Page 67 of Remnants
“Glad we have your blessing, big brother,” Kellan chortles, and I chuck a pillow at him.
“We got off track,” Aiden says while returning to his seat. “Can you help us with GE locations? Maybe the homes or offices of the GE Board members?”
Reid shakes his head. “I went to the few recent ones I knew of to find Tins. They’ll be shut down by now. GE rents spaces for a month at a time, then picks up and moves somewhere else if they feel their location has been compromised or if it’s been ninety days. The islands are the only constant, but there are so many of them, and I don’t know which ones GE owns or uses.”
“What about Charles’s office, where he brought Dane and me?”
“Already gone. I’d tried there first. As soon as we rescued you, I’m sure he had his things moved by the end of the day.”
Aiden rubs his hand over the five o’clock shadow on his jaw and sighs. “Any other offices of his that you know of?”
“Aside from the ones I’d just tried, I haven’t been around him in months. I have no idea where the others are. They could be anywhere in the country. He just teleports to the next one. As for the Board, they always come to him, not the other way around. So, I don’t know that, either. I’m sorry, but when I told you before I don’t really have any locations to give you, I was telling the truth.”
“I’ll have you mark all the previously known offices of his or GE, then, and see what we can get from that. Maybe we’ll find a trend in the building or location that can lead us to potential sites,” Aiden says, leaning into the small backrest of the folding chair. “Is he theone who injured you like that?”
Reid’s lips tighten. “No. I never found him or Tinsley.”
“Then who?”
“Royce and his puppets.”
The memory of what it felt like to be under his control sends a cold shiver through me.
Aiden tugs his jacket free from under Jack and wraps it around my shoulders. “Here.”
“I’m not actually cold,” I murmur, even though my hands grasp the lapels and pull it tighter. His cinnamon body wash surrounds me, cocooning me in that safety like an invisible ward.
“I know,” he practically purrs under his breath before he slowly withdraws to his seat.
A light burn creeps up my neck, and I bite my inner cheek to force myself under control.
“What can you tell us about Royce? He seems like a big player we’ll need to address before Charles,” Aiden continues the conversation as if there’d been no interruption.
Reid’s gaze jumps between us before finally sticking to Aiden when he answers. “He’s loyal to Charles. Would do anything he asked of him, just for a word of praise. And, unfortunately, GE has amassed a stockpile of dead people for him to…play with.”
Kellan straightens. “So, wait. When I joked about a zombie army before…”
“He has one.”
Aiden leans over his thighs, his dark brown eyes focused intently on Reid. “How does his gift work? What are his limits?”
“No one talked about it in detail, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. It’s just based on what I’ve seen first-hand or overheard.” He waits for Aiden’s nod of understanding before he continues, “He can control souls to varying degrees based on whether they’ve been detached from their body at some point. For anyone alive, he can only manipulate a couple at a time, and he can’t do it remotely. He has to be nearby. For anyone who’s died, he can summon their soul back to their body, and then he has full control over them.”
“By full control, do you mean their mind too? What they say?” Dane asks slowly, his fidgeting hands in his hoodie pocket giving away his uneasiness.
Reid frowns, considering. “I don’t think he can make them say anything. Mostly, he keeps their mouths closed and manipulates their bodies. Especially the older souls, who’ve either lost their minds or gifts already.”
“And the newer ones?” Aiden questions.
“If he gets the soul within twenty-four to forty-eight hours of leaving the body, then they’ll be almost like new. They’ll maintain their gift and their minds.”
“Thorne died a few times. He looked like shit each time he came back,” I comment, my nose scrunching in disgust at how he’d looked when Gordon had me. “It was why he wanted a new body. But Royce said something about using other souls to…freshen him up.”
Reid nods. “The body can only be healed so many times after death. And the soul can’t keep being stuffed into bodies before it also degrades. Usually, the mind goes first, followed by the gift. But hecan do something with combining souls that reverses some of that, though it can mess with the original soul’s mind and gift.”
“I thought you didn’t know much about it,” Kellan drawls. “Sounds like you know a hell of a lot.”
My half-brother’s gaze cuts to him. “I’m observant. And he hangs around Charles pretty often.”
