“So you think the benefactor you’ve been working with is the same one after V?” Hemlock asked.
“Yes.”
I was pissed off and snippy. We were wasting time here while my wife was at the mercy of some psycho. God only knew what the benefactor wanted from her.
“And your shadows haven’t been able to track her down?” Whisper asked; I shook my head.
I’d sent out my shadows to scour the area for any sign of Violet but they came back empty. It didn’t make any fuckingsense. How could they hide from my shadows? Nothing had ever been able to hide from them.
“Have you played back the scene yet?”
I took a shattered breath, shaking my head again.
“It would really help us if we knew what happened,” Hem said.
I nodded, releasing the hold I had on my shadows. They began to coil but before I gave Bridget the order to replay I noticed I only had six. I looked between Landon and Carson.
“Where’s Niko?”
He refused to leave Violet,Landon said.
“What do you mean?”
When you lost access to us, we were still there but stuck like when you keep us from coiling. Niko broke off to stay with her while the rest of us went with you,Evie clarified.
“What are they saying?”
I looked over to Hemlock and Whisper, both of whom looked lost.
“You can’t hear them?”
They shook their heads.
I’d never used my shadows in front of anyone before, until Violet. But every time I talked to them, she’d always heard their reply. The first time on the balcony of the cottage I hadn’t even thought twice when she’d groggily saidthey can talk?Or anytime she sat and listened to the reports Landon and Carson brought back with them.
She had a special connection with them from the get-go. She could tell them apart, their jobs apart, and gave them names. She knew the voices were masculine or feminine and named them accordingly. She could hear them.
But the two other supervillains sitting across from me couldn’t.
I relayed what Evie and Landon told me.
“So he’s with her now? Why hasn’t he come back with her location?”
We don’t know,Lily replied. I repeated her answer.
I ran my hands over my face. I didn’t know anything about my shadows or how they worked, I didn’t think I’d need to. V said I took them for granted and I fucking did. Even after she said that, I didn’t take any time to learn more. Now my wife was in the hands of a fucking madman, and I couldn’t get her back because I didn’t know how my fucking powers worked.
I couldn’t protect her.
I didn’t deserve to call myself her husband.
“Play it, please.”
I didn’t recognize the broken sound of my voice.
Bridget and Lily broke off and began playing out the scene. They started with Violet sneaking down to the basement. She was trying to run out the same way I did, trying to make it to the woods so she could meet me. She made it to the bottom of the stairs before she ran into someone.
The guy was stunned for half a second before he pointed his gun at her. It was too late for him, she’d already stolen his knife from the holster on his belt and lodged it in his neck a second later.
