“I already told you.”
Pain suddenly shot through every part of my body. It was a strange mixture of things, crawling all over my skin and setting my nerve endings ablaze. If you could somehow combine the discomfort of electric shocks, bee stings, and paper cuts, it would feel kind of like what I experienced. It only lasted a few seconds, but I found myself screaming out in pain nonetheless.
The light on Sheridan turned off, plunging us into darkness, but when she spoke again, it was clear she hadn’t moved. “That was the lowest setting and only a taste at that. Please don’t make me do it again. I want to know how you got the ID card and what you were out looking for.”
This time, I didn’t lie to her. I simply stayed silent.
The pain returned at the same intensity, but it lasted much longer this time. I couldn’t form any coherent thought while it was happening. Every particular of my being was too fixated on that terrible, excruciating agony. One of the things I’d loved about getting intimate with Adrian—aside from the obvious, like that he was insanely sexy and good at what he did—was that it often proved to be a rare moment when my always-thinking brain took a break, allowing me to become all about the physical experience at hand. That was kind of what was happening now, except the physical experience in question was pretty much as far from what I’d had with Adrian as one could get. My brain couldn’t think of anything. All there was just then was my body and its pain.
I had tears in my eyes when the pain stopped, and I barely heard Sheridan rattling off her questions again. She also added a couple more, like, “How did you avoid detection?” and “How did you get out of your room?” I barely had time to answer, even if I’d wanted to, before the pain resumed. When it ended an eternity later, she came back at me with the questions. Then the cycle repeated.
During one of the brief respites, I managed enough coherent thought to understand her process. She was throwing different questions at me in the hopes I’d be so pushed to a breaking point from the pain that I’d blurt out an answer to something—anything. It probably didn’t matter to them at first. Getting me started talking was their goal, and I had a feeling that prisoners in my situation didn’t stop talking once those floodgates were opened. There’d be a strong urge to tell everything to make the pain go away. I was certainly feeling that urge now, and I had to physically bite my lip to keep from telling her whatever she wanted. I also tried to mentally focus on the faces of those I loved, Adrian and my friends. That worked a little during the lulls, but once the torture started again, no thought or image could stay in my mind.
“I’m going to be sick,” I said at one point. I didn’t know how long it had been. Seconds, hours, days. Sheridan didn’t seem to believe me until I actually started coughing and retching. It was a different kind of sick from the purging, which was medically induced. This was my body’s response to more than it could physically handle. Someone came to me from the opposite side of the room from her and undid enough of my restraints to turn me on my side, where I choked up what little was in my stomach. I didn’t know if they were fast enough to have a receptacle to catch it in and really didn’t care. That was their problem.
As the worst of the vomiting subsided, I could barely make out Sheridan speaking quietly with someone else across the room.
“Go get an ‘assistant’ to help us,” she said.
A male voice sounded skeptical. “There’s no love between any of them.”
“I’ve seen her type. What she won’t give up for herself, she might for someone else.”
The sound of a door indicated her colleague left, and as I was re-restrained and wiped clean, her words triggered an awful realization. Someone betrayed me! Sheridan had been specifically looking for me, which was how the spell had been unraveled. I’d been foolish to think making the salt ink would create some kind of bond between the others and me. The only upside to this was that I’d disabled the gas, as planned, but now what would the cost be?
That was as far as I could speculate because the torture began anew—and incredibly, it was worse. I didn’t get sick, maybe because my body couldn’t muster the effort, but I couldn’t stop my screams from filling the room. I hated myself for showing them that weakness, for admitting that they were getting to me … but it was all I could do not to tell them every secret I had during those pauses. I will not talk, I vowed. If I’m going down for this, then I’ll do it with them knowing they’re not as powerful as they think.
“Why do you make us keep doing this, Sydney?” Sheridan asked in that mock sad tone of hers. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” I gasped out.
“And here I thought you were making such progress. I was nearly ready to reward you for your good behavior. Maybe a visit from your family. Maybe this.”
The tiny spotlight appeared on her again, and something in her hand shimmered. It was my cross, the little wooden one Adrian had made me, painted with morning glories. They’d tried to bribe me with it when I first arrived, as though one material object was all it would take to break me. Seeing it now made my chest ache—though that could’ve possibly been an aftereffect from the torture—and my eyes blurred with tears of sadness now, not pain.
“You could have it now,” she said congenially. “You could have it, and we could stop the pain. All you need to do is tell us what we want to know. It really is a lovely piece.” She held it up admiringly and then, to my complete and utter horror, she put it around her own neck. “If you don’t want it, I might as well keep it.”
I nearly told her it was made by a vampire but worried that might make her destroy it. So I stayed silent, letting my rage seethe within me—at least until the torture started again, and only agony seethed within me.
I lost track of time again until her colleague returned. This brought a reprieve from the pain, and a few new spotlights went on, including one shining uncomfortably in my face. The light also revealed the man hadn’t come back alone.
“Look, Sydney,” Sheridan said. “We brought you a friend.”
The man dragged someone up to my table. Emma. I nearly accused her of betrayal then and there. After all, she was the perfect candidate. She had her sister’s crimes to overcompensate for as well as her own. She’d gotten the salt ink from me already and had nothing to lose by turning me in, especially if she could convince them of her own innocence. She was also the only person who’d known for sure that I was out roaming the facility last night.
And yet … there was a terror in her eyes that kept me from making any accusations. Maybe she was the likeliest traitor, but on the off chance she wasn’t, I couldn’t insinuate she might be privy to any of my plans. “Who said she’s my friend?” I asked instead.
“Well, she’s about to share your experience,” said Sheridan. “If that’s not a basis for friendship, I don’t know what is.” She gave a curt nod, and Emma was dragged off out of my line of sight. Another assistant came forward, helping me to sit up so that I’d have a better view of what was taking place: They were restraining Emma on to a table just like mine.
“P-please,” she stammered, as helpless in her struggles as I had been. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what this is about.”
“She’s right,” I said. “She doesn’t know anything. You’re wasting your time.”
“We don’t care what she knows,” said Sheridan cheerfully. “We still want to know what you know. And if the methods of persuasion we’ve used on you don’t work, perhaps you’ll be more forthcoming seeing them on others.”
“Persuasion,” I said in disgust. “That’s what the P on the doors stands for. We’re on the lowest level.”
“Indeed,” said Sheridan. “You went on quite the little tour last night, judging from all the doors you used that card on. Tell us why you did it and how you didn’t show up on any cameras, or else …”
She gave another nod, and in the split second before Emma started screaming, I understood what had
happened. She hadn’t betrayed me. No one had. I’d screwed up on my own. I’d worried the guy whose card I had might report it missing and get it disabled. No doubt he had reported it, but rather than deactivate it, they’d waited to see if anyone used it. Their system would have recorded every instance it had been scanned. I’d been an idiot, laying out the perfect trail for them to follow, with only the invisibility spell saving me from immediate capture. I’d hopefully checked enough places to obscure my intentions, especially since the mechanical rooms hadn’t required card access. The odds were good no one knew what I’d pulled off.
But that didn’t save Emma from being subjected to the same torture I had been. My skin crawled, watching that pain wrack her body, and I felt ill in an entirely new way.
“She’s an innocent in this!” I exclaimed when they took their break. “How sick do you have to be to do this?”
Sheridan chuckled. “No one’s truly innocent—at least not around here. But if you do believe she is, it makes it that much sadder that you’re letting her suffer like this.”
I stared at Emma and felt torn with indecision. How could I give up all my plans? And yet, how could I let this go on? My deliberation was read as defiance, and they resumed the procedure. I couldn’t handle watching it, and when the next break came, I blurted out, “What do you think I was doing? I was looking for the way out!”
Sheridan held up her hand to halt whatever unseen torturer wielded the controls. “Did you succeed?”
“Do you think I’d be here if I had?” I snapped. “The only thing I saw was in your reflection control room, and you’ve got that pretty well guarded.”
“How did you move around without being seen?” she demanded.
“I evaded your cameras,” I said.
At Sheridan’s nod, Emma was subjected to more pain, her body flailing like a ragdoll’s as it tried to cope with the waves of agony coursing through her.
“I answered!” I exclaimed.
“You lied,” Sheridan returned coolly. “There’s no way you could have avoided all of them. No one noticed anything on camera at the time, but after extensive review, we found one small clip that shows what looks like a stairway door opening—just barely—by itself. We almost missed it and only noticed on later replays. Explain.”
I stayed silent, thinking I could endure watching Emma be tortured again. But I couldn’t. Not when it was because of my actions. Her screams seemed to fill every part of the room, and she bucked against the restraints in a desperate effort to alleviate the pain. I tried reasoning with myself as those shrieks went on and on, that this was only a temporary discomfort, that Emma had known what she was signing up for when she started helping me. Surely the greater good was worth one person’s suffering?
That cold logic almost had me convinced until I finally saw tears streaming from her eyes. I cracked.
“Magic!” I yelled, trying to make myself heard above her cries. “I did it with magic.” Sheridan signaled for the torture to stop and looked at me expectantly. “I moved around with magic. Human magic. And if you think torturing her will get me to tell you more about that, you’re wrong. You can torture her and everyone else in this place, and I won’t say another word. Talking about it involves people on the outside, and next to them, the people here mean nothing.”
It was kind of a bluff. I didn’t know if I could truly stand against mass torture of the other detainees, but Sheridan either believed me or had bigger concerns.
“I didn’t think it’d happen again,” she muttered.
“It always happens. Eventually,” said her colleague. He gestured one of the assistants in the darkness forward to Emma. “Get her up and back to her floor. There’s no telling what kind of damaging propaganda’s been spread. We’re going to have to do a mass re-inking.”
My heart sank. I’d only gotten to about half the detainees! The rest of the ink was still hidden in my bed.
“I didn’t convert anyone if that’s what you’re worried about,” I said.
“I told you, there are no innocents here,” said Sheridan. “Get Emma back to her level, and get Sydney back on the table.”
“I’ve told you everything I’m going to tell you,” I protested as the assistants came forward. Emma was dragged away. “Your torture didn’t work on me before.”
Sheridan gave a low throaty laugh, and all the lights went out again. “Oh, Sydney. Now that I know what you are, I don’t feel bad in the least about really turning up the intensity. We don’t know everything about human magic users, but there is one thing we’ve learned over the years: They’re remarkably resilient. So let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 16
Adrian
WHEN A SECOND NIGHT WENT BY with no contact from Sydney, I knew something had definitely gone wrong. I could tell Marcus was worried too, but he did his best to try to put me at ease.
“Look, she said there was some gas in her room that knocked them out, right? Maybe the Alchemists discovered it was off and just fixed it again. She lived that way for three months and wasn’t in trouble—I mean, not in more than the usual trouble of re-education.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But even if that’s true, don’t you think they’d wonder how it got broken in the first place? She could be punished by association.”
Marcus’s phone rang before he could respond to me, and I waved him off to answer. He’d been on the phone nearly nonstop since we’d gotten the hit on Death Valley, always coordinating with some agent or another. We’d arrived in the area yesterday, discovering that there was really no place to stay in Death Valley itself, which kind of made sense. Our base of operation had therefore become a motel in a rundown town fifteen miles away from the state park. There were no restaurants, so we got all our food from a convenience store across the street that was run by a kindly woman named Mavis, who constantly worried about me because of my complexion. “You need more sun, darlin’,” she kept saying.
What you need is blood, Aunt Tatiana had remarked at the time. Not from her, of course. We have standards. She’d been right on the first count. It had been a few days since I’d had blood at Court, and although I could go a few more before noticing any major physical discomfort, it was a problem I’d need to eventually remedy.
As Marcus spoke on the phone now, I wandered to the window of our room, which overlooked Main Street and the convenience store, as well as a gas station. By the motel’s standards, it was the best view in the place. To my surprise, a familiar car suddenly pulled up into the motel’s parking lot, its sunny color a bright contrast to this otherwise dreary town. Without saying a word to Marcus, I headed out of our room and down the stairs.
Eddie and Trey were getting out of my Mustang when I stepped outside. Even this early in the day, the heat was rising considerably, creating shimmering mirages on the asphalt. “Survive exams?” I asked.
“For the second time in my life, yes,” said Eddie.
“They’re actually still going on today,” said Trey. “But Ms. T pulled some strings with the other teachers so that we could finish up yesterday. She sent this—for when we get Sydney back.”
I accepted a small tote bag that was filled with all sorts of witchy accoutrements—herbs, amulets, and a book that meant nothing to me but that would probably elate Sydney. When we get Sydney back. Trey had spoken with such confidence, and I hoped it was warranted. These last two nights of silence had been rough on me.
“And I brought this,” said Eddie, with a wry smile. He handed over Hopper, whom I’d left at the apartment, still immortalized in gold. I touched the finely carved scales and then slipped the little dragon into the tote bag with the other magical items. “Any updates on Sydney?”
I beckoned them forward. “Come on up to HQ and out of the heat.”
Marcus was off the phone when we returned to the room, and he greeted the newcomers with friendly nods. “Just confirmed we’ve got three guys—well, one’s a girl—coming to help us tomorrow. Two of them used to be in
re-education. They had no idea it was here, of course, but as you can imagine, they’re kind of holding a grudge. They’ve got some intel on what the layout’s like inside, though not nearly as much as I’d like. Meanwhile, we’ve finally got some hard data on the exterior. If you can believe it, they actually mask themselves as a desert research facility. They’re outside the park proper too, probably about twelve miles from where we are now. This is actually the closest town to them. I wouldn’t be surprised if Alchemists stopped here for gas on their way to work.”
It was all good data, but it suddenly seemed lacking when Eddie asked, “Have you heard from Sydney?”
Marcus’s face, which had momentarily seemed upbeat, fell again. “No. We’ve been out of contact for two nights.”
“We don’t need to make contact to raid the place, though, right?” asked Trey. “We can just show up and bust her out.”
“Sure,” Marcus agreed, “but it would be nice to have a contact on the inside as this goes down.”
I slumped down onto one of the room’s narrow beds, which creaked under my weight. “And it would just be nice to know she’s okay.”
“Too bad there’s no one else we can contact,” said Eddie. “You don’t have any leads on other prisoners there?”
Marcus shook his head as he explained what they knew, and the old familiar despair started to settle over me. Plunging into sobriety and using spirit daily was a deadly combination for my mood swings, and I’d been fighting them constantly. Sydney’s latest disappearance had sort of shattered whatever fine control I’d held on to until this point. It’d be a wonder if my sanity lasted until we got her back.
Sanity’s overrated, my darling, I heard Aunt Tatiana say.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Go away, I silently told her. I need to listen to them.
What’s the use? she asked.
I need to focus. I need to get in touch with Sydney to make sure she’s okay and get info about what’s going on inside.