“What if he leaves the city?” I asked Jaiden. We were taking a break from flying on top of one of the highest buildings in the city. Life was going on as usual for people who were milling around and going on with their usual business.
We hadn’t seen any sign of Blake, and Lily hadn’t been able to track down Blake’s energy, which seemed to have faded in one of the most populated areas. No one had seen him, and there were no more deaths or anything suspicious on the surveillance cameras. Lily’s team was looking over the footage from satellite images, but that would take time.
“I don’t know.” Jaiden paced up and down, his brows drawn together. “Where do you think he would go?”
“He could go wherever he wants.” If Blake went to another country or continent, we’d never find him. “Now that he got what he wanted, I don’t know if there’s anything here that would cause him to stay.”
“Lily’s been monitoring all the exits, and the energy levels are easier to detect out there,” he said.
I chewed on the insides of my mouth. “I hope he hasn’t found a way to block his energy.”
“But wouldn’t he want to show his power to the city? He’d lived here his whole life. Wouldn’t he want to...?” Jaiden’s eyes met mine. “You said he had been in a lab. Do you know where it was?”
“I don’t, but I believe he destroyed it and killed everyone there when he escaped.” It would make sense for Blake to want revenge, but he’d probably already gotten it.
“What about the families of the people he killed?” Jaiden asked, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his blue jeans. “I’ll tell Lily to look into it.”
“You do that, although I don’t think he’d go after them. He’d have done it a long time ago. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been powerful before taking whatever it was in that syringe. Maybe he’s hiding somewhere and waiting for his powers to grow even stronger. How long will your serum work on me?”
“It should be fine until you spend your energy,” Jaiden said, holding the phone to his ear.
“Okay.” At least we weren’t under a deadline with this. I’d hate to lose my enhanced power before we got to face Blake.
“Lily thinks she found something.” Jaiden waved me over, pressing a button on his phone and placing it in between us.
“Are you there, Moira?” Lily’s voice rang through the speaker.
“Yeah. What did you find?” I asked.
“It might be nothing, but several disappearances have been reported all over the city in the last twenty four hours,” she said. “I’m working with the cops to get the info about the missing people. From what I can tell, they’re all healthy elementals, and surveillance caught nothing.”
“Do you think Blake killed them all?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but we never had so many disappearances at the same time. He could be taking hostages or killing people to get their elements, if that’s what he can do now,” Lily said.
“How many people have disappeared?” Jaiden asked.
“Um, at least fourteen,” Lily said. “The cops will alert me if there are more. So far, there are no clues about where those people could have gone.”
“I’ll text you a list of all the locations that Blake used as hideouts while I was with him,” I said. “But I doubt he’ll be there. He knows we’d find him.”
“The only question is whether he thinks he can take out whoever tries to confront him or not,” Lily said. “Do you think he could take all fourteen elements inside of him or just four elements like element preservers?”
“I’ve no idea. We don’t even know if that’s what he can do. If he found a way to collect elements into himself, then maybe he can take more than four,” I said. I really hoped Blake couldn’t take so many elements and keep them all. We’d never defeat him if he could take so much power.
“One of my scientists has a theory that Blake’s body wouldn’t be able to sustain so much power,” Lily said. “Maybe there’s hope that all those people are still alive. If the elements Blake takes expire like they do for regular magic disease carriers who’d stolen an element, then maybe he took the people so he could recharge.”
I was afraid that wasn’t the case. “Would he really need so many people then? Elements don’t expire so quickly if they aren’t being used, and you didn’t notice any spikes of energy anywhere.”
“He’s crazy,” Jaiden said. “We can’t know what he’s thinking.”
“True.” Lily sighed.
“You said the elementals were taken from all over the city. Is there an area in which more than one has been taken? That could help us narrow down his location,” Jaiden said.
“Let me see.” The sound of typing could be heard from Lily’s end of the line. “Two people have been taken near a popular club, but it might have been just a coincidence.”
“Send a team to that area and check the maps for any underground bases,” Jaiden said.
“Fine,” Lily said but didn’t sound too happy that Jaiden was giving her orders.
“Is there any pattern? Maybe we can predict in which area he’ll appear next,” I said. “Maybe he wants to take a person from every part of the city.”
“I don’t think so. If I look at the list of disappearances, it looks random,” Lily said.
“Are there any bigger areas from which no one disappeared? He could be using the disappearances as a distraction,” Jaiden said.
“Well, at first glance, not really. The city is big and not that many people have been taken,” Lily said.
“Can you send us the map so we can check it out?” I asked. “When I was with Blake, we used to do various things to distract you from what we were really looking for.”
“Okay, sending you the map right now.”
“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll call you if we find something or get an idea.”
“You do that.” Lily ended the call, and a message symbol flashed on the screen of Jaiden’s phone. He opened the map, and we both studied it. There were fourteen highlighted areas on the map, and there really didn’t seem to be any connection between them.
“I’m clueless,” I said. “We don’t really have any indication of the exact spot from which the people have disappeared because there were no witnesses.”
“Let’s check something.” Jaiden went through some files on his phone, and finally found a map that had lots of black lines crisscrossing the whole city. “If people disappeared only in areas without cameras, that means Blake was probably turning his victims into air so he could take them somewhere. We saw him kill only that one woman, and that was when he left the body behind. All those people could be still alive.”
“But there are no significant spikes of energy anywhere,” I said.
“The energy detectors wouldn’t be able to read Blake’s energy if he were underground,” Jaiden said. “There are many manholes through which you can get into the sewage system. I have a map of all the exit points. Maybe we can find through which ones he could have escaped with his victims.”
“You think he grabbed someone in an area without surveillance, turned them into air, and went with them through a manhole.”
“Yeah. That way he could have gone all over the city if he knew where to exit so he wouldn’t be seen.”
“But he’d never done that when I was with him. It would have been easier to go around unnoticed.” Blake would have told me about it, unless he’d thought I might run into someone familiar there.
“Maybe he didn’t feel the need to use it or had other reasons. Lily didn’t have much luck catching you, anyway, did she?” Jaiden said. “Or maybe he hadn’t known about it back then. We should check it out. There are tunnels that can be accessed through the sewers.”
“Did you use those tunnels while you were working for Elemontera and looking for tainted elementals?” I asked.
He nodded. “I had to find various ways of going around the city without being spotted, but it was much easier back then. There weren’t so many detectors designed to track us.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t thrilled about going into the sewers, but if Blake was using them, maybe we could find some clues about his whereabouts. “This is funny. It’s as if Blake can’t decide when he wants to be seen and when he doesn’t. You’d think he’d show his new powers off to the whole city, like he did with that first murder.”
“Maybe he lost control the first time or was just trying out his new power. If he doesn’t want to be found now, it means he’s planning something bigger.” Jaiden’s body started to shimmer, and we both turned to air. I didn’t know how much more energy Jaiden had in him, but I hoped it would be enough.