Cally was the only one who’d come for him, and with Gabriel controlling her, what chance did she have?
She didn’t even need him anymore. Once she’d bonded with Gabriel, Antoine would be redundant, an inconvenience, best left at the bottom of the ocean.
How long had the sun been up now?
The oblivion of vampiric sleep continued to elude him.
Three
“Options?” Cally asked.
They gathered around Antoine’s kitchen table while Marcel flipped pancakes at the stove, as though breakfast solved everything. Cally wasn’t hungry, and nursed her coffee.
“We need to get out there and see what we’re dealing with,” Zoey said.
Gabe shook his head, wavy dark hair perfectly in place. He was glamoured to hide his vampiric appearance: skin a warmer tone, green eyes a cool peridot. “Too soon for that. They’ll be watching for the first few days, making sure there’s nothing suspicious. Besides, they know I have a yacht.”
“We could take a fishing boat.”
“In this weather?” Gabe looked skeptical. “I mean, youcould, but you’d be tossed around like dice in a gambler’s fist.”
“I’m still going,” Cally said firmly. “I need to talk to him, to let him know we’re coming.”
Gabe’s eyebrows rose. “You can talk through the bond?”
“No. But Noah can talk to him. We’ll go together.”
“Not leaving your side anyway,” Noah muttered, the weight of his commitment evident in the tightness around his eyes. His sandy hair stuck up at odd angles, as though brushing it hadn’t been a priority. “The last thing Antoine asked me to do was keep you safe.”
“Taking her out into the open sea in weather like this isn’t ‘keeping her safe’,” Gabe argued.
Noah accepted a plate of pancakes from Marcel with a nod. “You heard her; she’s going anyway. And I can’t keep her safe if she breaks my legs, can I?” He winked at Cally and reached for the maple syrup.
Zoey pushed a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “We still need to figure out how to get him back from that depth.”
“I might have the answer to that.” Eve sat in a comfy chair off to one side, auburn curls tumbling as she bent over Marcel’s laptop, busy googling while her untouched pancakes grew cold. “ROVs. Remotely Operated Vehicles. Even the simplest ones can go down to three thousand feet.”
“Needle in a haystack,” Zoey replied. “We could be right on top of him and never find him with something like that. They probably tied weights around his ankles, right? He’d be one more bit of debris on the sea floor.”
“Don’t call him ‘debris’,” Cally said sharply.
Zoey ducked her head. “Sorry.”
“Okay, scratch the ROV,” Eve said. “Backup idea. Mini-sub. You could pilot it, Zoey.”
She held her hands up. “I mostly did security. Give me a door you don’t want anyone to go in, and I’m your gal. But I don’t know the first thing about piloting a sub.”
“I might have thralls who can help,” Gabe said. “But we’d still have to find him.”
“Well, that’s the beauty of the sub idea.” Eve looked up from the screen and offered Cally a smile. “We don’t need a sonar when we have our own Miss Bloodhound here. If she’s in the sub, she could lead you right to him. You can do that, right?”
“Yeah, I should be able to do that, if I’m in the sub.” Cally toyed with her coffee cup. “I’ve never tried using the bond at short range, but that would work, right, Gabe?”
“Yeah, it should work fine. As soon as you’re close, you’ll get a sense of distance, too.”
“We don’t have access to Antoine’s money,” Noah said. “How much does a mini-sub cost anyway?”
Eve tapped the keyboard for a few moments, then grimaced. “Price available on request. So, expensive.” Then she whistled through her teeth. “Twelve to twenty-four months’ manufacturing lead time.”
