Kissed by Ice(45)

"He never told you where he kept it?"

"Of course not. He wouldn't tell me something like that. He did say that it was someplace obvious. Like, he always said it was so obvious no one would ever think to look there. And then he'd laugh. No, wait." Her focus grew cloudy as if she was trying to recall something. "He didn't say 'no one.' He said you."

"Excuse me?"

"Alister said the place he'd hidden the book was so obvious 'Morgan Bailey would never think to look there.'"

That didn't really help. It could be anywhere. The UK, the US. Heck, it could be anywhere in the world, knowing Alister. He could have hidden it in the Otherworld, for all I knew.

"Was there someplace he talked about going? Maybe a special place he liked to visit? A favorite vacation spot? Or somewhere he liked to go to be alone?" Trevor prompted.

Jade scrunched up her forehead as if deep in thought. "Well, there was this one place. He used to talk about wanting to go there, but I don't think he'd ever been there before. He never said why, but he was kind of obsessed with it."

Trevor and I exchanged looks. This was it. This had to be it.

"And that was?" I prodded.

"Michigan."





"Michigan? Why the hell would my father want to go to Michigan?" Despite the tinny quality of the speaker phone, Kabita clearly sounded as baffled as I felt. She was obviously shocked enough to forget herself and refer to Alister as her father. She'd been careful to avoid using that particular F word ever since she'd discovered his betrayal.

"Good question," I said. "Did he ever talk about Michigan before? Like maybe there was something there he wanted to see? A tourist trap or an historical landmark." I was trying to remember anything I'd ever heard about Michigan other than the Great Lakes.

"Not that I recall." There was a pause. "Maybe something he and your father planned?"

Once upon a time, Alister and my father, Alexander Morgan, had been friends. They'd even been partners at the SRA, the Supernatural Regulatory Agency. But then Alister had turned on my father, and, if what I'd learned so far was true, had killed him. Then he'd lied to my mother about my father's death. For years I was told nothing but lies, and then I'd met my brother, Trevor, and my father's friend, Tommy Wahenaka, and I learned things that even now I found hard to believe. But it was possible that, back when they were friends, my father and Alister had talked about Michigan. Maybe even planned something. The question was why? What was in Michigan?

"I don't know. Maybe," I said. "Anything's possible. I'll have to ask my mother. Maybe she knows something."

"Good idea," Kabita said. She changed the subject. "What time does your flight get in?"

I relayed the question to Trevor. He glanced at me, then turned his eyes back to the road. It was already dark and there were no streetlights this far out. I winced as we hit another pothole and my elbow smacked against the car door. Trevor raised his voice so Kabita could hear him on the other end of the line. "We missed the last flight out of Vegas," he said. "We'll stay the night and fly back in the morning."

"Got it," Kabita said in my ear. "Just try and stay out of trouble, okay?"

"I'll do my best."

In the dark it took us nearly four hours to get back to Las Vegas. By the time we did, I was exhausted. I felt dirty and grody, and all I wanted was a hot bath and a long sleep. In that order. Oh, and some food if it wasn't too much trouble. I said good night to Trevor at the hotel room door, then called room service before stepping into the small bathroom to run a bath. The hotel had those fancy bath products in the tiny bottles, so I dumped in an entire bottle of "Tangerine Dream" bubble bath. Might as well smell good while I was at it.

Since it would be forty-five minutes before my food arrived (apparently they had to kill and pluck the chicken first), I shucked off my clothes and sank into the warm bubbly water. I leaned my head against the lip of the tub and closed my eyes. Images of the last few days flitted through my mind, but I ignored them. I needed to relax, not think about killing vampires or chasing after Alister Jones. As I relaxed I began to think about Inigo. I didn't understand what was going on with him. Oh, I knew it was the PTSD thing. If anyone understood PTSD, it was me. I'd nearly been killed by a vampire, after all. In fact, technically I had been killed. I still had nightmares about it. And yeah, I still hid things from the people I loved. I couldn't imagine explaining to my mother how I'd been dead. That would go over like a ton of bricks.

The point was, I'd found new people to help me through it. Kabita was one of them. Inigo was another. Was that what he was doing? Finding someone new to help him? Did he realize I understood what he was going through? That I'd been there? That I wanted to be there for him? Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he wanted to be around someone who didn't get it. Someone normal. Not like me. It was hard to pretend you were normal if you spent any time in my world.