“Heather could do it.” Cassidy’s answer was so quick, it seemed rehearsed. “She needs the practice, you know, finding people on demand. She hasn’t done much of that.”“We could ask Heather,” Cadence began, keeping her tone even, “but it might take her a while to locate him, and you could tell us right this very second exactly where he is.”Once again, Cassidy seemed to be having trouble swallowing. “It takes me a little bit of time to find people, too.”“Yeah, I know. But... you could tell us right now, without digging into his head, couldn’t you?” Cadence said again.Cassidy turned her head sideways and studied Cadence for a moment. The older sister didn’t blink or look away, only held her insistence. “He asked me to keep his personal information to myself.”“Why?” Cadence asked. “Why would he trust you after what just happ

Cassidy left the office and immediately went to Brandon’s apartment. She had no intention of going there when she got out of that chair, but that’s where her feet led her. This time when she knocked, it wasn’t bone shattering like it had been the night before. Waiting let her mind wander, but she didn’t want to go back over the conversation she’d just had with Aaron and Cadence. It was too upsetting.She’d gone into that meeting fully intending to tell them where Christian was, of even contacting him while they were sitting there. But that hadn’t happened. Why, she wasn’t sure. Part of it truly was the promise she’d made to him. However, as much as she didn’t like to admit it, she hadn’t wanted to tell Cadence simply because she’d asked. Her sister had positioned her in the middle of a standoff—keep your promise or help the team. In the end, she’d decided to be stubborn and stick to her guns.

“Hey, Cass, it’s okay.” He leaned forward on the couch, his hand outstretched, though he didn’t quite touch her. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.” His fingertips rested on her knee, about as far as he could reach, and Cassidy desperately wished she was in his arms again. The pain inside of her may have been caused by another guy, but it was Brandon’s arms that had held her together in the past when she felt as if she were falling apart. Still, it seemed wrong to ask him to wrap her up when she was about to disclose information to him that very well could make him feel exactly the way she was feeling at the moment.With another deep breath, she looked him in the eye and slowly opened up. “You were right about Alex.” She watched him start to attempt to decipher what that meant, his eyes shifting slightly with the news. “I had no idea how he felt about me when he was still here, but the note he wrote me while he was dy

It was hard to believe Jamie, Aaron, and Hannah had all been here so many years ago when the tragedy had taken place, but it was true just the same. Only she and Aurora, who was twenty-seven, hadn’t been born. Elliott was still in Oklahoma at the time, and Cadence realized she had no idea if he’d ever met her grandfather or not. The question would have to wait for later as the conversation on the tape took a shift.Skelton was going on about a tracking mechanism that sounded similar to the one they used now to locate Vampires, though the technology was behind their current capabilities, and Jordan said it all sounded good, that he should check in with Christian to see if he had any thoughts. “He’s our go-to man when it comes to those sorts of things. Aaron helps out, too,” Jordan continued, and Cadence remembered Aaron had actually come up with the device Jordan was wearing to collect the conversation they were listening to, “but we’r

“If he’s been through both portals, like Skelton said, he’ll have all sorts of tricks we’ve never seen before, or at least not in a long time,” Jamie reminded them.“He’s one scary son of a bitch,” Cadence agreed. “But Christian has left us little choice. Maybe if he would’ve stayed here, we could’ve gone over there and fought the symptoms, taken out his henchmen, cut off his blood supply. But now... our hands are tied. We can’t leave him there....”“Well....” Elliott began.“There it is. I’ve been waiting for it this whole time.” Aaron smirked at his friend, but it was clearly a warning, too.“I’m just kidding.” Elliott raised both of his hands in protest. “Here’s another question for you, though. We take Cass, Brandon’s gonna insist we take him, even if they are currently split up. I don’t want him to go e