Page 121 of Black Curtain

21

DISAPPEARED

Ilooked over with the rest of them, stunned. I realized the voice I’d heard was Jax even as it hit me it came from the other room, back where the virtual recordings had shown Brick’s mother sitting on a chalk drawing in a room painted entirely black.

It struck me what else lived down that hallway.

We’d found at least five bathrooms, but only one working toilet.

That one lived in a washroom here on the second floor, in the same direction from which we’d all just heard the scream. The toilet was behind the last door before that black-painted room, just off the master bedroom. It had an ancient pedestal sink and a pull-chain flush that still thankfully worked.

Last I saw, Kiko had been heading down there.

Black and I exchanged looks.

All of us began to run.

Nick got there first. That damned vampire speed propelled him to the door of the washroom before most of us were halfway down the landing.

Nick stood there, looking at something, his expression utterly blank.

“What’s wrong?” Black shouted, still moving fast. “What is it?”

He reached Nick by the time he got all the words out.

Now all of them crowded around the door to see Jax inside, holding a glove I recognized from Kiko’s wedding outfit. She’d worn lace gloves, and now one sat on the sink. The other, Jax gripped tightly in a white-knuckled hand.

“WHERE IS SHE?” Jax snarled, staring around at them. “WHERE IS SHE?”

We all blinked at him, lost in the anguish in his face.

Then Black whistled.

I looked back as he made a sharp hand-gesture over his head, one I recognized, both from Black himself, and from all the other military-trained seers I’d worked with over the past few years. Hell, I probably would have known what it meant just from being in the military myself. We’d used similar hand-gestures back when I was in Afghanistan.

Black wanted us to spread out.

To look for her.

He was calling for a full scout.

Without a single word, we scattered.

* * *

“I’m going up,” I told Jem.

He nodded, once, not slowing his steps as he headed down the stairs, towards the ground floor. Nick was in the black-painted room, opening closets, knocking on walls. I knew he would finish in seconds, and likely head downstairs to help his mate with the lower level. We probably needed at least one other person down there, given there were six of us, and we’d already covered most of the second floor.

Dexter and Jax followed me upstairs.

Black headed down, following after Jem.

“I’ll be in the kitchen first,” Black said, glancing over his shoulder at me.

I nodded, then went back to climbing stairs.

None of us had been on the top floor at all yet.

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