Cadence shot across campus to Christian’s lab where her sister was sitting with Lucy and Tara. They were patiently waiting to see if Holland’s other plane left or if anything unusual happened at any of the airports near where Holland was last spotted. The girls also kept an eye on any private planes moving in and out of the area, particularly chartered flights. It had crossed Cadence’s mind that Holland’s plane moving could all be a bluff, but she’d have to know that LIGHTS was watching her. It seemed like an awfully big coincidence that her plane just happened to be going to the location where they thought the portal would open soon, later that same evening.
“I think I’ve got a name.”
Cadence hadn’t even entered the room before her sister shot the information at her. “Great,” Cadence said, dropping into a chair on the other side of Tara. The girls didn’t even have to scrunch together to sit in front of Christian’s giant monitor. “What is it? Who is it?”
“Okay, so one of the names Stewart spewed out was Seonaid MacIain. She’s a librarian who lives in Glasgow. Stewart needed her help a few years ago working on a project that involved translating some ancient Scottish texts. When I jumped into her head, I immediately picked up on a thought about a strange phone call she’d received yesterday, a man asking about what she calls the Ancient Undead Text. I am assuming that’s our Vampire book, even though I don’t think I’ve picked up on that title anywhere else, not from Stewart or Ward. Anyway, she is a human, so to her it’s all just an ancient riddle. She’d never seen the book before and was thinking it was all just legend until this man sent her pictures of a few pages to decipher for him. She didn’t mind disclosing her thoughts on the passage because it all seemed make believe to her.”
“And we think this man was Stewart?” Cadence asked, confused.
“No, Hines,” Cassidy corrected. “And she told him what she thought it meant. The list of sites she was able to identify was far shorter than Ward and Christian’s, but she was able to identify three of them fairly certainly, as well as the one Ward said was Jupiter and the other one he said was the sun.”
“Which ones were they?” Cadence had a feeling she already knew at least one of them.
“The Colosseum, Stonehenge, and this place in Iceland called Latrabjerg, or Bird-cliff. She said she wasn’t as sure about the last one because it basically just said ‘steep, steep cliffs,’ but the other two she said she had no doubt about.”
“So we think the reason Holland’s plane went to Rome was because it was one of their three choices?” Cadence clarified.
“Yeah, I think she’s grasping at straws. I bet she already has a contact near Stonehenge she can send in without having to travel there.”
“And her second plane just took off,” Lucy chimed in. “We’ll track it, but I bet it’s going to Iceland.”
“Right. Okay. We need teams on the ground,” Cadence said, taking a deep breath. It was nice to know that Holland was likely even more in the dark than they were.
“Could she drive from Eastern Europe to Stonehenge?” Tara asked. “Isn’t there a tunnel or something?”
“There’s the Eurotunnel,” Lucy said. “I was reading about it a few weeks ago when I was thinking it would be cool to work out of France or England or someplace. She could take that.”
“But... would she have enough time to get there?” Cadence asked. “I mean, assuming she’s where we last detected her, or close to it, how long would it take to drive to Stonehenge?”
“Assuming she can drive as fast as we can, probably about two hundred miles per hour on average, she could get from Hungary to Stonehenge in about six or seven hours, I think,” Lucy said. “Maybe Ward would know.”
Cadence inhaled deeply through her nose. She had no way of knowing when Holland might’ve left or even where she would’ve left from, but it hadn’t even occurred to her that anyone would try to drive to an island. “All right. This Eurotunnel, put it on our surveillance, Lucy. I’m not sure how you can do that, but if anyone can figure it out, I think it’s you.”
“It won’t be easy,” the teen admitted. “It’s not like we have any idea what kinda car she’ll be driving.”
“Let’s get a team on the ground wherever the Euro-thingy-majigy lets out, and several people along the route between there and Stonehenge. Maybe we can track her that way.” Cadence thought perhaps she was wasting resources, but it was worth a try.
“I’ll get on it,” Lucy promised, and Cadence happily left it in their hands, heading out the door to check on how things were going in the archives.
On her way over, she checked the time. It was just past two in the afternoon. She needed to eat something, take a shower, and call her mom back, who’d left her no less than fifteen messages, even after she’d asked Aurora to call her. Some things Cadence had to do for herself.
As if her mother had the same ability to read one’s mind as Cassidy, Cadence’s phone rang again just before she reached her destination. With a loud sigh, she pulled it out and answered. “Hi, Mom. I’m sorry—I’ve just been unbelievably busy.”
“I’m sure you have, honey. It’s okay. I just wanted to hear your voice. How are you holding up?”
The sound of her mother’s comforting tone was almost enough to melt the defenses Cadence had been building around herself. “Not well, Mom. But we have a plan now, and we’re hoping this is all over soon.”
“Good, good. Well, I just wanted to call and check on you. I spoke to Cassidy a little while ago, and she seemed more angry than anything else.” Liz let out a little chuckle. “Dad says to tell you hi and not to worry about anything here. We told everyone there was a little mishap on a work trip, and while the wedding might not go off as planned, if they all just stick around a few more days, maybe we can have it next weekend. Of course, some people had to go back to work or school, but plenty of people are willing to rearrange their schedules so as not to miss it.”
“Next weekend, Mom?” Cadence echoed. “That seems kinda... rushed. I don’t know what it’s like to come out of a portal, but it might be harder than we think.”
“Well, Elliott seemed fine....”
“This is a totally different beast, Mom.” She didn’t have time to think about the wedding at the moment—hence, why she’d delegated that to her mother. “Listen, we’ll talk about it later, okay? I appreciate all you’ve done for us, Mom, I really do.”
“It’s no problem, honey. We love you.”
“We love you, too,” she said, confident her husband would say he loved her parents one way or another, and then she hung up, wondering how long it might take for the information she’d disclosed to Stewart, which was heard over the IAC, to make its way back to Shenandoah. Since Meagan and Shane were still there, and Aurora was listening in... probably not long. She couldn’t worry about that now either.
She headed back into the archives hoping she could make this meeting quick so she could go eat something and get that shower. She could sleep on the plane, though at this point she wasn’t sure where she should head to. Waiting until tomorrow for the portal to open at Stonehenge seemed like an eternity. Hopefully, Christian would come up with something else. If not, at least she had some sort of an end to this nightmare in sight.
