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🍪 — 013. isa meets her soulmate.
ISA HALF EXPECTED the sun dragons and the crazy sorceress to follow them, but nothing like that happened. She sat behind Leo as he steered the dragon toward the southwest. Eventually, the smoke from the burning department store faded in the distance, but none of them didn't relax until the suburbs of Chicago gave way to snowy fields, and the sun began to set.
"Good job, Festus." he patted the dragon's metal hide. "You did awesome."
The dragon shuddered. Gears popped and clicked in his neck.
"I'll give you a tune-up next time we land," Leo promised. "You've earned some motor oil and Tabasco sauce."
Festus whirled his teeth, but even that sounded weak.
"Leo." Piper said from behind Isa, "You feeling okay?"
"Yeah. . . not bad for a brainwashed zombie." Leo said, "Thanks for saving us back there, beauty queen. If you hadn't talked me out of that spell ─ "
"Don't worry about it," Piper said.
But Isa was the one to be worried. She felt mad at herself at how easily Medea manipulated her and charmspoke her. The girl wondered what the sorceress said about her patron having plans for Isa; that scared her, but she didn't want to say anything.
"We're going to have to put down soon," Leo warned his friends. "Couple more hours, maybe, to make sure Medea's not following us. I don't think Festus can fly much longer than that."
"Yeah," Isa agreed. "Gleeson probably wants to get out of his canary cage, too. Question is ─ where are we going?"
"The Bay Area," Leo guessed. "Didn't Medea say something about Oakland?"
Piper didn't respond.
"Piper's dad," Jason put in. "Something's happened to your dad, right? He got lured into some kind of trap."
Piper let out a shaky breath. "Look, Medea said you would both die in the Bay Area. And besides. . . even if we went there, the Bay Area is huge! First we need to find Aeolus and drop off the storm spirits. Boreas said Aeolus was the only one who could tell us exactly where to go."
Leo grunted. "So how do we find Aeolus?"
Jason leaned forward. "You mean you don't see it?"
He pointed ahead of them, but Isa didn't see anything except clouds and the lights of a few towns glowing in the dusk.
