And he was right again.
I looked to my knees.
“She’s gonna help,” he said, and my eyes went back to him. “Poncho’s aunt. Her name is Josefa.”
I wanted to hug him. He’d called me on it. He was right. He knew it and he knew I knew it.
But he didn’t push it. He didn’t rub my face in it. He didn’t drive it into the dirt. He said his bit and now we were moving on.
I didn’t hug him. I didn’t say anything about that.
I moved on with him.
I did this by relaxing into him and asking, “She is?”
“It took time for us to get her to agree, but she’s gonna try to get her some visions. Tell the future,” he said.
Sudden fear gripped my throat. “Oh God, that might not be good.”
He shook his head. “Future is elastic, according to her. She could say it like it is now, that doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to be.”
Well, thank God for that.
“How long are her visions going to take?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Apparently, magic isn’t exact,” Abel told me. “But first we got to get her some weird shit so she can perform a bunch of rituals and get in the zone.”
“What weird shit?”
He shook his head. “I stopped takin’ it in at ingredient three. Poncho’s got the list and Yuri’s assured us they’ll get everything we need.”
“Well, that’s good,” I noted.
“Yeah. More good, the other five are gonna keep on my brother, but they also think they may be able to locate Lucien’s father using Lucien’s blood, seein’ as they’re connected, father and son. They said it’s a long shot, it might work better with more witches, but since their coven was almost wiped out a few days ago, they’re not thinkin’ it’s a good bet they can recruit more and time is something we don’t have. But they’re gonna give it a shot with what they got.”
I felt my eyes get big. “That would be great!”
He grinned. “Yeah.” Then his grin died.
“What?” I asked.
“The good part of the rest I’ve gotta tell you is, we know it’s happening. The bad part is, it’s happening.”
My body got tight again, but I didn’t repeat my what.
“That hanger who came to see Lucien?” he started, and I nodded. “He was recruited by The True. He stayed with them while they were doin’ what they were doin’ with hangers. And when it was safe, he hauled ass to find Lucien to tell him what that is.”
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Buildin’ an army. Training. For battle to help with this Noble War, whenever that’s gonna start, and for other duties.”
“Like what other duties?”
“Like guarding the camps where they’re gonna intern humans.”
I felt bile glide up my throat.
“Uh…what?” I breathed, my voice sounding strangled.
“They got lots of plans,” Abel went on. “Obviously, they gotta leave some humans to do their thing. Need food to keep humans alive so they’ll need farmers, shit like that. And they’ll be able to take what they want when they want. The delectable morsels”—he said the last two words like they tasted funny—“that’s what they call them, they’re gonna breed and they want them available to feed. So they’re gonna build camps, corral those kinds of humans into them, and see to that shit. But there will be more.”
“This keeps getting worse and worse,” I muttered.
“Yep,” he agreed.
I let that go because I had to.
“How did this hanger know where to find Lucien?” I asked.
“Apparently, Lucien had showed him kindness. The guy hung around at places Lucien would go, did Lucien favors. Lucien didn’t accept these favors for free, gave the guy money which kept him clothed, fed. Lucien guesses that somehow, that built a bond. That’s a guess, though. He doesn’t exactly know how and he’s not exactly comfortable that the guy did know.”
“At least he did us a favor,” I said. “Kindness always pays off.”
“Yeah.”
“What now with that?” I asked.
“More good, this guy gave us the location of this training camp and told us there were others. Obviously, they’re covert, but they’re big operations, according to this Breed. Not easy to move, say, should one hanger go AWOL. We know where one is, not the others, but we now know to look for them. Gregor’s set some of his higher-up vampire soldiers on making a plan to take this base out. At the same time, they’re calling the president to access intelligence satellites to see if they can locate any other camps so they can hit them.”
“Wouldn’t the US government have a lock on any such activity, seeing as they do have spy satellites?”
“They can’t attack every compound that they reckon bad shit is happening in, and until today, we didn’t know they were up to this crap. Now that we know what that bad shit is, they can pay closer attention, get men on the ground to pay closer attention, and maybe weed out The True’s bases so that they can be targeted.”
Something unknit inside me as I said softly, “So we actually have a plan.”
Abel nodded, also looking a shade less stressed out. “Finally, we got somethin’ solid to go on and we’re able to do something.”
I took in a long breath and let it out, dropping my head to his shoulder. He cuddled me closer and laid his cheek against the top of my head.