The signal held for six minutes.
KaSandra had counted, standing perfectly still in the center of the room with her golden eyes half closed and her hands folded in front of her, reading the air the way other people read print. Six minutes was long enough.
When Katherine finally opened her eyes she looked tired in the good way, the way you look after something that cost you effort but paid you back double. Carlyle sat across from her blinking slowly, like a man coming up from deep water.
"Well?" Niall asked from the couch. He had been sitting forward with his elbows on his knees for the better part of the last ten minutes, and the tension in his shoulders said he had not moved once.
KaSandra turned to face the room.
"Iceland," she said.
The word landed in the quiet like a stone dropped in still water.
"Iceland," Dean repeated from the doorframe, his tone somewhere between confirmation and disbelief. "As in the country."
"As in the country," KaSandra said, with the patient expression of someone who had long ago made peace with stating the obvious.
"That is very far north," Niall said.
"It is," KaSandra agreed.
"And very cold."
"Niall," Kristen said.
"I'm just noting the facts."
"We know the facts."
"I'm a facts person, Kristen."
"I know you are and right now the facts can wait."
Courtney, from the armchair, pressed her lips together to hold back a smile and mostly succeeded.
Katherine was still sitting on the floor, her hands loose in her lap, looking at KaSandra with focused eyes. "You said we'd feel their power as a signal. What I felt was wind. Constant, moving in all directions at once, never the same way twice." She paused. "Is the wind chosen one a girl?"
KaSandra looked at her with something that might have been quiet approval. "Yes. Her name is Samantha Viento."
The name settled into the room and Thomas, who had been leaning against the far wall through the entire session, straightened slightly.
"Viento," he said slowly, turning the name over. "That's not a name I recognize."
"It would not be," KaSandra said. "It is the name her father chose when she was born. Before that he was known by another name." She paused in the particular way she had, the way that meant what came next mattered. "Engel Remial."
The room went very quiet.
Tierney, standing just behind Katherine, drew a slow breath. "Engel Remial is alive."
It was not a question.
"He is," KaSandra said. "And he has been in Iceland for many years, raising his daughter and keeping himself away from everything that once found him." Her golden eyes moved around the room. "He was one of the original chosen ones. Fire was his element, but his knowledge of the old ways runs deeper than most. He will be valuable to you beyond his daughter."
"Does he know about Samantha?" Thomas asked. "About what she is?"
"He knows everything," KaSandra said simply. "He has been waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Carlyle asked.
"For someone to come find her."
Katherine pushed herself up from the floor and stood, brushing off her knees. Something in her posture had changed from the girl who had sat down an hour ago. She stood straighter, her chin level, her eyes carrying the particular quiet of someone who has set something down that they have been carrying too long.
"What is she like?" Katherine asked. "Samantha."
KaSandra considered this with genuine care, the way she considered most things.
"She is quiet," she said. "She keeps to herself. She loves the open air and the wild places and she is most comfortable when she is away from crowds and noise." A pause. "She is not unfriendly. She is simply someone who has spent most of her life feeling slightly out of place in the world, not quite understanding why the wind answers her when she is upset or why she can feel a storm coming three days before anyone else." KaSandra's expression softened almost imperceptibly. "She has been waiting too, I think. Even if she does not know it yet."
Dean pushed off the doorframe and looked at Tierney. "So we go to Iceland."
"We go to Iceland," Tierney confirmed.
"Do we know anything more specific than the entire country?" Kristen asked, standing up from the couch and stretching her arms above her head. "Because Iceland is not a small place."
"We know the region," KaSandra said. "The signal Carlyle and Katherine held was consistent with the southern coast. There is a small town there. I will give you everything you need before you leave."
"When do we go?" Niall asked.
Everyone looked at Tierney.
Tierney looked at Thomas.
Thomas looked at the cold coffee in his hand, set it down on the bookshelf beside him, and said, "Give us a week to prepare. Weapons, supplies, travel arrangements." He looked around the room at all of them, at these people who had come into this house as teenagers with no idea what they were and were now standing in it as something else entirely, something still forming, still becoming. "And someone tell me we have passports."
A beat of silence.
"I have one," Niall offered.
"Mine expired," Kristen said.
"Courtney?" Thomas looked at her.
Courtney winced apologetically.
Thomas closed his eyes briefly. "Okay," he said. "Ten days."
"I can have the documents ready in three," KaSandra said, and the calm certainty in her voice made it clear that when she said documents she did not necessarily mean the kind that came from a government office.
Thomas opened his eyes and looked at her. "I will not ask how."
"Good," KaSandra said pleasantly. "Then we understand each other."
Katherine was looking at the window, at the pale winter light coming through the glass. Somewhere across an ocean, in a country of wind and cold and open sky, there was a girl who could feel storms before they arrived and had never been able to explain why.
She was done losing the signal.
She was going to find her.