“Jamie is hoping Eliza or someone will take one of the creatures captive tonight so he can do some experiments on them when we get over there. I’m not sure what we can do, but we’ll try our best.” Cadence sounded hopeful despite the odds.
“All right. Heather coming, too?”
“We’ll need her. She can float things and throw shields.”
“Right. We’re leaving at 8:00, so Brandon and I need to be at the airport at 7:30?”
She was quiet for a second, and I could see her rolling her eyes in my head even though I couldn’t actually see her at all. “Cass....”
“I need him there, sis. I don’t work as well without him as I do when he’s there. We just got back together. If you want me at my levitating best, I need my most trusted Guardian.”
“Cassidy, it’s only necessary personnel.”
“He’s necessary.”
“I’m not the boss of him.”
She sounded like a fourth grader. “Do I need to contact Aaron, then, because I’m pretty sure he’s not going to disagree with you if you say Brandon can go, Wifey-poo. Surely, Aaron doesn’t want me over in Hungary not able to concentrate on getting the bad guys because my boyfriend is left at home without me.” Now, I was the one acting like a little kid. I’d already refused to do the last thing she asked me to do, which could either work to my advantage so that she’d know I wasn’t bluffing—which I totally was—or she’d get even madder at me and tell me where to go.
“You are a malevolent child, Cassidy Elizabeth.”
“So 7:30 then?”
“Yes, 7:30. You better make sure Mila gets one of those goons this time.”
I smiled, glad she couldn’t see me. “I shall do my best.”
My sister disappeared, and I turned to Brandon. “Guess who’s going to Hungary.”
He grinned at me. “I am?”
“Yep.”
Brandon wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Thank goodness. I wouldn’t have been able to stand seeing you leave.”
“I do have to help Mila, though. That hunt is starting soon.”
“No problem. You wanna go to your apartment for that or stay here?”
“I can stay here. I’ll just have to tune everything out for a while.”
He nodded, and my mind went back to Skelton. “Cadence said Skelton showed up here today to warn us not to go. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Skelton? The guy that shot your grandpa? He was here?”
“Yeah....”
Before I could say more, Brandon was up off of the couch. “Dad!” He took a few steps down the hallway, and I debated whether or not I should follow. Elliott didn’t answer, so Brandon shouted at him again. “DAAAD!”
“What?” Elliott opened his door, and I pulled myself off of the couch, wondering what Brandon was going to ask him.
“Do you know anything about Skelton being here today?”
Elliott looked over Brandon’s shoulder at me. I noticed his phone was in his hand. “I’ll have to call you back,” he said into the phone, and then added, “I love you, too,” quietly, and I couldn’t stop the little grin that spread across my face. I loved that he loved Brandon’s mom again, and that Amanda loved him, too.
Putting his phone in his pocket, Elliott moved so he could see both of us. “He showed up a few hours ago.” Looking at me, he specified, “That’s why your sister couldn’t meet with you earlier.”
I nodded. I remembered Cadence and Aaron coming back from somewhere and how he’d looked slightly disheveled, but I didn’t mention it now. I wanted to hear what Elliott had to say.
“Apparently, the crazy old man showed up and asked to speak to Cadence alone. She went outside and met with him, and he told her we shouldn’t go over there because Daunator can infiltrate Hunters’ minds and make them kill Guardians. He also gave her a bunch of old newspaper clippings from the 1870s that said a lot of people were missing. We think a lot of these black creatures dressed in period clothing might’ve been incubating this whole time. And Skelton claims he went over there to fight Daunator and ended up in a hole in the ground for a long time until the monster spit him out. He came over here, tracked down your grandparents, and he claims Daunator made him kill Jordan.”
It was obviously a simplified version of what had actually gone on, but it was plenty of information to go through. “Did he know how Daunator can create these creatures?”
“No, but he seemed to think that Daunator has been through more than one portal. He mentioned the Blood Moon Portal and the Blue Moon Portal, but he also sort of implied there were more portals and Daunator had been through those as well. I don’t know. Guy sounded like a nut. We had to listen to him ramble on over and over again to try to decipher it, and even then, we ended up pulling the tape of the night your grandfather was killed to see if he said anything then to make sense of what he was saying now. It didn’t help much. But he did say, that night, that it wasn’t his fault that ‘he’ made him do it.” He shook his head; I didn’t know if he was disagreeing with Skelton that Daunator made him kill Grandpa or if he was just having trouble believing any of it.
“Okay,” I said, not sure what else I could say at the moment. “Thanks.”
“You ready to track Major Henry down?”
“Yeah.” I wouldn’t need to track Christian down. I knew where he was already. “We’ll be ready.”
“We?” Elliott looked from me to Brandon and back again, and I was glad he got what I was insinuating. He could’ve thought that I just meant the whole team, but he was with me.
“I’m going, too.” Brandon smiled at his dad, like Elliott would be happy, like they’d talked about it before.
Elliott tried to smile back, but when he said, “Great,” it was obvious he hadn’t wanted Brandon to be there.
Brandon’s expression shifted, but he didn’t question his dad. “Cass needs me.”
“Uh huh.” Elliott pounded him on the arm and pulled his phone out of his pocket, pushing his bedroom door open.
“She does.”