Page 463 of Shadowblood Souls
Andreas looks on with a casual smile but alert eyes. He ushered us over to the computer closest to the boombox that’s playing upbeat Italian pop music through the room, to better cover the faint clicking of the keys.
From the moment Griffin told me he’d gotten permission for this “date,” the idea of how I could reach out to the demon who once guided us came together in my head. The hardest question wasn’t what I could do but whether I should.
I bring up the website for the Beach Bliss Hotel and Nightclub in Miami. The design is flashy but in a refined sort of way, a lot like the building—and the demon himself.
I find the link for the Contact page down at the bottom. When I click on it, it brings me to a sparse page with a simple form.
It’d have been better if there’d been separate email addresses for different levels of the business. Then I’d be more sure of the message reaching Rollick quickly. Or at all.
But this is by far the best strategy I can come up with. Even if I could get access to a phone, I don’t have his number memorized. I have no idea what his personal email address is.
The hotel was his primary business and also, as far as I could tell, his home. A significant number of the employees, if not all of them, were shadowkind.
Please, let whoever checks the hotel email be one of those. Or at least a human obedient enough to follow my instructions regardless of how weird the message sounds.
I pop the last of my cannoli into my mouth so I can type with both hands, so focused on the task in front of me I barely notice the crunch of the pastry and the final gulp of sweetness.
This is an urgent message that should be passed on to the owner of the hotel. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it—he will.
This is Riva. The guys and I are being held by a man who’s split off from the guardians and is forcing us to help him. He’s already killed at least two of the younger shadowbloods. We haven’t found any way to escape without help. We’re hoping there’s some way you can reach us or send shadowkind who could get us out. His last name is Balthazar, and he has us in a villa on a steep hill in an isolated part of Italy, within a few hours of Florence.
“South,” Andreas murmurs as if making commentary on our map to himself.
I revise my last sentence.Within a few hours south of Florence. There’s at least one shadowkind who’s being forced to work with him, so you might be able to find out more throughyour connections. He also has a woman who goes by Toni and a man named Matteo working for him. That’s all we really know.
If you come, please be careful. He has devices on us that can kill us in an instant if he wants to, and I think he might prefer that we’re dead rather than let us escape.
I sit back, feeling wrung out, and have Drey read over what I’ve written. He nods in approval and squeezes my shoulder.
I don’t have an email address of my own to put in the form, but then, I doubt I’ll get a chance to check it for a response. I [email protected] if my explanation of who I am in the message itself might not be blatant enough.
Holding my breath, I click send.
My body goes rigid, some part of me anticipating a blare of pain from my manacles or a thunder of pounding footsteps as guards rush into the room. The pop music plays on, the chair stays firm beneath me, and we go unmolested.
I exhale slowly and manage a grin at Andreas despite my queasiness.
I did it. The only thing I could think to do, and a gambit that might not pay off any time soon if at all.
But it’s one more flicker of hope to sustain us through whatever our captor throws at us next.
Andreas slips his hand around mine and tugs me to my feet. He tucks the map he was contemplating into his pocket. “I picked out a good route from here. Trust me?”
My next smile comes easier. “Of course.”
As we drift down the street outside, Drey strokes his thumb over the back of my hand. “We’ve gotten through a lot of hard stuff already. This was supposed to be a break for you. Do you think you can set the worries aside and enjoy being here?”
I know that by “hard stuff” he means the email I just sent as well as everything we’ve endured before. Tension still windsaround my gut, but there really isn’t anything else I can do to improve our situation right now.
“Yeah,” I say. “I can give it a shot, anyway.”
Andreas flashes a warm grin at me. “Then I’ll do my best to make the rest of the day as enjoyable as possible.”
He guides me past some historic buildings I barely paid attention to before and then others beyond them, pointing out details in the architecture. We stop to read plaques offering stories of their significance.
After the first few, Andreas glances over at me. “It’s kind of comforting in a strange way, don’t you think? That these buildings and the memories attached to them have endured for hundreds of years.”
I think I get what he means. “It’s nice to know that it’s possible.”
