An Hour of Need (2 page)

A
s River
and I stood by our daughter’s bedside with Corrine, I prayed harder than I had ever prayed before.

Please, don’t let this be happening.

Don’t let this be.

The death of a child was something a parent could never, ever recover from, no matter what the circumstances of their death was. But like this? I couldn’t think of a more hellish punishment. I would rather spend the rest of my life in The Underworld than lose my daughter like this. And there was nothing I could do. Neither I, Lucas nor Kailyn were “true” fae like Sherus. We were byproducts. We didn’t possess the ability to turn others into fae. Besides, it wasn’t even possible for Grace to adopt the form of a fae without shedding her physical body and becoming a ghost first.

Corrine refused to say a word to any of us as she moved about examining Grace: checking various parts of her body, prodding her with odd witch-crafted equipment, and feeding her various colorful substances. The methods she used were a mystery to us, and we were forced to sit quietly and watch.

I tried to hide my fear from our daughter, and I could tell that River was too. Though neither of us could think of much to say to comfort Grace in any way. As much as we tried, we were both simply too tense ourselves.

I wasn’t sure what exactly the witch was thinking, but I already suspected her conclusion. It would be far too much of a coincidence for Grace’s tremors to be caused by anything other than Bloodless venom. Was Corrine honestly hoping that they were the result of some kind of post-traumatic symptoms?

I couldn’t believe it.

My eyes fell on the puncture marks in Grace’s leg. And then my mind fixated on one thing: the document I had glimpsed on Atticus’s laptop.

“Fight for Open Education on the Bloodless Antidote.”

FOEBA
.

Thank God that I had entered Atticus’ room to see that. In this dark hour, that single headline of white text was my only glimmer of light, my only shimmer of hope that a cure did exist. Somebody must have discovered it, otherwise there would be no need for “Open Education” about it, and why were the hunters fighting so hard to suppress it?

We just had to find out what it was.

Grace is going to be okay. She’s
going
to be. She’s a fighter. She’s a Novak.

I was already picturing myself hurtling back across the ocean toward the IBSI’s base in Chicago to hunt down that laptop and swipe it. Wherever it was now, I would do whatever it took to get my hands on that information.

I waited another half an hour, which was what Corrine estimated it would take to complete her examination of Grace.

I could already tell from Corrine’s expression what her conclusion would be as she took a step back from the bedside. Her face stricken with worry, she looked from me to River. She swallowed hard and shook her head.

“I’ve checked for every other disease and illness I can possibly think of that could bring about a violent reaction like Grace just displayed.” She clasped her hands together. “I…” She averted her eyes to Grace. “Honey, I don’t know what to say.”

Grace looked paler than a spirit as she sat up on the bed, clutching the blankets to her in fright. I wished I could take away all of her fears and carry them on my own shoulders. I wished she didn’t have to go through any of this.

River trembled next to me. I reached for her and Grace’s hands, holding them as steadily as I could before clearing my throat. “Well,” I said, my voice gravelly, “at least we know of a cure.”

Grace stared back at me. “But we don’t… We don’t know of anything.”

“We know of the
existence
of a cure,” I corrected myself firmly. “It’s clearly what Georgina died fighting to expose to the world. Somehow, I have to get hold of Atticus’s computer. The details must be on those files, or the IBSI would not be so hell-bent on guarding them.”

I rose to my feet and leaned over Grace on the bed. I brushed my fingers against her cold, pale cheek. Pressing my lips against her forehead, I cupped her face in my hands. I looked down at her steadily, forcing assurance and confidence into my expression.

“I’m returning to Chicago.”

M
y father didn’t delay
his departure in order to go outside and inform the others of Corrine’s conclusion, or to fetch Kailyn or Lucas to assist him. He thinned himself and left instantly, leaving Corrine, my mother and me sitting in deathly silence.

My brain still hadn’t quite accepted what was happening to me. But my emotions had. Fear gripped me so tightly, I was breathing like an asthma patient.

My mother moved close to me and placed a palm over my forehead. There was nothing she could say to ease my nerves. Nothing she could do. I might as well be all alone in the room. It felt like I was on an island all of my own right now, unreachable to everyone. Unhelpable.

Dad has to find those cracked files.

At least the tremors had stopped. I prayed that they would not return for a while.

“We should probably tell the others…” I croaked.

My mother nodded, her expression strained. She looked far older than her years right now. She headed to the opposite end of the room and opened the door. My family immediately rushed forward and began inquiring about Corrine’s findings. My mother’s expression should have been enough of an answer for them.

“I’m certain that Grace is infected,” Corrine said quietly.

She might as well have announced that I had died already from their reactions. My grandmother Nadia burst into tears—hardly making me feel any better about my predicament—while the others looked utterly terrified.

“Ben just left for Chicago,” my mother explained in a hushed tone. “He’s gone to search for the FOEBA files that he spotted on Atticus’ laptop.”

I couldn’t take the way everybody was staring at me any longer. I didn’t want to feel like a dying patient. Not yet.

I pushed myself off the bed, and stood up. “I’m going to see Orlando,” I announced.

Nobody argued with me or tried to stop me as I padded out of the room on shaky legs. I shut the door behind me, closing them inside.

Leaning my head back against the door, I breathed in deep.

I’m still alive. My heart is still beating. My brain is still functioning. I am still me.
And my father has gone to search for the FOEBA files.

I ought not panic yet.

I fought to focus my attention on Orlando. I wasn’t sure exactly which room Arwen had taken him to. He’d still been unconscious when she’d vanished him from my room hours ago.

I moved down the corridor, knocking on doors and inquiring who was in there, until Orlando’s hoarse voice answered me.

I entered his room to find him alone in bed. He wore hospital pajamas and looked
a lot
cleaner than when I’d last seen him. His shoulder had been bound with a thick bandage. He propped himself up on his elbows and gazed at me as I approached his bed.

“Grace,” he murmured.

I realized that in this well-lit hospital room, it was the first time I’d ever seen him beneath proper light. Everywhere we had been together in Chicago had been so gloomy. Even during the daytime, heavy black-gray clouds had covered the sun, keeping the city in perpetual dimness, and there’d been no electricity—we’d used gas lanterns indoors, which hardly let off a generous amount of light. I took a seat by his side, examining his face. He looked a lot different with clean skin. Younger, for sure. Less worn and… less like an escaped murderer. His heavy-set brows looked less severe, as did his sharp features.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, my voice several tones deeper than it ought to be.

“My shoulder is all right, if that’s what you mean,” he muttered.

I nodded, pursing my lips. We had just lost his sister. What else could he be feeling right now other than devastation? And he didn’t even know yet about my father’s suspicion that Maura had been turned into a Bloodless. He didn’t know anything about what my father had witnessed within the walls of that crematorium.

I averted my eyes to my lap and twined my fingers nervously. I figured that I ought to tell him, no matter how painful it would be. It didn’t seem right to keep that sort of information from him.

“After you fell unconscious,” I began tentatively, “my father arrived. He is a fae, as I mentioned before—”

“I know that your father arrived and that he got me out of there, and the girl who woke me said he couldn’t find my sister,” Orlando cut me off.

“Right,” I said, tense. “There, uh, was one other thing that I’m guessing she didn’t tell you. My father witnessed the IBSI forcibly turning convicts into Bloodless… He suspects that Maura was a victim.”

Wincing internally, I raised my eyes to meet his. He just stared back at me blankly, stunned. It took almost a minute for him to ask the obvious question. “W-Why would they do that?”

“We’re not sure yet.” I explained to him about what FOEBA stood for, and how the IBSI was apparently trying to wipe out all traces of its existence. I tried to reassure him that Maura might not be completely lost yet—that we might still discover the antidote. And I realized as I spoke that I was trying to reassure myself more than him.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Orlando what Corrine had discovered about me yet. I had come in here to see him in an attempt to distract myself from my own problems.

His voice caught in his throat. Shock gave way to grief, and then anger. White-hot anger. He leapt from his bed and stalked across the room. He raised his fists and brought them down against the wall, his upper back hunched and his chest heaving.

“Those people are the devil’s doing,” he hissed. “They all need to be lined up in a row and shot, dammit!” His voice cracked. “Before I die, I want to see them brought down, Grace. I want to bring them down.”

I gulped.

I hope you’ll have time.

And I hope I will, too.

I
t took
Orlando a while to sit down again. He continued pacing about the room, and I decided to stay with him a bit longer. Somehow I felt more comfortable in here with him than outside with my worrying family. Perhaps because he was also facing death.

I was glad that my family respected my desire for space, too, and didn’t insist on hovering around me.

Orlando cursed and seethed until he seemed to tire himself out. He sank back into bed and drew up his knees, dropping his head against them.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat with him—time had lost all meaning to me—but when we were stirred by a knock at the door, I guessed that quite some time had passed… time during which I ought to be grateful I had not had another seizure. I hurried to the door and opened it to find my father standing before me. I immediately searched his face for signs of victory, but found none. His expression was stiff.

“I didn’t find Atticus,” he said, cutting to the chase. My stomach dropped. At least he hadn’t delayed the pain. He took one of the seats in the corner of the room and sat down, gesturing that I sit next to him. My mother followed him into the room and stood between us, and I glimpsed the rest of my family gazing at us through the open doorway.

“I also could not locate his laptop,” my father went on, “nor did I find any other accessible computer. I
did
, however, find something else that I know can help us in one of his desk drawers.”

My father reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of paper. He unfolded it to reveal words in dark blue ink:

“Suspected FOEBA Involvement:

Georgina Conway

Deirdre Mighton

Roderick Gladwell

Frans Sanderson”

Beneath each of the names—except for Georgina’s—were listed addresses: one in Sweden, one in Spain, one in Bermuda.

And then a final line was scrawled on the paper:

Hotel Brundbar, Sweden—Planned demonstration center.

I read the piece of paper over several times while Orlando peered down at it over my shoulder. I raised my eyes to my father. “So these must have been Georgina’s accomplices,” I said in a hushed tone. “And… ‘planned demonstration center’…” My voice trailed off.

“Given that it’s a hotel,” my father said, “it sounds like they had been calling for a secret convention—I guess to demonstrate the antidote.” His eyes grew wider with optimism. “You realize what this would mean, don’t you, Grace?” he pressed. “It would mean that they must have had something very solid in order to demonstrate in the first place.”

“Right,” I breathed, attempting to allow my father’s optimism to roll over me. “They must have.”

“And we have addresses now. I’m going to leave right away to visit the first name on the list—Deirdre. And I checked the location of the hotel on the map already, it’s not far from Deirdre’s. I suspect that I can visit both within a matter of hours.”

“Don’t say ‘I,’” I told my father, frowning. “I want to come with you this time. I can’t sit around here any longer or I will go mad.”

“And I will come, too,” Orlando said.

My father exchanged a glance with my mother. Reluctantly, the two of them nodded.

“Of course I understand that,” my father said. “All right. You can come.”

After that, every single member of my family waiting in the corridor volunteered to accompany us.

“We should also take Ibrahim with us,” my father said. “A warlock might come in handy. And a jinni too. I could ask Horatio.”

And so it was decided; we would leave within the hour.

We’re going to pick up where Georgina left off. We’re going to take up her fight. The fight she lost her life for…

M
y parents returned
to our penthouse to fetch me some things for the journey—several fresh sets of clothes and my toiletry bag. I also requested them to bring me a pen and my pink polka-dot notebook, in case there was something I needed to take note of. I had to be alert to every clue we might come across.

After my parents returned and handed me some clothes—since I was still wearing a hospital gown—I changed before heading back to Orlando’s room to see if he was ready. He was locked in the bathroom when I arrived. I sank down on his bed and pulled out the notebook while I waited. My chest twinged as I paged past the notes I had taken on Lawrence while I was his caregiver.

Orlando soon emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed in new clothes given to him, I assumed, by one of the hospital nurses. He wore extra-warm clothes, like those my mother had given me. She had even gone to the extent of providing me with thermal leggings, which I couldn’t help but appreciate. Even while inside the building, it felt like it was all I could do to retain my body heat. As much as I tried not to think about it, it felt like my temperature was dropping slightly every hour.

Orlando seated himself next to me on the mattress, stealing a glance at my notebook. I shut it and stowed it in the mesh side pocket of my backpack. Some things felt too private for an onlooker to behold…

We were just waiting now for the rest of our party to gather in the corridor, probably within the next five or ten minutes. Then we would all be ready to leave.

I slanted a look at Orlando’s face. He was frowning. “I don’t understand why you people are so invested in finding the antidote. You people, here on your perfect island, away from the mess of the outside world… I guess what I’m asking is, why do you even bother?”

One answer to this, of course, was that we did care about what went on in the world outside of The Shade. Our island, as isolated and protected as it was, was still part of Earth. But, since Orlando would find out soon enough anyway, and I wanted to be completely honest, I decided now was the moment to just tell him. “Those Bloodless who bit into me in the sewage tunnel… They infected me.”

Orlando’s eyes bulged. “A-Are you serious?”

I nodded painfully. “I’m already starting to show signs of turning… Your sister was right. I might be half fae, but I am also half human.”

He fell into chilled silence before asking, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not exactly something I want to talk about, if you know what I mean,” I said tightly.

He nodded. “Right.” He continued staring at me, his eyes roaming from my face down the length of my body to my toes, and then back up again. “Well, I… I’m so sorry. I suppose that we really are in this together now.”

“Yeah,” I replied weakly.

The thought had already struck me that maybe, just maybe, this elusive antidote could possibly work on Orlando, too. We still had no idea exactly what drug the IBSI had given him to mess up his system the way it had… but I figured there was a strong possibility that his symptoms had something to do with Bloodless DNA. The idea didn’t seem to be too much of a stretch of the imagination, given the scene in the laboratory my father had witnessed back in Chicago. The IBSI were obviously experimenting with them somehow.

I voiced this idea to Orlando. He responded with skepticism, though not hopelessness.

“Who knows,” he muttered.

“All right, everyone,” my father called from the corridor. “We’re all here.”

Orlando and I lifted ourselves off the mattress and hurried out into the hallway.

We all gathered in a circle: my mother, father, aunts Rose and Dafne, uncles Caleb and Jamil, grandpa Derek, grandma Sofia, great-grandpa Aiden, great-uncles Lucas and Xavier, along with my great-aunt Vivienne, Orlando and me. None of them wanted to be left behind on this mission. And in the center stood Horatio and Ibrahim. My father had apparently already given our first destination to the magic-wielders, and almost before I could blink, the hospital around us disappeared.

* * *

S
weden was definitely not
the best place for a turning Bloodless to visit—especially not at this time of year. I gritted my teeth, gathering my coat closer around me. I caught Orlando shivering, too.

My mother, thoughtful as always, pulled out a lighter from her back pocket and handed it to me.

“Thanks,” I said, quickly taking the lighter and sparking up a flame. I billowed it until it was a ball in my hands and moved closer to Orlando, allowing him to share its halo of warmth.

We were standing in the center of an icy road, surrounded by a world of rolling snow-blanketed fields. We appeared to be in the middle of the countryside. Ibrahim had already put up his spell of shadow to protect the vampires from the sunlight. We crossed to the other side of the road and passed through a wall of trees, behind which we were met with a picket fence and a gate. Passing through it, we found ourselves approaching an old, rickety farmhouse. Just a brief glance at its derelict state—its broken windows and damaged roof—told me that nobody had lived here for a long, long time.

“This is supposed to be Deirdre’s address, right?” I said, hit by yet another swell of disappointment.

My father nodded, sharing my sentiment. Though it wasn’t like we had any excuse to be surprised. After what had happened to Georgina, we would have been surprised if we found any of the people listed on Atticus’ note still alive and residing at those addresses. I supposed what we hoped to find was some kind of clue left behind. We were grasping at straws here, and any kind of clue that could lead us on the right trail would be helpful, no matter how small.

The farmhouse’s rotting doorway opened easily—beneath just a light kick from my grandfather Derek. We entered a rundown living room, which probably had once been cozy, with its generous hearth and thick carpets— now covered with dirt and dust.

It was only a small farmhouse—two-bedrooms—and it didn’t take long for us to search it. We looked beneath carpets, inside closets, between pillowcases. Heck, we even tore open the mattresses to see if there was anything we could find. But we found nothing here of note. I’d held out some hope about the bookshelf I had spotted in the kitchen, but after Rose, Orlando and I had flipped through every single page, we found nothing that could help us. Just recipe books for food. Not antidotes.

“I think it’s time we admit there’s nothing here,” Lucas muttered.

“I agree,” Derek replied.

My father sighed. “All right. We’ll head to the hotel next.”

* * *

T
he hotel was also situated
deep in the countryside. It was an off-white building of five stories, much wider than it was tall. In front of it stretched a gravel parking lot, which was mostly empty. Apparently this wasn’t the busy season. A glass-doored entrance emitted a warm orange glow, above which read a proud sign:

Brundbar Hotel.

I realized what an odd bunch we were as we moved to the entrance. Though, given the cold, I guessed that the paleness of the vampires among us would be easier to pass off.

We set our focus on the long oak desk at the end of the cheerfully lit reception room. A man sporting a smart black suit and bow tie sat behind it.

My father suggested in a low tone that just a handful of us approach the desk, while the rest of us hung back. I of course clung to my father and followed him to the desk, while Orlando stuck by my side.

“Excuse me.” My father cleared his throat.

The receptionist rose to his feet and offered us a pleasant smile. “How can I help?”

“I have a rather unusual query,” my father said. “I don’t know how far back you keep a record of bookings of your conference rooms, but I’m trying to find out details about a meeting that was booked here about thirteen years ago.”

“Oh,” the man murmured. “I’m sorry. I am certain that we don’t hold such records.”

Well, this was a short visit.

“Thank you,” my father said faintly, before we backed away from the desk.

We returned to the others, who had all overheard the conversation. We headed out the doors, back into the frigid atmosphere. The sudden drop in temperature caused my teeth to chatter and my whole body to break out in shivers.

As my mother and father and everyone else huddled in a circle to talk about our next destination, I huddled closer to Orlando—not that he could provide me with any warmth. This wind, it was treacherous. My hands had started shaking so badly that I struggled to even spark up my lighter.

Orlando, noticing my effort, reached for the lighter to spark it for me. But before he could, the trembling in my body intensified tenfold. The next thing I knew, I was shaking so violently I could no longer hold my own weight.

I slipped on the snow, feeling arms close around my waist at the last minute. My brain had entered a state of shock as a tremor, as strong and dreaded as the first I had experienced, claimed my body. I registered briefly that it was Orlando who had caught and was holding me before more tremors started wreaking havoc on my limbs. I was vaguely aware of Orlando yelling for the others, then I closed my eyes against the cold. Against what was happening. As warm as the clothes were that my mother had equipped me with, it seemed that the icy atmosphere had triggered something in my system.

The ground left me, and I experienced the sensation of being whizzed through the air.

The tremors subsided slowly. When I dared open my eyes again, we had landed on a sunny beach—by no means hot, but not nearly as cold as the landscape we had just left.

Gazing up into a pair of deep, concerned dark eyes, I realized that Orlando was still holding me against him. My parents and the rest of my family moved around us.

My mother clasped my forehead. “Grace,” she said in a pained voice. “You should go back to The Shade. This journey is no place for you.”

“No,” I wheezed. She didn’t understand. I just couldn’t go back and wait blindly for their return. It would feel like I was just waiting to die. As shaken as my limbs still were, I fought to stand on my own two feet, with Orlando aiding the process—gently easing me upright. I remained clutching his arm.

A glistening sea stretched out before us. I drew in harrowing breaths, filling my lungs with the salty air, before managing, “We just need to keep moving.”