Cassidy FaceTimed her friends, and it only took a few seconds for Lucy to answer, Emma sitting behind her on the bed in Lucy’s bedroom. “Oh my gosh, Cassidy. I thought you’d died.”
“Uhm, it’s been, like, forty minutes,” Cassidy replied, just slightly offended at her word choice, considering the recent events. “What is it?”
“So, Christian gave us access to their site that livestreams the footage out of the airports, right? And so, we’ve been checking it, and we saw Giovani at Heathrow!”
“Shut up!” Cassidy exclaimed. “When? Today?”
“Yes!” Lucy replied. Emma had her laptop out, and Lucy pulled it around so Cassidy could see, holding the phone near the screen.
Cadence leaned in and looked over her sister’s shoulder. While it wasn’t easy to watch the short video off of the phone, it did appear to be Giovani and Zabrina making their way through security at an airport. The footage was clearly stamped with LHR, an indication that it was Heathrow, and the date and time stamp showed it was about ten hours ago. “Oh, wow,” Cadence mumbled, staring intently at the couple. She knew Aaron and Jamie could see it, too, through her own IAC. Just as Giovani passed the camera, he paused. Slowly turning his head up and angling it so that his face was looking directly into the camera, he snarled a vicious looking smile, flashed the peace sign, and then flipped it around, making it the British equivalent of the bird.
“See? It’s him, right?” Lucy said, bringing the phone back to her face.
“It’s him, all right,” Cadence agreed.
“But why is he telling us ‘peace’?” Lucy asked.
“That wasn’t peace,” Cadence explained. “That was the opposite of peace. Lucy, can you email that to me, please?”
“Sure,” she replied, clearly still confused by Cadence’s explanation of his gesture. “So--what are you going to do now?”
“Well, we need to figure out where he’s headed. Can you check to see what flights were leaving Heathrow around that time, where they were headed, and start checking airport footage for where he might have landed?”
“Already on it,” Emma replied, her computer back on her lap before Cadence even started talking.
“Awesome. Thanks a lot, girls!” Cadence said and then leaned away from her sister’s phone.
“No problem!” Lucy called, answering for both of them. “Hope you’re having a good time, Cass,” she added once her friend’s face was the only one looking back at her.
“It’s been interesting,” Cassidy replied. “I need to go, but thanks again for all of your help.”
“Sure thing! We’ll keep working!” Lucy assured her before they said goodbye and discontinued the call.
“So… Christian gave them access to highly sensitive footage from worldwide airports?” Jamie asked, clearly confused by the whole exchange. “Aren’t they high schoolers?”
“Yes,” Aaron confirmed on both counts.
“Doesn’t that seem a little…”
“Effective?” Cadence asked.
“Sure,” he admitted, “but I was going to say dangerous. Or reckless.”
“They’re fine,” Aaron assured him. “They’ll both be here in a few years.”
“Huh?” Cassidy asked, this being new information to her.
But Aaron didn’t answer. “Eliza just messaged me that she had a report that Giovani may have been spotted at Heathrow earlier today. She’s on her way to check it out.”
“I can give her the dollar she’s short, but I can’t give her another minute, let alone a whole day,” Cadence muttered. Changing the subject, she said, “Where the hell is he going? Why did he want us to see him?”
“Because he wants us to know where he’s at so you can arrive there,” Aaron reminded her. “You can’t meet him wherever he’s going if you don’t know where that is.”
“Well, then, he should have held up his boarding pass or something because it could still take us days to figure out where he went, especially if he doesn’t give us some sort of a signal once he arrives. Heathrow is huge,” Cadence replied.
“Maybe he needs a few days,” Aaron said, running his hand through his short brown hair. He was doing his best to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but it seemed like he was missing something--something obvious. What could it be?
“Why? Why would he need time?” Cadence asked. She got up now and started pacing back and forth the few steps between her chair and the door, the Vampire flutters almost more than she could presently bear.
“He must need to do something--get something--find someone,” Jamie offered.
“Who? Is there another Vampire more powerful than him that we aren’t considering? Someone he can get on his side? Someone he thinks he may need to defeat us?” Cadence asked as she wandered back and forth.
Aaron went over all of those questions in his own mind. He was aware of virtually every Vampire in the world over the age of a few months old; none of them seemed powerful enough to defeat Cadence.
“Are there any bad people in the world that are actually Vampires?” Cassidy asked, trying her best to be of use.
“What’s that?” Cadence asked pausing behind her chair.
“You know what you were saying earlier--about how not all bad people are Vampires, some are just bad people? Well, are any of them actually Vampires? Someone really bad?”
Cadence considered her question, but before she could answer, Aaron said, “Holy shit… I know where he’s going.”
Cadence and Jamie looked at each other, and since Elliott wasn’t there to say it, they both said, “Of course you do.”
“Philadelphia,” Aaron said quietly, standing up. “Gibbon. Of course! Cassidy--you’re a genius!”
“What?” the teenager asked. “I am? Huh?”
But Aaron wasn’t listening. “We need to alert the team in Philadelphia. They need to get that hospital covered as soon as possible. If Giovani actually gets ahold of him and has the opportunity to turn him, we’ll have one hell of a time destroying him.”
“God, it’ll be like Jack the Ripper all over again,” Jamie mumbled.
“And I do not want to go through that again,” Aaron agreed.
“Whaaat?” Cadence asked, wondering what she was supposed to infer from that conversation. But the answer would have to wait for another time. “Cassidy, can you call Lucy and Emma back and let them know to check Philadelphia International?”
“Sure,” Cassidy shrugged, still not exactly sure what was happening. “For Giovani?”
“Yes,” Cadence confirmed. “We think that Giovani might be on his way to Philadelphia to turn Steven Gibbon, the Jogging Path Killer, into a Vampire.”
“Oh,” Cassidy nodded. “Why would he do that?”
Cadence looked at Aaron, holding his gaze for a long moment before she said simply, “Because he thinks Gibbon will make a powerful Vampire, and he wants to use him to stir up trouble.”
“Cadence,” Cassidy said, waiting until her sister looked at her before she continued. “Is Giovani going to use Gibbon to try to kill you?”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Cassidy. There’s no Vampire alive--none that can be made--that can kill me. I promise you that.”