Isabella walked past me, singing that note at the top of her lungs. My knees were weak against that horrible power and I fell to the ground, curling into a ball, and wishing it would stop. My bestial sides screamed right along with her, like a dog listening to a tornado siren. There was nothing I could do to keep her from inside my head, just cringe like a terrified child and hope that she was after him, not me.
As it turned out, she was. Her powers shifted from the pair of us to directly on Scribe as she bore down on him. His skin flattened, ripples appearing in the veins. Scribe passed out and I grabbed her wrist as tightly as I could, giving it a squeeze.
The note stopped. Isabella cleared her throat. "Is there a problem? Or were you stopping me to thank me?"
"That's enough. He's got a daughter at home."
My voice was a weak croak against the melody of, well, Melody. She glared at me but I didn't dare threaten her or try to manipulate her. I'd seen how capable she was when Allison had hold of her mind, not knowing the extent of her powers. Isabella had been born like that and had practiced since she was a child. I had no doubt that she was perfectly able to rip me apart at a molecular level if she wanted to.
She looked back at Scribe and poked him with the toe of her Mary Janes. "Assuming that he doesn't do jail time for what's going on, anyway. You need to get to Cassie, don't you?"
"I wanted to try to talk Scribe out of this before I went," I sighed. "Looks like another failure on my part."
"What else is new?" she asked.
Izzy walked to Scribe's desk, yelled at the locked section of it, and popped out with a tiny box. I frowned at it, then her, slowly dragging myself to my feet. "You came all the way up here for a little box?"
"He took my car keys. If we're going after Adam, I needed them."
It was like someone had punched me in the gut. I shook my head at her. "You're not going anywhere. We need you to stay here, to deal with all of this. Of everyone involved, you're the only one who has any sense about the public relations needed to settle these problems down."
She paused, fingering her keys. Then she shook her head. "PR isn't important. We need to save people, not images."
Had I not known how important the situation was before, that would have cemented it for me. I'd given her an out, a way to ignore whatever duties she had and go hide in an office somewhere.
Maybe our little songbird was braver than I thought.
Izzy had always been about how we appeared to the rest of the world, sinking into the public's general consciousness as a good thing. For her to abandon it in a prime moment, to really throw in with us? I slid an arm around her and watched her back as we left the room.
"Lexi's locked in her room, by the way. We need to get her before we leave."
I snorted. "She's got food, water, and a place to go potty. She'll be a good girl until someone else buys her loyalty."
"She's my girlfriend," Izzy said, giving me a level look. "I'm not leaving without her. And if she were still yours, you'd feel the same way."
"But she's not," I said, moving away from her. "And did you know, I almost forgot that you had her cheating on me behind my back. Isn't it strange the allies we make when the world is on fire?"
Her lip raised in a sneer. "You weren't enough for her. That isn't my fault. You were never there for her, never did anything with her; anyone neglected like that eventually gives up and finds someone who wants to be with them."
I scowled at her, but I didn't argue. Just because Lexi had wanted to go places I didn't did not mean that she had a license to cheat on me. If I hadn't been enough for her, we could have talked it out. Instead, she started fucking Isabella and plotting world domination that, almost certainly, had come from Allison.
She didn't say another word. She just headed for the nearby stairs and started down them. Lexi had decided to stay in our old apartment after she'd been pulled out of the Dream by Cassie's parents. I hesitated for a moment, then followed Isabella, glaring. It was fair to save Lexi.
It didn't mean that I wanted to be involved with it, damn it.
We made our way down to my old apartment and I caught Lexi's scent at the door. It was an intoxicating blend of spice and pumpkin, not too unlike that latte that's so popular in the fall. Izzy moved to the side and I sighed. One of the things that every EMT needs to know how to do is to get through a door. You run into a lot of domestic violence situations, unfortunately, where someone has been hurt and the other partner is intent on trying to make the pain stick. Sometimes, they even want to kill them.
That meant that I had plenty of experience in how to correctly bust a locked door from its moorings. But I wanted to take the easier approach. I shifted into the body of a bear and lumbered forward. One massive paw rested against the wood and I just pressed inward until it gave, the crunch audible for thirty miles or so.
The door fell in and Izzy stepped over
