been.”
“Then explain what I saw!”
Why the fuck is he lying?
“I wasn't there!” Donovan yells back, his voice cracking with a mix of frustration and fear. “Do you think I’d lie about this? If I had her, she’d be here.”
The car goes dead silent for a beat.
“Was it Wes?” Cosmo’s voice cuts through all the crackling testosterone.
“I know you all hate my brother these days, but he can’t get the blame for this. He’s locked in the fucking penthouse with Ludo as guard dog,” Donovan snaps back. “You were probably spelled, Wes. Mind-twisted or something, because it wasn’t me, alright?”
Before anyone can reply, Cosmo’s phone starts screaming on the console.
He stabs the button, and the voice of Theo’s friend Willow fills the car. “Hello? Er, is that Cosmo? Hello?”
“Bloomhower, about fucking time,” Cosmo growls. “I’ve been calling you for the last hour. When did you last see Theodora?”
“Wha? Theo? What do you mean? At the Ball of course…shit. Is everything alright?”
“Obviously not. We can’t find her.”
We hear rustling noises. “OK, I’m going to Defectivum now. I’ll check her room. Is she not answering her phone? Shit, of course not, or you wouldn’t be calling me.”
“What’s going on, babe?” a sleepy voice asks in the background.
“I’ll call you back in a minute,” Willow says, hanging up.
“I don’t understand why you’re insisting Donovan was with her,” Alexis says to me. “Can you try explaining, but calmly and rationally?”
Douche. What is there to explain?
“I was carrying Cosmo’s sister, Sparkles was with me,” I tell Lex, as calmly as I fucking can. “That’s when she saw Donovan. Theo went to him, and I took the sister out. I didn’t have a choice, at that point the kid had stopped breathing. I don’t know how long I did CPR, but eventually we were both bundled into an ambulance. Ended up at the hospital, fell asleep in the waiting room after they said baby Drakeward was going to be OK.” I look around the vehicle at each of three men. “End of my story. Now start spilling yours, starting with you, Donovan Hart. Fuck, I trusted you to keep her safe.”
He growls. “I truly don’t know what you’re talking about, Larsen. I guess I got pulled out of the ballroom early with the others who were injured. When I came around, I was in the catering kitchen with the other bleeding witches. Obviously, I went straight back to find Tee-Tee, but everything was dying down by then.”
This makes absolutely no sense.
“That’s when I ran into Alexis,” he adds.
Lexi takes over the story. “I’d taken Willow, Naomi, and a bunch of other kids back to the academy; then went straight back to the Ball.”
Hmm. “And you, Cosmo?”
“Jordan,” he says heavily. “She wouldn’t leave my side until I finally got her in a limo with some of her friends. After that, my father summoned me. I couldn’t exactly refuse.”
Pussy. “Why the fuck not? Theo is way more important than your cunt of a father.”
“Because, if you take a moment to think, you’ll remember I’m supposed to be completely under the power of dark energy.”
The look on his face is pure despair, but I have little sympathy for him right now.
Gods damn it all.
The phone rings again.
“She’s not in her room,” Willow says through gasps of breath. She must have run all the way there. We hear a banging in the background.
