Page 60 of Lost Touch

Matthew subsided in his chair with a long-suffering sigh and waved at Nate as if to cede the floor.

“What exactly did you see when I whammied him?” Nate demanded, leaning forward, eyes narrowed.

“Not much?” I stammered. “I mean…you waved your hand. There was a little puff of purple light. Drew passed out cold. Should I have seen something else?”

Nate and Arik exchanged a look that raised the hair on the back of my neck. “Calder, you’re sure he was locked in a cell?” Arik asked, very evenly. Too calmly. “In bad shape. Not faked.”

“He smelled like death,” Calder said slowly. I shuddered. He was talking aboutme. “Not the way the warlocks smelled like death, though. Like someone dying. I don’t think that could’ve been faked. Nothing else they did fooled my senses.”

Arik subsided with a humph, and he and Nate had another one of their weird silent conversations. Extra weird, because their other conversations seemed to be so loud and filled with shouted insults.

“Okay,” Nate said, turning back to me. “Okay. Tell me how you found me—no, I’m not fucking asking about Google or Bing, and anyway they both suck for different reasons, so let me finish. The other search results you skipped over completely. And the ones you looked at and rejected. Why?”

The question was clearly so important to him—and by extension, possibly very important to whether or not they’d believe me—that I really considered it, trying to go beyond not liking the idea of putting Drew’s life in the hands of someone in a pompadour wig (which seemed like a reasonable boundary on its own).

Why had I skipped over them? Okay, the sites that looked defunct, with broken links, that made sense.

But the penis rock man? Maybe it was a fertility symbol. Or he had a sense of humor. I’d nixed him instantly, on whatever pretext I could find.

Why, though? And I had no answer to that whatsoever.

“I’m not really sure, now that I think about it,” I said reluctantly, wishing I could give them something. Anything. “They all seemed wrong. I didn’t want to call them. They just—felt like a bad idea.”

“Huh.” Nate’s eyes lit up, and if anything he seemed pleased. How could something so vague and useless be the answer he’d wanted? “Arik, what do you think?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, since you’re wrong so fucking often, but I completely agree with you.”

“Agree with what?” Ian asked, sounding as bewildered as I felt. “What am I missing?”

“Nearly everything, as usual,” Arik muttered snidely, and then they were all off again, snarling at each other.

I caught a few snatches here and there.

“If they were fucking with his senses—”

“—doesn’t work like that, Nate, you know that!”

“They were trying to isolate the neural pathways—”

“…warlocks always think they can use standard scientific—”

And I gave up, because none of it made any sense to me.

Jared leaned in closer to me and said, “They’re always like this. Don’t let it bother you.”

“They’re deciding if they’re going to help me or kill me,” I muttered back. “I’m bothered.”

He nudged me with his elbow. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Ash. When we came back, they thought the same thing about us, that we might be working with the enemy. They weren’t there. They don’t get it. Watch. Calder’s about to shut them down.”

I had no idea how he knew, because Calder’s ferocious scowl didn’t seem like the expression of someone about to help me. But Jared looked at Calder, and he smiled, and when I glanced back at Calder—well, he was gazing at Jared, and he’d gone…soft. Even the glow in his eyes went a little misty.

It was almost more terrifying than when he’d killed a bunch of people.

“Enough,” Calder said simply.

And silence fell like he’d muted them.

“Ash came to us for help, however he got here,” Calder went on into the ringing quiet. “I think he at least deserves to hear what you’re thinking about his situation. Clearly, and not both of you at once,” he added.

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