Burning in a Memory (29 page)

             
“Why are you here?” Angie repeated, demanding an answer.

             
Adam cleared his throat.

             
“She’s here because she wanted to save her cousin,” he said smoothly. “She’d heard of Leon’s miraculous recovery and thought she could save her cousin as well, but thought we’d never give her answers if she asked outright. She wanted to hang around to learn more. It was a dumb move but I don’t think that makes her evil.”

             
Angie bought it, hook, line, and sinker. The doubt finally left her face and she nodded.

             
“You should have said something!” Angie exclaimed.

             
“I-I know I didn’t come here on the best terms, but it’s all I knew at the time. I’ve never dealt with mages before. I wasn’t sure how…” she said when she slowly overcame the surprise. Her voice sounded light and flighty, just like her head felt. Angie smacked a hand to her forehead.

             
“This is too much to absorb. Adam, how are we going to convince Tony and Priya to help us? Tony will lose his shit about her before he even thinks about your crazy mission to go straight into the shades’ lair,” Angie said, turning on him. In a lower voice, she tacked on, “and we’re assuming that Adelaide is not leading us into more danger. Can you trust her? Can you trust where she’s taking us?”

             
The room was so small that Angie’s whispers carried. Overhearing it, Adelaide answered the questions that weren’t meant for her.

             
“I’m not leading you into a trap. If I went with you then I’d also be in danger. The shades aren’t going to help me.” Especially not when she led the Coltons straight to their lair.

             
“Give us a moment alone,” Adam snapped at Adelaide.

With a glare and a firm gesture, he sent Adelaide outside. She obeyed but in the hall she wondered how she was just kicked out
of her own hotel room. She wondered why Adam lied for her and what he had deciphered about her true actions. It seemed unbelievable that Adam would trust her now. Her mind raged with the inevitable concerns.

             
She paced the hall, desperate to expel some of her anxiety through her feet. It felt like an eternity before Angie reopened the door. Instead of allowing Adelaide entrance, she slipped into the hall and sealed the door shut behind her. Once Angie appeared certain that the two women stood alone in the long hall, she spoke quietly.

             
“I really don’t know what’s going on here, but just looking at you and Adam, I know it’s something bigger than it appears. I’m willing to go with you both, to work with you, but you two need to work with each other first. You need to hash out whatever’s going on with him before we leave.”

             
Adelaide’s jaw dropped. The feeling from the hospital room returned and the door a few feet away stuck out in her mind.

             
“Adam won’t talk to me.”

             
Angie arched an eyebrow as if the inquisitive notion answered all. She produced an iPhone from her pocket and headed down the hall. Adelaide watched her go before taking the hint. She reluctantly opened the door and let herself back in.

             
“Are you feeling all right?” she asked. Adam’s body was hunched over and he was breathing heavily. When she spoke, he straightened up right away.

             
“Now that I’ve felt your aura, I know you’re not very strong. I can still kill you,” he hissed.             

             
“Yea, I think you said that already,” she said, trying to sound as unaffected as possible. She did pick the farthest corner away from Adam to stand in, though.

             
“I just want you to remember it. Whatever evil intentions brought you into our lives, I will not let you succeed in them twice.”

             
Adelaide’s face fell. Adam may not have known anything but he knew it was bad.

             
“Why did you make up that story for Angie?” she asked quietly.

             
“Because Angie wouldn’t think it’s worth the risk if she knew the truth. Plus, if she told Tony, I’m sure he’d downright kill you. I need you to help me find my brother.”

             
Adelaide’s heart threatened to beat out of her chest.

             
“Adam, I owe it to you help you, but you know it will be insanely dangerous. We’ll be outnumbered and the shades are terribly strong. And, as you pointed out, I’m not very useful.”

             
He folded his arms.

             
“Yes, I bet you owe it to me. Now where is the Hawthorn coven hideaway?”

“Washington. I’m
don’t have the exact location memorized, but I can lead us back there.”

             
“Of course you couldn’t just tell me,” he snorted.

             
“It’s not like they use addresses in the woods. And it’s not like they’re trying to make it easy to find either,” she pointed out quickly.

             
He shook his head stubbornly.

             
“Well, you better be sure. We need to be on the road by tomorrow because we don’t have much time.”

             
“Adam, you can’t rush there that quickly. You just got out of the hospital! As if it wasn’t bad enough that you are going, its worse that you’d go while injured!”

             
He tilted his head.

             
“How long do you think Leon has left in the Hawthorns hideaway? Or Preeti, for that matter? Assuming they’re both still alive.”

             
“I bet they are. The Hawthorns didn’t want Leon dead or he would have been killed at the house. They captured him because they wanted him alive. The same is likely true with Preeti.”

             
“Which means they can only want him for one other thing. They’re going to try to turn my brother into a shade again.”

             
He sounded so calm but she knew Adam well enough now to know that it hurt him. Everything about this hurt him. Despite his attitude, she’d betrayed him and he’d lost his brother because of it. Stomach in knots, guilt descended heavily on her. Trying to kill Leon had been bad enough—helping him be turned into a shade was even worse.

             
Nothing made sense about what she did anymore. If she helped Adam, they’d be charging into almost certain death. But she found herself unable to runaway from him now either. If she backed out, Adam would almost certainly die and she’d have to live with it being her fault.

             
“We’ll get to him before they do. The shades at the house weren’t Hawthorns, which means they are probably going to Washington to bring him to the Hawthorns directly. Dragging Leon along might make them move slower. That will be the only way we can catch up.”

             
Adam scoffed but said nothing. Angie paced by the room in the hall and her muffled voice slipped through the door. Adelaide understood it only as a sign that the redhead would rejoin them shortly. She jumped on her last moment with Adam alone.

             
“Adam, if you believe me on nothing else, believe me on this. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to become so far involved with you, but…”

             
The door clicked and opened. Angie finished the loud parting words of a conversation and clicked off the phone.

             
“Are we good?” Angie asked.

             
Adam stood by himself as if in an act of defiance. He managed to walk out the door on his own, but he still had a limp in his step. Angie chased him and Adelaide trailed after. Her unspoken words lingered on her tongue, but with every passing second the words tasted sour. She barely knew what to say to him but, she knew, when she left with them she was risking everything by helping him. She’d succeeded in her life-saving pact just to throw out the results. And it was all for Adam.

             
Adelaide possessed no way to voice that sentiment. Or convince her crazy mind that this man was worth dying over. She followed him then without saying a thing.

Twenty-five

The blast rattled the windows
and the glass cried out. The house’s structural foundation joined in the moaning.

             
“Damn it,” Angie called, nose pressed against the front window. “He’s trying to pick off the shades in the street. We’re in a community now! Does he think the neighbors won’t find that strange?”

             
Adelaide sat back down on the bar stool before her blood pressure could go through the roof. After the most recent attack, Adam’s rampant use of careless magic put them all on edge. It was the quintessential crying wolf every second so they were overly calm when some bigger threat came barreling through the door.

             
Angie returned to the kitchen where Adelaide sat and returned to work on the task at hand. Before them sat crinkled paper wrappers of rations—power bars, dehydrated snacks, protein packed dinners. Once organized, they would join the bottles of water and the carefully packed first aid kits. Everything would have to fit in a backpack and all the backpacks in the trunk of a car. With her finger, Adelaide smoothed off the worn labeling on one of the square packets to determine its usefulness. Pickled salmon. She made a face.

             
She pushed it off to the side, grabbed her other pile, and made a beeline over to the bags. The busy work helped keep her antsy mind distracted, but Adelaide still wondered what the point was. This gear was only good if they survived long enough to use it. They needed a perfect plan, but that seemed to be the one thing no one ventured to talk about.

             
“Is he going to hurt himself?” Adelaide asked while she stuffed the packets into the last remaining bag. She could hear Adam’s incoherent grumbles from the porch and his loud footstep as he paced.

             
“I hope not. He might not have internal injuries but he’s going to rip his stitches out. I wish he wouldn’t exhaust himself, considering he’ll really need his health in a day or so.”

             
Adelaide made a face. He needed his health and they all would need a miracle. Adelaide fumbled with the zipper and closed the last bag. Angie watched her while she did.

             
“So I have a million questions, but I’ll save them for now. Answer me just a few. What are we expecting in Washington? Is this something that you’ve seen before?”

             
“I remember the highway, I-90, after we passed the state line. We pulled off the highway and followed a trail for half mile after that. It’s fairly remote and probably the only house out there. In fact, its more of a mansion than a house.”

             
“Hmm… Maybe I could find it on Google Earth if it’s as big as you say. Unless there’s too much tree coverage.” Angie pulled out her phone, tapping incessantly on the blue screen. Adelaide agreed that it was worth a shot. Meanwhile, she finished the bags and carried them back to the front door.

They
returned to the first home they had on the outskirts of Denver, officially the last home they had left. No one took time to clean it when they’d returned and the air smelled stale. After she dropped off the bags, she stole a look at Adam through the window.

Angie underestimated Adam’s demeanor. Every few steps, he stretched
, growled, and made a gesture to pick off another shade. His aura made the grass overgrow and weeds tangle almost knee high. The streetlights flickered even in broad daylight. At this rate, they’d be lucky if the Denver police weren’t called. She returned to the kitchen.

             
“Any luck?”

             
Angie already set the phone back down on the counter. She shook her head with newfound dismay.

             
“There’s too much vagueness. I can see buildings but I can’t tell any details. We run the risk of kicking in some human family’s door by accident.”

             
Adelaide regretted more and more not having exact details, but her mind had been on other things. At the end of her journey, she’d never actually expected to return to the Hawthorns. She figured they’d have to find her first.

             
“I remember the signs and the potholes in the road. I remember the way the deformed trees looked.” She shook her head at her own words—they seemed so juvenile now, so poorly planned.

“
I know they’ll move slower with Leon, but it’s going to be tough to catch up before they arrive. I suspect that the Hawthorns will be bundled up in a tactically advantageous place just as we were. Unfortunately, we don’t have the power or the numbers to drag them out or take it by force.”