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She pulled onto the side road and put the truck in park. For several minutes, they sat in the dark, catching their breath. Processing everything that just happened. The lightning that had slammed into the road… Eilidh’s nightmarish face as she’d vowed to kill them… The smell of burning flesh?—

Shay’s stomach surged. She pressed a hand to her lips, hurled herself out the door and onto the muddy bank?—

And threw up. Violently. Tanner stayed silent in the truck, no sound in the area but Shay’s retching and the singing of unbothered crickets.

Her hands were shaking on her bent knees, her face colorless. Half-frozen rain soaked the ground she’d vomited on, washing the mess away, her sopping hair hanging limply in her face. She spat a few times to get rid of the gross taste in her mouth, wiped the sweat off her clammy forehead, then got back in the truck.

Once the door was shut, Tanner waited a few more moments before speaking. “We should figure out a game plan.”

“I’m not going to Roman’s,” Shay said, dragging her sleeve across her mouth. Ugh, she needed water. And tooth paste. And a bath. “With Don looking for Pax, we can assume he’s already been there, and he might have his men guarding the place in case Paxton shows up.”

Or Roman. Her stomach dropped at the thought of him walking through his own front door, only to be massacred in cold blood by his father’s henchmen.

Tanner chewed on his split lower lip. “We should try tracking the others, then.”

“How did you end up here?” Shay asked him, all the questions she hadn’t had the chance to even think about flooding her mind.

“I was in the tunnels when the explosion happened. I was with Darien, Roman, and Jack at the time.” He paused tobreathe. Swallow. His face was pale like Shay’s, his skin dotted with sweat. “I got separated from them. I can’t remember how I got from there to that truck.”

“Were they alive?” Shay’s throat tightened, the last word barely squeezing past the rigid muscles. “Was Roman…?”

Tanner stared out the windshield, his own throat shifting. “Last I saw, yeah. They were all alive.” His chest rose with a deep breath, and when he turned to face her he was composed. “Let’s try tracking them.”

She nodded. “Okay.” After how much magic she’d spent summoning her lightning, she didn’t know if her eyes were even capable of turning black right now.

Still, she rested her head back against the seat and shut them—resisting the urge to give in to her body’s need to rest and simply fall asleep. “Who do you want to track?” she rasped, automatically picturing Roman’s face—his stupid, unfairly attractive face—in her mind.

She swallowed the lump in her throat.He doesn’t want you, stupid.

‘You’re getting out of here, Shay,’he’d told her last night.‘You’re getting out of Yveswich and you’re following your dream, which is. Not. Me. End of story.’

And:‘This is a fling. It’s a crush. And a mistake.’

Mistake. He’d called what had happened between them amistake.

“I’ll try Darien’s group,” Tanner decided. That meant he’d be looking for Darien, Jack…and Roman. “You try Ivy’s.”

Ivy was a part of the group that had gone to the tar pits—the group Shay had gifted a head start when they were attacked by Hounds. If Shay made it out of there alive, then maybe…maybe they had, too.

Beneath closed lids, her pupils ballooned with the Sight, eyes flicking about as she focused on her memory of what everyonelooked like. She decided to start with Ivy—Shay really liked her. She knew her kind face the best.

But barely two minutes passed before she felt her pupils shrink to their regular size, and her mental image of the glowing grids that made up Yveswich’s districts blurred as if the lens she was looking through was out of focus. If she couldn’t even see the streets, which was the first step to tracking someone, she would never be able to pinpoint a target.

A growl rose in her throat. “Gods, I can’t focus!” She banged her fists against the steering wheel.

Tanner flicked open the glove box and sifted through the junk inside, his face limned with dingy orange light.

“What are you doing?”

“These are Wyverns. There’s got to be drugs in here.” Sure enough, he pulled out a bag of Stygian salts packed tightly into a brick, the plastic secured by clear packing tape.

“I don’t usually take any drugs,” Shay said.

“Neither do I.” He ripped open the plastic so hard he dumped a quarter of the salt on his seat. He brushed off the pile that had fallen between his thighs, the crystals hissing as they hit the floor. “But I need help or I won’t be able to do this.” So would Shay. Unless you were the Head of a Darkslayer House, someone who had a ton of experience tracking people, it was hard for hellsehers to do so without the aid of a drug.

Salt crunched as his hand delved into the bag, fisting as many tiny pieces as he could hold. He dumped them onto the console that separated their seats and spread them out in a thin layer. “I think this is enough,” he murmured to himself. “Darien does this all the time, but I’ve never really— Never mind. We should hurry.”

He found a hollowed out pen and a cut straw in the glove box. When he held each out to her in offer, she grimaced at both but chose the pen.