“Fine,” Curran said. “If you want Derek, he’s yours. That fills the list.”

“That means we’re axing Paola from the list. The rats will be pissed,” Jim said.

“I’ll handle the rats,” Curran said.

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

I stood on the grassy hill. In front of me a garish sunset burned with violent intensity, the scarlet and crimson clouds floating like bandages in the open wound of the sanguine sky. Against the sunset, on the plain below, people were building a tower. Magic churned and roiled around them as the roughly hewn stone blocks rose in the air, held up by power and human will. Far in the distance, another tower stretched to the sky.

I wanted to stop it. Every instinct I had screamed that this was wrong. It was dangerous and wrong, and we would all suffer at the end of it. Something terrible would happen if it was completed. I wanted to go down there and scatter the stones.

I couldn’t move.

Cold sweat drenched me. I couldn’t look away. I just watched as the tower rose block by block, a monument to my father’s growing power and ambition. It kept going up, unstoppable, like an ancient legion, like a tank crushing all that stood before it.

Someone moved to the right of me. I strained, trying to tear myself from the scene, turned, and saw Julie. Wind stirred her blond hair. She looked back at me, her eyes terrified. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Julie!”

I sat upright in my bed. Darkness reigned, diluted but not conquered by moonlight coming through the open window. My face felt damp. I brushed my fingers at my hairline. They came away wet. Sweat. Great. I used to have nightmares about Roland and being found, but they stopped when Curran started holding me at night. They were never this vivid.

Maybe Roland was trying to find me. I had a vision of him sitting several states away, broadcasting screwed-up dreams like a TV tower. I needed to have my head examined, except anybody who actually tried would run away screaming.

The covers next to me were rumpled. Curran must’ve slipped out of our bed in the middle of the night. Well, that explained it. He was gone, and watching Maddie going loup had rattled me. It was stress. Eventually my dear dad would find me, but not today.

I had to check on Julie. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t. I slipped out of bed, pulled my sweatpants on, and went out, down the stairs. Julie’s door stood slightly ajar. Odd. I rapped my knuckles on a skull-and-crossbones DO NOT ENTER sign that took up most of the door. No answer.

Janice, a shapeshifter in her late thirties, stuck her blond head out of the guardroom to my right. “She took her blanket and a pillow and went downstairs.”

“When?”

“About two hours ago.”