Asylum (Causal Enchantment #2)(34)
Sympathy smoothed Leo’s frown. With a slight nod, he settled into the tawny leather chair beside the fire. Julian and I waited in silence as he pulled his pipe out from his vest’s inner pocket. He took his time unraveling the small burgundy packet of tobacco and tapping the corner of it on the edge of his pipe, filling its bowl.
My patience finally ran out. “So, about Sofie. Have you heard from her?” I pressed.
Leo paused and finally shook his head, concern filling his gray eyes.
“Well, can’t you send her a message?” I turned to Julian, now sitting on the couch. “They can talk to each other through some sort of communication spell Sofie set up years ago when she was helping—”
“No. I can’t,” Leo cut me off, scowling his annoyance.
I bit my lip, silently admonishing myself. Leo and Sofie’s relationship was a private story that Leo had entrusted me with, I realized. Maybe I am allergic to secrets! Only I didn’t know it was a secret . . . “Helping him with something,” I finished vaguely.
Leo held a match to his pipe, then spoke through a cloud of smoke as he puffed it alight. “A few hours ago, Sofie reached out to me, only she slammed the connection shut before I could get a response to her.”
I frowned. “Why would she do that?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “And you finally ask an interesting question. Why, indeed?”
“Well, ask her!”
Leo shook his head. “There are rules, my dear Evangeline. Rules imposed by Sofie, and I dare not cross that fiery woman. Sofie’s extremely paranoid, especially when it comes to you. I learned long ago never to question her.” He took another puff on his pipe before he continued. “She warned me not to communicate to her if anything seemed suspicious. Abruptly cutting off communication like that is suspicious. Under no circumstances am I to initiate a message chain now. I can only respond once she’s reached out to me.”
“Well, did you guys agree on a schedule, at least?”
“Of course.”
“So can’t you . . . ” I trailed off. What could he do, given the limitations Sofie had imposed? I felt my shoulders slump with disappointment, then tense as panic set in.
Leo sighed heavily. “Look . . . I’m going to tell you everything I know because I think you can handle it and because you’ve been lied to enough for one lifetime.” He paused again as he fumbled with his pipe. “If she hasn’t sent a message by now, something’s very wrong.”
His words lost no meaning with me. Not just wrong; very wrong. That brought me from lying lazily on the couch to perching on its edge, my blanket forgotten on the floor. I barely felt the draft in the air though; my stomach had dropped to my feet. “What does that mean? Is she dead? Are they dead?”
“That would be too easy,” Julian mumbled.
“They’re my friends!” I snapped at him, his callous remark pricking me. I had no valid reason to expect his compassion for them, but he could show me some.
Julian’s brown eyes softened and he bowed his head. “Sorry.”
I turned back to see Leo vehemently shaking his head. “No, I’d know if she were dead. I’d feel the connection break.”
“And what about Caden? Is he dead? And Amelie? What about Bishop and Fiona?” My voice rose in pitch as I fired names at him. “They are! She doesn’t want to tell me!” Up until now, knowledge that they were safely in New York City, on the same planet as me, had brought me a security blanket of comfort. But Leo’s ambiguity was wrenching that blanket from my grasp.
Leo’s forehead creased as he shook his head. “No, no. Don’t get all worked up. I don’t think that’s it.”
“Well, then why?”
“Like I said, I don’t know, Evangeline,” Leo repeated calmly.
I gripped the edge of the couch and stared at Leo, my stomach twisting with near-hysteria. “So send her a message!” I demanded. “How mad can she get?” The wrinkles on Leo’s forehead twisted as he arched an eyebrow at my insistence, and I dropped my gaze to my hands, feeling like a child being scolded. “What’s the big deal, anyway?” I muttered defiantly. “It’s not like they can find me here, right?”
“Who? Viggo? No.” Leo shook his head, then dropped his voice. “But I’m sure towns and cities all over the world are being scoured at this very moment as he hunts for you. There are people turning over every location connected to Sofie. And they will not stop. Not until they’ve found you or they’ve all died off from old age.”
The buttery taste the popcorn had left in my mouth suddenly turned rancid as I absorbed the implications of Leo’s words. Viggo was hunting me like an animal. And the end result would be much the same, if they found me. Suddenly this mountain was not remote enough. The trees were not numerous enough, the snow not deep enough; the cabin was so brightly lit, it was a shining beacon, visible from outer space. I had the urge to take an ax to the cables connecting the generators to the cabin and throw us into medieval times—anything that could help hide us from a two thousand-year-old vampire on his eternal mission to get this pendant off my neck.
My horror must have been written all over my face, because Leo rushed to calm me. “Not to worry, dear girl. They can’t possibly find you here unless they somehow . . . ” Leo’s voice drifted off in a chuckle that faded as a thought struck him. His expression suggested impossibility had become possibility. “Well, not unless they could trace the link to the spell.” He stroked his chin with a wrinkled hand, deep in thought.