I stared at him, at this man who’d been absent for most of my life, who’d watched from the shadows while I grew up without him. And now here he was, standing in my kitchen and offering advice like he had any right to.
But the worst part of it was that he wasn’t wrong.
“Fine,” I said. “Then let’s figure out what we do next.”
Rebecca retrieved her duffel bag and set it on the kitchen table, then unzipped it, revealing an array of equipment — tablets, sensors, something I thought was a satellite phone. “Eric’s been monitoring the ley line network since this morning. He’s identified several points of instability that seem to be spreading outward from Silver Hollow. If we can get ahead of the disruption — ”
“We can’t get ahead of it,” my father cut in. “The Dragon isn’t just waking up. It’s rising. That means it’s going to surface eventually, probably somewhere near the original portal site. We need to be there when it does.”
“To do what?” Ben asked, now looking dubious. “Fight it?”
“To communicate with it.” My father looked at me, and something passed between us…an understanding, I thought, or possibly the beginning of one. “Sidney, you merged with the phoenix. You’ve touched dimensional energy at a level no one in your family has done for generations. If anyone can reach the Dragon and make it understand that we’re not its enemy, it’s you.”
“And if I can’t?”
No answer…not that I was really expecting one.
I looked around the kitchen at the three of them — at Ben, steady and solid at my side, and then at Rebecca, who was already pulling out equipment and making plans. And my father, who’d spent seventeen years watching from the shadows and had finally stepped into the light.
Back in February, I’d been alone in this house, grieving my mother and grandmother, trying to hold together a life that had been falling apart ever since they’d disappeared. Now I had allies, people who believed in me.
Including a father I wasn’t sure I could trust.
He caught my eye across the table, and I saw the question there, the hope he was trying not to show. It was so clear that he wanted forgiveness. He wanted me to tell him that I understood, that the years of silence and distance had been worth it, that we could start over.
I wasn’t ready to give him any of that. Not yet, and maybe not ever.
But I could give him a chance to prove that everything he’d sacrificed had meant something.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter Four
The intel came from Rebecca’s tablet, pulled up on the kitchen table between the remains of a hastily assembled lunch that no one had done much more than pick at. Ben had grabbed the sandwiches from Eliza’s on a quick run into town while the others pored over equipment and argued about strategy. A waste of good food, but he supposed they could wrap up the remnants for later if anyone suddenly developed an appetite.
“Aetheris Dynamics,” Rebecca said as she tapped the screen to enlarge a satellite image. “They filed permits three weeks ago for what they’re calling ‘geological survey work’ in Welling Glen. The paperwork is buried under about six layers of shell companies, but Eric managed to trace it back to the parent corporation.”
Ben leaned forward to study the image. The clearing where Victor Maplehurst’s crew had illegally logged old-growth timber five months earlier was now occupied by a cluster of prefab buildings, a generator station, and what looked like drilling equipment. Heavy machinery had carved new access roads through the forest, raw brown scars against the green. He counted at least a dozen vehicles parked near the main structure, including two black SUVs that looked uncomfortably similar to the one Finn had been using for surveillance.
Ben’s stomach tightened with anger. He’d stood in front of a bulldozer in that glen, had risked his life to protect those trees. And now this.
“Who’s behind it?” Sidney asked. She stood at the counter with her arms crossed, her gray eyes fixed on the tablet screen. During their hasty lunch, she hadn’t taken much more than a few bites of her sandwich, either. None of them had.
“Julian Gregory.” Rebecca swiped to a new image, this one a headshot of a man in his early forties with artfully tousled dark hair and the kind of smile that belonged on a TED Talk stage. Perfect teeth, Ben noted, the kind you got from expensive orthodontia and regular whitening treatments. “Tech billionaire, founder of three different startups before he turned thirty, made his first fortune in cryptocurrency and his second in what he calls ‘alternative energy solutions.’ He’s been quietly buying up land in Northern California for the past two years.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Ben said slowly. The name had floated through his social media feeds a few times, usually attached to some breathless headline about disrupting the energy sector or revolutionizing sustainability. There’d been a profile in Wired, he remembered, full of quotes about “paradigm shifts” and “unlocking the earth’s hidden potential.” Most scientists had dismissed it as pseudoscience dressed up in venture capital clothing, but that hadn’t killed the buzz that always seemed to surround the guy. “He did an interview with Wired last year about tapping into the earth’s natural electromagnetic field. Most scientists dismissed it as pseudoscience.”
“Most scientists don’t know about ley lines,” Finn said quietly. He sat at the far end of the table, keeping his distance from the rest of them in a way that Ben suspected was deliberate. Even now, after everything that had been said, Sidney’s father seemed uncertain of his welcome. “Gregory does. Or at least, he knows enough to be dangerous.”
Rebecca nodded. “Eric’s been tracking Aetheris for about six months, ever since they started showing up on the fringes of DAPI’s surveillance reports. Gregory has been recruiting scientists and engineers who specialize in electromagnetic research. He’s paying three times the market rate and offering research budgets that would make a university department head weep.”
Sidney’s expression went very still. “People like Dr. Rosenthal?”
“Rosenthal joined Aetheris about two months ago.” Rebecca’s expression darkened. “Right after she fled the country to avoid prosecution for what happened with the phoenix. Gregory offered her asylum, funding, and access to equipment that makes DAPI’s resources look like a high school science fair.”
Ben exchanged a glance with Sidney. Sonya Rosenthal had been the architect of everything that had nearly destroyed them — the artificial portal, the corrupted phoenix, the weapon that had almost killed Sidney and had left both of them scarred. The idea that she was back, operating just miles from Silver Hollow, made something cold and heavy settle deep in his gut. He could still remember the sound of that weapon charging, the split-second decision to step in front of the beam…and the agony that followed.
“Why Welling Glen?” he asked. “Of all the places they could set up, why there?”