Cadence knocked on Elliott’s door, and waited as patiently as he could before Brandon called out in a high pitched voice, “Who is it?” as if he was a house wife from the fifties. It would have normally made her laugh, but humor was not on the agenda today.
“Open the damn door, Brandon,” she replied, trying to bite back the anger seeping out of every pour.
“Gee, someone is in a lovely mood.” He pulled the door open. Cass was sitting on the couch, her algebra book open and her laptop on the coffee table, so at least they were actually studying and not doing… something else.
She breezed past him. “Cass, I need you to gather as much intel as you can about Lexington,” she said, dropping into Elliott’s favorite recliner. She looked around, partially expecting him to be there, but she didn’t hear him. “I am going to put a hunt together, but I likely won’t be able to take any Guardians, so I need as much info as possible. And before you ask, no you can’t go.”
“Wait—what?” Cassidy asked, setting her math book aside and leaning forward. “What do you mean no Guardians?”
“It’s been forbidden,” she replied, brushing her hair back. Brandon was frozen between the door and the couch just staring at her. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but humor me, okay?” That was the only kind of humor she had a stomach for.
“Okay—like now?” she asked, still obviously confused.
“No, it doesn’t have to be now, but the sooner the better. I need numbers. Hiding places. What kind of location this is. Is it a residence? Is there security? All of the usual stuff, only you’ve gotta be absolutely certain.”
“Okay,” her sister said again. “Let me finish my math, and then I’ll check.”
“Great. Thanks.” Cadence rested her elbows on her knees, wondering how boring it would be to watch her sister do her homework.
“Is there something else?” Cassidy asked, obviously annoyed that her sister was still there.
There wasn’t, not really, but she felt like there should be something else, or otherwise she would’ve gotten up by now. “Uh, could you… check in on Hines? He might be on an airplane right now. It’s just… he’s been up to no good, too, and I wanna know if you can pinpoint him.” She didn’t know how her sister would react to knowing Sam had been Resurrected since Cassidy had every reason to hate him just as much as she did.
“Ookay,” Cassidy said as Brandon walked over and sat down next to her. She closed her eyes in concentration
“He might not be alone,” Cadence added. “But don’t worry about whoever is with him.”
Cass opened one eye, looked at her sister, and then closed it again. Cadence thought about saying something else but held her tongue.
Cassidy was quiet for a long moment, and Cadence wondered if it would be better if she left, but after a few seconds, her breathing evened out, and her forehead crinkled. “Oh, no,” Cassidy muttered under her breath, and Cadence prayed it was the bit of information she already knew. “Oh, no!”
“Cass, are you okay?” Brandon asked, resting is hand on her arm.
“Hold on. Let me check something.” She didn’t even open her eyes. She was slowly shaking her head but kept her eyes closed for another few minutes before they finally opened. “Uh, do you know who I saw?” she asked, her tone accusatory.
“Sam? Maybe Laura?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Cadence nodded. “Yeah. I guess I should’ve told you about that.”
“What?” Brandon asked, confused. “The Sam? As in Cowboy Sam?”
“Yep,” Cadence confirmed. “Hines broke in and turned them last night, took them with him.”
“Son of a bitch.” Brandon ran his hand through his hair so that it was practically standing on end.
“He’s on his way to some place in Europe, but I couldn’t get a direct read on it. I’ll check in later. Maybe he will have landed by then. I looked in on Holland, too, and regardless of what the big bossman thinks, she is pregnant. It wasn’t her idea to get Sam and Laura, but she approved it. I shut her down for a few minutes while I was in there, too, so Christian can get his data. She didn’t like it this time, not at all. She fought me the whole way. It was like she was really concentrating on something.”
Cadence was puzzled. “Like what? You mean more than just messing with the Vampires’ trackers?” They all knew Holland had been sending out a signal that made it difficult to track the Vampire’s location using the trackers many of them had implanted, but Cassidy had found a way to work around it. Cadence was able to take the new data, which looked a lot like the old data, and send it to Christian while she was still talking.
“Yeah, it was weird. She basically shoved me out of her head, something she’s never done before. She usually wants me to hang out there so she can try to talk me into joining them. I got the feeling she might be traveling, too. She might be going to meet Hines.”
“Could that be why she didn’t want you in her head?” Brandon asked, sliding his hand down to take hers.
“I don’t know. She’s so weird. It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. I’m sure it’s going to be worse now that’s she’s pregnant. Prego brain in a crazy ass Vampire.”
Cadence could only shake her head. “Okay, well get me that info this afternoon, if you can, okay?”
Before Cassidy could answer, Brandon said, “I wanna go.”
“At the risk of you being transferred, I’m going to have to say no. Again.”
“But….”
His argument was cut off when the door opened. “Well, hello there, sunshine,” Elliott said, walking in with a big sappy smile on his face. Cadence hoped it didn’t have anything to do with Aurora because those images wouldn’t be erased from her mind too quickly, and she couldn’t ask in front of the teens anyway.
