Before I can respond, Charlie pipes up.
“No, don’t leave. I can’t make a plan without the two of you.”
Nolan and I exchange a look. Then he beckons me back inside the bedroom. Maddox goes to help her into bed, but she waves him off.
“I’d rather sit,” she says.
Together, they maneuver toward the rocking chair in the corner. Maddox sets her into it gently, and Charlie lets out a relieved sigh as she sinks into the plush pillows. “It feels solovely to be upright. My spine feels like it’s molded to the shape of that lumpy bed.”
Charlie looks at me, then glances down at my empty arms hanging aimlessly by my sides with nothing to hold. Grief streaks across her face, and it pierces me too, because I know it’s not for herself.
“The three of you need to catch me up,” she says. “What do we have planned?”
I exchange glances with Nolan and Maddox.
“We were waiting for you to recover, Charlie,” Maddox says. “Now that you’re awake, I’m sure the healer will let us know when you can be moved. A timeline for recovery, what to expect, all of that. He wasn’t very helpful at first.”
“I’m not talking about me,” says Charlie. “I meant, what’s the plan for getting back your son?” She looks back and forth between Nolan and me expectantly. A twist pulls through my heart.
“There is no plan,” Nolan says, glancing at me hesitantly. “It’s been discussed, but there is no plan.”
Her face pales. “No plan?”
“The Sister took him,” I explain, unsure of what all she remembers. When she first woke up, she had made the connection that I had turned my child over to the Sister, but I have no idea the degree to which her memories remain consistent.
“Oh yes, I know that,” she says. “What I’m asking is how we’re going to get him back from her.”
Nolan pulls up a chair for me near the edge of the bed. When I sit, he stands behind me, rubbing my shoulders. “I’ve been throwing around ideas in my mind of how to get to the Sister, but none of them seem all that feasible. Of all of them, the Nomad seems to be our best bet. Nolan’s intel informs him theNomad is still unaccounted for. He, along with Tink, seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“Well, there has to be some other way. Some other person who has a connection with her,” says Maddox. “She meddles enough in everyone else’s business. What if we can find another one of her minions? Someone like Malia who’s enslaved to do her bidding. Someone who could lead us there.”
“And how would we find one of them?” asks Nolan. “The Sister has no more dealings with us, so it’s not likely there will be any in our vicinity. We’d have to scour the world. And even then, we’d have to rely on the rumor mill—barter for leads, and with good coin. It would be a wild goose chase. We don’t even know if she’s recruited anyone else to work for her.”
“We know one person,” I say, fighting my urge to whisper the statement.
Three heads turn in my direction.
“No,” says Nolan.
I bite my lip. The name swirls in my consciousness, taunting me. The counterargument in my head has been firm: he wouldn’t help us even if he could. And I’m not sure that he can. I’m not sure he’s of any use to the Sister anymore. For all I know, she’s cut off all contact. Still, he knew how to reach her in the past.
I convey all this to my friends.
Still, Nolan shakes his head. “No. We’re not going to Peter.”
Charlie opens her mouth, but Nolan interrupts her. “And before anyone claims that my not wanting to accept help from him is about my pride, might I remind you he’s betrayed us at every turn?”
Betrayed us. My heart grows heavy when I glimpse Nolan’s true meaning behind his words. Peter’s been betraying him years longer than the rest of us.
“Nolan,” I say. “If anyone knows how to contact her, it’s him.”
“Yes, and if anyone knows how to twist a situation to his own benefit, it’s him,” says Nolan. “We can’t do this anymore. We can’t enter into bargains with people who don’t have our best interests at heart, who don’t have our son’s best interests at heart.”
“What if we didn’t make a bargain?”
“What are you suggesting we barter with?” asks Nolan.
I frown, fumbling with how to explain my plan without sounding like a naïve fool. “We just have to find a way to convince him,” I finally settle on.
