Page 18 of Awakened Gifts

“You need help.” Mel’s concerned voice only fuels my anger. For three hours I’ve been trying to convince them, but no one wants to believe me. I’m not crazy. I’m not. “Denial is a stage of grief. It comes before anger and depression,” Mel adds. “You have to move on to a new stage, Jase. You’re going in reverse.”

If she wasn’t the girl I’ve always known as my sister, I’d probably strangle her right now. It’s still hard not to.

“Mel, I’m not crazy. I know I heard her. She said cerium. I’ve looked it up. It’s a mineral that grows in the northeast region of the Unaligned. I’m going there with or without your help.” I turn to Kellan again. “You’re a better tracker than me. If—”

“So what?” he growls. “I can’t track Aria in the northeast region of the Unaligned when I know her ashes are buried alongside the Seminole compound. We all saw her. She. Was. Dead!”

The door swings open, and Simone comes in holding old notebooks.

“Unless it was a ploy to make us think she was dead,” the brilliant, most sane person in the room says, freeing me from my prison of solitude on this matter.

“Thank fuck! Someone finally believes me.” I almost want to hug her right now.

“Not you, too, Simone,” Kellan groans. “If you keep on, Araya is going to have another attack. Her savage has been under control for almost a millennium, and two weeks ago she almost destroyed everything. You have to stop. Brazen might not be able to talk her down next time. I can’t believe he did it this time.”

Ignoring him, I turn to my only ally.

“Why do you believe me?”

“Because you don’t know the first damn thing about minerals, and it’s the first thing Aria would look for—clues as to where she is. That means she was probably still under the influence of the poison when they took her body, and she more than likely didn’t get to gauge her route to wherever they took her.”

Kellan drops to a chair, muttering something about denial and crazy people, but I ignore him.

“What poison?” I prompt, hoping she fills me in on her thought process before my legs give out and drop me to the ground. Nothing in her mind is making any more sense than what is coming out of her mouth.

“Dead man’s blood. My mother’s death was faked the same way. It’s nearly impossible to manufacture anymore since the earth was healed, but if someone managed to get their hands on the right ingredients, they’d be able to make it. There is no scientific way to tell the difference between the faked death and a real one. It has to be someone with deep insight to old world knowledge to accomplish this.

“It takes a dry climate with exaggerated heat to grow the Hera plant that is the main ingredient. Most people thought the ingredients were extinct. Do you know what mineral is always close by the Hera plant?” she asks, acting as though this is science class, or botany class, or what the hell ever.

“Do I look like I know?” I snap impatiently, barely staying on the edge of sanity’s ledge.

“It’s always in the same area as cerium. Aria is trying to tell us where she is, and she’s using the wavelengths of her empathic abilities to reach you through your mindreading. She’s projecting. I can’t believe she’s doing it this far away, but she’s fucking doing it. We have to get there. Maybe you can hear more if we’re closer.”

“She’s really alive?” Araya asks from the open doorway, too many tears still staining her cheeks.

Her legs go weak, and Brazen is suddenly there, catching her and scooping her up, cradling her to his body like she’s weightless as he kisses her head. “You’d better be right about this. I’ll kill you for giving her hope and taking it away,” he warns, his eyes threatening me more than his tone.

“I know I’m right. I’ll assemble a team.”

“No,” Araya interjects, doing all she can to take a breath. “I’ll handle this myself. When we find her, I can promise you that none of you are going to want to be in the way.”

“Fuck,” Rex growls as he walks in. “I can’t get a damn thing. If she’s alive, I should be able to find her. Why is she sending you messages instead of me? She could project an image to me just as easily as she’s projecting her voice to you.”

I don’t have time for a pissing contest.

“If this is real,” Mel says with little faith, “then she’s projecting to Jase because she knows you’ll most likely go savage. Jase hasn’t ever gone savage, and Aria believes him to have found his counter—making it less likely that he’ll lose control. She wants to be rescued. Setting you off will leave her stranded. Speaking of which, you need to take more olophine.”

The caution and concern in her eyes tells me he’s been getting dosed with as much of that shit as they’ve been forcing into me.

Aria still thinks Erin is my counter, but right now, the only thing I can really think about is the fact that she’s alive.

She. Is. Alive.

A lone tear escapes my grasp and rolls down my cheek, carrying with it a grain of hope.

“Let’s do this. Mom can level them after we locate Aria,” Rex prompts.

“How the hell are we going to find her?” Kellan asks, sounding more as though he believes it’s a possibility now. “The northeast region of the Unaligned doesn’t exactly narrow it down.”

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