“I think—” I stopped, trying to choose my words carefully as Reyes and Garrett moved in to create a huddle.
Uncle Bob ran up, then. He took one look at the girl then hurried toward us to complete the huddle.
“I think she was being controlled.”
“Are you okay?” Uncle Bob asked first Amber and then me.
We both nodded and he wrapped an arm around Amber. Then he spotted the blood that had soaked down and into my jeans. His gaze darted back to mine, but I shook my head.
“She said something to me. She said, ‘Eidolon says hi.’”
“Okay,” Ubie said, “who’s Eidolon and why is he sending messages through a stalker?”
“I think he was somehow controlling her.”
The cops started to take Thea away. I yelled at them to stop and ran over. The gang followed, everyone except Brandy. I got the feeling she’d had enough for one day. She sank into a chair and watched from afar.
“Thea,” I said, trying to get her attention.
Her shock and horror were so plain on her face, she stared absently.
“Thea, what did Eidolon say? Did he tell you to do this?”
“I was so mad,” she said.
“At Amber?”
“At me?” she asked, appalled.
Her knees started to give, so we ushered her to a chair. Her hands had been cuffed behind her back. A fall face-first would not end well.
“Yes. No.” She shook her head, confused. “I thought … someone spray-painted the number fifty all over my mom’s Encore. And he said it was you.”
“The number fifty?” I asked.
Amber lowered her head. “They were calling her a moron. You know, like an IQ of fifty?” She looked at Thea, her expression full of empathy. “Thea, some people are jerks. Why would you think that I had anything to do with that?”
“Because … I don’t know.” She blinked and looked up at me. “I stabbed you.”
Amber gasped and Uncle Bob tightened his hold.
“I’m okay, hon.” I knelt in front of her. “Thea, what do you know about Eidolon?”
I felt the heat at my back. Reyes was fuming, but his anger had finally shifted off of Thea and onto the root of our problem.
As though really seeing me for the first time, she refocused and drew in a sharp breath of air. “Oh, my God, he’s keeping you busy while he searches for your daughter.”
I stumbled like she’d punched me. Reyes caught me, jerked me up, and spun me around.
He was going to explain. I could see it on his face. But the situation hardly needed an explanation.
“Go,” I said, the word a mere hiss under my breath.
Unable to dematerialize in front of everyone, he took off, so fast people barely saw him as he sprinted across the mall, darting in and out of the curious onlookers.
He was going to check on our daughter. I couldn’t go, because that was precisely what Eidolon was hoping for. He wanted me to freak out. He wanted me, the one lugging around the bright-assed light, to lead him to Beep.
I prayed he couldn’t follow Reyes in the same way. Surely, he couldn’t.
I put my hand on Thea’s knee to draw her back to me. “Thea, what else do you know? Is there anything—?”
“He was mad. When you got upset and”—she cinched her brows together, trying to understand her own memories—“when you dematerialized? You can do that?”
I offered a weak smile, but Amber was all over that, her lids a perfect circle.
“He was angry,” Thea continued. “He wanted you to rematerialize near her. Near your daughter. He was tracking you. But he said you were too smart. You went somewhere—anywhere—else.”
I had no control over my destination when I went to Scotland. Or did I? Was I truly trying to avoid materializing near Beep? And if I’d had absolutely no control, how did I end up at a house on the other side of the world that had a mystical closet exactly like the one in the abandoned convent here?
“But I just kept getting angrier and angrier. He told me the most horrible things. I texted…” She looked up at Amber. “I’m so sorry, Amber. I never—”
“I know.” Amber dropped to her knees, too. “I know, Thea. It’s okay.”
She shook her head. “No, I stabbed her. I felt it go in.”
“I’m not hurt, see?” I unzipped my jacket and lifted my sweater. My blood-soaked sweater, but underneath the skin was, well, also covered in blood but unmarred nevertheless. “Just a scrape,” I said to explain the blood.
“But, how? I felt it go in.”
I leaned toward her, bringing Amber with me. “Okay, hon, I’m trying to help you out here. You didn’t stab me.” I winked, the gesture about a subtle as an elephant in a pink tutu. “You with me?” I looked at Amber. “Both of you?”
Amber nodded and beamed at Thea. “It’s okay, Thea. My aunt Charley will make sure you get out of this.”
Ubie cleared his throat from behind us. “Oh, and my dad. Mostly my dad.”