Chelsea Fine - Avow

A small patch of ash caught his eye and he followed it around a corner to find an alley dotted with more piles of ash.

But no sign of Gabriel.

Nate came up behind him with Scarlet. “Where do you think he went?”

Scarlet said, “Maybe he went to find us.”

Tristan spied Gabriel’s knife discarded on the ground and his gut churned as he picked it up. “He wouldn’t have left unarmed.”

Nate caught sight of something else on the ground and bent to retrieve the small object.

“What’s that?” Scarlet stepped closer.

“I think it’s a tranquilizer dart.” Nate turned it over in his hand.

More churning.

“Do you think someone drugged Gabriel?”

“Maybe Raven wanted to take him hostage,” Nate said slowly. “Like Heather. The tranq dart is a good sign, though. It means she doesn’t want to kill him.”

Tristan fisted his hands and Nate eyed his white knuckles. “Don’t stress, man. We’ll find him.”

“How?” Tristan snapped, his chest hot with fear. “How are we going to find him, Nate? With our Gabriel tracking device?”

“Ooh! A tracking device would have been a good idea.” Nate nodded. “Next time.”

Tristan started pacing. Why would Raven take Gabriel? Where would she take him? And why the hell wasn’t she dead?

From the corner of his eye, he saw Scarlet run a shaky hand through her hair. He stopped pacing and tried to feel her, forgetting the curse had shifted and he was no longer privy to her feelings.

Funny how he used to think of his connection to her as punishment, taunting him with what he could never have. But now, without her emotions running through him, he felt empty and lost.

Her eyes moved to his and their gazes locked for a brief moment. A flicker of unease crossed her face and she turned away.

Tristan’s chest tightened.

She was hiding something. Something big.

“Raven probably has Heather and Gabriel in the same place,” Nate said, “so we just need to narrow down possible hiding spots. I say we do a background check on ‘Clare’ and see if she owns any dungeons or other bad guy haunts. Avalon’s not that big. We’ll find Gabriel and Heather in two, three days tops.”

Tristan pulled his eyes away from Scarlet and stared at Nate. “Two or three days in captivity with a psychotic witch might kill them. We need to find them now.” He exited the alley and headed for his car.

“And your plan is what?” Nate said as he and Scarlet followed after him. “You’re just going to drive around until you see a sign that says Raven’s Secret Hostage Lair ?”

Tristan wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but hanging out in an alley all night certainly wasn’t going to bring Gabriel back any faster. “What’s the alternative? Go back home, eat some Lucky Charms, and get some sleep? I don’t think so.”

“Why are you hating on my cereal?”

“I think Nate’s right,” Scarlet said as they reached the car. “We can’t just drive around aimlessly. We need a plan. At least we know from the tranq dart that Raven doesn’t want to kill them, so that buys us some time to find them.”

“Yes.” Nate nodded. “Let’s go back to the cabin and plan .”

Tristan didn’t like this idea. Not at all.

But he also didn’t know where to look for Gabriel, so any argument he hoped to have on behalf of his driving around aimlessly plan fell dead.

“Fine,” he muttered, climbing into the driver’s seat.

Nate jumped into the backseat while Scarlet slid into the passenger’s seat and tried to buckle her seatbelt. It wouldn’t latch. The passenger’s seatbelt had taken a beating when Tristan had remodeled the shack and now the latch only worked if you jiggled it the right way.

Scarlet wasn’t jiggling it the right way.

Tristan reached over to help her and she swatted at his hand. “I can put on my own seatbelt.”

He pulled his hand back and rested an arm on the steering wheel as he watched her struggle with the clasp.

“Mother of Pearl,” she muttered, fighting with the belt.

She jiggled. She jaggled. Then she groaned in frustration and dropped her head against the seat.

Tristan waited a beat. “Are you done now?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

He held out in his hand in the dark car. “Give me the seatbelt.”

She yanked the belt across her body and handed it to Tristan with a huff, careful not to touch him. He had to bite the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t smile. She was just as stubborn as the seatbelt.

He eased the seatbelt into the broken latch and it clicked effortlessly.

She rolled her eyes as he started the car. “So where should we start with Raven?”

“We could find out where she lives?” Nate suggested.

Tristan shook his head. “She wouldn’t take Gabriel and Heather to her house. And she wouldn’t leave any clues as to where she was taking them at her house either.”

Nate frowned. “What makes you so sure?”

He shrugged. “Because I wouldn’t do those things if I was going to kidnap someone.”

Nate blinked at him. “Sometimes I worry about you.”

“If I were to kidnap someone,” Scarlet mused, “I would probably take them someplace nearby to cut down on travel. And it would probably be someplace in the middle of nowhere where Ashmen could come and go without drawing too much attention.”

Nate stared at them. “Now I’m worried about both of you.”

Scarlet continued. “Maybe Raven rented a house or a car—

“Or a dungeon,” Nate said.

“If we could see where she’s spent her money in the past few months, we might have a better idea of where Gabriel and Heather are,” Tristan said. “But we’d need access to Raven’s financial records.”

“Ooh! There’s an app for that,” Nate said cheerily, reaching into his pocket.

Tristan and Scarlet turned to stare at him.

“Just kidding.” He grinned as he pulled out his phone. “But I can probably hack into Clare’s bank accounts.”

“You can?”

Nate shrugged as he started tapping things into his phone. “You can do anything with hacking software these days. You can even figure out the code for beating the water demon in the new Warrior Vikings game.” He tapped a few more buttons. “So jj514hero can suck it.”

Scarlet wrinkled her nose. “Who’s jj514hero?”

“My arch nemesis in the gaming world who claims to live in Tokyo, but I tracked his user ID back to San Francisco.” He muttered, “Little liar.”

More button pushing and soon Nate held up his phone and smiled. “Tada. The Avalon bank account of a Ms. Clare Blackbird. Clever last name.” He scoffed. “ Not .”

“Let me see that.” Scarlet took the phone and started reading through the charges. She sighed. “There’s nothing unusual in her purchase history.”

Nate took back the phone. “So we’ll start looking through other Clare Blackbird things.” He shook his head. “Seriously. Worst name ever.”

When they reached the cabin, they went inside and Nate immediately headed upstairs. “I’m just going to take a quick shower to rinse all the ash and blood off my skin and then we’ll start our Raven investigation.”

Scarlet looked down at her dirty shirt and hands as Tristan walked to the kitchen.

He pulled off his coat and threw it on a barstool, grimacing at the sharp aches in his back and chest where his Bluestone cuts were. Knowing it was probably going to be a long night of research and nothingness, Tristan started making coffee.

A quiet gasp—almost too quiet to hear—came from the stairs and he frowned. Who was—

Dammit.

He rushed to the stairs and found Scarlet halfway to the second floor, eyes squeezed shut and a hand braced against the wall. At his nearness, she opened her eyes and leaned against the wall in a casual way. Like she hadn’t just been in excruciating pain.