I’d reclaimed my earbuds, and my phone was fully charged. I began dialing a group call. I was maybe the only person present in a position to address everyone.

“Speaker?” I asked, as my mother joined the conversation.

“You’re on speaker phone.”

“Dad?” I asked. He was in his truck with Foil and Chastity.

“Yeah. Don’t use this much, had to find the button.”

“Rachel, Cassie, you can hear me?”

I got a nod from Rachel. Cassie looked to be mostly dealing with staying mounted on the wolf, which was a tougher ride.

“Sveta?”

I saw Sveta nod her head.

“Okay. The members of this cluster pass out at a set time every night to rearrange their powers and the strength of those powers, dream, and communicate. This is our time window to do something. That’s the good. We have resources.”

“So do they,” I heard Rain.

“They have resources too, yeah. That’s the bad. They have mercenaries hired and contingencies planned, and they have our teammates’ body parts held hostage. We have to keep in mind that he knows we know about the time window. Anticipate that he’ll have guards, mercenaries, hirelings, traps, deceptions… Love Lost had some nasty traps at her hideout.”

“They’ll have eyes on the roads,” Foil said, through the phone.

“They will. Lookouts, people watching their rear and flanks while they get where they’re going,” I said for the benefit of Rachel and Cassie.

“I’ll get off the main road. I may come back to give ’em a sniff,” Rachel reported.

“Rachel’s going to try to stay more out of sight,” I said. “Can you roll down the window of the van, Foil, and make sure Sveta can hear? I’m going to stick with her right now.”

“I’d rather not roll it down,” I heard Sveta, distant.

“Belay—”

But the window was rolled down.

Sveta was perched on top, and as she was, she was as in control of that body as I’d seen maybe three times ever.

“Do you want the windows rolled—”

I saw her shake her head.

Foil left the window open, and Sveta hung near the top of the van. Rachel was starting to peel away, her dogs running now in places where a lookout wouldn’t immediately spot them and identify a telltale sign of Undersider or Undersider–Breakthrough action.

Helps that there aren’t headlights on the dogs. We’d be spotted a mile away.

On reflection, it was patently insane that they were traveling as fast as they were with no headlights.

I followed Rachel and the dogs as they left the road, running through the fields to the side, where no streetlights shone. I kept the Wretch active while flying out of reach of them.