Lucie

At this point I didn't understand the allure of road trips. People talked about the euphoria of wanderlust, the pleasure driving miles and miles of asphalt brought. I don't know; maybe there was a circumstance where all that was true. But not here. Not now.

The car had felt tight with four people, and now that Zev had joined the party, it was practically a vice. Nura, the littlest, was crammed in between Vinny and me in the backseat, Zev in the passenger seat beside Caprice as she drove. I wasn't sure why we'd agreed to let them sit so close to each other. They were bickering loud enough that I wished—briefly—that I was comatose again.

Okay, so technically speaking I still was.

Technically.

They argued so loud that they stifled the radio, and for three hours, it was just their clamoring voices and the whir of the air conditioning and the incessant thud of rubber tires against the pavement.

It was warmer here, and the silhouettes of palm trees extended towards the bluing sky. We'd left before the sun had come up. It seemed I was the only one who wasn't exhausted.

Caprice's pace slowed as we entered the city, where traffic caught up with us. As we inched along, I couldn't help craning out the window to see. I wasn't sure what I expected. Celebrities casually passing by? Versace-dressed women with chihuahuas peeping out from hot pink purses? It was none of that, really, just a moving crowd of inconspicuous people dotted with a few obvious tourists. Just like back home, in San Francisco.

I watched steam rise from off the dirtied sidewalks, and let out a sigh. Cian was around here somewhere. In maybe a few hours or so, I'd lay eyes on him again.

I didn't know why that scared me.

About a half an hour later, the Camaro rumbled up the pebble driveway of an old church, by the rather traditional name of St. Mary's. It was a tiny, white brick building with a wooden cross rising toward the clouds, and its makeshift parking lot (a few hastily drawn chalk lines) was empty, besides us.

Zev had chosen the spot for the sole reason that no one would be there. It was near the city's south end, down a back road that led away from the mountainous skyscrapers.

All of us clambered out of the car, Zev with an audible groan and a backpack over his shoulder. He was the first to prance up to the church's front doors, thrust them open, and beckon us after him. Once we were all inside, he rested himself on the edge of a pew, slugging his backpack down towards the dusty wood floors. "Okay, so it's game time," he remarked as his backpack thudded underneath him.

Caprice jumped. "How many chains did you bring?"

I cast a glance at Vinny, who looked a bit green.

Zev kicked the backpack thoughtfully. "A lot. This is a demon we're talking about, Cap."

She rolled her eyes in response, but Zev was on a schedule, too busy to notice. When he turned suddenly to Nura, I found I had an odd respect for the guy, working so hard to save someone he didn't even know. Maybe his motives weren't entirely altruistic, but regardless, he was getting the job done. "You. Nura," he said. "Are you feeling anything? Do you sense him?"

All of our eyes swiveled towards her. I think we all realized at that moment that this whole plan was down the drain if Nura couldn't find him. Without his location, his exact whereabouts, we were toast. Burnt toast. The worst kind of toast.

Nura squeezed her eyes shut, cradling the eye pendant against her caramel brown collarbones. She frowned, then gripped the pendant harder, finally letting out a sigh. "I...almost. But there's just barely—barely something—like I need to be closer..."

To everyone's surprise, it was Vinny who stepped forward, taking the girl's shoulder and shaking her gently. She looked up at him, stunned, through a curtain of tangled raven-black hair. "There is no closer," Vinny told her, his mouth set. "There's only here. Now. So either you find him or you don't, Nura."

Her eyes were wide. "Vinny, I—"

"Don't let me down."

She stared at him once more, then sat down on the edge of a pew with a sigh. "I woke up in the middle of the night last night because I felt a bit of it...the fire, the flames. But by then it was already too far away. Now it's closer. Warmer."

"Then what in God's—the world, what in the world—are you waiting for?" snapped Zev. He had risen from his seat and was beginning to pace like an overly excited child, strands escaping from the haphazard mini ponytail he'd tied this morning. I hated it, but Zev's hair was fascinating. It was dark and spotless and both messy and artful at the same time.

Nura closed her eyes, then snapped them open again. "Vinny—when you touched me, I felt it."

He twitched backwards in disbelief. "What? Why? How?"

"It must be because you're brothers, because you're so close," Nura responded, nodding to herself as she spoke. "I need your energy to find his. So touch my shoulder again."

Vinny was still looking at her like none of this made sense, because it didn't. He hesitated, but touched a tentative palm to Nura's thin, fragile shoulder, holding it there. Nura inhaled and shut her eyes once more.

For a moment it was silent. My nose burned with the thick, smothering scent of sweet incense.

Then Nura was gasping, jumping to her feet and crying out in either joy or pain; I couldn't tell. Her eyes flew open, and she caught Vinny's arm—the one he'd told me Zev had healed, for whatever reason.

Vinny had seemed off this morning, actually. Something had happened last night that he didn't seem to want to talk about. It wasn't like him to keep secrets, not like this, but like I've said: he wasn't himself without Cian.

God, how much we needed him.

"I've got it!" Nura exclaimed. "I didn't think I'd ever get it—but I—I did, and now—"

"Nura!" yelped Caprice. "Just tell us where he is already!"

Nura, still giggling as if locked in a frantic haze, made an odd gesture in the air until Vinny realized she was requesting a pen and paper. Zev rustled around in his backpack until he produced a wrinkled receipt and a fading red ink pen, which Nura snatched from him. She wrote without pause, then picked up the paper and shoved it at Vinny.

"There," she said. "It's an apartment complex near downtown. That's where he is—you'd better go. Now."

Vinny opened his mouth to thank her, but Caprice had already grabbed him and me, yanking us out the door and into the storm.