of the incident. I realized too late that I should have been worried about him ensnaring us in an unintentional psychic morass, but whatever his new injuries, he seemed to have control of his brain.
I could tell by how embarrassingly uncharitable I felt toward him.
“You’ve been in a state of panic for hours now,” I said to Pilar. “It probably took something out of you.”
She gave a little nod, her face going greenish.
“If you need to be sick, I can find you a bedpan or something.”
She seemed to swallow it back down, and then croaked, “Tabitha?”
“I’m asking you this time,” I said quietly. “Are you in?”
Without any hesitation, she twitched her head in a nod. “Just, um. Let me…”
I reached back into my belt and retrieved her CZ, keeping Sikorsky’s Glock for myself. “Here. Get yourself together.”
She took the gun and holstered it, managing it on the second try.
I turned back to Simon.
His eyes were still slitted open, following me and Pilar.
I wanted to tell him I was glad he was okay, but he would see the lie in it.
Cas, just tell me what else you need. The words projected themselves wearily at me.
“Uh. We’re … Tabitha got taken. Arthur’s daughter. We think we know where she is, but we need to…”
He shifted his head slightly, his eyelids fluttering again as if he were having trouble keeping them open. Then he lifted his hand toward me in the smallest motion.
It was a clear invitation.
Fuck. He was too weak to talk.
I’d said I would do anything.
I took a deep breath and reached for his hand, concentrating on his face, trying to bring the whole mess of a situation to the forefront of my mind: Willow Grace and Tabitha, and Elisa and Diego in danger, and Pilar and I had to go in but there would be no way we could get past the fucking dogs, or if she had any other people like Coach …
Coach.
Simon’s hand tightened on mine, his fingernails digging into my skin. With an effort, I wrestled back the wave of guilt and self-recrimination and failure and grief. Killing the man I’d barely known in this life.
“Sorry,” I said, and I actually meant it.
Simon had begun twitching like he was about to seize, but then he rode through it. I refocused on the problem—the dogs, we knew she had more, they’d probably been her first experiments, and they’d been moved from the ranch. We thought we knew where. We’d never get past them.
Simon read my microexpressions and the pressure of my hand and the movement of my eyes and the twitch of my second eyelash, or whatever constituted his powers, and his chin dipped slightly. I understand.
Can you—I don’t know. Brainwash us? Hypnotize us somehow, in advance, so that we won’t be afraid of them? I thought the words as clearly as I could, in English.
No.
Annoyance from him—because of course he would have done that before, if it were possible. It wasn’t. At least, there was no way he could think of to pinpoint it; the dogs were designed to push our fear centers.
Frustration roughed through my thoughts, along with a push for him to help us, to brainstorm, that there must be something he could do. Unfair, and I knew it, but he had goddamn superpowers and so did I. We had to be able to figure something out.
I caught something then, from Simon. Despite how rudely I was asking, he was trying to think of a way to help us, something he could do, and …
“What do you mean, it’s too specific?” I said aloud.
It’s too specific. I could … but it’s too dangerous. Bad idea. Bad idea …
“You’re breaking up,” I said. I felt my own thoughts poking at him—what? What? What? What is it?
He sighed, the smallest breath through dry lips. Another way …
But I’d picked it up by that time. “Fear,” I breathed. “You can take our fear.”
Cas, it’s too dangerous. Fear is useful. You need it. Without fear, who knows what you would do?
“I’d win,” I said.
You could kill yourself. Just by not being afraid enough of death.
“Cas?” ventured Pilar. She’d managed to stand, her hand shaky on the back of my chair.
“He can make us immune to fear,” I said. “But not only of the dogs. All of our fear. We wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”
“Maybe that’s good, huh?” She made a small, slightly hysterical sound. “I could use a little less fear.”
Tell her! barked Simon.
“I’m telling her,” I snapped. “He