Silence fel across the table as we processed the news. I swal owed against the sudden tightness in my throat. Kain had been kicking my butt and joking around with me just yesterday. He’s good and fast, but if he was missing, it meant he’d been taken for a later snack. Kain was a half, so he couldn’t be turned into a daimon.
No. I shook my head. He got away. They just haven’t found him yet.
Caleb pushed his plate away. Now I wished I hadn’t eaten so much. The news was doing gross stuff to the food in my stomach, but al of us pretended we weren’t that affected. We were in training. In a year or so, we’d be facing this stuff in person.
“What about the pures? Who were they?” Elena’s voice trembled.
The look crossing her face fil ed me with unease.
Suddenly, I understood it wasn’t just Kain we’d lost.
“There were two families.” Olivia swal owed hard. “Liza and Zeke Dikti, and their daughter Letha. The other family was… Lea’s father and stepmother.”
Silence.
None of us moved. I don’t even think we breathed. Gods, I hated Lea. Real y, I did, but I knew what this felt like. Or, at least, I used to. Final y, Caleb found the ability to speak.
“Were Lea or her half sister with them?”
Olivia shook her head. “Dawn stayed at home and Lea is here— was here. On the way over, I saw Dawn. She’d come to get her.”
“This is so terrible.” Elena’s face paled. “How old is Dawn?”
“She’s around twenty-two.” Caleb bit his lip.
“She’s old enough to take her parent’s seat, but who… ”
Olivia trailed off.
We al knew what she was thinking. Who would want to take a Council seat that way?
***
Back in my dorm, I found two letters stuck to my door.
One was a folded piece of paper and the other was an envelope. The paper contained a scribbled message from Aiden cal ing off practice tomorrow due to unforeseen events. Obviously, he’d been cal ed to investigate the attack.
I folded up the note and placed it on the table. The envelope was something else entirely; it was from my bipolar stepfather. I didn’t read the card. However, there were several hundred dol ar bil s folded inside it. Those I kept. The card went in the trash bin.
After spending the rest of the evening thinking about what’d happened in Lake Lure, I had trouble sleeping and woke up way too early, fil ed with an itchy agitation.
By lunch, I’d found out Seth had also taken the four-hour drive with Aiden. More information drifted back to the Covenant as the day progressed. Olivia had been correct.
Al the pures who’d been in Lake Lure had been massacred. So had the half-blood servants. They’d searched the lake and the grounds, but only four of the Security team had been found. They’d been drained of al their aether. The other two, including Kain, had not been discovered.
Olivia, who’d become our main source of information, fil ed us in with what she knew. “Some of the dead suffered multiple tags. But the half-bloods they found… they were covered in daimon tags.”
I read the same, sickening question in the pale faces around the table: Why? By birth, half-bloods had less aether in them. Why would daimons repeatedly drain a half when they had pures who were ful of aether?
I swal owed hard. “Do you know how they got past the Guards?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but there were security cameras around the cabins, so they’re hoping the video footage wil reveal something.”
Some of the halfs tried for some sort of normalcy as the day wore on, and none of us wanted to be alone. But the activity at the pool tables lacked the normal laughs and the game systems sat untouched in front of the televisions.
The sul en atmosphere started to get to me. I retreated to my dorm room after dinner. A few hours later, there was a soft knock on my door. I got up, expecting Caleb or Olivia.
Aiden stood there, and my heart did a weird flip I was beginning to hate.
I asked the stupidest question. “Are you okay?” Of course he wasn’t. I mental y kicked myself as he stepped inside and closed the door.
“You’ve heard?”
No point in lying. “Yeah, I heard last night.” I sat down on the edge of the couch.
“I just got back. News travels fast.” I’d never seen him so exhausted or grave. His hair looked as if he’d run his hands through it many times, and now it went every which direction. The need to comfort him nearly overpowered me, but there was nothing I could do. He gestured at the couch.
“May I?”
I nodded. “It was… real y bad, wasn’t it?”
He sat down, resting his hands on his knees. “It was pretty bad.”
“How did they get to them?”
Aiden glanced up. “They caught one of the pures outside.
Once the daimons got in—the attack surprised the Guards.
There were three daimons… and the Sentinels—they fought hard.”
I swal owed. Three daimons. The night in Georgia, I’d been surprised by how many were together. Aiden was thinking along the same lines. “The daimons are real y starting to work in groups. They’re showing a level of restraint in their attacks, an organization they never had before. Two of the half-bloods are missing.”
“What do you think it means?”
He shook his head. “We’re not sure, but we’l find out.”
I had no doubt he would. “I’m… sorry you have to deal with this.”
A hardness settled across him. He didn’t move. “Alex…
there’s something I need to tel you.”
“Okay.” I wanted to believe the seriousness in his voice was due to al the heavy stuff he had been dealing with al day.
“There were surveil ance cameras. They let us get a pretty good idea of what happened outside the house, but not inside.” He took a deep breath and lifted his head. Our eyes met. “I came here first.”
My chest tightened. “This… this is gonna be bad, isn’t it?”
Aiden didn’t mince words. “Yes.”
The air caught in my lungs. “What… is it?”
He twisted his long body toward me. “I wanted to make sure you knew before… anyone else did. We can’t stop people from finding out. There were a lot of people there.”
“Okay?”
“Alex, there’s no easy way to say this. We saw your mother on the surveil ance cameras. She was one of the daimons who attacked them.”
I stood, and then I sat right back down. My brain refused to process this. I shook my head as my thoughts went on repeat. No. No. No. Not her—anyone but her.
“Alex?”
It felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. This was worse than seeing dul ness in her eyes as she’d lain on the floor, worse than hearing she’d been turned. This… this was worse.
“Alex, I’m so sorry.”
I swal owed hard. “Did… did she kil any of them?”
“There’s no way to know unless we find either of the halfs alive, but I’d assume so. It’s what a daimon does.”
I blinked back hot tears. Do not cry. Don’t do it. “Have…
you seen Lea? Is she okay?”
Astonishment flickered across Aiden’s face.
The laugh that came out of me was shaky and broken sounding. “Lea and I aren’t friends, but I wouldn’t… ”
“You wouldn’t want her to go through this. I know.” He reached over and took my hand in his. His fingers felt remarkably warm, strong and grounding. “Alex, there’s more to this.”
I almost laughed again. “How could there be more?”
His hand tightened around mine. “It can’t be a coincidence she is this close to the Covenant. It leaves no doubt she remembers you.”