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“What’s that?” I asked.
His eyes were ahead, scanning the area before driving through the intersection. “The bond,” he said, “between Aern and Emily. Is that something unique to them?” He turned right without signaling, barely glancing at me as he did so. “Or do all of your kind have the ability to create a union?”
My kind. The words bothered me more than they should, I knew, but I couldn’t say why.
He waited.
“No,” I said finally, shaking off that niggling feeling. “I don’t think … well, none of us should be able to.” I stopped, baffled by the idea that I had no clue about my kind. I’d only truly known my mother and Emily. It wasn’t like we’d had an honest history lesson on ourselves. Why was Logan asking? Because of me? Because of the prophecy? I clarified, “It’s just Emily as far as I know. But I can’t be sure.”
He nodded.
We were silent for several minutes before he asked a new question. “Are you all prophets, aside from Emily?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “My mother for certain, possibly hers. It might be something that’s passed directly, but Emily … well, we’re twins, so there’s no accounting for what could have happened.”
“What about a written history?” he asked. “Some way for you to find the others?”
I twisted the hem of my shirt between my fingers. “I don’t know if there are others, Logan.”
He did look at me then. “Because you were hidden?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think she meant to die so soon. I think she had every intention of telling us more.” The words hurt, because I believed them with all of my heart. And because if it was true, then there were no guarantees my power would save us.
Logan pulled the car to the curb in front of a massive metal-sided building.
“She had a choice, Brianna.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “you have to choose between two bad things.”
He stared at me, only able to guess at the horrors my visions had shown me, and said, “Sometimes, you have to make your own options.”
Despite the fact that we were outside the warehouse that had possibly housed my captive mother, that my visions were warning me of fire and death, that we were nearly alone in our quest and that I was possibly the world’s last remaining prophet, I found myself smiling at his resolve.
The warehouses were far from empty. They were littered with containers and boxes, and occasionally a dark furry mass skittered across the slicked concrete floors. What was noticeably absent was any sign of people, human or otherwise, among the cardboard and empty pallets dispersed throughout the buildings. No food wrappers or soda cans, no chairs posted near the entrances, not even a homeless person using the rooms for shelter. Nothing. Whatever Morgan was planning for these properties, he’d not gotten started before the Division had imprisoned him.
We drove from location to location, crossing each possibility off the list through most of the morning. It wasn’t until the fourth warehouse that things changed.
“Wait,” Logan said as we crossed in front of a wide roll-up door. He pulled one of the devices from his pocket and sent a message to his team.
“What is it?” I whispered beside him.
“There,” he said, pointing to the line of the roof over head, “see that conduit? That is new. Someone’s made upgrades to this building, and I’m guessing it’s security.”
“Like cameras?” I asked.
The device in his hand beeped and Logan read the screen. “Yes,” he tipped it toward me, “but apparently the feeds aren’t running outside the property.”
“You mean they were watching from the inside?”
A prickle crawled over my skin when he nodded. “Looks like everything is shut down now, though,” he said.
His assurance didn’t help, because if the men who’d watched it were gone, then we were likely on the right track. But I followed as he disabled the locks and led me through the entrance. Because I couldn’tnotfind the place that held my mother.
High shuttered windows let in narrow streams of light to streak across the empty, sealed-concrete floor. There was no scent of must or stale air, no sign of those dark, furry masses. A set of offices lined the wall close to the doors, and the other wall was boarded over what would have been the roll-up doors that allowed trucks to access whatever cargo it had held. Painted beams and columns filled the otherwise empty space, which only helped to emphasize the fact that it was too clean.
I started to reach for Logan’s hand, but stopped when I saw how it hovered over the holster he’d strapped to his leg. His eyes scanned the space before he tilted his head toward a set of doors on the far wall. “There. This property has seven buildings, but only four are climate controlled.”
“You don’t think he’d let her freeze?” I asked skeptically as we walked across the space.
