Entropy by Keira Michelle Telford

Author:Keira Michelle Telford [Telford, Keira Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780987870155
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Venatic Press
Published: 2012-05-19T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Vice

Dawn breaks, and Gabriel slips quietly out of bed.

Veva, content and happy, stays wrapped in the sheets for a few moments longer. Making up for lost time, they’d been up half the night and not once had he reached for the drawer of the bedside table.

Pleased, Veva allows herself to enjoy the possibility of it.

Pregnancy.

No chance to savor the thought.

Daydream shattered.

“Ella!” Gabriel yells from the hallway. “Ella!!”

Veva leaps out of bed and pulls on her clothes. She finds Gabriel in Ella’s bedroom, searching through her closet and checking under the bed.

“Gabe? What’s going on?”

“She’s not here.” He checks the closet again, for good measure. “I’ve looked everywhere.” He runs two exasperated palms through his hair. “I don’t know where she is.”

The panic in his voice is heartbreakingly audible, and Veva’s never seen him so fraught. He’s in Hunter Division uniform, but he has no intention of going to work. Anxiety overriding his Hunter’s instincts for the first time in his life, he’s missing details that would otherwise be blindingly obvious.

The Chimera talon.

Ella’s version of a security blanket.

It’s wedged beneath her single-hung bedroom window, keeping it open just a crack. It leaves enough of a gap that she could get her skinny fingers underneath to let herself back in from the outside.

Veva clues in.

Gabriel doesn’t.

“What kid runs away in a walled city?” he booms. “Where the hell does she think she’s gonna go?!”

“I don’t think she ran away, Gabe.” Veva nods to the window. “Besides the fact that she worships the ground you walk on, runaways don’t usually have return strategies.”

Gabriel swipes the talon from the window and it snaps shut. If that’s relief he feels, it’s quickly swamped by suspicion and fear.

“What, then? What secrets do five-year-olds keep?”

Veva’s lack of any real emotional investment in Ella allows her to be more objective. Her rational teacher brain sorts through facts and logic with calm, unbiased precision, and she thinks back to the previous night.

Their midnight interlude in the hallway.

Bingo!

“She overheard you talking with Darius Jenkins last night.”

Gabriel’s blood runs cold. He’d almost rather she ran away than go chasing after monsters in the dark. “What did she hear?”

“Enough.”

Clutching the talon in his fist, Gabriel’s knuckles turn white. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?!”

“I sent her back to bed. I figured the worst that’d happen is she might have a nightmare.”

“A nightmare? You think the kid who avenged the death of the man she called ‘papa’—without a single flinch or a tear—would fret over the thought of one baby Chimera on the run?”

“That wasn’t bravery, Gabe. That was apathy.”

“You weren’t there.”

“Oh, please. Her father didn’t get mauled to death by a Chimera. Jonathan Cross was a stranger to his own child—you made sure of that.”

“You’re accusing me of something, Veva?”

“You’re the Deputy fucking General. You make the schedules. You can’t tell me it was a coincidence that you always made yourself available for the school run, or on weekends. Meanwhile, J.C. was working swing shifts, graveyards, you name it—anything to keep him away from home when it really mattered.

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