Took Me Yesterday (book 2 of The Tomo Trilogy)

Before You Die

"Are you positive it was this way?" I asked, unsure if I trusted Lily's sense of direction or not. Scaling walls and breaking in was one thing, but memorizing a landscape was my specialty, not hers, and I couldn't figure out Louis City at a glance. While I was fine in a forest, I was a fish out of water in a city—or a deer out of the forest. I couldn't make sense of which street went where, but Lily claimed she could.

"I'm telling you," Lily argued, "when I was holding Epic, he got spooked and ran the opposite direction, so the dogs must be over here." Like I said, her logic was sound.

We turned the corner only to come face to face with a circle of light beams and an almost-empty veranda.

"That..." The wind carried Lily's voice. "Is that was I think it is?"

I swallowed, staring at the flat piece of land with two steel rods reaching up in the sky, only for the tops to be splintered off. Tiny fragments stuck up like crushed fingers grasping the air. The St. Louis arch. I could see both the painting in Phelps' office and the horrid structure in front of me. Something had wiped it out. Something big.

"Let's keep going," I said, turning away from the site and toward the street of buildings we came from.

We'd been searching for any sign of Argos for a half hour, which meant the others had to know we were missing by now. We didn't have much longer to find him, but I didn't care how much time it took. I'd stay out in the cold all damn night if it meant getting Argos back. He hadn't left me, ever. I wouldn't leave him now.

"You didn't know, did you?" Lily asked, catching up to my side.

"That he was trained?" I guessed. "Not like that."

Lily waited for me to expand, but I didn't. "You don't find that odd?" she pushed.

I stopped, hearing her tone for what it was. An accusation. "I don't know anything, and if I did, I'd tell you."

She put her hands up. "That's not what I meant."

"So what'd you mean?"

She never had a chance to answer.

A dozen of armed shadows sprung out of the alleyways and surrounded us. Edmeah's people. We were caught, and that was that. I didn't bother to pull out my knife. In fact, this was exactly what I expected to happen. It just didn't happen as fast as I had hoped.

"Take me to her," I said, unfazed by the gun gang. From what Penelope had said about supplies, I doubted most of them were even loaded, but Lily obviously didn't feel the same way.

"What are you thinking?" she hissed, digging her nails into my arm like cat claws.

I shushed her, she listened, and two guards did exactly what I asked. They took us to Edmeah, or what I assumed to be Edmeah's office. It was tucked into the tiptop corner of what looked like an old hotel, minus all furnishings. The way the building creaked in the wind, I half-expected there was nothing safe about the floor or walls. I held Lily closer.

"You better have a plan in mind," she said when the guards left, "because I'm pretty sure this woman is going to make us walk a plank."

"She's a militia leader, not a pirate," I grumbled, but found myself looking out the nearest window for a piece of plywood. Only cold, hard street met us below. "Besides, we're nowhere near the ocean."

"Have you even seen the ocean, Ms. Gray?"

Edmeah's voice was like nails on glass. When I faced her, her gaze was worse. Somehow she appeared to be glaring despite not glaring at all. She chilled the room.