Page 94 of Saving the Last Heir
She smiled sadly and departed, leaving me alone with the empty nest. I thought of Tormynd, I thought of my father, I thought of all the people we’d lost over the years. I couldn’t let this be the end of us. Ihadto find a way to stop The Vanishing and rebuild our numbers. In order to do that, I had to deal with Joseph Anitoli. Even thinking his name made my blood boil.
Whirling on my heel, I went up to the roof. The sky was still dark, but the horizon had a faint glow to it where the sun would soonrise. A new day. A day that would determine everything else. A lot might go wrong, but by this time tomorrow, I’d know whether I was finally free, or if everything in my life would be shattered.
22
JACKSON
Taking a deep breath, I checked my watch once more. My anxiety was making it hard to stay focused. The sun dipped low on the horizon, dusk coming on strong. After the night I’d spent with Shyanne, I’d felt like I was on top of the world. The whole experience had been like some blissful dream, but then I’d received that awful phone call, and it had doused that happiness with devastation, sadness, and mourning. Losing Tormynd and once again being reminded about howclosedeath was to all of us gave my task a much more dangerous tint. Now I had to put those thoughts from my head and focus on the task at hand.
I sat on the outermost branch of an ancient and powerful oak tree, gazing off into the distance at the Bauer Estate. Flying to and landing on this perch had been dangerous in and of itself. Christian’s family had private security—wyrms whose only job was to watch over and protect one of the most powerful families in all of shifterdom. They could have seen me coming and ruined everything. I’d had to fly in dangerously low, nearly crashing into multiple trees along the way, to get to this spot.
Before I moved in, I took a moment to calm my nerves and tried to make peace with what I was about to do. Taking Bryn?Actuallykidnapping her? It disgusted me, but there was no way to get my sister back without doing what Joseph wanted.
My phone buzzed with a text.
Shyanne:I’m in place. Be careful.
Careful? That was an understatement. If even one of the security guys or another member of Christian’s family found me in the house… At best, there would be questions and scrutiny that would make the kidnapping impossible. At worst, they’d realize what was about to go down, and possibly kill me—old family ties be damned—especially if they realized I was there not only to kidnap her, but tokillher as well.
The thought made my stomach roil. Brynhilda Bauer had always been a sweet kid and one of my favorite people. She loved to perform and chose acting, choir, and singing over sports. Christian and I had always teased her about her name, and the fact that it was really close to Broom-Hilda, the old newspaper comic strip about a witch. We would call her Sweepy, Sweep, and Sweeper. She hated it, but in the way you hated anything a big brother and his friends did—with a combination of love and irritation but grudging assent.
Pressing my fist to my mouth, I waited for the sun to set and recalled the last time I spoke with Bryn. It had been right before I went off looking for Ayumundi. Christian had invited me to her school play, and I’d carved out the time. Afterward, we’d all gone out to dinner. I closed my eyes, envisioning it as if it was happening at that very moment.
“Jackson?”
“Yeah, Sweep?”
“Ugh.” Bryn rolled her eyes. “I told you to stop calling me that.”
I shrugged and winked at her. “Yeah. You’ve been saying that since you were five, yet here we are.”
“Hey, dude?” Christian called from down the table. “You want fried pickles for an appetizer?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Gross. No.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, then went back to his menu.
“Jackson?” Bryn repeated, nudging my arm.
“What’s up?” I said, scanning my own menu.
“Did you like the play?” she said, eyeing me with intense interest.
“You did a really good job.” I was being honest. She’d been phenomenal in the role of the genie in the school’s adaptation of Aladdin.
My jaw had hit the floor when she’d come out. From the moment she’d taken the stage, she’d commanded everyone’s attention. Her jokes, her stage presence, her voice when she sang the songs? All of it was top-notch, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d never have believed she was only eleven years old. She acted like a seasoned actor twice her age.
“You think so?” she said, eyes shining with excitement.
I reached over and mussed her hair. “I do.”
“Hey! Quit it.” She giggled and pushed my hand away.
When she stopped laughing, she glanced down the table toward her parents, then back at me. “I want to be an actor when I grow up.”
“Sweep, we’ve known that since you were three years old, singing along to The Lion King songs.”
“No, I mean really,” she said, her words low and urgent. “Mom and Dad want me to go to college to be some stupid doctor or lawyer or something. Or get a business degree like Christian did. Blegh.” She made a gagging sound.
