Free Darkness Divides (Sensor #3) by Susan Illene

on.”
    “Nah.” She shook her head. “They were pretty much over by the time I was born.”
    I grabbed an oatmeal cookie off a nearby plate and chewed on it. “So give me the scoop on what’s been going on. I’ve been kind of out of the loop.”
    “It’s not good,” Kariann said, sighing. “We’ve only accounted for half our people so far, but we know for sure two vamps are dead. Their houses were damaged and they were exposed to the sun. Oh, and one werewolf was working in a mine when the earthquake caused it to collapse. He got out, but he’s in bad shape.”
    Werewolves could heal fairly fast, but broken bones and crushed spines could put them out of commission for at least a couple days—though it depended on their age and power level. A really strong one could bounce back sooner.
    “Any idea who set off the explosion?” I asked.
    “Not yet. We’ve confirmed it originated at the fae city, but communications with them are down. No one has any clue who would want to do this or why. It doesn’t make any sense.” She shook her head and sighed.
    Kariann was tough, but recent events seemed to be getting to her, too. Hell, they were getting to all of us. As selfish as it might seem, it made me feel better that I wasn’t the only one feeling a little frustrated and helpless.
    “Ladies,” Nik said, coming down the stairs, “Emily’s settled in her bed and Micah just flashed in to check on her. He says she’ll need to rest soon so if you want to see her, you should do it now.”
    Kariann and I exchanged glances and headed upstairs. My house wasn’t big. The common areas, plus a half bathroom and storage closet were on the first floor. Two bedrooms and a full bath were upstairs.
    It was an older place, but Nik’s renovations had modernized it enough to be comfortable. He’d put beige carpet in all the rooms and painted the walls off-white. We could change anything we wanted, but we’d never got around to it. All the furniture was simple and comfortable—nothing extravagant.
    Emily and I had both moved around so much in our lives, I think we were afraid to get too relaxed. Life can change in the blink of an eye. You never knew when you might have to pick up and leave it all in an instant. Better to not get too attached to anything.
    We walked into Emily’s room and found her settled on her queen-sized bed with a dark red comforter on top of her. She was pale from the trip, but at least the swelling and bruising on her face had gone down. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, fully exposing her bald spot. I could see the faint outline of the surgical scar. The vampire blood had healed it enough so that it was almost non-existent. Micah had told me this morning he expected her hair would start growing back soon.
    Emily hadn’t seemed to care about that so far, but it could become an issue for her eventually. At least school would be out before she could go back. I’d already called them and arranged to have all her homework sent to our house so she could work on it over the summer after she recovered. So long as she finished it, the teachers agreed to allow her to move on to her junior year.
    Micah sat in front of Emily holding up one of the drawings I’d done last week. He shouldn’t have taken those from my room, but now wasn’t the time to complain about it.
    “What is this?” he asked her.
    Emily’s forehead wrinkled and she squinted at it hard. “I don’t know.”
    I came around the bed and looked. It was a drawing of our house—the one we were currently in.
    Micah flipped up another sketch from my notebook. This time it was of our shape-shifter cat, Sable, where she stood next to a river. I’d done that one last month while out on a particularly long walk. She’d been in her usual lynx form at the time.
    Emily stared hard at that one, too.
    “I don’t know.” She turned her head away and stared out the window.
    I swallowed back my worry and turned to Micah. “What does this