A World of New (A Shade of Vampire, #26)(29)

Perhaps it was because I was younger and more na?ve, possessing not even a fraction of the knowledge that those witches and jinn had. But one of the many things that my father had instilled in me was determination. Doggedness. Even in the face of the seemingly impossible.

I wished that he was here now. I distracted myself momentarily by wondering what was going on with the League. Although they had been gone a long time now, I was not really worried. They had a big task to complete, after all—scouring the entirety of The Woodlands to rid it of hunters.

Thoughts of Josh once again filled my mind. Since I was clearly not going to fall asleep anytime soon, I switched on my bedside lamp and dove my hand into the backpack I had hung at the end of my bed. I withdrew my notebook, lay back again, and began paging through my notes.

After scanning all of my comments, it was clear that we only had two strong pieces of information. Firstly, his accent, and secondly, his inbuilt instinct for physical training. From the moment I’d first seen his build, I’d thought that he must’ve been some kind of athlete or fighter. Coupling this with the fact that he had been caught by the hunters… I paused in my train of thought.

What if he wasn't actually caught, per se?

The idea hit me like a sock in the gut.

What if he had been a hunter himself?

That would certainly explain a lot of things. His build, for one, and also the fact that they were able to catch him in the first place. If he’d been one of the hunters, he would’ve been an easy target. What if he was originally from one of the IBSI’s UK bases?

So many what-ifs crowded my brain that I struggled to contain them all. And the idea that Josh could have been a hunter chilled me. I’d developed an inbuilt hatred for all members of the IBSI. Then again, even if he had been one, for them to have handled him like this, he couldn’t have gotten along with the rest of them. He must have been opposed to them in some way or other to have been treated the way he had been. I couldn’t imagine what person in their right mind would have been willing to go through such torture. And now that he had woken up from his stupor, he had an inbuilt desire to avoid them at all costs. If he truly had volunteered himself for whatever procedure they were performing on him, why would he be so averse to being taken back by them? No. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he had cooperated with them. He must have been taken by force.

But how do I verify any of these ideas for a fact?

Am I not just back to square one, speculating and musing?

I recalled how his knowledge had come to the surface when faced with me using that exercise machine incorrectly. It had sparked some memory deep within him. A familiar situation. In his previous life, he had been around gym equipment… Just as he must have been around England for at least some period of his existence.

What if we took him to a familiar setting?

What if we took him to England? And more specifically, the IBSI’s headquarters?

I immediately saw a glaring problem with that. I did not know how many bases the IBSI had in the United Kingdom. How would we know which one he had been a part of? I supposed that the headquarters would be a good place to start… But that could lead us on a wild goose chase if it was not the right one.

Not to mention the risks taking him there would pose. Especially since we would need to get close enough in order for him to recognize the setting… How close exactly?

It was not so easy for us to enter IBSI’s headquarters. Fae were the only species we knew for certain could bypass their hyper-sensitive alarm systems—and only those who were fully fae, at that. I would not be able to get away with it, being half human and unable to transform into a subtle state like my father could.

Still, nobody seemed to have any other ideas regarding how we could move forward with Josh. There would be no harm in suggesting it to Shayla and seeing what she said. We could go to wherever the headquarters were—I believed they were in London, though I would need to verify that with the witch—and then play things by ear. Who knew? Maybe simply taking him to his home country would draw back a whole slew of memories, and we might not even need to approach IBSI’s territory. That would really be best…





Grace





Early the next morning, I found myself sitting in Shayla’s kitchen while she threw together a quick breakfast for herself.

“So is that where IBSI’s headquarters is in England?” I asked her. “London?”

“As far as I know,” she said. “At least, that’s where they used to be.”

“Then what do you think?” I asked, quirking a brow.

She took a seat at the table opposite me, a serious expression on her face as she munched on a bowl of granola.

“I think your logic is sound,” she said after a pause. “Taking him to his home country could very well be the trigger that we need, since it seems that whatever memories are buried within him have to surface naturally, rather than being forced by our artificial means… But—assuming that he really was a hunter, which is a rather big assumption—as you say, depending on how close we have to take him to hunter headquarters, this plan could come with a lot of risks.” She paused for a swig of orange juice. “That said, I don’t see any harm in taking him back to England and seeing what happens. We might not need to make it as far as their headquarters. We could check into a hotel somewhere, I suppose… But we would obviously need to keep a low profile. We can’t have anyone recognizing him.”