AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Casper bounded past her, then Hunter appeared at her side. “Take it slow,” he said. His voice turned wry. “You had a pentagram on your door, too.”
She swung her head around, unsure what emotions were rattling around in her head. “You knew. All that time, you knew.”
He shrugged, and she didn’t know if that was indifference or embarrassment. “Not all that time. At first I was only sure about you. It wasn’t until that morning in your driveway that I really started to suspect the Merricks.” He paused. “I also thought you were with them.”
“So all that—when you wouldn’t kiss me in the parking lot.” She swallowed. “You thought I was in on some plot to kill your father?”
r raised his eyebrows.
Then he sighed, turned the gun sideways, and released the hammer. She swallowed and held her hand out, but he only gave her half a smile.
Then he lifted the edge of his shirt and slid it into a holster at the small of his back.
Now that the gun wasn’t pointed at him, Michael climbed to his feet—slowly. He was watching Casper, who was still growling at him.
“So now you’ll help,” Michael said.
“I’ll help Becca,” Hunter said. He paused and looked out at the field. “Though I don’t know what I can do. I haven’t seen another Guide in town. I’m assuming you’ve tried to track—”
“Yeah,” said Michael.
“Maybe we could create a diversion,” said Gabriel.
They all looked at him.
“You know,” he said. “Make something explode, or call up a storm—” He stopped short, as if remembering his brothers weren’t with them. “Or an earthquake, or something to draw out the Guide.”
“If we go to the center of town,” said Michael, “an earthquake would definitely get his attention—”
“Or,” said Becca, “maybe we could try something completely mundane.”
Now they all looked at her.
She pointed at Casper. “He’s a police dog, isn’t he? Can he track a scent?”
“Sure.” Hunter frowned. “But we’d need something of the Guide’s to track.”
“Maybe not.” She fished the second cell phone from her pocket and held it out. “How about something of Chris’s?”
Becca trudged beside Hunter, following the plume of Casper’s tail as he bounded ahead of them through the underbrush.
“We’ve already come this way,” she said, just to break the silence.
“Looks like an army came through here,” Hunter answered, though she had no idea how he could tell the difference. Just looked like a bunch of brush and branches to her. “Maybe Casper can pick up a second trail.”
She didn’t understand how he could be acting so normally, as if he dealt with things like guns and violence and missing Elementals on a daily basis.
Then again, maybe he did.
“So are you going to tell me?” she said.
“Tell you what?”
Was he deliberately being infuriating? “You said you’re not an Earth,” she said. “So which one are you?”
He laughed and gave her a sidelong glance. “Come on, Becca.”
“Come on what?” she said. “Just—no more games. No more lies. Just tell me.”
