Chapter 25: Chapter Twenty-Five

“Drive, drive, drive!”

I leaped into the back of the van, dragging Nik in with me. Aaron yanked the door shut behind us and Lucas gunned the van, speeding us out of Geiser’s driveway.

As Nik collapsed to the floor of the van, a gash in his side started spurting blood all over the mandala cushions.

“Why’s he bleeding?” Cora cried, her eyes wide.

“Bleeding? Who’s bleeding?” Lucas exclaimed, his hands tight on the steering wheel. “In my van? Dude, that is so not cool!”

Retta grabbed a throw and pressed it into Nik’s wound. She looked up at me. “What happened?” she demanded.

“Don’t use that!” Lucas cried, turning to look over his shoulder. “That’s genuine Persian!”

“Focus on the goddamn road!” Retta yelled back. “Your hippy cushions can be dry-cleaned.”

“As long as we don’t plough headfirst into a hydrant,” Aaron added, gripping the sides of the van as it swayed side to side perilously.

Lucas turned back to the front. We veered left, then right, weaving through the heavy traffic of New York City, speeding for the freeway that would take us to Bear Mountain.

The stress of the situation clearly wasn’t doing Nik any good. His owl started flapping around above us, hooting in distress.

Retta ground her teeth. “Someone shut that damn bird up!” Then she glared at the back of Lucas’s head. “There’s only so much squawking I can cope with.”

Cora coaxed the owl down and cradled it in her hands. As the owl relaxed, the grimace on Nik’s face loosened too. For the first time since we’d leaped into the back, everyone stopped yelling.

“Okay, someone really needs to explain what happened back there,” Cora said.

“To state the obvious,” Aaron replied, “they clearly got attacked.”

“What happened to the goddamn plan?” Retta demanded. “Get in, get Nik, get out? Did you get sidetracked by the vol-au-vents?”

My chest sank. I felt bad enough already. I didn’t need yet more shame piled on my shoulders.

“It wasn’t that easy,” I said. “Someone wasn’t being cooperative.”

“Are you blaming me?” Nik cried. “Seriously? The bleeding guy?”

“I know who I’m blaming,” Retta interjected, flashing me angry eyes. “We told you to let us come in with you, Theia. We frickin’ told you it was dangerous!” She flapped her wings with annoyance.

“OW!” Nik screamed as Retta accidentally took her anger out by pressing down on his wound.

“Shut up!” Cora yelled, cutting me off before I had a chance to, well, blame him some more. “No one’s blaming anyone. Geiser’s the bad guy. This was all his plan.”

My mind flashed through the moments of the attack, and the horrible sight of Heidi plummeting to the ground. My heart clenched.

“Oh god, I hope Heidi’s okay.”

“Heidi?” Retta asked. “Geiser’s daughter? She got hurt?”

“Her familiar got stomped on. Familiars and Mages are psychically linked. If one gets hurt, so does the other.”

Cora’s red-feathered wings flapped in distress. “Is she going to die?”

“Mages can survive their familiar’s death,” Nik said, his pained voice coming through gritted teeth. “But not unscathed. They can go mad, even end up with brain damage. If it’s newborn and the Mage is young…”

He trailed off.

I let my head drop. This was all my fault. I was the one who’d told Heidi to run. I’d been trying to protect her but I’d just put her right in the path of danger.

Suddenly, Lucas yelled out from the front. “Cops!”

The van made a sudden sharp turn to the right. We all tumbled into one another, elbows and knees knocking. Nik screeched out in pain and his owl took to the air again, flapping around, hooting in distress.

“Whoa, sorry!” Lucas called behind him as the van righted itself. “They were putting up roadblocks.”

Roadblocks? There was only one need for them—to stop people from leaving the city. And not just any people. Us.

A terrible sense of doom settled over me. “Turn on the radio,” I said.

Lucas turned the dial. The nasal voice of the local news reporter came through the speaker.

“We’ve just had news come in regarding a Vanpari attack on William Geiser’s home. Supposedly his youngest daughter, just fifteen years old, was injured in the attack. We’re going live now to the Manhattan Hospital where William Geiser is about to make an announcement to the press.”

Everyone in the van fell silent. A chill ran down my whole spine as I pictured Geiser on the steps of the hospital, Mom by his side, a tender hand on his shoulder, Conrad the other side doing his best impersonation of a person who cared—while secretly trying his best not to smile.

The next voice that spoke was Geiser’s. “This afternoon, a group of Vanpari stormed my daughter Heidi’s egg-hatching ceremony in what the police have told me was a targeted attack. For the Vanpari to choose my daughter’s egg-hatching celebration for this vicious attack, shows just how callous these moon-class gangs have become. Both my biological daughters have been injured.” His voice cracked, right on cue. “Emerald will need reconstructive surgery. Heidi is in intensive care.”

At least my right hook had been strong enough to mess up Emerald’s precious face. But Heidi? That poor kid. She didn’t deserve any of this.

Anger peeled through my body.

Geiser continued. “It is with great sadness that I must announce my own stepdaughter, Theia Foxglove, was leading the Vanpari who attacked us, and our close family friend, Nikolas Storm, son of the moon mayor, was working alongside her.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Every pair of eyes in the back of the van locked on me and Nik. He’d gone as white as a sheet. No doubt, I looked the same.

“Well shit,” Lucas said, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror. “What a ball ache.”

My whole body went numb. I shook my head and it felt like it was moving through gloopy molasses.

“He’s pinning it on us,” I stated, my voice flat.

Retta grabbed my hand. The anger she’d thrown my way—rightly, I could admit now—had been replaced by unconditional support.

“It is time for Mayor Benson to step down,” Geiser’s voice continued through the radio. “His ineffective running of this city has allowed moon-class gangs to run rampant. It is time for a strong leader who will finally enforce the laws of the Twilight Curfew, so that no other family need suffer the way mine has on this very dark day.”

I looked down at my broken bow in my lap. Geiser had destroyed everything. My whole life, whatever relationship I had left with Mom, my bow, and now my reputation. He’d tried to take my life but failing that, he’d gone for the next best thing: he’d made me a fugitive.

He’d done everything in his power to crush me. And he was going to keep throwing things at me until I was dead. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him win.

I pushed my feelings down and looked at Nik. “Do you have Elliot’s talisman on you?” My voice had become authoritative.

He nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

“When we reach Bear Mountain, I’ll use its scent to find him.”

Nik raised his eyebrows. “Elkie can do that? Follow scent like dogs?”

“You can talk, Incisor Boy,” I retorted.

His jaw set firm. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out Elliot’s half-moon charm, dangling it in front of me.

I snatched it from him. “See how easy it is to cooperate?”

“Wait,” Cora interrupted. “I’m Celestial. I can use it to conduct a proper tracking spell. Like how I did with the bow during the séance. Not that your powers aren’t proper, Theia,” she quickly added, probably in response to my automatically insulted expression.

“You’ve got to admit it’s better than you sniffing him out,” Aaron added.

“Sure,” I agreed with a nod, forcing away my feeling of being upstaged by Cora’s Celestial strength. Then I leaned forward and slapped Lucas on the shoulder. “Come on, pretty boy. Let’s put some pedal to the metal, shall we?”