both thought he was too old for you,” Dev replied.
Their bickering was lost on me as my mind whirled. My daughter was twenty-eight? God, I’d known she would age. I knew I would have lost that time with her, but twenty-eight hit me hard.
Daniel was at my side, his arm going around my waist. “It’s all right, Z. It’s okay. We still have a chance to meet her. She’s here. Does she…”
Dev’s lips curled up. “Hate you? No, not at all, though she might if we don’t get her out of jail. And I was being a dick about Marcus. They’re intensely compatible. I felt it the moment he realized she wasn’t Zoey. There was a connection between them I felt like a physical tug. You understand what this means?”
“It means Marcus has a fate and her name is Summer.” Kelsey looked ready to defend her mentor.
“I just want to see her.” And apparently get her out of jail. “I’m surprised they have a jail here. If Summer was the girl in the painting, was she running from the police? And who were those men…the dead ones? Were they after her?”
It was too much to deal with. I had to bring our problems down to the one I could solve. Getting my daughter to safety had to be my priority. My daughter was here. Dev had seen my baby girl and she was alive and apparently a criminal.
She was alive.
Kelsey seemed to understand I needed answers. She sobered, putting her hands on my shoulders and speaking without an ounce of her normal sarcasm. “I believe she was the female figure in the painting. She was running from a paramilitary group led by a man named Turi. I don’t know who that is because I haven’t had a chance to fully interview her yet. I took care of them. There’s something happening on this plane, something they call the convergence. I don’t know a lot about that yet either. Marcus hadn’t fed in days. Summer went to feed him in private. During that time, a mercenary group arrested her. She’s wanted for several thefts across the planes, including stealing a book of prophecy from a witch plane. I have that book, my queen. She stole it because she’s mentoring this young man.”
Kelsey being calm helped me to be as well.
“They took her to the Vampire plane,” the young man Kelsey had referred to as Dean said.
“What the hell is the Vampire plane?” Daniel asked.
“It’s a plane of existence where vampires evolved as the dominant species,” Dev explained. “But they’re different from our plane’s vampires. I’ll explain it all after we get help. We need to move quickly. Dean, how long can we expect that door to remain open?”
Kelsey stared at me, ignoring what was going on around us. “His name is Dean and his mother is from our plane. She was kidnapped and taken to the Vampire plane when she was pregnant with him. Summer believes he has a great destiny back on his home plane.”
A chill went through me because we’d talked about this before. I’ve learned that trying to shift destiny when you’re not a nexus point can be tough. Somehow things come back together. Marini had tried to change Daniel, to use him when he’d known Danny could become strong. He’d sent Danny back to me with the thought that I would be his weakness. But I’d been the one to take Marini down, not Daniel. Had Myrddin made the same mistake? Was that what Gray had been trying to tell us all this time? What had he told me? I had to lose in order to win…
“I would like to get to know him,” I said carefully.
Kelsey nodded. “I think that’s an excellent idea. I’m going to do the same.”
It seemed like Kelsey had figured out a lot, and maybe we were here for a reason.
“We’ve got another hour and a half before the door closes.” Dean was tall, his body a lanky boy’s, though he was obviously on the cusp of manhood. “But like I said, we’re too far away. We’ll barely make it back to the brugh before nightfall if we don’t go soon.”
“That won’t be a problem now. We’ve got plenty of time, though you’ll need to give us explicit instructions. I don’t want to get lost. Dan, when do we expect Zack to get here?” Dev asked. “Did you set a meet-up time?”
I had some questions, too. “How long have you been here?