was speckled with grey, making him seem older. Or maybe it was the five days of hell we’d been living since Mae was taken.
“He’s still not answering?” he asked finally, sounding tired as he guessed at the cause of my frustration.
“If he’s not dead, I’m going to kill him,” I growled.
Alastair dropped his hands. “Maybe whatever he’s doing will actually get him some useful information.”
Damn, I hoped so. I’d already called in every favor and every connection I had. People either had no idea about where Mae had gone, or they were too afraid to tell me. I was starting to feel like it was the latter, given how quickly a lot of my sources had hung up on me.
“Still haven’t found anything either?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
While I was talking to sources, Alastair was researching. Every time I got home or got off the phone, we seemed to have matching looks of disappointment. As hunters, we were used to following our different paths and turning up something. But now, when it mattered the most, we were suddenly unable to find a single hint as to where Mae had been taken. It was frustrating as hell.
“She’s disappeared without a trace. I’ve checked the supe web, and even in the most hidden and secured pages, no one is talking about her. Everyone is too busy talking about the darkness that’s coming for us, and all the dead supernaturals.”
He stretched a little and flinched.
I was on my feet in an instant. “Take your shirt off.”
“It’s fine.”
“Take it off,” I said, coming to stand behind him.
At last, he sighed and removed his shirt. A huge bandage covered his back, and on his chest was the wound from Mae’s mirror, still yet to heal. I carefully removed the bandage and winced when I saw how bad it still was. But then, when we’d gone to find the shifters, we’d been exhausted. It was just one fight after another lately, and we’d been fools to go in such a rough state. We’d been lucky to get out with only a few claw marks. While being a unicorn meant I’d already healed, Alastair wasn’t so lucky.
“Let me?” I asked softly.
He nodded and closed his eyes, and I realized he must have been hurting more than he let on to just agree. I released a slow breath and reached out for the claw marks. Channeling my powers, I felt them flow over me. Unicorn magic was unlike most. Using it felt…warm. It brought the scents of flowers and the sweetness of honey, even if I might be the only one to sense it. I gently touched the outside of his wound and coaxed the flesh to close. It obeyed, slower than it should have, pulling marks together that a human would need massive stitches to close, and then healing the thin lines with dark scabs. When I pulled my hand away, I was breathing hard. I could push myself harder, but his body could take care of the rest.
“Now, your chest.”
He shook his head. “It’s not going to heal, Ellis. There’s something wrong with it.”
“I can still try,” I said.
Reluctantly, he pushed back his chair.
I bit my teeth together to keep quiet. The damned wound looked almost as bad as the day it happened. There was a scab, but blood still leaked from it. Carefully, I reached out and touched his skin, then coaxed the flesh to heal. It responded, but there was something…strange about it. Almost like cursed flesh.
When I was done, it looked better. But I had a feeling Alastair was right, it wouldn’t look good for long.
“Has Grim found anything?”
Alastair reached for his shirt and put it on as he spoke. “So far, no, but we’ll see when he gets back.”
I tried to push aside my disappointment. It was no secret that Mae and I hadn’t been on the best of terms and that I was nervous about her connection with Hunter, but I hadn’t wanted anything bad to happen to her. And as much as I hated myself for it, our group felt strangely…empty without her. Like in a short time, she’d made a place for herself with us, a place that was now vacant.
It didn’t help that these idiots had gone on a shopping spree for new things for her, things that were being delivered daily and piling up by the door—a reminder of her absence.
“Do you…do you think she’s okay?”
Alastair frowned. “Honestly? I don’t know. But