Ascendant by S M Gaither

Author:S M Gaither [Gaither, S M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

dance

“I don’t understand.” I was on the ground, forehead buried in my hands, and my words were muffled by my hair falling in front of my face. “Lora was wearing it the entire time you were holding her captive last summer. How did you not notice it then? How did the feral not take it from her? Why?”

“Because it seems your father was even more clever than I realized,” Joseph said simply. “I never saw any necklace. It must have been hidden by some sort of cloaking spell…something that made it invisible to feral eyes—including the ones they’d possessed. But it must have been protecting her, all the same. That explains why the feral resorted to alpha syndrome to control her, instead of outright possession magic…. I’d wondered about that. It’s likely been exerting a quiet, protective force over your family for as long as its been in your possession…”

“Long enough for it to have left a magical residue at my house, same as it did in this box?”

“Most likely. Why?”

“Because that must have been what Carrick and Cerin were searching for a few weeks ago. They must have sensed it. They tore up my house looking for it.”

He nodded, looking relieved. “We’re lucky it wasn’t there.”

“Did you not hear me before?” I said, exasperated. “It isn’t there because it’s on Lora! And, hidden from sight or not, they can obviously still track it if it stays in one place long enough to build up an energy in that place, right?”

“…Yes.”

“So, yeah, not feeling especially lucky at the moment.” My gaze snapped toward Vanessa so fiercely that she drew back. I tried to breathe calmness into my pounding heart and aching lungs before I asked, “Where is she? When was the last time you talked to the ones hiding her and my mom?”

“I…I haven’t talked to them directly. But I did send your letter the other day, and my sources told me it was safely delivered—”

“Safely delivered to where?”

“Somewhere in France. There were multiple makeshift safe-houses they considered, so I don’t know which one they ended up at, but just calm down, Alex, we can—”

“I can’t.”

I couldn’t calm down, because this kept getting worse. Because France. Of course. That was where that strange call to my cell phone had come from a few days ago. And there was no way that was a coincidence. I’d kept my cell phone off since we left Iain’s place and any sort of power source to charge it; we all communicated through thoughtspeech, anyway, and I figured I’d save my phone’s battery in case of emergency.

But Lora was too far away for thoughtspeech.

What if she’d been desperately trying to reach me some other way?

Vanessa had her connections, I guessed, but what if they weren’t able to reach us, either?

“I have to get back to camp,” I said. “Now.” I was going to turn my phone back on and stare at it until she called me again.

And this time, I would be there to answer.

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