“You feeling okay?” Kiko finished brushing herself off and raised a brow at me.
I snatched my hands away before she could comment.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
She tilted her head to regard me. “Is Havoc’s little friend okay?”
“She’s fine, too.” I headed after Cara. I hadhorns. Fuck. How had that happened? Did Jumping scramble my cells? It seems Kiko’s unexpected partnership had brought us closer than was healthy.
We entered the school, hurrying down a few halls until we bumped into someone and could ask where Cara had gone.
The older Centaur opened his mouth to answer, but when he inhaled prior to speaking, his head lifted and his eyes glowed. But it wasn’t Kiko he stared at. It was me.
Dammit.I seem to have acquired more than just her horns.
“Please,” I repeated. “We need to find Cara.”
He straightened, and directed us down another hall.
Our view of what lay on the floor was obscured by a group of Centaurs. Wind gusted through a large broken window at one end, carrying a strong scent redolent with their panic and rage. A few wept openly. Others were demanding, angrily, to know what had happened.
A deep voice carried above the general hubbub, one I recognized immediately.
“Please,” Emmanuel said. “I know we all need answers and want to know where our children have been taken. We will look for those answers, and find those who took them. But we must pull together. I suggest we set up a crisis center in the cafeteria for family support and information, as well as a headquarters for a strategic team that will reclaim our children.”
The Centaurs fell silent. My gut twisted—I knew how difficult reclaiming them was going to be. Then an older Centaur stepped forward.
“He is right. Let’s put our efforts into getting everything together to make this possible.”
The voices rose again, but the hysteria level had dropped. As the group broke up, I eased past them.
Just beyond Emmanuel, Cara was leaning over a Centaurina with the distinctive red hair of Marcus’s mother. She lay disturbingly still.
Then I looked through the shattered window, and saw Marcus.
He stood in the large courtyard beyond. I knew it was him, but it was hard to tell. His face and body were changing back and forth, dark scales erupting along his arms as they swelled with new muscle, and then falling off as they shrank again.
I hugged the wall to get past the crowd to where his mother lay in a heap. All I wanted was to reassure him. To hold him and tell him it was going to be okay.
As I went to step through the window, he uttered a strangled sound.
The moment my eyes met his, I knew I’d made a mistake in coming. The rage and pain in them flared, his struggle accelerating.
I was only making things worse.
“Is that really Sixey?” Kiko breathed it, shock in her voice.
A large hand dropped on my shoulder, and I looked up into Emmanuel’s face. His eyes, however, were locked on Marcus.
“He’s having a hard time,” he rumbled softly. “It might be best, for now, if you go.”
It was so hard to turn away. But I did, grabbing the Satyr by the arm and towing her along behind me. Emmanuel paced with us down the hall.
“Will Triss be okay?” I asked him.
His rugged face twisted with worry. “I have had some experience with the poison in those darts, but I was given the antidote to counteract it.” He looked toward his mate, lying so still on the floor. “Cara said she can heal Triss, she wouldn’t say that if she couldn’t.” Despite his brave words, pain and uncertainty ran beneath them.
“Did Isobel really make off with the children?” Kiko asked.
