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“Not yet.” I lean against him. “Give me a minute to find them again.”
Marc supports my weight as my magic sweeps out, finding the two shining stars faster this time and locking on.
I open my eyes. “I’ve got them. They’re in the woods not far from here.”
Marc checks his phone, where the tracking app fills the screen. “They’re still not popping up.”
“Maybe they dropped their phones.” Sharpe’s gaze sweeps over the woods. “We have no idea how they got from the Bone Yard to all the way out here.”
“You just focus on getting us to them, pretty boy.” Marc squeezes my shoulder. “Let Sharpe and me keep an eye out for danger.”
Nodding, I plunge into the woods, guided by the beacon of Pen and Darius’s energy sources.
As I walk, the life in the forest around us tugs at my senses, begging for my attention and trying to entice me to look away, to follow other souls.
A headache builds, and I rub my temples to ease the pain. After spending so much time earlier in the black hole that displaced the sleeper’s mind, I find it harder than usual to focus.
Fat drops of rain make it through the canopy of leaves, plopping down on my head and shoulders, the cold bursts shocking me out of my light trance.
Orianna brushes against my leg, and I let my hand fall to the top of her head. The ley line magic that rises to my fingertips helps push back the smaller distractions, making Pen and Darius shine brighter.
Pen’s soul holds more warmth than usual, a sleepy awareness but not yet woken. She’s taken Darius’s fire, though not enough to risk waking her firebird.
I want to be angry about it, but if not for Darius, we would have driven past, and there’s no telling how long it would have taken for us to track them back to these woods.
“We’re near,” I murmur, only half seeing the surrounding trees. “They’re just up ahead.”
Marc raises his voice. “Pen? Darius?”
The noise of the wildlife around us cuts off, leaving only the heavy fall of raindrops and silence.
“Maybe they couldn’t hear you?” Uncertainty fills Sharpe’s voice.
“Or there’s a reason they can’t hear.” Marc steps forward before Sharpe pulls him back.
“We take this smart.” Sharpe moves him back to my side. “If they’re caught in a trap, we don’t want to be caught, too. That won’t help them.”
Marc’s hands curl into fists, but he gives a tight nod, and we continue forward another few dozen feet until we stand right on top of their energy signatures.
I stop and look around in confusion. “This is it.”
Marc spins in a slow circle. “What? I don’t see them.”
I back up a pace and direct my attention to the wet, leaf-covered ground, my heart sinking. “They’re under us.”
Marc grabs me. “What do you mean, they’re under us? Are they alive?”
“Yes, they’re alive.” I shake him off. “If they weren’t, we would have gotten an alert about their rebirths. Calm down.”
“How far down?” Sharpe demands, keeping a more level head.
I focus downward, sifting through tiny pinpricks of energy made up by insects until all signs of life vanish before I reach Pen and Darius once more. “Twenty feet, I think. There’s a void without life. Maybe a cave. But they’re not moving. They must be stuck.”
“Fuck. Okay.” Marc scrapes his wet hair back from his face. “We have shovels and an ax in the sedan.”
Sharpe grips my arm. “Stay here while we go get those. See if you can figure out anything else.”
The two men race off through the woods, retracing our path back to the road.
