“Leila was always clever.” But even the cleverest young woman couldn’t share what she didn’t know.
The comm beeped again, notifying her of a file transfer from DarkRiver.
Downloading it, she saw that Lucas had sent through information on the triangular symbol Leila had drawn. The search had been running as they spoke. “It’s the logo for a long-defunct utility company.” Canadian Cheap Electric. “Hundreds of possible facilities across Canada.”
“Wait.” Malachai scrolled down, swore with uncharacteristic harshness.
Miane’s right-hand man was usually almost Psy in his ability to control his emotions.
“It says historical records were damaged forty-five years ago,” he told her. “The locations of the substations, the part of CCE’s infrastructure that best matches Leila’s description, were lost.”
Some, Miane thought, had undoubtedly been destroyed by time and human interference. Others might be hidden by the kind of tree cover Leila had described, while still others may have been repurposed into legitimate uses. “It’s our only real clue. We run it, even if it means tracking down each and every substation one by one.”
Malachai didn’t tell her that was an impossible task—Leila would be long dead and turned to dust before they found the right location. All he said was, “We have to think smart.” His pale gold eyes held hers, the color so clear she sometimes couldn’t believe it was real. Malachai’s true eyes looked like a beam of sunlight cutting through the clear waters off the most pristine white sand beach.
It befit what he was, a secret unknown to the world.
“We’ll have the tests done,” he continued, “get an idea of where she might have dropped in the bottle and how long ago.”
Because there was a high chance Leila was no longer in that old CCE facility.
Miane refused to believe the bright young woman was already dead, like so many of BlackSea’s vulnerable and far-flung members. The ones who swam alone or in small groups. Where the Consortium believed they wouldn’t be missed.
I miss you, Leila.
The girl was on their list of vanished members, the disappearance reported by another lone swimmer who’d crossed paths with Leila once a month and who’d searched weeks for her in the warm waters around Samoa. She’d found only Leila’s small research vessel; it had been bobbing on waves far from the zone where her friend said Leila would’ve normally dropped anchor.
“We also have people in Canada,” Miane reminded Malachai, ruthlessly silencing the memory of how Leila’s friend had sobbed when she’d reported her missing, how she’d begged Miane to find Leila.
She’s so gentle, Miane. And she has this childlike wonder in the world, this belief that people are mostly good.
Hand fisting so hard her nails cut into her palm, Miane forced herself to speak. “I’ll blast out a notice, put our people in the region on alert.” The Canadian landscape was full of lakes and the changelings that called them home also called BlackSea pack.
Malachai’s expression darkened. “It could go to one of the traitors.”
Bile threatened to burn Miane’s throat.
The realization that BlackSea must have at least one traitor in their midst was a terrible one. There was no other way to explain how outsiders had so accurately been able to predict the location of BlackSea’s most isolated members—those lone water changelings generally had well-hidden places of sleep scattered across oceans and along beaches, riverbeds, and lakefronts.
The ones like Leila, who lived on boats, moved around from day to day, though like any living being, they had favorite spots.
The realization of betrayal would’ve been devastating for any pack but it was viciously heartbreaking for BlackSea because of the pack’s unique genesis. Water-based changelings tended to be made up of pairs or small pods. Some did run in large schools, but those changelings thought in “groupmind.” It made them smart and strong when functioning as a group, but different enough that they had difficulty dealing with outsiders who demanded to speak to the boss. The schools had no leader, were truly a single multicelled organism.
On the flip side, the water was also home to the dangerous and the powerful, but the lethal predators rarely came into contact with the other species. That had worked fine for centuries, but as the world developed and the oceans and lakes and rivers of the planet became a coveted source of power and trade, fishing going from small boats that changelings could easily avoid to huge trawlers dragging massive nets, their isolation began to kill them.
It had been Miane’s ancestors who had reached out to their brethren, after losing half their family to a huge fishing conglomerate that had flat-out ignored the warnings that certain waters had been legally claimed for changeling use. Big business knew that scattered groups of water-based changelings had no way to enforce the rules and as the decades passed, people had become used to ignoring them.
Coming together to form BlackSea had never been about power, though power was a much-needed by-product. BlackSea had been born so that their people would be safe, so that they could protect and nurture their young in waters unpolluted by outsiders, free of their deadly nets and traps.
Now one of the pack had sold out the members who needed BlackSea most.
“We need eyes out there,” she said, her gut churning. “Not just for Leila, for all of the vanished.” This was only the second time they’d had any clue where one of their stolen packmates might be. “We’ll have to take the risk.”