Uncontrollable

Chapter Thirty-One

"He's hiding in Eastbell?" I asked, surprised at the place he picked. And then a thought occurred to me: I didn't know whether or not he was king of Eastbell or Westbell.

"Yes, the Capital to be precise," Bruno said, a hard look taking over his face.

"Is he the king of Eastbell or Westbell?" I questioned, wanting to have a full understanding of what he had power over before we went into this.

"Eastbell," Vanessa answered. "Do you know the history of them?"

"Yeah I read about it when I learned about Trent Smith," I explained quickly. She nodded.

"So what's the plan?" Vanessa had turned to Bruno, her eyes showing she was ready to take action and find Grey.

"This isn't going to happen today. There are a lot of factors that need to be incorporated. We will leave tomorrow morning for Eastbell. This needs to be done with precision, carefully and in the right moment. There are a lot of moving parts," Bruno explained, looking directly at Vanessa.

"Tomorrow morning? What if Grey has already killed another innocent man by tomorrow morning? We can sit around and wait forever until it feels like the 'right moment' because that can have consequences!" I exclaimed in response to Bruno. I would not wait around and watch another innocent person get killed because of me.

"That's the only choice we have. Don't you understand, if I could, I would take down Grey right here and now but it doesn't work like that. Nothing is ever that easy," Bruno said, his voice smoother than marble. "Besides, we don't even know if he actually killed that man. For all we know, he was lying about everything. Maybe he just picked up a corpse, threw it in your room and wrote a note pretending he snatched him and has a family starving at home."

I rolled my eyes.

"That would be too kind of a thing for Grey to do."

"No matter what you say, we're not going to be able to leave until tomorrow. I have a lot to work out and coordinate and it won't work until tomorrow. You can keep trying to get me to leave earlier but you won't succeed," Bruno said, clearly fed up with my nagging.

"C'mon, Ryder, he's right. We can't do anything about it. At least we get to go. We can just hang out for the day — it'll be fun," Vanessa said trying to lift my spirits.

"Whatever," I said, not able to contain a smile at the thought of spending all day with Vanessa.

"Good — I'll be gone the whole day trying to arrange things. Just don't get yourself into trouble. Most of the people won't come back to the Base out of fear after what happened with the intruders, so there shouldn't be many people around," Bruno said, running a hand through his hair.

Vanessa and I nodded.

"See ya," Bruno said and with that, he disappeared.

"So what do you wanna do?" Vanessa asked, turning to me.

"How about we drop all the magic things and spend a day like regular teenagers," I suggested, elated by the thought of acting like a normal kid for once.

"Sounds refreshing. Lets do it," Vanessa agreed, smiling.

"Cool," I said. "Where do you wanna go? I suppose since we don't have an adult to patrol us and we have magic to transport us, we can really go anywhere we want," I said, the realization dawning on me.

"Can we go to Chicago?" she asked, a hint of hopefulness in her tone. "I've always wanted to go there since I was a kid."

"Lets do it," I answered. I'd been there once as a kid, so I imagined us transporting from the Base to the city.