Page 38 of Bad Blood
“We all have choices,” a voice whispered behind me. Nightshade emerged from the shadows, his gaze on my mother as she danced. “The Pythia chooses to live.” He smiled. “Perhaps someday that choice will be yours.”
I woke with a start to find Dean asleep beside me and Celine Delacroix standing in the doorway.
“I came to say good-bye,” she said. “Michael performed an impressive encore of youryou don’t belong here and you need to leavenumber.”
If there was one thing my last conversation with Celine had taught me, it was that shedidbelong here. But I couldn’t blame Michael for wanting to send her away. The rest of us were in this. We were already in danger.
Celine didn’t have to be.
“When this is over—” I started to say.
Celine held up one perfectly manicured hand. “Unless you feel like letting me in on whatthisis—don’t.” She paused. “Take care of Michael for me.”
I will. I couldn’t make that promise out loud.
“And if you get a chance,” Celine continued, a subtle smile pulling at the edges of her lips, “put in a good word for me with Sloane.”
She didn’t wait for a reply before strolling out the door.
Beside me, Dean stirred. “What do you need?” he asked me quietly.
I needed to do something other than stand in front of the wall in the basement, waiting for a body to show up. I needed to get out of this house.
I needed to follow up on the one lead we had.
“I need to go to Gaither, Oklahoma.”
YOU
You forget sometimes what it was like Before. Before the walls. Before the chains. Before the turning of the wheel and the bleeding and the pain.
Before the rage.
They bring photographs to show you what they did to Seven. They place another diamond around your neck.
Your fingertips gingerly touch the edge of a photograph—proof of death. There was blood. There was pain. You did this. Judge and jury, you held his life in your hands.
You did this. You killed him.
You smile.
The town where Nightshade had been born wasn’t the kind of place where the FBI turned up on a regular basis.
“Gaither, Oklahoma, population 8,425,” Sloane rattled off as we stepped out of the rental car. “In the early days of Oklahoma’s statehood, Gaither thrived, but its economy collapsed during the Great Depression, and it never recovered. The population has dwindled, and the average age of residents has risen steadily for the past sixty years.”
In other words, Gaither had more than its share of senior citizens.
“Three museums,” Sloane continued, “thirteen historical landmarks. While local tourism is a substantial source of income for the city proper, the surrounding rural communities rely primarily on farming.”
The fact that there was tourism in Gaither meant that we could get the lay of the land without announcing our intentions—or the fact that Agent Sterling was carrying a badge. Agent Briggs had stayed behind in Quantico. I didn’t fool myself as to why.
April second. Today was a Fibonacci date, and Laurel’s disappearance was almost certainly a harbinger of things to come.
Judd had accompanied us to Gaither, as had Agent Starmans. My gut said that Briggs had sent the latter to protect Sterling as much as the rest of us.
Don’t think about that, I told myself as we began the walk down historic Main Street.Think about Mason Kyle.
I tried to picture Nightshade growing up in this town. The storefronts had a Victorian charm to them. Stone signs detailed the town’s history. As I laid a hand flat on one of them, an odd feeling came over me. Like something was missing.
