“That tickles,” Kitty whispers.
“How did youknow, Kitty?” I ask quietly, crouched next to the young girl. “About me coming for you? Did you see … pictures in your head? Or maybe it was a whisper in your mind, or just a sense of need?”
Kitty blinks at me for a moment, staring deeply into my eyes. My violet eyes. “Do you see too, Mirth?”
“I don’t. But I … get feelings sometimes. I knew you needed me.” I try to smile at her, but I can’t quite pull off the expression right now.
“I saw you …” Kitty’s eyes fill with tears. “I saw … I saw you and Tommy and a cage, and … I shouldn’t have said anything. Tommy told me never to tell anyone about the things I see, not even my dreams. Not even my …” She whispers so quietly I almost miss the next words. “My mom. I think … they weren’t supposed to take Tommy. Just me. He tried to run with me. But I … I can’t run as fast as he can … and … and … they …” Her breath hitches. “They … they grabbed us both … and … and what if they took Mom too? Or … what if they hurt her? And that’s why … that’s why she didn’t help us?”
“We’re going to figure it all out,” I say. I could tell her that no one was home when the royal guard went looking for her, and that there were no signs that anyone was hurt in the apartment. But she doesn’t need extra or exact details now.
She needs her brother. To know Tommy is safe and to feel safe herself.
I know. Because I always needed Armin in the same way.
“You can open it now,” Coda says in as gentle a tone as I’ve heard so far from the tech awry. “Take everything, please.”
I open the safe, revealing more paper money, in multiple currencies, than I’ve ever seen in one place. Plus thin one-ounce gold and silver bars and stacks of actual paper bonds. What looks like three portable hard drives are tucked between the money and the gold bars. A narrow shelf at the top of the safe holds a half-dozen phones.
“There we go,” Coda mutters gleefully. “Grab the hard drives first. The baby girl needs to carry the drives, Mirth.”
Because of my energy. It doesn’t usually affect tech, but the portable drives might also be essence protected.
“Got it!” Kitty runs back toward the couch and retrieves a brand-new-looking pink backpack. She unceremoniously dumps its contents — books, crayons, and a doll — and brings it to me. “My phone?”
The bag sports a designer label. The toys and treats … are bribes? To keep Kitty mollified? Anger flashes through me, hot and pervasive. I almost lose hold of my essence. I almost wipe every living person in the building from existence. By melting each of their brains.
Taking Kitty wasn’t a simple snatching of a convenient target. This was planned. The presence of the pink bag tells me so.
“Mirth?” Kitty asks almost meekly. “My phone?”
I take a steadying breath. I meet Kitty’s questioning gaze. She’s not scared of the energy that has to be rolling off me now, but she is wary.
And I smile.
I smile, and I know. I know what I’m capable of. And that I will do what is necessary to protect not only those I love, but those who don’t have anyone else to protect them.
“You have to be willing to hurt others to save yourself, to save those you love.”That was my father’s challenge, wasn’t it? When he completely overreacted to Radek and Lukas’s feigned kidnapping because he didn’t think I was capable of doing what was necessary to rescue myself.
So, yes. Challenge accepted. I smile, and so I don’t keep worrying the little awry at my side, I reach into the safe for her phone. An interior essence ward of some kind dissipates under my touch. “Whoever set the protections on this safe really knows we’re here now.” My voice is calm, measured.
“Not a problem,” Coda says without further elaboration.
From the top shelf, I pick up the phone covered in sparkly pink and purple decals and hand it to Kitty. She grabs it in both hands, carefully checking it over for damage.
A trickle of disconcertion cuts through my calm acceptance. “Coda …”
“Press your phone, back-to-back, to Mirth’s phone, baby girl,” the tech commands. “Let’s check it for tracking software.”
Kitty follows Coda’s instructions. Energy passes between the two phones, and she gasps sweetly, wiggling her fingers as if they’re tingling.
“Can you tell if it’s the phone that drew their attention?” I ask quietly, focused on grabbing the other phones while pointing Kitty toward the hard drives. All of it gets zipped into the various pockets in Kitty’s backpack.
“It wasn’t you, Mirth.” Coda’s tone has darkened again. “Give me a couple of hours and I’ll get you a detailed report of how the kids came to the attention of the Möbius Group.”
Coda clearly doesn’t want to elaborate yet. I glance at Kitty, but she’s looking through the photos on her phone — lots of selfies, a few containing Tommy — and I don’t know her well enough to know if she’s shut us out or is listening to everything we say. Either way, if Kitty’s slip about her mother potentially being involved in their kidnapping is true, it’s best we don’t discuss it.
“Have you got the guardianship paperwork in place yet?” Coda asks.
