Frozen Desires (Asylums for Magical Threats 2)

“You’ll have to wait until tomorrow night. It’s bedtime.”

All three of them groaned and begged her to continue, but like always, she never gave in. She put her arms out for Gio, and he jumped into them. After kissing his sisters goodnight, she carried him to his room, tucked him into bed, and said, “Sweet dreams, Giovanni.”

“Goodnight, Mama.”

Gio had tried for so long to block out the memories of his childhood. After his parents had died and he’d been separated from his sisters, all he’d ever wanted was for his adopted father, James Sinclair, to accept him. Even as young as he’d been, Gio had known that he couldn’t be happy with his new father if he kept trying to remember his real parents.

For more than ten years, he’d succeeded in severing ties, and putting aside any tender feelings for his past life. But hearing about a real-life Siren from Evans earlier, had been too much. In some ways, he was grateful for the memory because now he remembered another important fact from the second half of Loreley’s story.

Centuries earlier, Loreley had only been one of thousands of Feiru with latent abilities that had gone on to protect the legendary Four Talents.

If the new abilities were as widespread as he was beginning to believe, it meant that the story of the Four Talents and their periodical reappearances might be true, too.

There was a knock at his door, and Gio decided he’d have to mention the possible connection between the Talents and the emerging latent abilities to Evans later.

For now, he needed to focus on his upcoming tour of the facilities. Maybe he’d finally see how all of the children who had been born inside the AMT compounds were treated.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Cam snuggled into the soft, warm bed and groaned. The last thing she remembered was being cold—freezing—and wet, yet now she was warm and toasty. But as she rubbed her head against a soft pillow, it all came back to her—the ship, the man reaching out for her, and jumping into the sea.

She tried to sit up, but the action was met with a combination of resistance and a small pinch in her right arm. She remembered crashing into the glass door, but after moving her left arm again, slowly this time, it barely hurt, and she knew it wasn’t broken.

Still, she didn’t know where she was. She wondered if that man with the tattoo on his neck had retrieved her and taken her somewhere. There was only one way to find out, so Cam opened her eyes. But the room was full of overly bright light, so she promptly shut them. The brightness was like daggers stabbing into her eyes.

“Camilla Melini, open your eyes right now or I’ll force them open.”

Wait a second. “Zalika, is that you?” Cam blinked her eyes until she adjusted to the brightness. Sure enough, her friend was sitting next to her, smiling. “You’re alive.”

“Of course I am. A team of DEFEND members rescued Jacek and me.”

“Is Jacek all right?”

Zalika rolled her eyes. “He’s fine. Although, you’d guess from the way he goes around, showing everyone the tiny scab on his neck, that he’d barely escaped with his life.”

Because Zalika had always been good at hiding her true feelings—a thing Cam had in common with her—she pushed. “Tell me the truth—are you okay? Did Richard do anything to you?”

“I’m fine, I swear. There was a hairy moment when I thought your asshole ex might actually slit Jacek’s throat, but things turned out all right in the end. Richard Ekstrom is now in the custody of the Feiru Enforcement. Your hottie new boyfriend, Marco, set up his capture, so make sure to thank him.”

She was too exhausted to correct her—Marco wasn’t her hottie boyfriend. At least, not yet. “Where’s Marco?”

Her friend merely stared at her, assessing something. She didn’t think Marco would’ve abandoned her, and she refused to think of the alternative. “Well, where is he?”

Zalika raised an eyebrow. “Impatient to see him, are you?”

Cam growled, noticed the IV in her arm, plucked it out, and sat up. “You don’t want to fuck with me right now, Zalika. Tell me where he is.”

Her friend put her hands up in defense. “Geez Louise, calm down. He’s alive. It’s Wednesday evening—you were knocked out for nearly a day—and he had to go and retrieve the clue from that Rosa Elena person at the Novia del Mar statue.”

A sense of relief washed over her, but she was careful not to let it show on her face. Now that she knew he was still alive, she focused on the other shitload of problems that needed to be handled. “What about the Collector’s crew? Did DEFEND or Enforcement capture them?”

“No, somehow they managed to escape. Probably by jumping out of one of the windows lower down. Marco had only created an ice dome on the top part of the ship, to serve as a distraction to rescue you, rather than contain the whole thing.”

Cam stopped breathing. “Marco created another ice dome, in front of everyone?”

Zalika gave her a look. “What do you mean by ‘another’ ice dome? Did you know he could do that?”

She gave a noncommittal shrug. It wasn’t her secret to share. “You’ll have to ask him.”