Barcelona

Dyson picked up their scent upon entering the dark stairwell to Lauren and Kenzi’s apartment. Dyson, along with Tamsin, Bruce, and Bo found the flat unlocked and the rooms shabby and threadbare, all as Vex had described and yet as neat as a hospital, of course it was, Lauren had lived there. Even the limits of their runaway existence could not keep their singular natures from rising: the tidiness of the flat was all Lauren, Bo surmised, just as the collection of tequila and vodka bottles must have been Kenzi’s. Bo couldn’t help but laugh, imagining the two of them drinking themselves into the dawn, maybe downstairs or up here on the roof, dreaming away without her, their anger with her flooding the bottom of their glasses, cold and watery as ice. She’d been sitting alone sipping directly from one of the bottles left behind—the alcohol numbing her lips and warming the insides of her pain. She wondered what she’d say to them, what her first words might be, or if Lauren or Kenzi would even give her the chance to say a word. Alone on the roof, Bo drank to hope, hope that Dyson would pick up their trail and find them straight away.

“Bo,” she heard his raspy voice behind her, as well as the slow and deliberate footsteps of the Fae that had gone with him.

“You don’t have to tell me; I can sense it.” Bo swigged directly from the bottle without turning around to face them.

“We got as far as the waterfront,” he went on. “If they’re anywhere, it’s on a ship. Their scent is gone with the tide.”

“Can you tell which one?” Bo asked him.

“At least a dozen ships dock here every day. It would be impossible—“

”—Impossible is what helped me survive all those years I was hidden from the Fae. Impossible is what kept Lauren alive even though she was nothing but a slave to your kind. Impossible is Kenzi being smart enough to convince a race of super Fae to embrace her as an equal rather than as a side dish to be served with breadsticks.” The trio of Tamsin, Dyson, and Bruce observed Bo raging on, caring less with every word whether or not anyone listened.