Lord only knew what the people around the square had thought of the chaos afterward.
Pickle leapt up from the floor and tucked himself close to me, resting his chin on my thigh. As I scratched between his ears, three of my higher shadowkind companions materialized in the living space around me. Ruse took a glance into the kitchen cupboards and appeared disappointed with his findings. Thorn surveyed the inside of the RV as thoroughly as I suspected he’d just been investigating the grounds outside, his expression typically grim.
Omen brushed his hands together. “We appear to have evaded any additional assaults for the time being, but I don’t think we should count on that luck holding.”
If you could even call what we’d experienced so far “luck.” My gaze darted to the door to the master bedroom. “How’s Gisele?”
Thorn grimaced. “Still unconscious. I’ve seen shadowkind in a similar coma a few times before when they’re badly wounded… Sometimes they manage to regain enough energy to restore themselves, and sometimes they fade utterly into smoke in a couple of days.”
“At least we had the RV to drive off in before the mortals ended her completely.” Omen patted the wall. “You managed not to get one of our vehicles destroyed, Disaster. So far, anyway.”
I wasn’t in the mood to return his snark with more of the same. Bow must still be in the bedroom watching over his—friend? Wife? They’d never really clarified their relationship.
Shadowkind didn’t tend to pair up in a romantic sense in their own realm, but for mortal-side enthusiasts, who knew what human customs they might have gone in for beyond the horse feed and the other kind of grass. Whatever the case, the centaur and the unicorn shifter clearly cared about each other a lot.
My stomach clenched at the thought that next time it might be one of my trio who drew the short straw in facing off against the Company. And speaking of that trio…
I glanced around. “Where’s Snap?”
“Dozing in the shadows to sleep off that big meal, apparently,” Ruse said with amusement. “Hey, devourer, time to rejoin the physical realm!”
No slim figure emerged to answer his call. Ruse cocked his head and vanished into the dark patches himself. When he returned several seconds later, still alone, the clenching sensation crept up to the base of my throat.
“He wouldn’t have gone far,” the incubus said. “He’s always stuck close to the rest of us before. And we’ve all seen he’s particularly stuck on you.” He shot me a smile, but it was tense along the edges.
Thorn was frowning. “I didn’t encounter him during my sweeps of the area around the school. Where would he go?”
“Perhaps he heard there was a country fruit stand nearby,” Omen muttered, but his cool eyes betrayed more concern.
I got up to check the view from the windshield as if the others might have somehow missed him shooting hoops in the school yard. “When was the last time anyone saw him? I know he was in the RV with us when we took off from the square.”
I’d held onto him briefly then, confirming to myself that he was still the same passionately gentle man I’d found myself welcoming into my bed and my heart—and doing my best to reassure him that I knew it. I might have been startled by seeing his full shadowkind powers in action, and what he’d done to that guy hadn’t been pleasant to watch, but he hadn’t used them lightly. His regret over taking that step had been written all over his beautiful face afterward.
Ruse’s brow furrowed as he thought back to the previous night. “We talked about what he saw during his devouring. Then you two started patching up Sorsha’s wound, and I don’t think I heard anything from him after that. When we parked here for the night, I assumed he’d taken to the shadows to get some rest.”
“We were focused on helping Sorsha and finding somewhere safe to pass the night.” Thorn rubbed his chiseled jaw. His frown deepened. “I don’t recall taking note of him after that initial conversation either. It never occurred to me that he might leave.”
Fucking hell. A lump rose in my throat, almost choking me. “He was so ashamed of his power. You all saw the way he would react when it came up. He was so adamant that he’d never use it again, and then for him to feel like he had to…” Because of me.
It was all because of me, wasn’t it? Leland had tipped off the Company because of his grudge against me. The shadowkind had stayed by the RV instead of escaping into the shadows to protect me. I should have been paying more attention to Snap after—I should have noticed he was slipping away from us.
I dropped my head into my hands. Pickle nuzzled my arm as if sensing my distress, but the gesture didn’t give me much comfort. “Where would he have gone?” I asked the RV at large.
“I don’t know,” Ruse said. “I don’t think he’s been mortal-side long enough to have regular haunts.”
Omen’s voice had turned even flatter than usual. “If he isn’t in his right mind enough to stay with us, he’ll be easy pickings for any Company hunters prowling around. Let’s hope we find him—or he finds his way back to us—before they do.” His shoes scraped the floor as he swiveled. “You two take my bike back into the city. Try to follow the same route we took and watch for him. We also need to check the Wharf Street building so we know whether it’s still a valid target.”
I glanced up at him. “You’re letting Ruse drive ‘Charlotte’? What are you going to do?”
As Ruse and Thorn tramped out to detach the motorcycle from where Omen had clamped it to the back of the RV yesterday, hidden under the glamour, the hellhound shifter fixed his narrow gaze on me. “I’ve got to see how much more power we can drag out of you, mortal. If we’ve lost the element of surprise and Snap, we’re going to need you outright blazing to take the Company down and get him back.”
The last thing I felt like doing at this particular moment was tap dancing to Bossypants’s tune, but the look he gave me warned off any arguments. And he might have a point. It wasn’t as if I’d be doing Snap any good by sitting around and moping.
I marched after him out into the parking lot. He ushered me toward the school yard. Chalk marks from the previous week’s recesses colored the pavement in pastels: creamy hopscotch boxes, jagged pink and purple flowers, a mint-green abomination of a kitten. That kid better not have any dreams of art school.
The yard gave us plenty of space to work with. The sprawl of pavement stretched all around the brick school building and out to a larger stretch of grass, where football goal posts jutted toward the clear blue sky. I rolled my shoulders and shook out my arms, trying to shed the guilt twisting through my innards.
“Okay, here we are. What crap are you going to put me through this time?”
Omen had turned to face me. His eyes flashed. “I hardly think you can call it ‘crap’ when it’s gotten you this far. You could barely summon a spark to save yourself before, and last night you started a bonfire. It’d just be ideal if next time you could light up our enemies instead of random civic sculptures.”
He motioned to a piece of blue construction paper the breeze was nudging across the ground, doodled with gawky stick figures. “Let’s see if you can get a blaze started now without an immediate crisis hanging over you.”