“And she left something for us.” I nodded toward the open briefcase on the table.
With shaking hands, Rhys looked through the documents resting on top of the cash and gold. “Last Will and Testament, the deed to the apartment, our passports?” He sank down in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “She’s not planning on coming back,” he whispered.
I felt a stab of fear as I prepared to tell him more about what happened today.
“The dead girl. I saw her again at the library . . . she looked just like me . . . and she wasn’t alone.”
“What do you mean?”
I stared him straight in the eyes. “I met Katia.”
He lowered his chin, taking in a deep breath through his nose. “Katia, as in our five-hundred-year-old ancestor, Katia?”
“She talked to me. She cut me,” I said, rubbing my palm.
He leaned forward with his head in his hands, looking like he was going to pass out.
“No. It’s not like that. Look . . .” I sat next to him and held out my palm. “There’s nothing there. I must’ve blacked out or something.”
As Rhys reached out to touch my hand, an icy current ran from my fingertips all the way up my wrist, almost as if my blood leapt away from his touch. I pulled my hand back and the feeling subsided.
He crossed his arms. “So it was some kind of hallucination?”
“I think so.” But when I put my hand into my pocket, I felt the ribbon resting there. I wanted to show it to him; I wanted to tell him about the memory of Mom and Thomas, but I wasn’t quite ready to share any of that yet. And I was pretty sure Rhys wasn’t ready to hear it.
My brother skimmed his hand over the gold and cash. “Do you think she stole this?”
“I don’t know, but maybe we can use it as a bargaining chip to get her back from Quivira.”
His jaw dropped. “Quivira? Is that where you think we’re going? Have you lost your mind? We need to call the police or the FBI—we can’t handle this by ourselves.”
“If we call the cops and this is stolen property—Mom will go to jail.” I forced myself to sit up straight. “We can do this. We have to try.”
He leapt from the chair and started pacing the kitchen. “You think we’re just going to be able to waltz in there and take what Katia needs to break her blood bond to Coronado?”
I stood, blocking his path. “I thought you didn’t believe in any of that?”
“I don’t.” He swallowed hard. “But they do. It’s a cult. They’re dangerous.”
“Katia told me we’d be welcome.” My eyes veered toward the chandelier as I thought of the dead girl. “That we’d be protected there.”
“Oh, okay,” Rhys snapped. “I guess it’s fine because you heard it in your imagination.” He smoothed his hair away from his face and took a deep breath. “Even if we decide to get her, which I’m not saying we’re going to do, you think we can just put Quivira in the GPS, and it’ll take us there?”
I pulled his phone from my pocket and typed in—Quivira, Kansas.
“Eighteen hours and thirty-four minutes,” the distinctly British female computer voice replied.
“Let me see that.” He snatched it back from me. “Look . . .” Rhys brought up an aerial photo. “It’s in the middle of nowhere—it’s just a bunch of farmland.”
“Mom talked about the corn. This has to be it.”
His breathing became heavy as he studied the photo.
“Today’s June fifteenth,” I said. “There are six days until the summer solstice—until she thinks she’s going to walk the corn with Thomas so they can become vessels.”
“See . . . that’s just crazy.” Rhys shook his head in disbelief and started pacing again. “Even if we found Quivira, what would we say to these people?”
“We’re Larkins. If it’s anything like Mom said, we tell them we’ve come home. Gain their trust. Talk some sense into her, and get the hell out of there. They can pick a different vessel.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“Maybe we can buy her freedom. Cults need money, too.” I had cautiously picked up the gold brick I’d dropped earlier to place it back in the briefcase when I felt something embedded on the back of the ingot. I turned it over to find the circle with the dot in the center—the same mark I received this morning.
I ran my hand over the bandage near my collarbone. Either I was going crazy, like Mom, or I was really a conduit. And what did that even mean? She didn’t prepare me for this.
I shut the briefcase, securing the latches.
My brother’s arms were prickled with goose bumps. “I have a terrible feeling about this.”
“I don’t know how to explain it,” I said as I touched the imaginary scar on my hand, “but I know we have to go there ourselves. It’s the only way to save her.”
But it went deeper than that. Somehow I knew I needed saving, too.
? ? ?
I said my silent good-byes to the city as we crossed the George Washington Bridge in my mother’s SUV.