“I don’t have time to think, Dad. If he’s not an elemental, then they don’t care about him. They might be about to … to kill him.” She could barely get the words out.
“If he’s not an elemental,” Dad said, his steady gaze holding hers, “he’s more likely to survive. It’s your kind they want to kill, not people like Archer and me. He’s a Davenport. He’ll be fine.”
“What does being a Davenport have to do with it?” Ridley demanded, her voice shrill.
“Because that name means something. He can negotiate with it. Offer them a small fortune in exchange for his freedom. Even the Shadow Society needs money, right? Or contacts, or favors. Maybe that’s why they took him—because they recognized who he is.”
“But—he—” Ridley shook her head. “That makes no sense. The Shadow Society already has influence over … I don’t know, pretty much everything, right? The mayor of Lumina City is one of them, for goodness’ sake. They have contacts already.”
“Okay, but maybe … maybe they want to bribe Alastair Davenport. He does control almost all the arxium in the world, so—”
“Dad, stop. You’re only saying these things because you don’t want me looking for Archer and putting myself in danger.”
Dad pressed his lips together before answering again. “Yes. But what I’m saying could very well be the truth anyway. I’m not letting you go.”
“You can’t stop—”
“Just think.” Still holding onto her—probably so she wouldn’t be able to shift form without taking him along with her—Dad reminded her of the danger she’d be putting everyone else in. He pointed out that the Shadow Society might catch her and torture the new location out of her. They may have invented some way to follow her back here while she was in her elemental form.
Then he dragged her to Nathan, who freaked out almost as much as Dad had about the idea of her returning and putting everyone in danger. Nathan promised that within an hour or two, a small, select team of elementals would return to the reserve and covertly check things out.
An hour or two.
There was a not insignificant part of Ridley that wanted to scream. But knowing that there were more lives at stake than just Archer’s, she managed to keep herself from racing off immediately. That didn’t mean she had to be still, though. She changed into the dry clothes Callie brought her at some point, then started pacing.
The giant receiving room slowly emptied of people, and she continued to pace.
As the moon inched across the sky, she paced.
After the team of elementals left—a team Nathan flat-out refused to allow her to be part of—she finally grew too exhausted to continue pacing and sat down against the wall. With every passing moment, her insides wound tighter.
The sun was rising as the group returned. Ridley had half fallen asleep with her head tilted back against the wall, but she forced her eyelids open at the sound of voices. Dad, sitting beside her, had properly fallen asleep. Ridley stood, daring to hope that Nathan would deliver good news. But the expression on his face—and the fact that there was no Archer among the group of people who’d just returned—was answer enough.
Nathan sighed and shook his head. “He wasn’t there.”
6
Ridley slipped away a little after dawn. She’d known from the moment Callie told her what happened that she would go after Archer. The only thing that might have stopped her was confirmation that he was no longer alive.
The supplies Nathan had mentioned to Ridley included not only shelves and shelves of canned food, but a collection of gas masks as well. As Ridley hastily dropped a mask and a few cans into a backpack she’d ‘borrowed’ without permission, she heard Malachi’s voice in her mind: Don’t those things last forever? It had been only a couple of weeks ago, but that conversation felt as if it had taken place in another lifetime. That was the day they’d taken refuge in an old hotel in the wastelands near Lumina City. The day Ridley had finally given herself over to the magic in the elements, desperate to find Archer after he’d vanished. Magic had helped her then and it would help her now. She would find him again.
Dad would be furious once he realized she was gone, but she doubted he’d be surprised. Hopefully, when he stopped to think about it, he would understand. Nathan, who was turning out to be a bit of a dictator, would be irate too. He had actually used the words ‘I forbid you to leave.’ Ridley and her father had raised equally stunned eyebrows at that. She’d almost responded with ‘You’re not my father,’ and if Dad had been given the chance to say anything before someone else tugged on Nathan’s arm, demanding his attention, he probably would have pointed out the same thing.
This community of fugitives that Ridley was now part of might make major decisions together, but anyone was free to leave if they wanted to. Free to seek out other elementals hiding in the wastelands. Free to return to whatever city they’d fled or attempt to start over in a different one. There was nothing stopping Ridley from doing the same thing.
Nathan had promised that someone ‘more experienced’ would go after Archer, but there was no one who knew Lumina City better than Ridley. She’d been sneaking through its streets and inside its buildings for years. Of course, this advantage would mean nothing if Archer had been taken somewhere else by a different Shadow Society chapter, but Ridley had no way of knowing yet if that was the case. Besides, she doubted anyone else felt the same sense of urgency she did. Four bodies had been found when Nathan and his team returned to the reserve, and everyone else was now accounted for. Archer was the only one who’d been taken. It seemed Dad may have been right about him being recognized. It was this that gave Ridley real hope he was still alive.
Once she was soaring amid the air currents above the mountains, she let herself fragment and gave herself over to the wind, letting it sense the urgency in her heart and the desperate need to go faster, faster, faster. The kind of speed she could never have reached if she had Dad or another non-elemental with her.
She cast her mind out repeatedly but received no hint of Archer’s whereabouts in return. That in itself was an answer: He was most likely within a city, blocked from magic’s reach by a multitude of arxium-reinforced buildings. Lumina City? Or one of the others? It didn’t matter. All her pacing earlier had given her time to come up with a plan. If she couldn’t sense exactly where Archer was, she would get an answer from a Shadow Society member.
The only one she knew of was Lumina City’s mayor, but she was nervous to confront him directly, even with a gas mask on. Not just for her own safety, but for the safety of the community she’d left behind. She didn’t plan to give up their location, but the mayor might somehow get it out of her anyway.
No, the safer option was to get information from a distance and without Mayor Madson knowing about it. If Ridley could remotely access his devices, she could see his calendar, his text messages, his emails. Perhaps she could even listen in on his calls. She didn’t know. But there was someone who did know. Someone who would happily break the law for Archer. Someone who had the kind of influence and contacts that might help her to get valuable information even if the device-hacking plan didn’t work out.