When I step into the house, I find a very angry Cyra on the couch, her old laptop in her lap as she’s furiously typing, her face like thunder. Yikes.
I glance at Spence, who is working from the table and he looks pretty angry himself.
Cyra jumps up when she sees me, moving her arms angrily. “My parents are fucking dead when I get my hands on them. How dare they. How dare they say those things to Audrey?” She stalks over to me, still upset. “I need to go back to the city.”
“Whoa! Wait a moment.” Max appears behind me, his hands full of bags. “Let’s not do things like that in a hurry, without thinking it through.”
Cyra turns on him and I’m glad she’s not looking at me with that murderous look. “They fucking threatened to get Audrey fired for not telling them where I was. They went over the line, far over.”
“I know.” Max steps past her, putting his bags on the floor next to the couch. “I’m not excusing what they did. We’ll do something about it. But you’re not going back. End of discussion.” He’s fucking brave. But I guess he’s getting used to her anger by now... For probably being the most grounded of all of us, he somehow manages to get the most of her anger over him.
She opens her mouth, probably ready to chew him out, when Liam walks into the house.
“He’s right.” Liam also puts his bags down. “None of us are going back to the city any time soon. And we’re staying out of any big cities. This was our last trip to the store. It’s no longer safe for us out there.”
Cyra spins to Liam, but must have seen something on his face that makes her stop, her body slumping and Max quickly catches her, lowering her to the floor. “They didn’t... Did they? Did they send the cops?” She looks so lost.
I quickly shake my head. “Not yet, as far as we know. But there’s been a huge push from outside sources to get your parents to put out a reward to ‘get you back’ quicker, and also to pin some crap on us to ‘make us’ ‘hand you over’ quicker. I don’t think it’s going to take long for them to find a way to get the police after us.”
“Fuck.” There’s little energy behind the word and she just shakes her head. “I’m sorry for having such messed up parents.”
I kneel in front of her, touching her cheek softly. “We’ve all got our crap to carry. We’ll fix this. We’ll make this right.”
“How?” She takes my hand, hers shaking. “And how many lives are they going to have to ruin? How many lives will they ruin before you ‘fix it’? They won’t stop, they’ll never stop.”
I tip her head up so I can look her in her eyes, her tears breaking my heart. “We won’t stop either. We’re never going to stop fighting for you.”
Spence kneels next to me, taking her other hand. “Don’t worry about Audrey and the cafe. Nothing bad is going to happen to them. I’ll make sure of that.”
“How?” She looks hopeful, but also still scared.
He gives her a smile and a wink. “I know the owner. Or, more like, I was the one who did the negotiations when they needed a place. They’re renting it from my family’s company. I’ll make sure they’re safe. Don’t worry about them.”
“Thank you.” Her breath shudders. “Please, do. They’re great. They don’t deserve this shit.”
“And neither do you.” He leans over, kissing her on her forehead. “I’ll go make the call.” He walks away, taking his phone and looking through it.
I feel like they’re all helping her out and I’m just flailing here, not able to help her much at all. I slowly stand up, pulling Cyra up with me. “Come on. Let’s go check out some new houses.”
“What?” She levels a look at me. “Why would we? We’re not buying anything. You’re not buying anything.”
I try to give her an encouraging smile. “I’m not buying anything.” Yet. “But we do need another place to stay. The people in the town have seen us and I have no idea how likely any of them are to get tempted by the money, or just your parents’ sob story.”
I pull her with me to the table, to one of the laptops there. “We’ll get someone to pick us up food and such for a new place, but it would be a good idea if we went somewhere a little more... remote.” Even though this place is pretty remote. But we really need something even more remote.
Cyra is right. Her parents are going to try anything to get her back now. The whole media circus is only feeding into their ridiculous ego and their idea that they can get away with this.
We need to stay low, even lower than this. We need to disappear off the face of the earth for a while. And this time it’s a good idea if Cyra at least gets to choose the place we stay at, it’s the least we can do for her.
33 Spence
The new place we’re going to be staying at is... interesting. Apparently, Cyra chose this from a list that Zack provided. I have no idea where he got the list, but I’m happily surprised by the location and how it looks on the outside.
We’re now as far away from our home town as we can be while still being in the country. The house rising up in front of us is more a combination of a hotel and a castle, it’s massive. Definitely unique. It’s in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by forests, no living human or shifter in sight.
Max is driving the minivan that was waiting for us when we landed at the local airport. Since he was the only one of us who
