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“Yeah, well… I got ambushed on the stairwell.” He looked directly at Black. “By Brick. Fucker threw me off the top of the stairs, bit me, and then hit me with a syringe full of that vampire tranquilizer shit before I even got to the door where Jem was.” Nick’s voice grew a touch harder. “I came to in a fucking closet.I walked back out here when I woke up, but I couldn’t find anyone.”

“You couldn’t call?” Black snapped.

I knew he wasn’t really angry. He was relieved, like the rest of us.

Nick quirked an eyebrow in Black’s direction, his eyes flat.

“He took my earpiece, Quentin, and my phone, so no, I couldn’t call.” Glancing around at the rest of us, Nick added sarcastically, “I suppose I could have walked up and down the street, screaming my fool head off like a moron.”

His voice and eyes grew a touch more serious as he tapped his ear.

“Incidentally, it’s a good bet Brick and his vampires heard everything you’ve been saying to one another over the comms for the last however-many minutes…”

I frowned at that, exchanging looks with Black.

Black’s gold eyes blazed, and his neck pulsed, but he didn’t answer.

33

THE TRAIN

Istared out the window, letting my body relax into the rocking motion of the dining car as I looked out over the rolling French countryside and darkening blue skies.

Like earlier that day, on the famous avenue by theArc de Triomphe,I wished I could be here for just about any other reason than the one that brought us here.

I’d come to this car less because I was hungry and more to get away from the circular conversations we’d been having while crammed into the train’s most expensive first class suite. We’d purchased a few smaller cabins on the train as well, but that one took up an entire car, and was the only one large enough to fit most of us.

We were on the train from Paris to Marseille.

We were once again following Dalejem to wherever he was taking Aura now.

We’d considered bringing the plane instead, but again, without knowing where Jem was going precisely, and being less than an hour behind, this seemed like the more practical approach.

Now I wished wehadbrought the plane.

Something about the train felt like it was giving me too much time to think.

“…I could almost see it with Rucker,” I muttered, continuing a conversation with Black that had been going on in that crowded car at the back of the train. “There are a hundred different motives that might justify killing Rucker, especially if Jem had somehow known about him trafficking seers. But Jem was outrighthostileto Aura, and then he kidnapped her…”

Black frowned. “I don’t understand why you keep coming back to this. You don’t really think it wasJemmaking all these decisions now, do you? Doc, you were one of the ones who said from the beginning itcouldn’tbe Jem. You were more adamant than Nick…”

“I said I would follow the evidence,” I muttered.

I bit my lip, still staring out the window.

I didn’t add that following the evidence was usuallyhisjob, or Nick’s, funnily enough, but this time, I thought they were both wrong, because in different ways they were damned by Brick and vampire venom into seeing it a particular way. They each had been poisoned by Brick, in different but equally horrible ways.

I didn’t say that to Black, though.

Maybe I didn’t need to.

Slowly, I shook my head.

“It’s just not… something’s not right, Black.”

“It’s much more plausible if you think the implants could be capable of more than simply blocking a seer’s sight,” Black said. “If there’s an element of control there, that explains everything, doesn’t it?”

I’d heard this theory of his and Nick’s before, too. Their words sounded logical, reasonable, almost scientific.