“’Cause Katrina’s missing,” Ronan barked. “No one’s seen her since early this morning—but Fang here did sniff this out.” He held up a torn scrap of fabric that looked a whole lot like the lacy top I’d seen Katrina in the night before. “Found it at the edge of the grounds. There’s blood on it.”
I stared at a red-brown stain on the dangling scrap. “Oh.” My mind spun with questions, like whether she might have done this on purpose to frame Crowe. But with the Sixes, half of whom were her cousins or brothers or uncles, all glaring murder at us, I didn’t think now was the time to question it. “Have you tried a locator spell?”
“You think we’re idiots?” This came from a Six who looked to be in her twenties and was wreathed in locant magic. “There’s no sign of her anywhere.”
Ronan nodded. “So I’m actually glad you stopped by, Crowe. Now we’ve got a problem.”
“Why? I’m not trying to start anything, Ronan. I just want to find my sister.”
“And I want to find my niece!” roared Ronan.
“Maybe the same person took—”
Ronan shook his head. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Crowe Medici. I’ve been asking around all day. And you know what people told me?”
The skeins of purple animalia tightened, and the Doberman refocused on Crowe. Its hackles rose, and a low, deep growl rolled from its throat. Ronan leaned forward and dropped the scrap of Katrina’s shirt at Crowe’s feet. “You were the last person to be seen with her.”
THIRTEEN
MY STOMACH DROPPED AS AMBER SKEINS OF MAGIC unfurled around Crowe—he was preparing to defend himself in the only way he knew, and it would make things worse.
“There are three people missing right now,” I said loudly, shoving forward to stand next to Crowe, ready to do my best to throw out a barrier around us if it came to that. It might not work, but I had to do something. “Alex Medici, Katrina Niklos, and Darek Delacroix. The Devils, the Sixes, and the Deathstalkers are each looking for someone.”
“Gunnar Reyes went missing two days ago,” Crowe added. “Still hasn’t been found. So we’re missing two.”
Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “Your point being?”
“What if they’re all being taken by the same person?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I believed that—it was still possible Darek and Alex were holed up somewhere together. I knew I had seen Katrina hurl a curse at us less than an hour earlier, and Gunnar was known for disappearing for days on end. Except… the other person I had seen in the woods seemed to have some kind of screwed-up arma power—I had seen the swirls of pale yellow mixed with black and red as he ran between the trees. Could that have been Gunnar? If it was, why would he hurl a hex knife at me? I shook off the thought. Right now, I just wanted to make sure we didn’t start another brawl. “What if we get all the clubs together and try to figure out what the hell is happening?”
Crowe said nothing, but the amber ribbons of his magic slithered back into his fingertips, and I stood up a little straighter.
“It’s a reasonable suggestion, Ronan,” my dad said, trying to keep the peace, like any of this shit mattered to him. “If you want to find Katrina, convening the officers of each club seems like the best plan.”
Ronan was still glaring daggers at Crowe, but his magic was pulling away from the dog at his side, and the animal whined and sat, leaning its head on the enormous man’s thigh. “All right, Agent Carmichael. But if I get even a hint that Crowe’s behind this, I won’t hold back.”
“Same,” Crowe said in a hard voice. “Ronan, I propose you and I go talk to the Stalkers and the Kings. If everyone agrees, we can meet in the gathering tent after dinner—around eight. It’s neutral ground.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to me. “Will you go get Jane for me? I want to talk to her before we all meet. She’s camped out—didn’t want to make the trip back and forth from her cabin—so she should be in the south field.”
Circles had formed under his eyes, and I was once again reminded that he hadn’t slept in nearly a day and a half. “Yeah,” I said. “On one condition.”
His eyebrows rose.
“You get a few hours of sleep before tonight,” I whispered. I held up my hand when he opened his mouth to argue. “You have to be sharp to pull this all together, Crowe, and you’re human. You nearly died less than an hour ago. You have to rest.”
For a moment, he simply looked down at me, and every nerve in my body thrummed with awareness of him. “Okay. Once I get this set up and check in with Jane, I will.” He touched my arm as I turned. “And, Jemmie? Thank you,” he murmured. “I mean it.” He trudged away and joined a knot of Devils who had gathered between the tents.
Without looking at my father, I turned and marched toward the camper grounds. People who didn’t have large family groups, or who simply preferred a little more solitude, were allowed to pitch tents or park their RVs in a wide-open area at the south end of the festival fields. Jane Vetrov sat on a ratty lawn chair outside a rusty old Airstream. Her knobby knees stuck out through tears in her jeans. A Harley T-shirt hung loose on her body and a half-empty bottle of Jack dangled from her fingers. Despite that, her gaze was sharp as she caught sight of me marching toward her. I braced myself as the silver threads of her omnias magic stretched toward me like a giant spiderweb.
“Trouble?” she asked when I got close enough.
“Yeah. Four people are missing and everybody wants to blame someone else.”
Jane looked unsurprised. “And they want me to come tell them what the hell is happening.”
I nodded. “Will you? They’re meeting in the gathering tent around eight, but Crowe said he needed to talk to you before that. We still can’t find Alex or Gunnar. The Sixes want to blame Crowe for Katrina Niklos’s disappearance, and the Stalkers seem to think he might have kidnapped one of their prospects. It’s kind of a mess.”
Jane grunted and slowly stood up. “That boy’s a magnet for trouble,” she muttered.
“He didn’t do it.”
Her pale eyes met mine. “You sound awfully sure, Jemmie Carmichael.”
Her magic smelled like steel and machine oil as it caressed the sides of my face. I shuddered and pulled back, and Jane tilted her head, peering at me with sharp curiosity. “You were always a funny child.”
“Um. Thanks?”
“Sometimes your parents and the others would come out to my property to drink and cast and talk about the future. They’d bring you along, and while the other kids were playing tag and hide-and-seek in the woods out back, I’d always see you squatting behind a chair or near the wood pile, watching.”
“I guess I was interested in what the adults were doing.”
She chuckled. “That’s what your parents said. Nosy little Jemmie. But that wasn’t what it looked like to me. You weren’t watching them. You were watching the air around them.”
I swallowed and rubbed at my arms. “If you say so.”
“You used to enjoy being around all of it, but after you hit six, maybe seven, your mom told me you started asking to stay home with a babysitter. She said you’d have a screaming fit if they tried to bring you.”
It had all gotten to be too much. The older I got, the more the magic overwhelmed me. “Well, I’m here now. Wondering why you’re telling me this. Can we go?”
Jane didn’t budge. “You’re here now, all right. Only half-in, though. Your energy is split right down the middle.”
I suddenly thought of Darek, out there somewhere, maybe with Alex, maybe in trouble, and then I thought of Crowe, trying to find his missing people and make sure this festival didn’t end in a gang war. “Can you see my future?”
She moved a step closer to me, and I inhaled her metallic essence. “Yours in particular? Not unless I touch you, and I don’t think you want me to do that.”