“Yes,” she answers, and comes to sit by me. She puts both of her hands on my shoulders and turns me in the direction where the rods had just about pulled me off the roof of the building. “Your dad is being kept somewhere in the vicinity of Freemont park, which by the way, is on vampire territory.”
I rub my head in confusion. “But, I thought it was a witch or a warlock who took him?”
“I’d still say that’s the case,” Rita replies. “I imagine they’re keeping him on the South side so that if they do get caught out it will be easier to pin it on the vamps.”
Finn stands in front of me, offering me his hand to pull me up. He’s got a serious expression on his face, perhaps my dalliance with near death has taken the wind out of his sails. “Thanks,” I whisper when I’m standing close to him. “For saving me, I mean.”
He smirks then. “Any time, Tegan.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance want to help me look for my dad in Freemont Park, would you?” I ask him.
He scratches his jaw. “That’s a big place, it’d be like searching for a needle in a hay stack.”
I frown and Finn’s expression seems to soften. “Look, I can’t do it tonight. I have to report back to Pamphrock in an hour to help with the preparations for tomorrow, but I promise I’ll bring you in the morning and we’ll scope the place out.”
Tomorrow morning could be too late to find him, and I’m eager to get searching straight away. At this very moment my phone buzzes in my pocket and I step away to look at it. There’s a message. From Ethan. All it says is, Come to the club. Memories of last night flit through my head, and a pleasant shiver seizes me down to my toes. Then another thought comes to mind, perhaps Ethan could help me look for dad, since I now know he’s being kept on vampire territory.
I step back to Finn and reply, “That’s okay, I’ll get Ethan to bring me tonight.”
He doesn’t seem happy with this, but he just shrugs and turns away from me. Alvie and Rita are almost finished packing away all of their stuff, as well as those infernal dowsing rods. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I go near those again.
We make our way over to the door that leads back inside the building, when suddenly it bursts open and a security guard steps through with a gun held in both his hands. He aims it at me and my friends.
In a loud and hostile voice, he commands, “Hands in the air, all of you.”
In my head, I’m thinking, Okay Rita, now would be a good time to whip out that confusion spell.
Chapter Fourteen
Drowned
Silently, Rita hands the bag she’s holding to Alvie. Wolf steps forward and begins growling low in his throat. The guard eyes the massive dog warily and seems to take a step back. Alvie begins to rummage in the bag and whips out a small bundle of fabric that’s tied in a knot. He hands it to Rita and she takes it absently, her intense dark eyes focused on the security guard.
The guard lifts his gun higher and shouts, “I said put your hands in the fucking air, now!”
Rita ignores him and holds the bundle in her outspread palms, whispering something quietly in Latin, the only word I can make out is turbatio.
Next she pulls the knot loose and blows out the contents, which seems to be a handful of white dust. It travels straight to the guard, each granule latching onto his face, and then his eyes begin turning frantically in his head and he drops to floor, his whole body spasms fitfully.
Fear seizes me. “What the hell did you do to him Rita?”
“He’ll be fine in a half an hour, now come on, we have to get out of here. He probably called for backup before coming out.”
Everything moves so rapidly then, Finn grabs a hold of my hand and drags me down the stairs. All the while I feel like I might explode from the adrenaline that’s rushing through my veins. When we get to the elevator Rita hits the button for the ground floor, and the descent feels like it takes
forever. Once we get down I can hear sirens coming from out on the street, and we all run like our lives depend on it, back to the side door we first entered through.
Finn doesn’t lead us out the front way, but instead to the back of the building, where we all hop over a high wall. Finn has to give me a step up because I’m useless with the whole athleticism thing. We rush past the next building and out onto a different street, where cars pass on the road and people walk by casually. We stop running then and walk, all in a group, not saying a single word. Once we’ve gotten a safe distance away from the sirens Finn tells us he’s going to go back for the van and that he’ll meet us at the house later on.
Rita flags down a taxi, but then I remember that I need to go to Crimson to see Ethan, so I get another for myself. Rita hugs me and wishes me luck with finding my dad over on vamp territory. She says she’d go with me, only it isn’t safe for her to cross the river. For a brief moment I feel liberated by the fact that I don’t have to abide by the segregation. Although that might not last for much longer, especially if the vampires find out I’ve been secretly working for the DOH.
I jump into my taxi just as Rita and Alvie are pulling away in theirs, and I say a silent prayer that we didn’t get caught. I tell the driver where to take me. Then I think of the security guard and hope like hell that Rita was telling the truth and that he really will be okay in a half an hour. But at this a disturbing thought hits me, the security guard had obviously seen us on the cameras, cameras that will have recorded our faces.
I sweat even more profusely, causing my short hair to stick to the back of my neck. How dumb was I going along with Rita’s plan to break into the building? I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. With shaking hands, I pull my phone out of my pocket and hit the speed dial for Finn’s number. The taxi driver is having an animated conversation with someone on his bluetooth, so he’s not paying me any attention.
“Miss me already?” He answers smugly, although he sounds a little out of breath.
I completely ignore his smart-arse comment. “Finn, what about the cameras in the building, they’ll have recorded our faces. Why didn’t we wear masks or something?”