Taken by Storm

“You were there,” Chase said, stepping in between Griffin and me. “First in Wyoming, and then here.”

That wasn’t a question, but Griffin responded as if it was. “I was there, but I was too late.”

“Too late for what?” Caroline asked. I didn’t need any kind of special access to her mind to see that she didn’t trust anyone—or anything—she couldn’t shoot.

“I was too late to stop what happened in Wyoming.” Griffin closed his eyes, his head bowed, his entire body tense. “I was too late to stop this.” He forced his eyes open and spread his arms out, gesturing toward the blood-splattered grass beneath our feet. “Not that we know how to stop it, exactly.”

We? I’d been so focused on Griffin—what he was, what he might be capable of—that I hadn’t thought even for a second about the person we’d come here expecting to find.

Maddy.

In the dream we’d shared, she’d told me that the only person who could help her was dead. I’d assumed she was talking about Lucas—but what if she wasn’t?

“We,” I repeated, watching Griffin’s reaction and searching his eyes for some hint of what was going on inside his head. “As in you and Maddy.”

I should have put it together earlier, but when your friend’s twin brother comes back from the dead and lands smack-dab in the middle of a murder spree, it has a way of short-circuiting the part of your brain responsible for “logic.”

“I spent years watching you all,” Griffin said finally, “watching out for Lake. But after that last fight, after the challenge—”

For the first time, the word challenge didn’t take me right back to the forest, to standing over Lucas’s dead body. I was too busy trying to diagnose the expression marring the boyish innocence of Griffin’s face. Guilt? Sorrow?

Hunger?

“You didn’t need me, Lake.” Griffin said the words like he was making a confession, like Lake was his priest. “But Maddy did.”

“You went with her.” Lake reached out to touch the side of his face and pulled back at the last second, as if she’d only just remembered that her hand might pass straight through. “When Maddy left the Wayfarer, you left me and went with her. You watched out for her.”

It was a beguiling thought, that even once Maddy had lost us, she’d never really been alone. But whether or not I could afford to believe it—that was another story. A drop of water landed on my forehead—rain. I looked up. This was thunderstorm season, and by the looks of the sky, things were only going to get worse.

“We need to go,” Griff said. “The weather’s getting bad, and Maddy shouldn’t be alone.” An alien intensity fell over his face, his eyes glowing in a way that made me wonder how anyone could ever mistake him for a human or a Were. “When I’m not there,” he said, his voice low and hoarse and nothing like the boy I’d once known, “when I have to go somewhere—that’s when it finds her.”

The words sent a light chill over the back of my neck. I could feel my palms sweating, clammy.

“When what finds her?” Caroline asked.

Griff glanced at the scene around us—the signs of the struggle, the blood. “The thing that did this,” he said. “The other ghost.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

GRIFFIN HAD JUST GIVEN ME EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED: a reason to believe that he wasn’t our killer, an alternative explanation that fit the evidence just as well. Chase could barely grasp Griffin’s scent. If there was another ghost, it made sense to think it might have that same not-quite-there smell.

But the Griffin I’d known had been a very smart little boy. Smart enough to know exactly what to say to make us follow him. Smart enough to throw suspicion onto someone—something—else.

“Here.” Griffin—who hadn’t said a word the entire time we’d been following him—spoke in the low voice of an adult trying not to wake up a napping child. He tilted his head toward a small opening in the brush.

Maybe he was leading us to Maddy. Maybe he was leading us off the side of the cliff. Right now that was a risk I had to take. Finding Maddy, making sure the rest of the Senate didn’t find her—that had to be my top priority.

Glancing back at Griffin, I thought of the room I’d built for my fears. I readied myself. Then I ducked through the brush.

The cave I’d seen in Maddy’s dream was smaller than I thought it would be, and darker. My head scraped the ceiling as I stepped over the threshold; Lake and Chase had to duck. Behind us, Jed and Caroline lingered near the mouth of the cave, either to cover our backs or because they knew that what was about to happen was private.

Griffin wasn’t lying. Not about Maddy. She’s here.

Knowing Maddy was close, knowing what she had gone through—already, it cut me to the bone. Beside me, Chase’s mind was flooded with scents: damp stone, fresh dirt, sweat, and something sour.

Outside, the storm was raging. Inside, it was quiet.

Too quiet.

An unreadable expression on his too-pale face, Griffin pushed past me and made his way farther back into the darkness. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a small form huddled against the wall of the cave. She was lying on one side, her arms curved protectively around her middle. Her clothes were worn, her face dirty, and the slant of light from the entrance caught her eyes just so, giving her the look of a person caught in the throes of fever.

But she was Maddy, unmistakably Maddy, and a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding whooshed out of my chest when I felt that spark of recognition deep inside me. Even after listening to the story Griffin had spun, I hadn’t been certain what we would find here.

Who we would find here.

But she still looked like our Maddy. She still felt like Maddy. She wasn’t the killer, and she was alive. That was more than I’d hoped for, more than I had a right to ask for, when I’d believed she was capable of the things we’d seen.

The other ghost. Griffin’s words lingered in my mind. He’d brought us here, to her, but what was the likelihood that there were two ghosts following Maddy around?

Then again, what had the likelihood been that there was even one?

“Bryn?” Maddy didn’t sound sure of herself, like she thought I might have been a dream—which was probably a fair assumption, all things considered.

“Maddy.” Everything in me wanted to go to her, to kneel beside her, but I couldn’t bring my feet to move—not until I knew that she wanted me there, wanted me close. “Mads.”

“You came,” Maddy whispered. For a moment, all I could think was that the first time I’d seen Chase, locked in a cage in Callum’s basement and half out of his mind with the Change, he’d said the same thing.

“Of course I came.”

Maddy closed her eyes, and as Chase inhaled beside me, he caught a scent, too faint for my human nose to pick up.

Tears.

She hadn’t shed them yet, and I didn’t know whether I should go to her or just go. But we’d come here for a reason, and Callum’s warning was still fresh in my mind.

“The other alphas will be looking for you,” I told Maddy, matching her whisper with one of my own. “Soon.”

I wanted to be saying something else—that we loved her, that we missed her, that if I could have taken her pain and made it mine, I would have, in a heartbeat.

“The Senate doesn’t know about the baby, Maddy, but if they find out, you won’t be safe here.” I paused, and my eyes traveled to her stomach, round against her rail-thin frame. “Neither one of you will be.”

This wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion with Maddy going, but I didn’t know how to say anything else. Hesitantly, I crouched where I was, my knees pulled tight to my chest. I forced my own guard down, so she would know that I wasn’t trying to scare her or threaten her or imply that she’d made a mistake. Instead, I let my face show my feelings, let my own tears come.

“I was scared, Maddy, so scared that something had happened to you, and that we wouldn’t get here in time.”

She looked at Griffin and nodded, and he shot me a warning look and then backed up to stand next to Lake, leaving nothing but a few feet of space separating Maddy and me.