Chapter Thirteen
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, walking into the great room where a meeting was still going, I immediately didn’t like the feel of the room. The faces that looked my way were tight with worry or fear, which only seemed, at least to my eyes, to get worse when they noticed my presence. Nira stood up in front of the chair where she’d been sitting, and a little too fast, making my breath catch.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” I asked the rushed words with a wheeze.
“Let’s have a talk, just the two of us, out on the balcony,” Nira said to me as she walked up beside me and took my arm in hers. To the rest of them, she added, “Carry on without me. There are still things to be worked out beyond this issue. We still have strategies to plan for the unknown variables. We know our enemy, have fought them before, and need to continue to plan beyond them, to make the most of this delay. Nothing bad can come of brainstorming while we await answers.”
“Issue? Delay?” I muttered rather than asked, though I did want to know what was going on, much as I was desperate to learn the bad news.
“Come. I will tell you everything out on the balcony. While you were in the shower, we heard from the Royals. We are going to need your help more than we all knew. This time, they are asking for your help.”
“Mine?” I muttered, perplexed.
I don’t think she even saw my furrowed brow as she turned to the back of the loft, catching me up by the arm as she turned. I let her escort me to a set of sliding glass doors, as I felt too dizzy to do anything else. I tried to find that fight I’d had just a minute ago when I’d thought I would come out to be told a plan and told my part in it. ‘Issue’ wasn’t a word one wanted to hear at a time like this. We already had issues aplenty to deal with. My warm-from-the-water and soothed-by-orgasm muscles immediately began that process back to tightening up, undoing any good I’d just done myself as I stumbled to keep up with her quick and determined strides.
As we stepped out onto a porch-sized balcony that overlooked a city, Nira guided me to sit in one of the many seats. This, too, even outdoors, was set to entertain a cozy few. Two sets of high, pub height tables sat with four chairs around each. On the side Nira escorted me to sit an outdoor set, black and ornate to match the pub tables, each with white cushions adorning them.
Unlit candles sat on each surface, and hung from sconces on the wall and the wrought iron bars that kept one from falling to their death from this bewildering height, especially if you didn’t care for them, as I didn’t. Rather than look out or down, I looked to Nira to beg her to begin. Still, my eyes were drawn just past her shoulder, out to the city scape on the horizon. I wanted so badly to believe that he was just out there, close, waiting for me to get to him.
While a wall of apartment buildings were just beyond this one, in what looked from this view to be a row beyond that, a line of tall city building dotted the skyline. Many seemed to pierce the fluffy clouds that half covered the blue sky. Sun and shade intermingled over their surfaces of steel and glass, maybe brick, merging the differing structures to look as if they were all made from the same materials. It was a beautiful day, seasonably warm with a chill still hanging in the air from a brutal winter.
“That’s Pittsburg,” Nira offered as I scanned the horizon.
“He’s got to be near here. I hope,” I stated as well as asked her, watching the emotions I couldn’t read wash over her face to get some sort of confirmation as to his location, how long it would take to get to him from here after whatever issues were handled.
“Well, that is just the thing. The Royals thought they knew where the true wolves were holding Lex, Vivian, and Riker. They even went there. But, the usual place the true wolves meet was not only empty, but abandoned. So, they tried to use their own connections to each other, magical ones, magic to magic, and werewolf to werewolf, but they couldn’t sense any of them. No one has been able to. Their own sorcerer looked, did a locater spell, but with no results. Well, that isn’t the full truth. He got scattered results, telling him that their wolves were in about ten different locations. So, they believe that the sorcerer the true wolves are using has cast some sort of spell himself that is blocking them from finding the Royal three.”