Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(44)

Anger rose up in me. “Yeah, Dad. I know what I saw. I’m not lying.”

He put up his hands. “I can certainly ask her a few questions,” he said. “In fact, what if we all head over to the Sixes tent now?”

“Yeah, because it’s going to go real well when we show up with a Syndicate agent in tow,” grumbled Brooke.

Dad shrugged. “I didn’t ask you to be happy about it. But it might be good to put space between you guys and the Stalkers, especially if Killian shows up.”

“Yeah, where is that guy?” asked Hardy.

“If he has Alex, I’m going to kill him, Owen,” Crowe said. “You won’t be able to stop me. He’s not going to take another member of my family away from me.”

“We have no evidence that Killian Delacroix has done anything wrong,” my dad replied. “Then or now.”

Crowe muttered something hostile under his breath before turning away. The clench of his long fingers around that little teddy bear made my heart ache.

“Crowe, wait,” I said. “Before we go, maybe my dad could try a locator spell…?” We’d come here to find Alex, and I didn’t want to leave if she was close. “He’s a lot better at them than I am.”

Dad smiled, looking relieved. “I’d be happy to, Crowe. It’s the least I can do considering you just saved Jemmie’s life. I owe you.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, I wanted to stay mad at my dad—it hurt less than opening myself up to disappointment yet again. On the other, I remembered the desperate look in his eyes as he hunched over my bleeding body, and the wrenching sound of his voice as he begged Crowe to save me.

Dad accepted the stuffed animal from Crowe and closed his eyes. My nostrils flared as the stinging scent invaded. Blue tendrils sprouted from my father’s body like vines, slithering along the forest floor, winding up tree trunks and into the canopy above. I watched in awe as his magic expanded so easily, so controlled. But then it shrank back just as quickly, and Dad frowned. “There’s nothing,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?” asked Crowe. “Jemmie sensed her. She led us to this spot.”

“I’m sorry, Crowe,” Dad said. “I’m just not picking anything up, and if she’s anywhere within a hundred miles from here, I should be able to.”

“I probably got it wrong,” I said miserably. “Crowe, I’m so—”

“No,” he snapped. “You sensed her, and you know it. Don’t get scared now. Own it.”

I stepped back, stung. “I warned you I might not be able to do it.” I couldn’t escape his gaze, hard and full of challenge.

“Crowe,” my dad said quietly, “Alex isn’t a locant, so she couldn’t hide herself from me.”

Crowe’s eyes narrowed. “Then maybe someone with locant took her.”

“Okay,” Dad said cautiously, “but the number of people with enough locant to completely conceal a life spark from someone like me is so small that—”

“My sister is not dead!” shouted Crowe.

Dad took a step back. “That’s not what I’m saying. We’ll all help you search. But maybe we should talk to Ronan and the Sixes first. If Katrina is looking to punish you, that might be the best place to start.”

“Fine, let’s go talk to them,” Crowe said. His lip curled as he gazed at the Stalkers’ tent. “I need to get out of here anyway, before I change my mind and curse all of them with explosive diarrhea.”

“Never thought I’d say this, but thank God Owen put up that shield around them,” said Brooke. “Because we don’t have nearly enough toilets for that.”

The Devils fell into step just behind Crowe as he stalked off down the path toward a tent flying the emblem of the Rolling Sixes, some type of crouching demon with ragged wings clutching a human leg bone with its clawed fingers. Wind ruffled my hair and dried my sweaty face as I followed. Dad made his way to my side and caught me by the elbow when I tripped over a clump of grass. “You might be healed, but you lost a fair amount of blood before he got that wound closed,” he said.

“I’m fine. I just want to figure out what’s going on, and I want to get Alex back.”

“I didn’t mean to make you look bad back there, Mo. I think it’s great that you tried to do a locator spell.”

I stared stonily at the path ahead. “I’m not a child, Dad. You don’t have to talk to me like one.” It wasn’t his fault I was freaking incompetent. I could have sworn, though, that I did it right. My own magic had flared out just like his—but unlike his, I had connected with Alex, however briefly. “I know I found her. I just… didn’t get a good sense of the location quickly enough.”

“Crowe was right—she could have been cloaked,” he said. “But it would take someone with locant magic even more powerful than mine.”

“One of the Stalkers has that kind of magic.”

“Ford? He can barely cloak himself, let alone someone else. He’s always been resentful because he doesn’t have much power and can’t do much with what he has.”

“So you don’t think the Deathstalkers could have been responsible for kidnapping Alex?”