Almost instantly, Amanda picked up. “Brandon Michael, where the hell are you?” she asked, her speech slurred. “I’ve been texting you all damn day.”
“Ms. Keen, this isn’t Brandon,” Aaron said, keeping his voice completely calm, despite her obvious agitated, and extremely inebriated, state. “This is Aaron McReynolds. I was a friend of Elliott’s.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment while Amanda absorbed that information before she said, “How the hell did you get my son’s phone?”
“We just wanted to let you know that Brandon is here, in Kansas City, with us, and that he’s safe. He won’t be able to contact you for a little while, possibly a few days, but he didn’t want you to worry,” Aaron continued, still as serene as before.
“Didn’t want me to worry!” she exclaimed. “You kidnapped my son, and you don’t want me to worry? What are you doing to him? Why can’t I talk to him?”
Aaron tried not to sigh or raise his voice at all, knowing that would not be helpful. “He came here of his own accord, Ms. Keen. He’s undergoing training right now, which is preventing him from being able to use his phone. But he will contact you just as soon as he can.”
“You bastard!” Amanda shot back. “How dare you? I’m going to call the police! I’ll have you arrested for kidnapping!”
Her speech was so slurred, it was difficult for Aaron to understand everything she was saying, but he was able to get the gist. “Ms. Keen, he’s an adult. You can call the police if you’d like, but I think we both know that won’t be effective. Look, I have to go, but I promise you Brandon will call you in a few days. You don’t need to worry about him; he’s here because he wants to be, and he’s perfectly safe. We’ll take good care of him.”
“I know the crazy shit you do,” she replied. “I know. I’m not supposed to know, so I have to pretend that I haven’t heard about the monsters you hunt at night. But I do know. You give me back my son, or I’ll call every media outlet in the country and let them know your secret!”
“I really don’t recommend you do that, since there’s a pretty good chance no one would believe you. I think it might be a better idea for you to get some rest, and Brandon will call you soon. Okay?” But he didn’t wait for her to respond before disconnecting the call and turning the phone completely off. He knew she wouldn’t call anyone--but even if she did, no one would believe her story. This wouldn’t be the first time someone threatened to go to reporters with an outlandish tale of a secret operation whose sole purpose for existing was to protect the human race from Vampires.
With a sigh, he slipped Brandon’s phone back in his pocket and momentarily returned his attention to the nagging voice in his head. The five-month reprieve from Eliza had been under-appreciated, but now things were returning to normal and he needed to find a way to calm her down so they could work together to find Giovani.
Cassidy was sitting in the chair Jamie had brought her, nervously staring at Brandon, her arms and legs crossed, her foot swaying back and forth. It had only been a few minutes, but her anxiety had sent Jamie over to check his vitals, just in case.
“Cassidy, he’s going to be just fine. The scary part is over,” Cadence assured her.
“Oh, I know,” Cassidy replied, shrugging. “It’s just weird seeing him so still and knowing I couldn’t wake him up if I wanted to.”
“He’s just fine,” Jamie reassured them both, taking a seat next to Cadence.
Cadence was having a lot of trouble sitting still; it seemed like she should be preparing for battle, but she couldn’t figure out what was causing it. She did her best to relax and act calm, but she couldn’t keep her knee from bouncing and her stomach was still doing flip flops. She could tell by Jamie’s expression that he was concerned. “I’m fine,” she said before he could even ask. “It just seems like there’s a Vampire around, and I don’t know why.”
Jamie’s eyebrows knit together. “How weird. No one new came in today, right?”
“Right,” she agreed. “I feel like I need to go jog the perimeter of the grounds and make sure there’s nothing suspicious going on.”
“Maybe it’s just all this stuff with Giovani,” he offered.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Cadence shrugged. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. If I’ve felt like there was a Vampire nearby, it was because there was a Vampire nearby.”
“That is strange,” he agreed. After a moment, he said slowly, “I hate to change the subject, but when were you planning on letting me look at your knee?”
“Look at it; it’s fine,” Cadence said wiggling her leg back and forth.
“Very funny,” he said shaking his head. “I’m serious. I need to do an MRI.”
“What happened to your knee?” Cassidy asked, momentarily looking away from Brandon.
“I was dropped out of an airplane,” Cadence replied. Aaron just happened to come through the door at that exact moment, and she gave him a sharp look.
“I prefer to use the phrase ‘lovingly assisted,” he clarified taking a seat next to Jamie in the little semi-circle they had formed.
“What?” Cassidy asked. “Who pushed you out of an airplane?”
Cadence said nothing, just glared at her fiancé for a moment before he finally said, “She had to get out, and she wouldn’t jump.”
Cassidy’s mouth dropped open. “You pushed her out of an airplane?”
“She was wearing a parachute,” Aaron replied defensively. “Besides, she would have been just fine if she would have listened to me and bent her knees when she landed.”
“Sorry, I guess I couldn’t hear you over my screams of terror,” Cadence shot back, making a face at him as she did so.
“My point was,” Jamie interjected, “I need to see if there’s any damage in there that didn’t get fixed correctly when I did the emergency healing on the side of the road. If there’s still damage to your ACL it could snap at any time--and it can’t heal itself.”
“You tore your ACL?” Cassidy asked, her eyes still wide. “That’s super serious, Cadey.”
“It’s fine!” Cadence assured her. “I’m fine.”
“You need to let him look at it,” Aaron said, a serious expression on his face.
“You need to not push people out of airplanes.”
“Cadence,” Cassidy exclaimed with a sigh. “Just let him look at it, geeze.”
“Fine,” Cadence finally agreed, and then looking back at Jamie, she continued, “but not until Cassidy goes home.”
“I hate putting the surgery off with everything that is going on with Giovani,” Jamie warned her. “What if something happens and we end up going off to hunt him down, and I still haven’t had a chance to look at it?”
“Jamie, I’ve been on a hunt, and it was fine, remember?” she reminded him. “As soon as I get a few minutes, I’ll let you do it. But I really think it’s fine. So long as I don’t get dropped from any great heights.” The last part was said with a glare at Aaron.
Ignoring her, he said, “I’ve been talking to Eliza--a lot--this evening, and she seems to think that Giovani has left the country. She’s got people looking into where he might be headed, but she doesn’t really have any idea. Did you both get a chance to look at the note she found?” he asked Jamie and Cadence.
“I read it, but I’m not sure I have any idea what he was trying to say,” Jamie admitted.
“It seemed very nonsensical,” Cadence agreed.
“What did it say?” Cassidy asked. Having no IAC, she had no opportunity to read the letter or access all of the information they were privy to.
Cadence glanced at Aaron for a moment, and she could tell by his expression that he didn’t mind if she told her sister. After all, he had brought it up in front of her. “It was really strange,” she began squinting in thought. “It said, ‘Tell Miss Findley I said missed me, missed me…. Do you know what comes next? I will see you soon.’”
“Actually, it said, ‘I await your arrival,’ which makes it even more odd,” Aaron corrected her. “What makes him think you are going to travel to wherever the hell he is?”
“True,” Cadence agreed. “I don’t know where he is, or I would go there.”
“Maybe that’s some sort of a clue,” Jamie offered.
“So… missed me, missed me--now you’ve got to kiss me?” Cassidy asked slowly.
“That’s what most of us were thinking,” Aaron nodded. “Which wouldn’t really mean kiss, I assume. Since he’s a Vampire, I would think he’s talking about biting--a Vampire kiss. But it would do him no good to bite you.”
“He couldn’t kill you by biting you?” Cassidy asked looking for clarification.
“I guess he could, technically,” Cadence replied, thinking it over. “But he couldn’t turn me. So why say that? If he’s trying to say he wants to kill me, aren’t there better ways to say that than a schoolyard taunt?”
“That’s really bizarre,” Jamie said quietly, still obviously mulling it over. “That’s a really old rhyme. We used to say it when I was a kid.”
“When was that?” Cassidy asked.
“Well, I was born in 1868, so… a long time ago,” he explained.
“Wow,” Cassidy said quietly. “I can’t really wrap my mind around that. I mean, I know you’re even older, Aaron, but still…. Anyway, the whole letter makes no sense. There’s got to be more to go with it. Something is missing.”
“I agree,” Aaron said, nodding. “With the part about there being more, not that I’m old.” He smiled at her, and she blushed, hoping she hadn’t offended him. “But until Eliza can figure out where he’s actually headed, the whole point is kind of moot. We can’t arrive where he’s at if we don’t know where that is….”
“Oh, actually, that reminds me, Lucy called a little bit ago when we were talking to Brandon,” Cassidy said digging her phone out of her pocket. “They’ve been looking at that footage. Maybe she knows something.”
“That might have been nice to know--if it ends up being important,” Cadence said just to Aaron.
“She’s got a lot on her mind. Surely two high school kids couldn’t do a better job of finding Giovani than Eliza,” he replied.
“You don’t know Emma.”
