“If we have to, yeah,” he said without remorse. “Something bad’s going on.”

I leaned back in my chair, considering his idea, and then I nodded. “Okay. If it’s what you think we should do, then let’s do it.”

He pulled out his smartphone and took the file from me, double-checking the spelling of the host family’s name and the address. I dug into my pocket to pull out my wallet so we could pay for our lunch and then get out of here.

“Shit,” Ridley said, and his whole body sagged. Under the dark stubble on his cheeks, his face had gone ashen.

“What?”

Instead of answering, he turned and held his phone out toward me, so I could see the ominous headline that had shown up during his search for Emma’s address.

Emma Jones, Teenage Daughter of Software Mogul Benjamin Jones, Was Found Missing from Her Bedroom

I scanned the article below, and it went on to say that based on the ransacked state of her room, the authorities suspected foul play, and they were reaching out to the public to see if anyone knew anything about where Emma might be. Worse still, her family said Emma had only been gone since the early morning.

My heart dropped to my stomach. “We missed her by a few hours.”

“Then maybe we haven’t missed her.” Ridley shoved his phone back in his pocket and stood up in a flash.

I threw a couple bills on the table, then pulled on my jacket as I hurried after Ridley. An icy drizzle had begun outside, but Ridley hardly seemed to notice.

“We should split up,” I suggested. “We can cover more ground that way.”

“Good. That’s smart. I’ll go back to her house, see if I can get a better sense of where she might be. You should go back to the hotel.”

“The hotel? Why?”

“You should get on your laptop, check out her Facebook, Tumblr, et cetera, see if her friends know anything and what people are saying online. You can also figure out what school she’s at, and then you can go down and talk to them.”

“All right,” I agreed reluctantly.

“If I can’t find anything at her house, I’ll head down to the police station. I might get them to tell me something.”

That wouldn’t have sounded likely except that Ridley had mild persuasion. He only used it for tracking, and usually on people like host families or school officials. Or in this case he could get a police officer to tell us everything they knew about a missing girl.

I didn’t like being stuck on desk duty, but it might give us a clue to what happened to her. If Konstantin Black was trailing her, her friends might have noticed, or Emma might have said something to someone.

She might have even left with Konstantin willingly—before he’d been on the Högdragen, he’d been a tracker just like Ridley and me, and he was just as capable of talking a changeling into leaving with him as we were. And if he had done that, maybe Emma had told someone about it or where she was going.

That didn’t seem likely, especially given how aggressive Konstantin and Bent had gotten with Ember and Charlotte, and given the alleged state of Emma’s room. But at this point we couldn’t rule anything out, and we had to work as quickly as possible to find Emma.

Ridley and I went our separate ways, and I jogged back to the hotel, holding my jacket up over my head to keep out the rain. By the time I reached the lobby, my jeans were soaked through, and the front of my shirt was damp and sticking to me.

The hotel was cool and modern, with complimentary bottled water and tea in the lobby and hipsters lounging around playing on their tablets in slick chairs and art deco sofas. We’d chosen it because of its proximity to Emma’s house, and the clash between our one-bedroom suite and my loft in Doldastam was staggering.

The view of downtown Calgary from the windows was amazing, but the shades were drawn when I came in, leaving the room in relative darkness. I tossed off my soaking jacket, and then I stumbled over an ottoman in the sitting room. Ridley had offered to take the pull-out sofa, so my things were in the bedroom, and I went into it to retrieve my laptop.

If I hadn’t been so distracted, hurrying in my worry that something bad had happened to Emma, I would’ve noticed that things weren’t right—that the shades had been open forty minutes ago when we’d dropped off our things but were closed now, and that the ottoman was now out of place, rather strategically placed in front of the bedroom doorway.

I doubt I could’ve seen him, though—his skin had changed color, blending in with his surroundings perfectly. But if I weren’t distracted I definitely would’ve heard footsteps behind me as I was bent over the bed, digging through my duffel bag. And I’d like to believe that I would’ve felt the presence of someone standing behind me.

But I didn’t. Not until I felt a strong hand covering my mouth, pulling me straight back against him, and a sharp cold blade pressed to my throat.

“Don’t make a sound,” Konstantin said into my ear, whispering like we were lovers.

TWENTY-TWO

culpability

I stood frozen against him. I could feel the hard contours of his chest pressed against my back, warming me through my wet shirt, and I tried to slow the rapid beating of my heart so he wouldn’t feel it. The whiskers from his beard tickled against my cheek and neck, and the skin of his hand felt rough on my lips. He smelled of cold, like ice and snow on the harshest days of winter.

“I know you’re devising all kinds of ways that you can kill me,” Konstantin murmured in my ear. “But I want to warn you that it won’t do you any good.”