I typed the woman’s name into the search engine. I was surprised she was a normal human woman, a librarian in fact. Short, middle aged, with a brown bob, she didn’t look like the type of person who would help a Vampire Queen take over the universe. But it had only taken me a few seconds inside of her head to know she’d been contacted by Hines. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no trace of how he’d reached her, so I couldn’t use this info to reach Holland.
I heard my sister in the hallway and wanted to make sure she came right in so I could tell her what I’d found “I’ve got a name!” I shouted.
Cadence seemed surprised but glad. “Great. What is it? Who is it?”
“Okay, so one of the names Stewart spewed out was Seonaid MacIain. She’s a librarian who lives in Glasgow. Stewart needed her help a few years ago working on a project that involved translating some ancient Scottish texts. When I jumped into her head, I immediately picked up on a thought about a strange phone call she’d received yesterday, a man asking about what she calls the Ancient Undead Text. I am assuming that’s our Vampire book, even though I don’t think I’ve picked up on that title anywhere else, not from Stewart or Ward. Anyway she is a human, so to her it’s all just an ancient riddle. She’d never seen the book before and was thinking it was all just legend until this man sent her pictures of a few pages to decipher for him. She didn’t mind disclosing her thoughts on the passage because it all seemed make believe to her.”
My sister was following me, even though I was talking super fast. “And we think this man was Stewart?” Cadence asked.
And... I’d lost her. “No, Hines.” She nodded. “And she told him what she thought it meant. The list of sites she was able to identify was far shorter than Ward and Christian’s, but she was able to identify three of them fairly certainly, as well as the one Ward said was Jupiter and another one he said was the sun.”
“Which ones were they?” Cadence asked me, biting her bottom lip.
“The Colosseum, Stonehenge, and this place in Iceland called Latrabjer, or Bird-cliff. She said she wasn’t sure about the last one because it basically just said ‘steep, steep cliffs,’ but the other two she said she had no doubt about. “ Reading Cadence’s expression, I could see that at least the first two had been on Ward’s list. She looked puzzled by the third.
“So we think the reason Holland’s plane went to Rome was because it was one of their three choices?” my sister asked.
It seemed like a lucky guess to me, but I couldn’t figure out how else she’d know. “Yeah, I think she’s grasping at straws. I bet she already has a contact near Stonehenge she can send in without having to travel there.”
Lucy had long since taken back the mouse. She chimed in now, “And her second plane just took off. We’ll track it, but I bet it’s going to Iceland.”
I thought Holland couldn’t actually be in that plane. We had troops at the airport now. I wondered why they hadn’t stopped it. If Holland or Hines had been there, they would’ve known. Maybe they decided it didn’t matter if it left so long as the queen wasn’t aboard.
Cadence was thinking aloud. “Right. Okay. We need teams on the ground.”
Tapping her chin in thought, Tara asked, “Could she drive from Eastern Europe to Stonehenge? Isn’t there a tunnel or something?”
It would explain why the plane had gone to Iceland. “There’s the Eurotunnel,” Lucy answered, pulling it up on the computer. “I was reading about it a few weeks ago when I was thinking it would be cool to work out of France or England or someplace. She could take that.”
“But... would she have enough time to get there?” Cadence asked. I wondered how much time she thought we had. She obviously knew something we didn’t about how the portals would open. “I mean, assuming she’s where we last detected her, or close to it, how long would it take to drive to Stonehenge?”
“Assuming she can drive as fast as we can, probably about two hundred miles per hour on average, she could get from Hungary to Stonehenge in about six or seven hours, I think,” Lucy replied. “Maybe Ward would know.”
Our faithful leader mulled that over for a minute. “All right. This Eurotunnel, put it on our surveillance, Lucy. I’m not sure how you can do that, but if anyone can figure it out, I think it’s you.”
Lucy beamed at the compliment, but I could tell she was nervous about failing. “It won’t be easy. It’s not like we have any idea what kinda car she’ll be driving.”
“Let’s get a team on the ground wherever the Euro-thingy-majigy lets out, and several people along the route between there and Stonehenge. Maybe we can track her that way.”
“I’ll get on it,” Lucy nodded, and Cadence gave her a satisfied smile before turning and leaving.
“Okay—is anyone else confused?” Tara asked as Lucy began looking for cameras in the Eurotunnel. Luckily for her, Christian had already shown her how to access basically any public camera anywhere in the world, so she wouldn’t have to get his help now to figure out how to do it.
“About the portal openings?” I asked. Tara nodded. “Yeah, I am, too. I’m going to find out.”
“Great. Come back and let us know,” my friend said with a loud exhale.
“No, I’m gonna stay right here, but I’m going to find out.” I jumped into Ward’s head, and it was all pretty clear to me in a matter of minutes, complicated as it was.
Lucy was typing away, but she stopped as I began to speak. “Turns out Christian isn’t completely worthless.”
“What do you mean?” Tara asked. I knew she’d want to rip Christian’s face off, too, if she was given the chance.
“So, he used the cell phone data to determine where the Guardian’s phones had been sending signals from in order to locate the previous portal openings,” I began.
“Genius.” Lucy shook her head, chewing on her fingernail.