Page 170 of Illusory

My eyes swelled into saucers as a firestorm ripped across my face and neck. Before I could even attempt to form some kind of response to that, Gabriel came striding back into the room, his forehead already crinkling with unease, though I wasn’t sure if it was over my mess of a sister or something else entirely.

He stopped short at the doorway and blinked at me. “What is it? What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” I squeaked defensively. The heat in my cheeks intensifying until I was positive I had broken out in hives. “We were just waiting for you.”

His suspicious gaze moved across the three of us before he clenched his jaw and then fully entered the room. Taking off his leather jacket, he strung it along the back of one of the chairs and then sat down in it. “Have you fed?” he asked Trace, his expression still tense.

“Yeah,” he said, his attention sliding over to me as his dimples made a minor appearance. “I fed.”

Gabriel glanced up at Dominic as if expecting a reaction from him, but he just took a sip of his drink and watched me with an undecipherable look in his eyes. Gabriel returned his focus to me and frowned.

I couldn’t have felt more awkward and exposed if I had been standing in the room with my boobs out. “Um, what was that thing you showed me back at the cabin?” I asked Trace, eager to shift the conversation to something less uncomfortable. “You said it would help us?”

“Yeah, I got it right here.” Lifting his hips from the couch, he sank his hand into his front pocket and then pulled out the strange looking piece of rope as I tried andfailedto keep my gaze from roaming all over him.

God, something was seriously wrong with me.

“What is that?” asked Gabriel, surprising me since, you know, he usually knew everything.

“It’s a Transfer Bind,” said Trace, turning it over in his hand. “Nikki made it for me way back when I needed a way to be able to port without the Council finding out about it.”

Oh, right. I’d forgotten all about her doing that for him. Whatever, she was still a megawatt bitch.

“But it’s not just for that,” he said, eyeing me then. “It can also tether me to a specific place and time, or more importantly, aperson.” He waggled his brows and waited to see if I’d catch up.

I blinked at him. “Why would you need to tether yourself to someone in order to port?”

“It’s not so that I can port. It’s so that you can.”

I blinked a few more times, still not following.

He smiled at me, like he thought my fried brain was cute. “The bind would let me port you to wherever you need to go without me having to step foot there myself. It’s usually used as a safety net when traveling somewhere where the risk of changing something in the past is high. One person stays grounded on our Timeline while the other travels back.” He licked his lips and shrugged. “We can use it just as easily for porting. I could still teach you how to port yourself. I mean,I will. But if we need to get this book as badly as you’re saying, this is the quickest way to do it.”

Despite the nervous pinch in my chest, my lips curled into a smile. Because this was precisely what we needed! “Are you saying you can port me to Templetoday?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

I looked at Gabriel and Dominic for reassurance, for confirmation that I had actually heard what I thought I had. That this was really happening.

Gabriel immediately shook his head. “You’re not porting to Temple today. That’s out of the question. We need to formulate a proper plan. To look at this from all angles and make sure we have a contingency plan in place in case something goes wrong.”

“What can go wrong? I’d be tethered to Trace,” I quickly argued back.

“A million things could go wrong. Besides, Tessa isn’t…” He trailed off probably because neither of us had any idea what Tessa was and wasn’t. “And Jaqueline still hasn’t sobered up from her blood bender.”

“What does Jackie have to do with anything? It’s not like she’s going to port there with me,” I said, not getting why she was even factoring into this. She didn’t have a motherly bone in her body, at least not anymore, and frankly, I couldn’t see her giving a crap about this one way or the other.

“Until we know where she was and the reason for her not checking in, we’re not going to make any moves that could jeopardize everything,” he said sternly as if there were no two ways about it. “Just trust me for once, Jemma. I know what I’m talking about.”

Frustrated, I blew out a breath and folded my arms across my chest. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand where he was coming from. I did. I just…I wanted to get this over with. I wanted to accomplish one good thing today. To have something to busy my mind with. And Gabriel was making that really fucking hard at the moment.

“So, what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” I asked, trying not to sound like a sourpuss. “Just sit here and stare at each other?”

“No. The two of us will continue training as usual,” said Gabriel as I tried to conceal the disappointment from my face. “We’ll start with sparring.”

Dominic smirked at me, letting me know I hadn’t done a good job of hiding my displeasure about it. “I think her time will be much better served doing practice runs with Romeo,” he said and then drained the rest of his drink. “We ought to be sure that this Binding trinket works, and that she knows precisely how to use it, before blindly sending her off into enemy territory.”

I perked up at his suggestion. That sounded like a hell of a lot more fun than another boring day of sparring.

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