“Fine, where are you?” That would get me close enough to find Elena.

When she gave me a street address, I told her I’d be right there. Then I called Elena’s number. No one answered. I texted Adam. He called as I raced to a cab outside the terminal.

“Get back inside, Savannah.”

“I can still catch my flight and I will, but Elena—”

“She’s fine. There’s no way she’d let some guy with a gun—”

“She’s not answering her phone. Something happened. I texted you Roni’s location. Meet me there.”

I hung up before he could reply.

seventeen

Roni was holed up in a fast-food joint. It was lunchtime, and the place was packed. I found her in a corner, sipping a soda, shoulders hunched against the glares of families circling past her table as they looked for seats.

When she saw me, her eyes filled with tears. She started to rise, then stopped, looking behind me, eyes wide. She raced over and grabbed my hand—the bandaged one—and I let out a yelp.

“Sorry. D-don’t turn around. J-just—” She stepped in front of me, using me as a shield. “I don’t think they saw me.”

“Is it—?”

“Chrissy. She’s with that man I don’t recognize.”

“Okay, listen. We’re in a very busy public place. Just calm down and tell me how you got here. That will help us backtrack and find Elena. I need to call Adam—”

“They saw me!”

“Calm down. They’ll scope the place out first, and cover the exits. The worst thing you can do is—”

She yanked free of my grasp and bolted.

“—run.”

I went after her.

I caught up with Roni at the back door, which was locked. As she whaled on it, I pulled her back.

“So now you’ve trapped us in a dead end,” I hissed. “Wonderful.”

“It’s only locked,” she said. “You’ve got a spell for that, don’t you?”

“Normally, yes, but I was poisoned recently, which explains why you haven’t seen me cast anything.”

I reached for the door. A prick in the back of my arm made me jump. Roni fell back, clutching a needle.

“You little bitch!” I said.

“It’ll be okay, Savannah. I’d never hurt you. And they’d never let me. You’re too important.”

I swung at her. She tried to duck, but my fist connected and she went down. I spun toward the exit. Even when I stopped moving, though, the hall kept going, around and around. My fingers clasped the handle. It turned. It hadn’t been locked after all. I flung it open, staggering out, the stench of garbage making my stomach churn. I stumbled against a trash can. It took everything I had to stay upright.

“Hello, Savannah.”

I lifted my head to see a man and a woman standing there. I twisted. Two men blocked the other way. I tried to turn back, but my feet slid on the gravel. Someone behind caught me, and the last thing I heard was Roni saying, “Her friends are coming. The half-demon and the werewolf. We need to go.”

I woke tied to a chair. Everything was dark, but when I moved my head, I couldn’t feel a blindfold.

I tried to twist and feel how I was bound, but my hands were tied back-to-back and I couldn’t stretch my fingers enough to touch anything.

I closed my eyes and worked on inhaling and exhaling, struggling to slow my galloping heart.

Kidnapped.

If anyone else was here, I’d joke about how this made me a legitimate challenger to Jaime’s record. Kidnapped again. Ha-ha.

Only it wasn’t funny at all. When I saw that blackness and felt my bound wrists, panic surged, tugging behind it the memories of kidnappings past.

The first time, I’d been captured with my mother. They’d come for her and I’d been home playing sick, so she’d had to protect me, which meant she couldn’t get away. She’d died without ever getting away.

The second time I’d been captured by my father. He’d been fighting Paige for custody and unable to tell his side of the story, so he took me. Then Leah convinced me he’d murdered Paige, and in a blind tantrum of spell-powered rage, I’d killed him.

Two kidnappings. Two deaths.

Who would die this time?

No one. I couldn’t get anyone else hurt here. I was alone.

But for how long? The familiar bulge of a cell phone in my rear pocket was gone. Had they disabled it before Adam could get coordinates?

What if Adam came? What if he got killed—?

A door behind me squeaked open. Light flooded in. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder and instead took stock of my surroundings to see what I could use in a fight. Not a damned thing, unless I could play lion tamer with my chair.

“Savannah?”

My hackles rose at that voice.

Roni walked in front of me, circling wide as if I might lunge and bite her. Tempting.

“I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

I spat. Sadly, I missed.

“It’s your own fault,” she said, her mouth going rigid. “All you had to do was come and help me when I asked. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Help people? The others said it wouldn’t work, because you aren’t like Paige and Lucas. I insisted on trying. That’s ironic, isn’t it? A witch-hunter championing the goodness of a witch? But you proved me wrong.” Disappointment leached into her voice. “They aren’t very happy with me now, especially after you killed Maddie and now it looks like Tyler might die, too. Your werewolf friend hurt him pretty bad.”

Tyler must have been the man who went after Elena. I remembered what Roni had said before I passed out, about my “half-demon and werewolf” friends coming after me. So Elena was fine. Like Adam said she’d be.

I relaxed. “That’s what Tyler gets for taking on a werewolf. And if Maddie was the woman in the parking garage, I didn’t kill her. She swallowed poison.”

“Because of you. So as far as they’re concerned, you killed her.”

“That wasn’t your aunt, was it?”

“No, just a group member who kind of looked like me.”

It took a moment for me to process what that meant. Roni’s family had never been chasing her. She’d pretended they were, with the help of these people. A setup to convince me that she was in trouble.