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Ingrid and I were never going to be friends. She didn’t like how much attention Sig paid to me, ironically, because I think she believed it made him weak. Now she understood that I was not Sig’s only weakness.
“You can’t blame yourself for this,” I told her. “They were going to find a way to make him do it, one way or another. You just happened to be the most convenient option.”
“I don’t understand you.” She got to her feet. “You had their strength, you had their healing, and you gave it all up. How can you be content to just be human? These bodies make us weak. They make us targets.”
Oh great, I should have her team up with Desmond so I could start hearing this song everywhere I went. “In case you’ve forgotten, I was pretty much always a target. No one cares if you’re immortal when they want to kill you. They’re going to try to do it no matter what.”
My battered body agreed with this sentiment wholeheartedly. As I got back up to my feet I let out a groan of protest.
“Let’s get her out of here,” I said. “I know those wounds don’t look bad, but we need to get you to a hospital. I’m actually shocked you’re still human. You lost so much blood, and he gave you his, and then you were out cold…”
“Not to get cute by quoting The Princess Bride, but I was only mostly dead. You can’t be turned into a vampire unless you’re truly and properly dead. I guess I got lucky.” She glanced at all her wounds as if she didn’t think she was particularly lucky in that moment. But Sig’s blood was helping to heal her, so I doubted most of the scars would last. She added, “And I’m not going to a hospital. I’m coming with you.”
Naturally.
I didn’t even have the energy to try to talk her out of it, either, not that she would listen to me one way or the other.
“Fine, but if you get killed for real this time, that’s on you.”
Chapter Thirty
We had one missing person located and one more left to round up, but the problem was that the bar had been my only lead. It turned out to be a good one, considering we’d found Ingrid, but it was also the end of the line as far as available clues.
The four of us opened all the other rooms, hoping to find something that might indicate where Sig had been kept or what they’d done with him, but unfortunately no one had left behind a handy We Are Here map with a big red X on it.
Pretty inconsiderate of them if you asked me.
Once we had exhausted searching every nook and cranny of the shady basement prison, we left the bar, glad to put it in our rearview at last. Night had settled in fully at this point, the cloak of darkness wrapping the city up entirely. New York fought back, shining its own brightness into the night, but it was obvious that we were now well beyond the protection of sunlight.
Even though Davos was locked up, his people were free to do the nasty deeds he had planned.
Which meant we were truly running out of time. His people had Sig, and there was nothing to stop them from opening up their Hell gate.
I considered heading back to the High Line, because he’d tried to open one there before, but something about that choice didn’t feel right. At the High Line he had used two female human victims. He couldn’t have expected too big of a gate from such a small offering. No, this time around he would be looking for something a lot bigger.
And probably more private.
Unfortunately, my brain wasn’t coming up with any viable locations. I needed help of the magical variety, and I needed it now.
“I know where we have to go,” I declared.
“You know where he is?” Ingrid asked.
“No, but I know who does, and I know someone who can get us through the door.”
The three of them exchanged uncertain glances.
“We’re going to see the Oracle,” I explained. “But first we need to go get my dad.”
The Starbucks on the corner of West 52nd and 8th didn’t look like much, though it had been renovated in the past two years to have more of an upscale aesthetic. It wasn’t the kind of place you would pass by and think, Now there’s a portal to a reality between dimensions.
But that’s precisely what someone would find, if they were in dire need and passed through that door.
The need was key. You couldn’t be perfectly content and still find yourself in Calliope’s realm. Nor could you get there if you were human, unfortunately. Which meant Emilio, Ingrid, and myself were all shit out of luck in getting past the threshold.
I wasn’t sure about Cal’s demon policy, and I didn’t think it was a great idea to make Harry a guinea pig in this particular experiment. Calliope’s realm didn’t adhere to the laws of physics as we knew them, meaning the phases of the moon all happened simultaneously there, something that really fucked up werewolves when they tried to enter.
Who knew how things would impact a demon, or if she had barriers in place to keep them from entering at all.
