House of Leights (Secret Keepers #3)(77)

It was dark inside. Really dark. And as the doors closed behind Daniel, who was the last through, I could barely see anything. Chase kept a steadying hand on me as we made our way down the stairs. When we reached the ground level, Daniel lit a flame in his hand and a room came into view. “Come on,” Xander said, waving a hand. “This is just the decoy.”

“How do you have houses like this everywhere?” Emma sounded as confused as I felt. “I mean, you four have only been on Earth for a year.”

Lexen answered: “Our families have been here for years, and we have safe houses for Daelighters scattered around. This is a Royale one. They tend to dominate the island areas.”

We came to what looked like a wall, until Xander pressed a button and it swung out. Stepping inside, we were suddenly in a very high-tech looking elevator. The wall shut again, and then we were moving. I’d expected it to move down, but instead it went sideways. When it finally stopped, Xander was the first out, and I followed him into what looked like a state of the art control center. Wow. I had not expected that.

“This is where we are going to rest tonight,” Xander said, taking a seat in front of a set of twelve or more monitors. “Tomorrow, we’re going to find that girl and end this all.” He flicked a switch and images appeared across all of them. Many different images.

“This is how we’ll keep an eye on Laous and his army,” Daniel said, sitting next to Xander. “We’re hooked into the most powerful government satellites. It can’t track Daelighters, but it can track those armed assholes Laous has teamed up with.”

Emma held up the necklace, which she had not let go of. “And this is how we’ll find our last secret keeper and join the four of our energies together.”

As Chase wrapped his arm around me, and I sank back into his warm embrace, I realized I was ready for this. Having the starslight stone back put us in the dominant position to end this war. Laous picked the wrong humans to go up against. The clock was counting down now, and he was about to find out his days were numbered.