Marcus closed his eyes, and his head twitched to the side, like he'd just witnessed something very troubling. His lips curled back into an angry sneer. "I see the fucker in the café. Kallie's eyes are completely glossed over, and he's ordering her to follow him. She's going along with it. She’s trying to resist the compulsion, but the sedative makes it hard for her to disobey, so she can’t fight back. I see them leaving... come on. They went this way."
Marcus sprinted out of the café and took the front door out of the hotel. We quickly followed. The November air was chilly, and the sky was completely overcast.
Marcus tried touching things to get a vision, but he must’ve not found anything useful. He raced down the street and began grabbing random people. He shook them to read their minds, trying to see where Valen had taken Kallie.
“Did you see him? Did you see where he took her?!” he yelled in a crazed manner.
He didn’t find anything and angrily shoved people to the ground, screaming his desperation and acting insane. People scrambled to get away from him, glancing over their shoulder as they ran away. Rishi yowled as he did so, giving hisses of rage.
Marcus doubled over to catch his breath; he was practically hyperventilating. He steadied himself on a nearby lamp post, and almost immediately, his form went rigid. "Hold on. I'm getting something. I see them on the sidewalk… Valen’s ordering Kallie to cast an illusion around them to conceal themselves, so nobody can see them leave. He says once the spell is cast, she's to get on his back?—”
Marcus gasped. “Valen's going to shift into a wolven and fly Kallie out of here. But her concealment charm is strong... I can't break through it!”
Marcus started to panic, and now hewashyperventilating. “I've lost them. I don't know where they’ve gone. If he shifted to fly Kallie out of here, he could be miles away by now!”
Charlie grabbed Marcus by the shoulders. “Marcus, we need you to focus. Is there anything else?”
Marcus closed his eyes again and gave a shudder. “I see Kallie following Valen outside. She’s walking forward. That’s it.”
“What else?” Charlie pressed.
The crease between Marcus' brow deepened. “Before Kallie cast the concealment charm, Valen brushed up against the sideof the building, against some plaque. It was accidental, but he might’ve left some sort of energy imprinted on the object. Maybe I can get something from it.”
I quickly surveyed the area and saw the plaque Marcus was talking about. I rolled over to it and began reading.Chicago Landmark, it read, before listing off all kinds of historical details about the Scarlet Grand Hotel.
Marcus put his hand on the plaque, and concentrated. His Seer powers worked quickly, and Marcus’ eyes shot open as he said, “I couldn’t see where he was going to take her, but I caught an impression of a name… Rupert Berenwald. It’s got to mean something. Thoughts and intention are energy, but they’re difficult to imprint on objects. The fact that I’m able to pick up on this at all means this information is really important.”
Charlie yanked his phone out of his pocket and stabbed the screen. He began barking into it. “Max, Kallie's missing, but we might have a lead. Look up everything you can about Rupert Berenwald.”
I could hear Max's voice through the phone. “I’m on it.”
A keyboard clicked in the background, and I held my breath. Max better find something right fucking now, because I was ready to burn down this city for my best friend.
“Rupert Berenwald was an architect; a vampire, actually. He designed the Scarlet Grand,” Max said.
“Did he design any other buildings in Chicago?” Charlie demanded.
Max clicked the keyboard again. "Yes… there was an entire neighborhood that he constructed decades ago, but that area looks completely deserted now. The groundwater in that area became polluted from a local factory nearby and forced everyone to leave. The city’s left it abandoned.”
“That must be where he took her!” I cried.
“Let’s go,” Charlie said. We dipped back inside the hotel, and Charlie used his pocket mirror to make a portal. We went through, and came out on the other side in a dilapidated residential area that didn’t look like it’d been inhabited for twenty years or more.
Since the area was deserted, Oberi changed into a unicorn, and I got on her back. Marcus subconjured my wheelchair. Charlie and Marcus immediately dispersed in different directions to look for her.
I took off on Oberi, galloping through the abandoned streets. We rounded corners and went down crooked alleyways, but found nothing. Just graffiti, trash, and broken items that had been discarded long ago.
I met up with Marcus and Charlie a short time later. They’d been running around like I was, and clearly hadn’t seen a thing. Rishi gave a mournful yowl.
“We’ve covered this whole block, and there’s nothing here,” Marcus moaned.
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t think Valen’s here. I’m scanning the area with my Elf magic, and I don’t feel any magical traces.”
“What do youmean?” Marcus asked. “According to my vision, this is where he ended up!”
“But it wasn’t his final stop,” Charlie stated. “If it was, we’d have found him.”
“Then where the fuck is he?!” I yelled, feeling hopeless.
