“You can’t tell me what to do.” Wow. I sounded just like Davy. Just like Jack. Spoonful of my own medicine. Yuck.
“I’m not telling you what to do,” Zay said. “This is a direct order from Maeve.”
“Oh, for fuck sake. I’m an adult. Maeve is my teacher, not my mother.”
“You have met Mrs. Flynn?” Terric said from the backseat.
Just what I needed, another smart mouth in the car.
“You have to listen to her,” Zay said. “Because she is your teacher. Until you are done training under her, she has say about where you should be in the event of magical emergencies.”
“Was that in the contract I signed? Oh, no, wait. There was no contract.”
“No, there was a test and a vow.” Zay’s voice didn’t rise, but I could tell by how hard he was gripping the steering wheel that he was not a happy man. “If you break that, you are out of the Authority.”
It had been at least two months since Zay had had to remind me of that. Still, it chafed. I hated knowing that one perceived misstep would mean my memories, and all the training I’d done, would be gone out of my head. Hells, if they wanted to, they could make me forget who I was. Take away everything.
If I kept training, if I gave in this time, I knew I would become strong enough that they’d never be able to mess with my memories.
The soft moth-wing flutter tickled the backs of my eyes. I actually rubbed my eyes trying to make it go away until I remembered it wasn’t some kind of weird muscle twitch. It was my dad, in my head, reminding me that he was there.
We could be so much, he whispered. So powerful together. Life and death. Light and darkness. And all magic will be ours.
The only thing worse than my dad being in my head was him getting all creepy and poetical on me. I ignored him.
Zay had taken us down the twists of Terrwilliger Boulevard, and we were now headed into town, toward I-5 North.
“Where are Shame and Chase?” I asked.
“Hunting,” Zay answered.
“No, I mean where? Which part of town do you think Greyson’s in? You don’t think he made it across the bridge to Portland, do you? Do you think he could have made it downtown to Chapman Square?”
“He’s a Necromorph. He doesn’t have to use just his feet to get around.”
“So he could be in Chapman Square?”
Zay’s nostrils flared. “Why?”
“Someone opened a gate in the park, closed it, and crushed the spell so all traces of it would disintegrate within a half an hour. I thought I caught Greyson’s scent. It was faint. I don’t think he’s still there, if he ever was, but something happened there. Maybe around the same time he escaped.”
Both men were dead silent. I tried not to look smug, because frankly, I was more aggravated than smug.
“I’m taking you to Maeve’s. Then we’ll look,” Zayvion said.
“And I’m just going to wait at Maeve’s for days until you find him?”
“Allie, don’t,” Zay warned.
“Listen, when Greyson was on the street before, you said people in the Authority were looking for him for months. Who found him?”
Nothing.
“Me,” I said. “I found him.”
“No, he found you,” Zay said.
“Okay. He found me. So why not let me go out and find him this time? Let me be the hunter instead of the bait.”
Terric spoke. “Taking you to Maeve’s is a form of hunting. We’re setting the trap, and he’ll come for you.”
Unlike Shame, who always stuck his head between Zay and me, Terric lounged, one arm over the back of the seat, half tucked against the corner of the door, his leg stretched out on the seat in front of him.
“He’s not going to come for me there,” I said. “Not at Maeve’s. Not where there are magic users and the well, and the cage he just escaped. He might eventually be desperate enough to break back into his prison to get me. How long will that take? Weeks?”
Neither man said anything.
“He’s not stupid,” I added.
Still the silence.
“He remembers being in the Authority. He remembered my father, remembered how to used Blood magic and Death magic, and even bound Tomi and used her to cast those spells for him to hurt Davy and open those damn gates, and whatever the hell else he did. He is nowhere dumb enough to walk back into the place he escaped. Not even to get