Page 6 of Scarlet Wars
“She went to visit her parents two weeks after the Great Exposure. Jackson and I portaled out around the same time to Argentina to destroy their LiaPrism, and then the bubble happened.”
Cyclos’s new Leader was breathing heavy. “I’ve been trying to find her from here ever since, but walking into that hellhole without our powers wouldn’t have helped anyone! Not you, not my Collective, definitely not her.”
I bared my teeth, rage still simmering like molten steel. “So you just left her there by herself? While magi all around theworld are being tortured in human labs? Do you even know what’s happening out there?”
James’s expression flashed with anger. “Don’t you dare act like I don’t. And she’s not ‘by herself.’ She’s with her parents, and she’s smart enough to lay low until I can reach her.”
“You don’t know that, James.” I stepped in, until Rachel moved to block me, her hand still clamped around my arm. “You don’t fucking know that. When’s the last time you even heard from her?”
He stilled for a second, before a muscle in his jaw jumped.
Don’t kill him. Control yourself. Control is survival.
But the longer he hesitated, the harder it became to keep myself from breaking my resolution.
“How long?” I demanded, louder as I shrugged off Rachel.
“Four days ago,” he ground out, tightly, as if the admission cost him.
Four days. Not fourteen, like Sean.
The words scraped against the inside of my skull, producing a thin sliver of relief. Four days meant she could still be alive. It also meant she’d been alone—trapped, maybe hunted—for nearly a hundred hours while hewalked away.
“They bubbled the country eight days ago. How did she contact you those first four days?”
“Human phone,” James muttered. “We’ve tried to contact her again since, but all of them are disconnected. Hers. Her parents’. Every line is dead.”
My pulse spiked. Which meant somethinghadhappened.
Captured. Injured. Or worse…
The possibilities spiraled, each one darker than the last, but I forced them into order. I couldn’t afford to lose it. Couldn’t afford feeling. Every instinct screamed to move, to do something—tear through borders, bodies, whatever it took—but I locked it down.
Focus first. Act second.
Because if she was still out there, I wasn’t going to lose her to panic. I was going to find her. And if anyone had touched her, I’d make sure they didn’t breathe long enough to regret it.
“We need to find her.Now,” I commanded, my voice flat, stripped of noise.
“You think I don’t know that?” James snapped, as he slammed his hand against the table hard enough to rattle the glasses. “I sent Offensives into Massachusetts when the bubble hit, but they couldn’t get past the state borders since human military had locked down the whole fucking country!”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Probably because your guys are stumbling around without magic like spoiled little rich kids in IKEA without a manual. If you’d trained your Offensives to function without translation, they wouldn’t be so fucking useless.”
James narrowed his eyes at me.
“What?” I asked dryly, while my mind worked through my next move to find his fucking girlfriend. “You disagree? Or you don’t know what IKEA is?”
James leaned in close, his anger sparking. “You’ve got some brilliant plan then, Colt? Because standing here bitching about my men isn’t exactly helping her.”
“Actually, I do.” I turned to Rachel as I asked, “What’s the closest entry point from the States?”
She blinked, caught off guard. “Coming from where?”
“Boston.”
Rachel hesitated, her gaze flickering as if weighing her words. “Vermont to Quebec, definitely, but there are fifteen potential crossing points.”
Knowing Emma, she’d rather cross at a known location than stumble through some less surveilled no-man’s-land. She mightact all tough, but she was still a city girl. Bushwhacking through Vermont’s rugged, forested border wasn’t exactly her thing.
