“I don’t think I was born with my abilities,” I told the others, my limbs falling slack. “I feel like they existed before me, and they gave birth to me instead of the other way around. I felt it when I was little… and again, when I touched the forecasting in the Komnata of the original Atmás. I can’t control my power… it… it controls me.”
“What do you mean?” Cabe asked, appearing in front of me and kneeling, his hands gentle on my knees. “The forecasting doesn’t want you to find Silas and Danny?”
“Maybe.” I shook my head, having no idea what I was trying to say. “Maybe the lack of forecasting is a kind of forecasting in itself. It won’t show me, because it doesn’t want me to go there.”
Cabe’s hands slid from my knees, confusion washing over him. I could see the same expression on Noah’s face, and I didn’t want to turn toward Quillan, because his opinion mattered to me more than I would ever admit. I couldn’t stand to see the confirmation on his face that I was being ridiculous.
“Actually, that almost makes sense.” Quillan surprised me, his words thoughtful. “You said that you couldn’t forecast the night that Silas and I bonded to you; not until after the bonding. And yet, if you had turned up to that gravesite even a few minutes earlier, you would have run into Danny himself. You arrived at exactly the right time. Not to save Aiden, but to save yourself.”
That hit me like a kick to the gut, and I hung my head. I would have preferred to save Aiden, and didn’t want to think that the forecasting could really be so selfish.
“So what do we do?” I asked, the hopelessness bleeding into my voice.
“If that’s all true… if we can’t go to them…” Cabe stood up, folding his arms over his chest. “We’ll have to make them come to us.”
I nodded, tossing the notebook aside and beginning to pace. “How do we draw them out? Silas isn’t answering his phone and I doubt he has the GPS tracking thing enabled if he doesn’t want to be found—” I stopped pacing, an idea occurring to me. “Whenever Silas has needed to hide something in the past, there’s one person he always goes to.”
“Jayden,” Quillan confirmed. There was a heavy note of resignation in his voice, as though he had already thought this far ahead, and had been trying to find a better solution.
“Jayden.” I nodded. “He’s our best option right now… the only problem is, he kind of flipped out the last time I mentioned the messenger—er, Danny.”
Quillan tilted his head up to the roof, screwing his eyes shut for a moment. The others watched him, waiting for a confirmation, and he eventually gave a short nod. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll go and see Jayden. Leave the talking to me.”
Cabe called Clarin to see if they had found anything useful as I called Tariq, asking him to stay at a friend’s place for the night. I made up a lie about needing some alone time to sort things out with the guys, and it made the call awkward enough that Tariq quickly agreed and didn’t question me further. I wanted him as far removed from this whole situation as possible. If it dragged on for longer, I would beg him for more time. Anything to keep him safe, even if it meant lying to him. I supposed that was how he had learnt that particular behavior. He had learnt it from me.
We all hurried down to where the news vans and other vehicles were all still overcrowding the college. We found Albert and the limousine parked a good way down the road winding through the mountain to the college, and I was surprised when Quillan gave him directions to the mountain house. For a moment, I was afraid that they were going to lock me inside. I considered that Quillan might have lied to me to prevent me from running off on my own again. When we arrived, however, Noah and Cabe moved toward Quillan’s Porsche while Quillan spoke to Hans and Andrei. He was convincing them to take the limousine so that they could watch over Tariq for the night.
I almost couldn’t believe that they weren’t trying to stop me.
It took a little while to convince Hans and Andrei, and then it took us another hour to get to Jayden’s house, since I had to rely on my memory of the day I had run away to get us there.
By the time we finally gathered outside of Jayden’s house, I was sufficiently terrified. I knocked timidly on his door, waiting even more timidly for him to open it and finish casting his eyes over the four of us. He looked beyond us, probably expecting to see Silas, before settling his attention back on me.
“Hey.” I waved. I was acting as though we turned up on his porch every Sunday for dinner.
“This should be good,” he stated dryly, stepping aside to allow us entry.