AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When I pulled up the tracker, there was no sign of Aurora on campus. I scrolled outward on the map, looking for her location.
She was at the old club. What the hell was she doing there? I glanced at my friends, wondering if she was doing more than a mission for me. Maybe she'd secretly won over each of the guys. It wouldn't have surprised me.
And it wouldn't surprise me if she'd kept that a secret for her own amusement either. She played her games too.
“What do you think Aurora is doing right now?” I asked Pax. He froze, then glanced at me at first as if he'd been lost in thought.
His fingers tightened on the edges of his throne. “Is there any chance we could go a day without talking about Aurora?”
“Not very likely,” I admitted. I went back to watching the acolytes mill around, checking in with each other. One of them announced they were all present and ready.
“I hope so,” Cain said, that subtle threat in his voice that made them all quiver. Cain leaned forward, about to start the presentation of the gifts to the Sphinx and us, but I stopped him with a hand on his forearm. Cain cocked an eyebrow as he turned to face me.
“There's something wrong with Aurora,” I said.
“What else is new?” he muttered.
“I mean it,” I said. “She's back at the Twisted Rose.”
Cain sparked with instant fury. “I thought she was locked safely in her room tonight.”
“I was never going to actually lock her in.” Stellan seemed surprised by the idea. “You know how much she would hate being trapped after her time with the Demon.”
Cain rolled his eyes. “It's different when she's in the Sphinx. She knows she’s safe here… otherwise, I wouldn’t have found her ass on my bed eating popcorn.”
“Is it different?” Stellan asked skeptically. Then he added, “After tonight, I'm taking Aurora back to our hometown. I need to know what happened. One way or another, the two of us need to figure it out.”
“Good,” Pax said shortly. “We've all been waiting for you to get your head out of your ass.”
“Hopefully we get the chance for Stellan to resurrect his head from his rectum,” I said, “but I'm not sure because, like I just said, Aurora is at the Twisted Rose. Did anyone else send her on a mission?”
“On a mission? What the fuck are you talking about?” Pax demanded, then understanding dawned over his face. “You were working with her on this first-girl-in-the-Sphinx nonsense.”
“If none of you sent her on a mission, then I don't know why she would be there, because she went to get Carrie Hayward's hand and his files. The files, as her tithe. The hand, mostly for my own amusement.”
“We're going to the Twisted Rose.” Cain rose suddenly, his voice rolling through the temple when he said, “The initiation will continue after you have faced your next task.”
I was amazed by how quickly he could improvise, making it seem as if everyone should have expected this task all along.
Cain made up some bullshit tests for our initiates and told them to be sure to keep their phones ready and available for the next phase of initiation. Then once he'd sent our acolytes running off, we headed to the Twisted Rose.
When we reached the Twisted Rose, we found Paxton’s car parked in the big underground garage, the one used for transport and workers, not clients. I went over to check the trunk. It was empty, with no sign of the box or a dirt-crumb-covered shovel. Anxiety twisted through my gut.
“You never should have done this without talking to us.” Cain sounded furious. “Is your loyalty to us or to her?”
It was funny that he was accusing me of being disloyal for his sake when his fury was obviously protective towards her. Sometimes psychopaths weren’t very self-aware. Even though Cain seemed to understand everything about the rest of us with a glance. Sometimes it seemed as if, while he was learning how to imitate a normal human, he'd become better than the rest of us at understanding what was happening in the human head.
Just then, a scream seemed to echo through the building. A building the was well sound-proofed. It took me a second to realize that someone had to be projecting the sound through the loudspeakers.
Aurora. I knew in my heart it was Aurora already, and protective rage tightened every muscle. I was ready to kill for her.
“What the fuck is going on?” Cain demanded. But he was already running toward the sound, his gun pulled out.
As always, the rest of us plunged in after him.
* * *
Aurora
