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Victor nodded.

“We think it’s some sort of third-party variance or practitioner spell placed on the vehicles,” Remi said. “But damned if I can pinpoint it to counteract it. We’ve been able to store some of our data on a private drive that’s hacker-proofed thanks to B. But we’re still being cautious.”

Wade scrolled through whatever files he’d been sent on his phone.

The motes swirled around me. Restless. Impatient.

Yeah, I thought. Same.

Remi squinted. Could he see them?

Wade looked up, eyes wide. “There are dozens of missing kids from that facility. And it’s being covered up.”

“That sort of thing should be national news,” Victor said.

Wade nodded. The motes surged around me, a wild pulse of something I strained to read. Angry? They swirled like a dark tide, pressing against the walls, the ceiling, the edges of my vision. For a moment, I saw them differently.

As witnesses.

I looked at Ivan. At the kid who’d been almost sent away. At the kid who’d been almost erased before he even had a chance to become something more.

Dozens of missing kids. Covered up.

Ivan could have been one of them. Hell, I could have been whittled down to one of those floating dots of almost nothing. Fed to a growing monster in the dark. A monster who ate children handed over by parents hoping to mold their kids into something that reflected a zombie rather than a person.

And somewhere out there, my father was still missing. Still connected to this nightmare.

32

JUDE

Bobby and Tiana arrived, and the planning began in earnest.

Grandpa hugged me fiercely before we could start—tight, desperate, the kind of hug that said he didn’t want me involved but knew he couldn’t save any of us from more pain. He blamed himself, muttered something about messing up with Adrian somewhere along the way. I let him have that, even if I knew the fault ran deeper than any one person.

Wade took him and Nikki across the hall to rest. The team needed space to work, and Grandpa had already carried enough weight for one lifetime.

I’d have liked to exclude Ivan from the planning. I really would have. But he was as much a part of this as I was. Teenager or not, he had power that supernatural beings and humans alike would want to use, or destroy. And his seer’s eyes had already seen more than most people ever would.

He deserved to know what we were walking into.

Even if I hated that he had to.

A knock cut through the noise. Sharp. Insistent. The kind of knock that expected to be answered now.

“It’s Xavier,” Ivan said, sounding resigned.

Right. That.

The little secret that Xavier and Ivan were fated mates made me want to beat the demigod’s face for approximately a dozen different reasons. He was ancient. My brother was a teenager. And Xavier planned to just... ignore the bond. Pretend it didn’t exist.

I reached for the door and flung it open, displaying bravado I didn’t have since the guy was six foot eight and had two super powerful kitsunes who acted as his murder minions at his side. Xavier stood on the threshold, looking less like a composed demigod and more like someone who’d been running on panic and no sleep for days. His eyes found Ivan immediately. Locked on. Devoured him with relief he was clearly trying to hide.

Then his gaze found me, and shock crossed his expression.

Right. I was supposed to be dead.

“Angel told you Ivan was fine,” I said before he could speak.