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***
Connor slept fitfully, body occasionally shaking as if he were fighting some unseen attacker. He curled into me, and I banded my arms around him, holding him tight against the fear and fury, hoping he could find a waythrough.
TWENTY
And then there was only one more night. Tomorrow, the House, our parents, would be lost to us forever. So we were hustling.
Connor and Alexei were already gone when I left for the office that night. I still didn’t know what Connor intended to do about the challenge, and I wondered if he’d use Lulu’s strategy—wait and see if we could get the House back in time. And when his father was here, they could decide together.
Lulu was stationed at the table again with a smoothie that looked nearly as unsavory as Connor’s. I kissed the top of her head as I headed for the door.
“We could use a little luck,” I told her. “So if you’ve got any juju for that, feel free to use it.”
“We’ll get it done,” Lulu said, giving me a look of confidence that had me almost believing it was possible. “I’m getting close.”
So we didn’t have a plan exactly, but we had a plan for a plan. And that was something. On the way out, I looked at Lulu, grinned fully. “I missed you. I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she interrupted with a grin. “I missed me, too. Let’s toast this asshole.”
***
Wind whipped at the windshield as I took an Auto to the office. I didn’t feel especially good about the update I sent Micah and theother Houses on the way, but there was no point in hiding the truth: We were doing everything we could to find Rose and her sigil, and we wouldn’t give up. But we were running out of time.
“Anything new?” I asked, taking off my jacket.
“We think there are eight wards and Cornerstones,” Petra said.
I stopped. “What? You got that far?”
“Process of elimination,” Petra said, “and one really bad game of darts.”
Theo lifted a hand. “It wasn’t bad for me, because I won, which means I got the last Mallocake in the vending machine.”
“Man, my mother loved those,” I murmured, then realized I’d used the past tense. “Lovesthem,” I corrected. “She loves them, just interdimensionally right now.”
“They’re amazing,” Theo said, and popped the map onto the screen. “The algorithm helped a lot, so thanks to Armin.”
“Praise be to Armin,” I murmured, and reviewed the colored blobs that now covered Chicago, each a different color, and each a different Cornerstone.
“Their zones of influence, let’s say, are a guess,” Petra said. “We don’t really know their boundaries, but those are the best mathematical conclusions. And that assumes we’re right about eight. I’m feeling eighty percent confidence on that.”
“I’ve just sent Gwen the six new locations,” Roger said. “She’ll send out uniforms, who will let us know if Rose is spotted.”
“It would make sense for me and Elisa to check them out,” Theo said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Anything on the video front?” Petra asked.
I shook my head. “I found no footage clear enough to tell what she’s doing. I viewed everything the CPD had, every social media and news video I could find. None were ever clear or close enough to get details other than—” I spun my hand in the air.
Theo frowned at me. “I don’t recall it looking quite like that.”
“It seems you overplayed your hand,” Roger said, offering the daddest of dad jokes.
“There’s more video to review,” Petra said. “So you can have at it.”
I sighed, and tried to garner the enthusiasm for spending hoursnotfinding what we needed.
She pulled out her buzzing screen, read it with hope. And then her shoulders slumped.
