Chapter 9

I started with reaching out to Mika Novak, hoping I could figure out where she was and if she’d been changed into a Vampire or if she was literally just missing like a normal human being. But I couldn’t find her anywhere, which was really strange. I double-checked the date on the article I’d read about Havel looking for her and saw that it was dated about a week ago. So she’d been missing for less than two weeks. If she’d been changed into a Vampire, I should’ve been able to find her easily enough as she would’ve likely gone through the entire Resurrection process by now. It can take longer for some people, depending upon how the Vampire that is changing them goes about it, but for the most part, it’s pretty quick. Sometimes it happens within a few hours. She didn’t seem to be a Vampire, though. I put out some feelers in the Vampire community to see if anyone knew anything about her, but I couldn’t locate her name in any of the conversations I was overhearing, and when I straight out asked a few Vampires I could reach in her area, no one seemed to know anything.

But there were other whispers. There were new Vampires over there, lots of them, just not one by the name of Mika Novak. I wondered what that might be all about and put finding Mrs. Novak on hold so I could look at those missing persons reports again.

They were adding up. The more I dug into the numbers, the more astonished I became. I started compiling data, cross-referencing names and dates, making sure I wasn’t double counting anyone. After about six hours of looking through all of the resources Christian had introduced me to, I had over four hundred names on my list—which was unbelievable to me. The leadership team definitely needed to hear about this, sooner rather than later.

But that still didn’t answer my question about Mika Novak. Where was she? Was it possible she was actually just a missing person? Maybe she ran away with a boyfriend her husband didn’t know about, or maybe she was kidnapped by a legit bad person. Maybe she fell off of a cliff.... I supposed it was a possibility her being gone had nothing to do with the Vampires I had heard whispers of earlier, but really, what were the chances? It was certainly not a possibility that all four hundred of these people had been taken captive by regular ol’ kidnappers. I wanted to spend some time seeing if I could find any of them in Resurrected states, but when I glanced at the clock and saw how late it was getting and remembered I hadn’t eaten anything in hours, I decided to take a break.

I had a lot of missed messages on my IAC. I saw them each come through as I was digging around, but I hadn’t responded to any of them because when I’m in the zone, it’s hard for me to pull my head out of the trenches. Brandon was irritated. He’d tried apologizing for his poor apology earlier, and I’d just said, “I’ll get back to you,” which is a standard answer I send my friends when I’m working to let them know I can’t respond at the moment. That usually satisfies him for an hour or two, but this time, he was more than a little upset that I’d let four hours pass. By the fifth message after my short response, he just said, “Never mind. I’m going to the arcade with Dax. See you tomorrow.”

The arcade, Pizza Triangle, is off-campus. After Holland was sucked into the Blood Moon Portal, the ban on Hunters leaving campus was lifted, so technically, I could go to the arcade if I wanted to. But I can’t drive. So that would mean tracking down Lucy or Tara or someone else and asking them to take me, and I saw messages from both of them that let me know they were actually already there. So all of my friends had gone out without me. I know, I know. That’s my fault. I should’ve responded sooner so I could go, too, if I wanted to go. And part of me wanted to. But the rest of me knew that the meeting I had with the leadership team the next night was important. Not only would I have to have all of my numbers right, I’d have to present the information to them in such a way that they could see the critical state of the matter. If I stood up there and sounded like a teenager asking to go to the mall, they’d laugh and ignore me. I needed to convince a bunch of people who’d been alive for almost a collective millennia that I knew something they didn’t, something important.

So as much as I would’ve liked to be hanging out at the arcade, eating pizza and watching Brandon spend a fortune trying to win me another plushie I didn’t need, I was better off staying in my apartment. I went about making myself a box of macaroni and cheese, trying to stay out of my own head so I didn’t burn it, and turned a movie on, thinking they couldn’t possibly stay at the arcade all night. Maybe when they got back, I’d be tired of searching through newspapers and other people’s heads and I could go over to wherever they’d be hanging out to join them.

But... that’s not what happened. I ate my gourmet dinner and a bowl of ice cream, downed a couple more Dr. Peppers, and got so lost in trying to piece together what was happening on the other side of the planet, I totally missed my chance to go hang out at Dax’s place when they got back from the arcade around 9:00. That was two hours before my curfew, plenty of time to watch a movie. Instead, I’d been up to my eyeballs in other people’s thoughts.

I felt like a horrible friend and an even worse girlfriend. Brandon hadn’t said anything else to me until right before my curfew. Then, it was just a quick, “Missed you. Hope you had a good night. Love you—see you tomorrow.”

I looked at it for a few minutes and thought about the texts he’d sent me when he was still trapped in the portal and how, at the time, I thought I couldn’t possibly ever love anyone more than I loved him. How, once he got back, I wanted to spend every minute of every day with him so I knew he’d never disappear on me again. But that’s not how all of that worked out. Maybe if Alex hadn’t sent me that message, I’d still feel that way. Now, when I see a note like that from Brandon, it just makes me feel guilty, like I don’t love him enough. I do love him, though, and there’s not anyone else I want to be with. Not even Alex. So why do I feel like crap whenever he says he loves me?

If there was an answer for that, it escaped me. I sent back, “Sorry—I was really in deep, trying to sort out this stuff in Europe. Something crazy is going on. I’ll be talking to the leadership team about it tomorrow evening. Maybe we can have lunch tomorrow?” I was supposed to go help Aurora with training the next day, but I should be back in plenty of time to have lunch with Brandon. As far as I knew, he didn’t have any other plans, but that might’ve changed while he was out with our mutual friends.

It took him a while to answer me. I thought maybe he was still mad and didn’t want to talk. But after about twenty minutes, he said, “Sure. Come by when you’re done in the gym.” I had a feeling that meant he actually wanted to make me lunch, something he did sometimes. He’s not any more of a chef than I am, but he’s pretty good at grilled cheese and a couple of other quick dishes, and that sounded better to me than pizza, which is what he’d eat at every meal, given the chance.

“Sounds good. Love you, too.” I did—I do. I didn’t know why it seemed like an afterthought.

Sleep sounded like a really good idea. I decided to go ahead and send Hannah a visual so she knew where I was. Sometimes she checks in with me to make sure I haven’t missed my curfew. Other times, she doesn’t. If I was going to actually try to get some sleep, I wanted to make sure she didn’t wake me up in a few minutes with an IAC message asking me to prove where I was. She had messaged me earlier to apologize about not getting back to me, reminding me that there are so many reports she has to check every day, even though there aren’t a lot of hunts going on right now, and that she doesn’t know how Aaron does it. So when she got my message that I was going to bed, she said, “See you tomorrow,” and I imagined she was referencing the meeting. That made my stomach knot up. I couldn’t think about it and sleep, though, and right now, sleep was more important. Even with training and lunch with Brandon, I’d have time before the meeting to go over my notes and make sure I was convincing. I had to be convincing. If I wasn’t, more people would disappear, be turned into Vampires—more people would die. And we couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let that happen.