“I’ve told you that. They pick up on its energy. And they have other ways, I’m sure, but I don’t know what they all are.”
“You really don’t know or you’re filtering information as a defense measure?”
Bas frowned at me.
“What? That’s not a fair question? Then what about their abilities?” I knew Samrael had the mind powers and the bone blades. Alevar had wings. It wasn’t much. We had a lot to learn about our opposition. “Can we know about those? Or are we back to playing twenty questions again?”
Daryn glared at me. “I told you up front. I can’t tell you everything.”
“Yeah, but you’re giving me just a little more than nothing.” And there it was again. Hello, temper. Welcome back.
It was quiet for a second. Then Daryn said, “Gideon, can I talk to you alone?”
Sebastian and Marcus evacuated the booth before I could answer.
Daryn and I turned toward each other. Too close, nowhere to look but right at her, so I got up and slid across to where Bas had just been.
“Is this about earlier?” she asked.
“Earlier?”
“You and me.”
It might have played some part in how frustrated I felt. But I just shrugged and said, “Give me some credit.”
Her gaze fell to the table.
Wait. Was she disappointed?
Strike three. Strike twenty. I just couldn’t get it right.
My attention pulled to the entrance, where a group of bikers covered in leather and ink filed in and began unsnapping their jackets and helmets. Not the Kindred, but we’d been there too long. My Jeep was starting to feel like shelter, even though it wasn’t. But at least it kept us moving.
“I told you I’d give you one unknown. I’ve given you much more than that,” Daryn said.
She had. It still didn’t feel like enough.
As I looked back at her, I noticed that the chain around her neck fell over the outside of her jacket. On the end was a key. Heavy. Old-fashioned. Nothing spectacular, but not ordinary, either.
That was it.
It had to be the object the Kindred were after. A key that could unlock realms.
I looked into her eyes. They were steady, as always.
She was trusting me.
“We need to go to Italy,” she said, quietly.
“Okay.” I couldn’t believe what I was agreeing to. “Okay. How are we getting there?”
“You.”
I rubbed my head as I thought it over. I had a couple thousand stashed away. It might be enough for four plane tickets. If it wasn’t, I could suck it up and use my credit card. I’d need to figure out flight schedules, whether we needed visas, but that was doable. We just needed time. “How soon do we need to be there?”
“Tomorrow.”
I laughed. It was already past three in the afternoon. “Daryn, I don’t see how this is happening.”
“But you will,” she said, watching me with the same expression she’d worn the first time I’d seen her at Joy’s party. Like she was asking me to step up to a challenge. “We’re going to catch a flight tonight. I saw us on a cargo plane.”
“You saw us?”
She nodded. “You got us there, Gideon. Now, you just need to figure out how.”
CHAPTER 31
Our first stop back in Los Angeles was my bank, where I emptied my account of the nearly two thousand dollars I’d saved from jobs, birthdays, graduation, and the Army pay I’d earned so far. It was money I’d wanted to give to Anna someday to help her study in Paris. Now I’d be using it to go to Italy. My life was taking some solid turns.
Sebastian came with me and the clerk turned out to be a guy he’d done some auditions with, so the transaction took about fifteen years to complete. I left the bank with a slim envelope of cash. Bastian walked out with a tote bag full of key chains, coffee mugs, and Post-it pads, everything stamped with the bank logo.
We headed to a sporting-goods store and went on a little shopping spree courtesy of yours truly, stocking up on warm clothes in dark colors, binos, a set of two-way radios with GPS, rope, a first-aid kit, and a bowie knife, which felt unnecessary because, you know, magic sword, but also necessary since at that point, I had a better chance of making it rain than calling my weapon. We piled into my Jeep with our brand-new backpacks stuffed with supplies, granola bars, and water bottles. Geared to the gills, but it was going to take a lot more than gear to get the job done.
Next I stopped at a shipping store to drop off one of the radios, spending a small fortune to overnight it to the Ritz Carlton in Rome, then I drove us to LAX. I said good-bye to my Jeep in the airport parking lot, which hit me harder than I expected. It felt like leaving a piece of my dad out there, but I snagged the Pearl Jam cassette and stuffed it into my pack, which made me feel a little better.