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We’d almost died. Xavier could have killed us. Mom was hurt. Cornelius was hurt. It was a miracle that all three of us survived. A ghostly echo of Michael’s magic swirled around me. I hugged myself, trying to banish it. I was at my limit, and I’d been gripping all my emotions in a tight fist of my will for so long, they were choking me.
Gus rose to his feet and put his head on my thigh. I looked into his brown eyes and almost cried.
Not yet. We weren’t safe yet.
The door swung open, and Alessandro marched into the room. His expression was terrible. He looked like he would murder anyone who got in his way and not even notice.
I hugged Gus. If this was an illusion mage, Gus would know.
Alessandro saw me and stopped.
Our eyes met. There were so many things in his eyes: fear, fury, relief, and love. Not an imposter. Alessandro. My Alessandro.
He cleared the distance between us in half a second, dropped by me, and gripped my shoulders. “How bad are you hurt?”
I put my arms around him and stuck my face into the bend of his neck. His skin felt scalding. I was a Prime and the Head of a House. I should have maintained composure, but I had nothing left.
He hugged me to him, his arms strong, but his hold careful.
“Catalina, talk to me.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words to explain it. I’d thought he’d died. I almost saw my mom die. I had felt everything, Xavier’s volatile power, driven by pure hatred; Gunderson’s deranged glee; Cornelius’ desperate song that made me want to throw myself on the ground and cry until my eyes ran dry; and, worst of all, Michael’s indescribable darkness that still clung to me.
He kissed me, his lips hot on mine, and pulled me closer. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Sono qui con te, I’m here . . .”
I squeezed myself against him and held on.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay, love, it’s okay . . .”
My mouth finally worked. “I thought you were dead. I thought Gunderson and Xavier killed you.”
“Not in a million years. I won’t leave you. I’ll never leave you.”
The fear clawed me.
“It’s okay. I’m here . . .”
“We need to go home. We all need to go home.”
“We will, angelo mio.”
My mind finally started, like a rusted water mill forced to turn by the current. “Konstantin set us up.”
“I know.”
“There is a mess in front of the Office of Records.”
“Leon is handling it.”
“Mom’s security detail . . .”
“We found them. They are alive and being treated.”
He kissed me again and cradled me in his arms until Cornelius returned and the nurses wheeled my mother out in a chair.
Chapter 8
Alessandro had brought the Vault Bus.
From the outside, the massive vehicle resembled a heavily armored truck, but inside, instead of cargo space, the bus featured two rows of seats along the walls, each with an individual harness. It could seat twenty-five, if you counted the four seats in the cab. It also weighed upward of forty thousand pounds, about the same as a fully loaded sixty-foot bus. Even Connor would need an amplification circle to lift it off the road.
As soon as Mom was done, Alessandro and our guards loaded us into the Bus, and we were off.
I rode with Alessandro in the cab while one of our guards drove.
The night outside of our windows was so dark. Deep and stifling despite the streetlights and the glow of storefronts and windows.
Alessandro took my hand. I held on to him. We rode in silence for a long time.
“Talk to me,” he said finally.
“It’s my fault.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“I should have told you about Konstantin as soon as it happened.” He would have known instantly whose skin Konstantin was wearing and would have anticipated the shitstorm that would follow. “Failing that, I should have identified his disguise. I’m supposed to be smarter than this.”
“You were in the middle of an interrogation with an unstable mental mage. I, on the other hand, abandoned you and left to run a political errand. Had I stayed, the outcome of tonight would’ve been much different.”
“What happened with that?”
He shook his head. “We went to the school. Gunderson had mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared by a post office. We went there. He was gone again. Then came a sighting half a mile away. Again, we were too late. I checked the surveillance footage at the post office. The camera should have caught him according to eyewitnesses, but it didn’t. I realized I’ve been chasing an illusion mage, and not a very powerful one at that.”
A Prime would have shown up on the security footage as the person he was mimicking, but a lower-level mage didn’t have enough juice.
“I tried to call you and got voice mail. Then I tried the Compound, and the call wouldn’t go through. I borrowed Matt’s phone and called the Compound again. No answer. I called Linus’ house, then Bern . . .” He shrugged. “Finally, the light dawned. I shut off the phone and went home. I was pulling into the driveway when you called from the ER.”
