With an unease feeling fluttering in my belly, I climbed onto the Winters’ porch and pressed the lit up doorbell. Chase answered the door with a lopsided grin on his lips. “You missed me already, which I totally get. I’m hard to forget.”
I rolled my eyes, stepped inside, and let the look of him warm me. It took just a glance to heat my blood. “Just because we have some three-way bond, doesn’t mean you’re all I think about.” That was sort of a white lie. I thought about him way more than I should. Even now he was distracting me from the real reason I was here. Mom.
“Thanks for shitting on my parade.”
“It’s my pleasure,” I replied.
He darkened the doorway. “Okay, so if you aren’t here for my bod…”
“I’m looking for my mom. We are supposed to be having dinner tonight, remember?”
“Right. I haven’t seen her.”
My stomach plummeted. “She’s not with Devin?” I asked, unable to keep the hopefulness from my voice, because if she wasn’t here, then…
I couldn’t let myself go down that horrible path. Not yet. She was fine. She had to be fine.
He shook his head. “No. Devin is in his office working. I just came from there.”
I glanced out the small window at the winter’s horizon, taking a few long, drawn-out breaths. “Something is wrong, Chase. I can feel it.” I pressed a hand to my belly. “She didn’t answer her phone, and she’s not at home like she is supposed to be. This isn’t like her at all.”
“Try her again,” he insisted.
Once again I punched in the numbers and just like the other times before, I got her funny voicemail message. “Hi. This is Chloe. Now it’s your turn. Beep.” The sound of her voice immediately crammed my gut with alarm.
My head spun a little, and my stomach did a couple of rolls. There was one explanation I had refused to let myself consider, but now…Alastair’s name echoed over and over and over again in my mind. If anything happened to her, how could I forgive myself? It would be because of me that Alastair would harm her.
I could not live without her.
She was my only family.
Chapter 24
Alastair.
The certainty buzzed in my ears, like a swarm of harassing flies. I knew that he had taken my mom. For bait. For manipulation. For desolation. I didn’t need to see with my own eyes. I didn’t need to hear him tell me, taunt me with it. The sick feeling in the pit of my gut was all the confirmation I needed.
And just like that, my world came crumbling down around me. All those fears assaulted me at once. “Oh God.” I began to fall, but before I hit the wooden planks on the hardwood floors, I was in Chase’s arms.
“Hey there, Angel Eyes. Don’t do that. Not now,” he murmured. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
Deep breaths. Deep, long breaths. Chase’s promises were as solid as a boulder. He would not let me down, and he would not let anything happen to my mom. I don’t know how he handled such devotion from me, but I was glad I had him.
Glancing up at him, I asked with wild eyes, “What am I going to do?”
“First, you’re not going to freak out on me. Second, we are going to talk to Devin. He needs to know, and we need to be sure—really sure.”
I nodded. He was right. I had to keep my head, stay level, sharp. If we had any chance of finding her, I had to keep my head. She was counting on me whether she knew it or not. And my gut could be wrong. There could be a thousand reasons she was missing. Cellphone dead. Car accident. Abducted by aliens. Not every incident revolved around Hell. Just the majority of them, I added silently to myself.
As I followed behind him all I could think was how I wanted to climb back into bed, pull the covers over my head, and pretend this was all just another nauseating dream—if it could only be so easy.
Bollocks.
Nothing worth gaining was easy.
“Devin has spent quite a lot of time researching Hell to keep us safe,” Chase started to explain as we ascended the stairs to the second floor. “He knows more about this stuff than you can imagine.”
Peeking behind Chase, he knocked and cracked the door to Devin’s office. I’d never been inside Devin’s personal space, nor had I ever considered Devin as a source of demon activity. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who spent his nights tracking the underworld.
“Do you have a moment?” Chase asked his uncle.
Devin looked up from behind his laptop, removing the wire-rimmed glasses from his nose. He looked from Chase to me. When his hazel eyes landed on mine, he smiled softly. “Of course.” Setting aside his glasses on the desk, he leaned back in his chair while the two of us sat in the mahogany chairs. The leather shifted under my weight. “What’s on your mind?” he asked. Then something clicked in his eyes as he glanced at me. “Isn’t today supposed to be a kind of girls’ night?”
I nodded. “That’s why I’m here. She’s not home, so I came here looking for her.”