Demons in My Driveway (15 page)

She held the door open for me. “It’s the zombie apocalypse halftime show. We’re all waiting for a wardrobe malfunction to really liven things up before we get more nachos.”

Riley stood in the middle of the living room, looking tired and pale. “Are they gone?”

I nodded. “Where’s Kam?”

“Darius didn’t answer when I called, so Kam went over to get them. I kept an eye on the portal until the werefolk came around the house with you.”

I glanced at the clock and frowned. “It’s really dark out there. I’m surprised Mom and Darius didn’t get back already.”

As if on cue, Darius, enormous and blank-faced in his after-dark mothman guise, swung the door open and led Mom inside.

“Sorry we’re so late.” Mom took her coat off and hung it on a hook. “We took a walk. It was so nice out, and I haven’t been anywhere for so long.” She chattered to us, content, her cheeks rosy with the nip in the air. When she saw us staring at her, she stopped. “What?”

“Didn’t Kam find you?” Riley strode out onto the porch.

Darius’s voice echoed from the hollow space where his mouth should be. “We saw no one.”

I grabbed my phone and called Kam’s number. It rang, but she didn’t answer. Through the open door, digital music drifted in from a distance. I stepped outside next to Riley and we shared a frantic look. Adrenalin rushed through my limbs simultaneously holding me in place and pushing me forward to investigate, leaving me to hover in limbo, undecided.

Finding Kam’s phone abandoned in the grass would be terrible—but finding her body would be worse. I shoved the thought away. Fear of the unknown wouldn’t help Kam, no matter what we found.

We took off down the steps and onto the driveway. The music grew louder as we reached the edge of the fairy ring.

Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” stopped at the same time Kam’s voicemail message kicked in. I hung up, then called again. The song started over, and we searched in the near dark.

“There,” Riley said. A few feet away, a light shone from a patch of grass next to the gravel. Riley made his way over and picked it up.

“No.” My voice was nearly without breath. I disconnected the call and the light in Riley’s hand went out.

Kam never went anywhere without her phone.

Someone had taken her.

Chapter Fifteen

Usually, I’m the most efficient, solid person in a crisis. The idea that Kam had been kidnapped paralyzed me. I stood in the darkened driveway, staring at Riley with my mouth hanging open and one foot poised to take a step.

I didn’t know where to go, though, so I couldn’t put my foot down. Should I go forward, run out into the street to look for her and scream her name, as if she were a lost dog? Backward, into the house so I could make sure she hadn’t gone inside to change into a sassy cocktail dress and heels? Around the house in circles to check for tire tracks from a windowless white van she might have been forced into?

My chest tightened and I gasped for air. I had no idea what to do, and panic had taken over my body.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright.” Riley moved close and rubbed his palm over my back in soothing circles. “We’ll find her. Deep breaths.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on breathing. It wasn’t easy. Every moment I took to pull my shit together, the farther away Kam probably was. I drew strength from Riley’s soft, comforting tone and slowed my breathing into a more normal rhythm.

I swallowed hard. “Sorry. I’m okay.” My hands shook, but I felt more in control of myself. “What should we do?”

From behind me, the porch light flipped on, illuminating us.

Darius left my mother on the porch, took Kam’s phone from Riley and strode to the spot where it had been lying in the grass. “The grass is trampled here. But there’s no trail.” He knelt and touched the bent stalks, then rubbed his thumb across his fingers. “Blood.”

My stomach flipped, and I tried to keep myself together. It wasn’t the first time someone in my family had been kidnapped right here from my home.

I thought of Iris, his huge paws held out toward me though cage bars as the truck he was in sped away. We’d found him. We’d rescued him.

But in the end, he’d sacrificed himself and taken a bullet for Maurice. Because that’s what brothers did, even if one was a closet monster and one was a skunk-ape.

I could either wallow in grief and fear of history repeating itself, or I could take the lesson of Iris’s sacrifice to heart.

I pushed my shoulders back and held myself straighter.

If that was what it took, yeah. I’d take a bullet for Kam. Because that’s what sisters did.

“I’m going after her,” I said. For a brief second, I thought about snagging Kam while I was inside getting my keys. She’d want to ride along. A pang of sadness tinged with panic shot through me, threatening my composure. Pushing aside the mistake, I turned toward the house.

Riley touched my arm. “Wait. Honey, you can’t go after her.” His gray eyes were sad, whether for me or for our broken relationship, I wasn’t sure. “Even with the cult gone, you’re still a target. This might be a trap.”

I pulled my arm away. “I don’t care if it’s a trap. If Kam’s in trouble, she needs me.”

Darius grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me to face him. He stared at me with his bottomless eyes, and the vibration of his hollow voice shook my bones. “You’re being selfish and asinine. I’m the only one with any chance of tracking her in the dark, and I need you to stay with Clara and protect her. The last thing I want to do is leave her alone. And what happens if you both die? Aside from breaking the hearts of all the people who love you, it could literally bring about the end of the world.”

His fingers tightened and I wondered if they’d leave bruises. I probably deserved it if they did. He was right, of course.

My charging out after Kam would endanger everyone.

I shook his hands off, my jaw tight. “Fine. Then go find her. If she was right, somebody’s been using djinn magic to get the portals open.”

My voice caught on my words, and I hoped nobody had caught it. I was in charge, here. Better not to let everyone know how frightened I was for Kam’s safety. How terrible I felt that someone had come right up to my house and snatched her out from under our noses. How much I worried that they would use up her magic and then toss her away as if she were some sort of disposable lighter.

Or kill her.

If everyone knew how close I was to completely losing my shit, they’d stop treating me like me, and start treating me like—well—like Mom.

When he had gotten there, I didn’t know, but Maurice slipped his hand into mine. “She still doesn’t have a full charge.” He brushed a strand of hair from my face. “She’s useless to them dead, and they can’t use her till she’s charged. We’ll find her.”

I stared into his wide, yellow eyes, once so strange, and now so comforting. “Okay.” I took a deep breath to clear my head. “How long before she’s full?”

“At least two or three more days. Maybe more.” He scratched his chin.

“Guys?” Mom’s voice was quiet, but it carried well from the distance of the porch. “Are you sure her phone was on the
outside
of the fairy ring? It looks like it’s closer than that.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. She was right. The difference was a matter of inches, but the squashed patch of grass was on our side of the invisible barrier.

Riley hurried to the spot. He took an experimental step forward, then back, finally standing sideways, legs apart, as if straddling an invisible line. “It cuts right through where she fell.”

I frowned. “So—what? Something dragged her through? She stepped outside the barrier, got hit and fell backward? Which?”

Riley pulled his leg back inside. “No way to tell. But the barrier
should
have kept anything dangerous from grabbing her through it.”

Darius grunted. “Unless it was someone the fairy ring had cleared previously.”

“You mean it could be someone we know?” Mom’s voice shook.

Darius didn’t answer, which sent goose bumps up my arms. “I’m taking her phone with me, in case the kidnappers use the number to contact us.” His dusty moth wings whooshed outward and stretched. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

I doubted the kidnappers would call. Nobody would be demanding a ransom for her safe return. I’d bet my house on it.

Mothy wings stroked the air, then Darius was gone.

I closed my eyes and inhaled, filling my lungs to capacity before letting the breath out. The calm I tried to manufacture in myself was thin, but it held. I turned toward the house. I had to take control of the situation or I’d be reduced to a fetal ball of needy woman-flesh waiting for someone to come rescue me. Rescue all of us.

In the end, that would always be
my
job.

“Riley, you and Maurice search the property.” I marched up the steps as I spoke. “Knowing how Darius works, he’s probably searching farther out, but if there’s anything here, I don’t want to miss it.”

Neither of them questioned me. They moved together along the fairy ring toward the woods, examining the surrounding grass as they went.

“What can I do?” Mom had one hand on the front door, ready to help in a more domestic sense.

“They’ll probably want something hot to drink when they come in. If you wouldn’t mind boiling some water, that would be great.”

Mom’s greatest gift was her talent to soothe and treat the sick or injured. Her greatest
power
was her ability to keep a soul inside a body and hold off death until help arrived. I’d always thought her being a necrofoil was a far superior power to my empathy. In an emergency, it was. But as far as everyday use went, if you’re saving people from death every single day, you’re probably living in a seedy neighborhood or a warzone.

Being an empath was a lot more useful in the long run.

Still, in our current situation, she was stuck boiling water, and I was reduced to barking inane orders to keep from losing my freaking mind. Hooray for the Aegises—the only things standing between humanity and the zombie apocalypse.

Sara stepped from the shadows of the porch overhang. “You okay?”

“I’m a rock.” The quiver in my voice wasn’t convincing.

“Do you want me to drive around? I might see something.”

“What I want is to go after her myself.” I kicked a rock and watched it spin across the driveway. “Even if I could leave, I’d just be looking in random side streets hoping to get lucky.”

Sara smiled and nudged me with her elbow. “There are easier ways to get lucky you know.”

I smirked. “What are you, twelve?”

“Not until my next birthday.”

“You wish.”

She was trying so hard to keep my head clear by making juvenile jokes. That’s what we always did for each other. We helped each other cope.

Her face sobered. “When Iris was missing, didn’t you do your empath mojo to reach out and find him?”

My breath caught. “I did, yes!” I stepped off the gravel drive onto the grass. “I got attacked one of the times I did it, so get ready to catch me if I go down.”

“That’s what she said.” Sara’s face was stone cold.

Moving inward, I searched my protective walls, reaching for the window I used to control the amount of emotional energy I received from those around me. The filter was tight, since I was home, surrounded by my friends. I pulled away the filter and formed a focused beam of thought, projecting outward in a narrow cone. Sara felt worried and a little scared, but I pushed past her. The neighbors across the street were angry, possibly in the middle of a fight. Farther out, the emotions came in larger groups.

Sadness.

Celebration.

Sexual tension.

Pride.

Embarrassment.

Hunger.

Loneliness.

Love.

Boredom.

I blew over the residents of the small town of Bolinas, alert for anything extraordinarily fearful or angry, but found only the diverse emotions of everyday humanity. The experience was beautiful, sad and exhilarating—all at once.

But it didn’t help.

As I focused my beam east and south to the larger towns and cities in the distance, the emotions were less prominent and more diluted. Nothing stood out to say kidnapped djinn, and nothing tasted specifically like Kam. Nothing had that spicy, exotic tang that only belonged to her.

I pulled my focus into myself and tacked the filter back in place. “It’s no good. When I searched for Iris, there were hundreds of terrified Hidden with him. I didn’t just feel him—I felt the entire group.” I stared at my purple boots in defeat, a knot forming in my stomach. What little hope I’d had of tracking down Kam shattered. “She’s either left town or she’s unconscious. Maybe both.”

“I’m sorry. I thought it might work.” Sara wrapped her hand around my arm and tugged me toward the house. “Let’s get you some of Andrew’s tea before your migraine hits.”

She was right. The dull ache behind my eyes had already started from taking in all those emotions. If I didn’t get Andrew’s herbal remedy in me, the migraine would hit within a half hour.

We made it as far as the front door before the wind kicked up in a miniature tornado, then died down as quickly as it had started.

Wiggy stood on the porch with two women, all three looking breathless and pale.

“Alright, poppet?” Wiggy bent at the waist with his hands resting on his thighs while he panted and caught his breath.

I smiled. No matter how bad our situation, I couldn’t help it. Wiggy made things brighter with his presence.

Sara, always so calm and unshakable, stood with her jaw hanging slack. The two new women huddled together, blinking in the porch light, muscles tensed as if they were ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.

I gave the sylph time to pull himself together and stand upright. “Hey, Wiggy. You okay?”

He grinned and threw his arms around me in a bear hug. “Sorry about that. I’ve never transported more than one at a time. Two left me a bit winded.” He stepped back and drew the two women into our circle. He placed his hand on the shoulder of the dark-haired woman. “This is Julia. She’s from Italy.” Moving his hand to the blonde woman, he smiled at her. “And this is Annika, from Germany.”

They both gave me shy smiles.

“Welcome.” I offered them each my hand, hoping the puzzlement I felt didn’t show too much on my face. “I’m Zoey, and this is Sara.”

Sara gave a little wave, her eyebrow hovering as if it wanted to shoot upward, but she was fighting as hard as I was to keep a neutral expression.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” Wiggy said. “But this is probably the safest place for them. You’ve got more security than the other Aegises.”

I widened my eyes. “They’re Aegises?”

Annika’s voice had a guttural accent, but her English was perfect. “We’re all that’s left.”

I frowned. “There’s still one more in Africa, I thought.”

Annika and Julia exchanged a pained look.

Julia wrapped her arms around herself. “Gone. All gone.” She stopped and bent her head. “Now we are four.”

My stomach knotted. “Aswang?”

All three of them nodded. My guess was that while I’d had Breezy and Mac talking in my yard, another portal in Africa had opened. They’d suggested this very solution of bringing all the Aegises to my house for safety. At the time, it had seemed like a much better idea than it did now.

Four. The fate of the world rested on the shoulders of four people, and we were all located in the same place.

This was the worst plan I’d ever heard.