Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

“Who’s fighting him?” Phin asks.

“They’re unclear. I can’t decipher faces, but they’re likely Halfies.” He opened his eyes and turned. “Half-Bloods are difficult to detect with my ability, because their emotions are radically altered from what they ought to be. They’re harder to pinpoint and therefore harder to see clearly.”

It made sense. It was an annoying handicap, but it made sense.

“Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Lewis,” Eleri said.

“You’re welcome. Was anyone else in the house during the incident?”

Phin shook his head, lips pressed tight, as unhappy with the results of Brett’s visions as I was. “At this hour?” he said. “No, it should have been just the three of them.”

“All right.” Brett hesitated. “With your permission, Mr. el Chimal, I’ll check the other rooms.”

“Feel free.”

Brett excused himself from the room. Phin’s cell phone rang. He made no move to answer it, so I yanked it out of his back pocket. Astrid’s name was on the caller I.D.

“This is Stone,” I said.

“Stone?” Astrid replied. “Why—?”

“He’s preoccupied.”

Phin shot me a grateful smile. He was struggling to remain outwardly calm, and I could easily imagine the inferno churning beneath. Although his Clan had lived peacefully in the city for decades, they were a warrior race. Sitting still and waiting were not in his nature. He wanted his family back.

“What’s your status?” she asked.

“Brett Lewis just confirmed that Halfies were involved. Joseph is wounded, but we don’t know how badly.”

“Halfies seem to be a common thread in all the disappearances, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence—”

“That we ran into Felix and crew tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“I had the same thought. Has he said anything?”

“No.” She hesitated. “We’re about to begin interrogating him.”

A tiny part of me wanted to be there; the rest of me was glad to be far away from it. Interrogating Halfies used to be one of my favorite pastimes, but seeing the face of someone I used to consider a friend staring back at me from the other side of the table … no.

“Who’s interrogating him?” I asked.

“Marcus and Wyatt.”

I flinched. “Does Kismet know?”

“Yes. I’ve forbidden both her and Gant from watching.”

Not a bad idea. She and Milo did not need to see their old teammate tortured for information. And if Felix did know anything about these kidnappings, Marcus wasn’t going to be kind. I’d seen the were-cat in battle, and I’d seen his jaguar form rip throats out of Halfie teenagers.

“Has anyone else gone missing?”

“No. Everyone connected to a member of the Watch has been taken to a safe location, and the Assembly has been informed. The Clan Elders are seeing to their people.”

“Good.”

“How’s Phineas?” she asked in a voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear her.

I glanced at the man in question—glaring out the bedroom window—then slipped into the hallway. I was halfway downstairs before I replied. “He’s pretty close to the breaking point,” I whispered. “I’m damned close to snapping, myself.”

“I know what they mean to him.”

“Yeah, just the future of his entire race.”

Astrid sighed, and in the sound I detected … sadness? “The Felia and the Coni are not natural allies, but we all grieved for his Clan’s destruction. We want them back, Stone. All of them.”

“Me, too.”

“If Felix gives us anything, we’ll let you know.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I turned at the bottom of the stairs and nearly crashed into Brett. He stood by the living room wall, eyes closed, one hand touching a framed photo hanging at eye level. It was a candid shot of myself holding a squirming Ava, with Phin and Aurora in the background. I remembered the day it was taken. As Ava’s godparents, Phin and I had been invited to dinner so we could perform the official “bonding” ceremony. It mostly involved making a solemn promise to protect Ava and see to her future, and drinking a cup of stinky tea.

Looking at her apple-cheeked face, with the same dark curly hair as her mother, my stomach ached for her safety.

“Stone?” Astrid said.

“One sec.” I pulled the phone away from my face. “Brett?”

His eyelids flew up, and he blinked hard, eyes dilated so wide that only a thin circle of brown lined the irises. “Someone else was here,” he said.

My heart thudded. “With the half-Bloods?”

“At the same time, yes.”

“Who?”

“His face seems familiar, but I don’t know who he is. He’s human, though.”

Little icy fingers danced up my spine. “Are you sure?”

“Not one hundred percent, but close. He stood here and looked at this photo. He watched everything that happened.”

“Did he speak? Interact? Anything to tell you who he is?”

Brett shook his head. “I don’t get the soundtrack, just the blurry highlight reels.”

The simple fact that this mystery man had looked at that particular photo creeped me the hell out. “What did he look like?”

“Tall, thin, dark hair. Quite handsome, but sad.”

The world grayed out at the edges, and I blinked hard to keep from falling over from a sudden wave of vertigo. “Was he wearing a long black duster?”

Brett frowned, eyes narrowing. “That’s an odd detail to guess in the middle of summer.”

“Shit.” My stomach dropped to my feet. I put the phone back to my ear. “Astrid?”

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“I need you to send a photo of Walter Thackery to Phin’s phone right now.”

“On it. Why?”

“Because I think he was here tonight. I think the bastard’s involved.”

The best photo we had of Thackery was six years old, but that didn’t matter. Brett identified him as the special guest star in the kidnapping as soon as the image appeared on Phin’s phone.

I don’t remember moving or sitting, only realizing that Phineas was crouched in front of me, holding my hands and saying something, and that I was now on the living room sofa. Walter-fucking-Thackery had held me captive for twenty days, tortured me in order to watch me heal, and cut off my goddamned pinkie finger—all in the name of science. Those twenty days left me a very different person from the one who went with him in order to prevent him from releasing dangerous beasts on an unsuspecting city.

To stop him from murdering Phineas in cold blood.

A coven of gargoyles on the hunt for one of their own had attacked the mobile lab where Thackery had stashed me. Max, a former ally of mine, had been among the gargoyles who rescued me, and he brought me back to the city. Thackery had been at large ever since—just over a month now.

Someone put a glass of water in my hand. I sipped without tasting it. Everything felt distant, not quite real, not even Phin’s constant, comforting presence. He squeezed my knee. The near-ticklish sensation shocked some sense back into me, and I met his steady gaze.

“There you are,” he said. “With me?”

“Yeah.” I forced my hand to loosen its grip on the frosted glass before it shattered. “I think so. Did I pass out?”

“Not exactly. You seemed to go catatonic for a moment, though.”

I groaned. “Awesome.”

“No one is judging you, Evangeline. They know what Thackery did.”

I waved my left hand in front of his face. “Because I walk around with the evidence every single day. God, I can’t believe I freaked out just now.”

“I’m more disinclined to believe he’s involved, but Mr. Lewis insists Thackery is the man in his vision.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Thackery despises vampires. He wants to see them all dead. Hell, he thought he could use my blood to cure the infected, so why would he align with half-Bloods?”