Chapter 24

Rosabel La Rouge

The voices in my head had turned chaotic. So much uncertainty around me. I had no idea what was happening and who to trust. I had no idea what to think, either, so I thought everything all at once, and it fucked me up within minutes. No amount of my forcing myself to calm down, to breathe, to clear my head was working because two days were already as good as done and Taland was nowhere to be seen and I still had no clue how to find him.

Well, no clue except for one, and I wasn’t even sure that was going to work. In fact, I was fifty percent certain that it wouldn’t. There was a good chance that I was going to end up in a jail cell in Headquarters before sunrise because, not only was I a fugitive, I’d showed my true face to a stranger in Dackston (because let’s face it, that ten grand wasn’t going to keep her mouth shut for real). And not only had I gone to the McMurray twins’ house and threatened them (easy to see how they could have called it in the moment I left their house, after I practically begged them to pay someone to deep clean their place), but I’d had Jim talk to the Information Desk to get Cassie’s number, and then I’d texted her to meet me in a small woods in a human neighborhood at the back of a trailer where a Mud family lived.

Yeah, I must have gone out of my fucking mind, now that I thought about it.

Get up, leave, run! insisted most of those voices in my head (there were many). But I still sat there on the ground with my back against a tree trunk, looking out in the darkness of the forest, waiting.

I hadn’t even gone close to the trailer on my way here because Taylor might have been just a kid, but she had this nasty habit of always knowing when I was close by, so I didn’t want to risk it. I’d come into the woods from the other side just in case, and I’d stopped far away from the tree where she’d one day build her tree house. I doubted she’d be there—it was two in the morning anyway.

My stomach was growling because I hadn’t had the balls to eat. Even so, I waited—to either be saved, imprisoned, or…just as confused as I was now. There was no telling if I’d misunderstood this entire thing or if memory just sucked, but we’d find out soon, I supposed. I either got taken down by a team of agents in the next few minutes, or…

I didn’t.

My eyes had closed, and I hadn’t even noticed, more exhausted that I was willing to admit to myself. But when I heard the sound coming from much too close for my liking, I was on my feet with my gun pointed ahead and my hand raised as my magic buzzed under my skin.

Then…

“Girl, I wouldn’t even use that thin barrel as a dildo. Put it away; don’t embarrass yourself.”

Cassie’s voice broke the absolute silence around me, and it was a miracle I didn’t scream. I put the gun down even though I knew there was still a chance that she wasn’t here alone, but I was so happy. So excited. So relieved to hear a friendly voice that I didn’t question it.

Then she came closer and I saw her face. Her smiling face.

It was another accomplishment that I didn’t jump and hug the hell out of her but stayed put until she was in front of me.

Alone.

“Girl’s got balls,” she said, nodding her head as she looked me over. “Get in here, you little shit.”

Then she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me just as tightly as she had that night she saved my life.

Goddess, I had never been more thankful for a hug. I held onto her shoulders and allowed myself to close my eyes for a moment, smiling as she laughed, not even bothering to look around us anymore.

Yes, she was most definitely alone. Cassie wasn’t going to sell me out. And the twins hadn’t, either.

I felt damn lucky, despite the situation.

Eventually, Cassie let go of me, and looked me over again to make sure I wasn’t wounded. I’d left the charm in the car again because I’d needed her to see my face, and I was currently under the protection of my own magic, my own spell that I’d renewed before going to see the twins. So far it hadn’t failed me, and I felt lucky about that, too.

We sat on the ground near that tree together, and Cassie kept looking at me like that and smiling, grinning, eyes sparkling blue.

“The Mergenbachs,” I started before she could even ask me. “Your cousins, right?”

“You finally figured it out,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

I nodded, and even though the next words could potentially get me killed, I said them anyway.

“Taland told me. I helped him escape pretty much the same way you took me out of Headquarters that night. He told me about Selem and the Mergenbach siblings.”

My heart pounded in my chest as I waited, and…

“Yep, I thought so. He and I have been in Selem since we were born, pretty much. His dad was one of the originals. His brothers are extremely powerful, too. Just like my cousins.”

Goddess, thank you, I thought, and I was planning to tell her everything, to ask her what it meant that those siblings were her cousins, and why she was working for the IDD. Was she a spy? Was she the spy that Radock Tivoux had talked about while he tortured me?

I wanted to talk about all of it, but in the end, there was only one thing that mattered to me right now.

“Cassie, he’s gone,” I said, and her smile faltered.

“Taland?”

I nodded. “We were in a Selem safe house together, and then last morning I woke up and he just wasn’t there. No sign of a struggle or anything—he was just gone.”

Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. “Well, fuck.”

That summed it up pretty well.

“Yes, fuck ’s right. Now I have no idea where to find him. Nobody’s in the Blue House anymore, and I don’t have access to even my phone. I’m wanted, too.” I offered her a smile. “Which is why I had no choice but to call you here. I hate putting you in danger like this.”

She waved a hand. “Oh, please. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Believe you me, I’m in no more danger than usual. But I have no idea where Taland is and I can’t get in touch with my cousins till next week,” she said. “We have a system—the reason why I haven’t been caught, and probably never will.”

I flinched. “Next week is too long.” How the hell was I supposed to live another week without knowing where Taland was?

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rora. I simply can’t contact them any sooner,” she whispered, putting her hand over my knee.

“It’s okay,” I said, though it wasn’t. “It’s fine. I’ll figure it out.” I wouldn’t because I had no clue where the hell to even go next. I had a car and some cash, that’s all.

“I’m glad to see you’re alive and well,” Cassie said, and her smile had turned sad now. Sorry. “And between you and me, I’m glad you finally decided to switch sides.” And she winked.

I pressed my lips. “Not sure if that’s what I did. I just…followed my gut. I followed Taland.”

That made Cassie laugh, and she didn’t bother to be silent about it, either. “Don’t worry, nobody will hear us,” she said, like she knew it for a fact. Like she’d made sure of it herself, probably with a spell. “Goddess, I love love. Really—I love it. It makes people so much more interesting. You were pretty boring before.”

This time I laughed a little. “I was?”

“Oh, yeah. And I also hated your guts for what you did when you first came to the IDD. Seriously, I was thinking about killing you on the job and calling it an accident. I tried to work as a clairvoyant with Michael a lot of times before we actually met.”

“Well, fuck, ” I repeated, and she laughed.

“C’mon, don’t judge me. I didn’t know you. I had no idea who you really were!”

“But you judged me!”

“True, true,” she said, nodding. “But I changed my mind after we met and talked a couple times. I didn’t kill you, and I think that’s all that matters.”

I was still laughing a bit. “Sure, Cassie. That’s all that matters.”

“You put Taland in prison—what did you expect?”

“I put Taland in prison to save his life, actually,” I dared to say, something I hadn’t even thought about often until I talked to him. Until he saw the memory in my head while he was carrying me out of the Iris Roe, and he said it himself—I hadn’t betrayed him. “They were going to shoot him on sight as soon as he stepped through the doors of the Strongroom, so I knocked him out before he did.”

That was a shock to Cassie. “You’re fucking with me.”

“I am not fucking with you, no.”

I told Cassie the story, only the important parts of it.

I told her about Hill, too, and that surprised her the most.

“You know, he’s the cousin of my cousins, but I never liked that guy. He gives me the creeps,” she said, flinching. “Fucking Whitefire. They’re all the same, I swear.”

“And you should stop judging people based on their color, Cassie,” I said. “But yep—you’re right. They are.” This was only half a joke. As much as I believed that all colors of magic were the same, most Whitefires were just mean . Evil .

“I’ll be talking to my cousins about him,” she said. “Hill actually grew up away from Selem, you know that? His Whitefire father raised him. He refused to live near Selem or his wife’s family when she died—very young—until Hill grew up and decided to come back after his father’s death.” She shook her head. “We never really hung out—he’s much older than me, but he always looked like a red flag on two legs.”

“I had no idea,” I muttered. “Just make sure to tell them, okay? Whenever you talk to your cousins, tell them.”

“I will. I will.”

Cassie told me about Headquarters, about the teams that were sent after me and Taland—classified information, all of it, but of course she knew about it. Everybody owed Cassie favors.

“The agents who know are making up all kinds of stories—that he went to prison for a reason, that it was all planned from the beginning, that you broke him out and brought him into Headquarters to steal—stuff like that.”

“Let them think whatever they want,” I mumbled.

“The public doesn’t know, though. They have no clue what happened,” Cassie said. “They’re keeping it a secret to most of the staff as well.”

I sighed deeply. “Good. Fine. I don’t really care, Cass.” What I cared about was finding Taland.

“You really have no idea where he could have gone?” Cassie said after a moment, as if she could read my mind. I shook my head. “You said there was no sign of struggle, right?”

“There wasn’t.” I’d checked that house so many times, I was sure of it.

“So what do you think happened?”

That’s the part that sucked. “I think he left on his own.” There was no way anybody could have just taken him without me hearing it—or if they put a spell on me or something, there was no way anybody would have taken him and left me there, sleeping. The same people who were after him were after me, too.

No—Taland left because he wanted to leave. He left without his mother’s charm, too, but instead transferred it to me. However its magic worked, it now made me into someone else, and I had no idea how long it was going to last.

“I just…I don’t understand why.” He would have told me if he needed to go take care of something…wouldn’t he?

“Maybe he was called back. Maybe he was sent on another mission or something,” Cassie said.

“Did they tell you something?”

She shook her head. “Nope. They didn’t mention it. Didn’t tell me to keep an eye on cameras or reports or anything like that.”

I nodded. “I need to ask you something and I wish I didn’t,” I said, but this was my only option, the only one I had left. There was literally nowhere else for me to turn right now, so…

“Anything,” Cassie said, and I appreciated it more than she knew.

“Where are the Tivoux bothers?”

Because there was a good chance that they knew where Taland was, and while I waited for Cassie to get in touch with her cousins, I could go find them. Maybe I could even talk to them. Not like I had anything better to do, anyway.

Cassie flinched. “You sure that’s a good idea? They kind of hate you.”

That, too, made me laugh. “Oh, trust me, I know. I know it very, very well, but I have no choice.” I wasn’t going to just sit on my ass when there was still something I could do. Something that was probably going to get me killed, but something nonetheless.

“Last I heard, they’re staying at this famous hybrid club-slash-strip club-slash-brothel, which is connected to a warehouses, too. It’s somewhere in Pittsburgh, but I’m not sure exactly where, just that the club is called The Diamond Club. That’s all I know,” Cassie said.

“That’s good enough. I’ll find it.” I had planned to buy a phone anyway.

“I’m sure you will,” Cassie said. “I don’t know what it is about you, but trouble seems to love your name, girl. I’m jealous.”

If she only knew what it was like inside me, she wouldn’t be. “I’m special like that,” I said instead.

“You sure are. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me the truth about Taland before.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were a spy.”

She rolled her eyes, but it was just for show. “Whatever.”

“I gotta go, Cassie. Thank you so much for coming, but I gotta go now.” I needed food and sleep and I needed to make my way to Pennsylvania as soon as I could without getting caught.

“Hey, no problem. Any time. You got my number?”

We stood up together.

“I memorized it,” I said. “And I’ll text you my new one when I get it tomorrow so you can reach me if you need to.”

“Do that. I’ll send you anything I have, when I have it,” she said.

I swallowed hard. “Hey—do you know anything about my grandmother, by any chance?” I forced myself to say.

I didn’t even want to think about Madeline right now, but she remained one of my biggest threats, and since Cassie was already here…

“Saw her coming in yesterday. Didn’t stop at all, went straight to Hill’s elevator. She looked pissed off, though,” Cassie said.

“Yes, I imagine she is.” And there was a voice in my head that was happy and proud to imagine it, but I pushed it away until it disappeared completely.

I thanked Cassie another three times until she told me I wasn’t allowed to say thanks again. That’s why when we went our separate ways, I had a small smile on my face. For a moment there, I didn’t feel so utterly alone anymore. It wasn’t just me against the entire world. She was there to give me a hand, too, whenever she could.

I think that’s the first time I truly understood what having a friend means.

I clung to that thought with all my being while I drove around the city and stopped at a drive thru to get food. The idea of eating wasn’t very appealing to me right now, but I needed my energy, and I wasn’t going to be able to sleep with this growling stomach.

Then I found a paid parking lot with extra security and a very loud alarm system that went off the moment anybody alerted the sensors, and since that was the safest place for me right now, that’s where I chose to sleep.

When the hamburger and all the fries were in my system, I lay in the back, closed my eyes, and I prayed with all my heart that Taland and I saw the end of this alive.