“Signal’s dead now, but that could mean anything. Dead battery, most likely. Or the watch was damaged, or she’s in a place where she’s not getting service, but… Hang on.”
A few more clicks, a few more hacked relay towers, and…boom.
“Yes. Yes!” I’m damn near out of my skin with relief as the green dots illuminate a clear path on the map. “This is a map of her location—at least, the watch’s location—starting last night and ending a few hours ago, presumably when the battery or device itself died.”
“How are you getting all this?” Drae asks.
“It’s the tracking signal. When it’s working, the device pings the towers at regular intervals. See, this is Blackmoor Manor last night.” I zoom in and check the time stamps. “She was in her room, probably sleeping at this time. Then you can see the slight movement here—now she’s in the library.”
We watch as the light shifts on the screen.
“And then?” Auggie asks, his breath warm on my cheek as he leans in closer, all of them awaiting confirmation that the signal didn’t die in that library.
That somehow, she got away.
“There. There!” Draegan jabs his finger as a new series of dots lights up along the road leading off the property. “That means she left Blackmoor, right?”
I blink back tears of joy. “Yes. That’s exactly what it means.”
The collective sigh is audible, a weight evaporating from all our shoulders.
But now we’ve got a new problem, because it still means she’s gone, and we have no idea what the circumstances were that led her off the property.
“So she just… wandered off?” Jude asks.
I check all the timestamps. “No, the signal is moving too quickly for that. She must’ve gotten into a car.”
“Or she wasputinto a car,” Auggie says.
“Where?” Draegan asks. “Where the hell could she have gone? And with whom? None of our vehicles are missing.”
We watch as the lights blaze a trail straight into downtown Manhattan.
“That’s it.” I point to the final dot on the screen. “The towers received a signal from this same location for about ten minutes before the transmissions stopped for good.”
“You got an address?” Jude asks.
I plug in the GPS coordinates to get the exact location.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “That’s Thornwood. Which means… The fucking shadow mages. It has to be them.”
Draegan curses. “Tell me the cathedral security cameras are still operational.”
“Should be. I never turned them off.” A few more clicks of the keys, and I’ve got the feeds from Thornwood pulled up.
The candlelit chandeliers flicker over a scene that chills me to the core.
“Is that live?” Auggie asks.
Taking in the sight of all those black-hooded mages gathered in the nave, I swallow hard. “Yes.”
Because past the mages, trembling on the altar in a thin dress, her hair a mess, her eyes wide with a mix of fear and determination, is Westlyn.
“She’s alive,” I whisper. “She’s fucking alive.”
“But what the bloodyhellare they doing to her?” Jude barks out.
A hot, sick feeling tears through my gut, chasing away the chill. There’s only one explanation for all of this—the kidnapping. The mages. The cathedral. Westlyn in a dress on the very altar where she once stabbed her betrothed.
