CHAPTER 24. It tasted as bitter as always, but as I drank, Markelle lifted her eyes

It tasted as bitter as always, but as I drank, Markelle lifted her eyes. There was nothing obvious in them, no wink, no expectation. Yet, somehow, I knew. I knew. It was the fake again.

Satisfied that I’d swallowed it all, Abigail gave me a withering glance. “We need you cleaned up. That fool is coming for you again later tonight, and he did a number on that dress last time. He wants you looking good, though, so…” She gave a half-hearted shrug. Naturally, I couldn’t tell her that my dress’s rumpled and slightly torn state had nothing to do with Leith’s sexual aggression, but, rather, an angry spirit bent on killing me.

Markelle’s eyes were downcast once more. “Should I get her a new dress?”

“No. You’ve got to clean up too. Art’s going to be here in a little while for you.”

The girl flinched, but Abigail didn’t seem to notice. But then, why would she? She didn’t notice any of these girls, not really. And I knew what those words meant. Markelle’s time had come. “I’ll send in that freckled one, once she wakes up again.”

I realized that she was me and that I should allegedly be going under. I sank back against the covers, blinking like I was trying to stay awake. The two of them left, Markelle giving me one last fleeting glance. There were a lot of things in her wide eyes as she looked at me. Fear. Hope. Anxiety.

I exhaled once they were gone and sat up. Plan time. My muscles were still weak, but they reminded me more of what you’d feel after a hard run. What had Markelle said before? Twelve hours was the normal dose? I was at that point. The nightshade had to be significantly wearing off. Theoretically, my magic should be returning too and—

“Why, hello,” I murmured. I’d sent my mind out into the room and had just barely—barely—felt the tingle of air and water. I wasn’t going to be blowing anyone apart soon, but the magic was coming back. And when it did, these assholes were fucked.

But I needed to wait this out. I wasn’t going to jump the gun like I had with Volusian. Every minute brought the magic and my strength back. I had to use this downtime to assess the situation. Abigail was in the house still. Art and Leith were eventually coming back—together or apart, I didn’t know. The one thing I felt confident of was that I did not want to face all of them at the same time. That meant Abigail had to be taken out first, but I was going to need help.

In what must have been a little over an hour, Cariena slipped in with a pink silk dress. It reminded me of something Maiwenn would wear. Apparently, no one had gotten the memo that redheads don’t wear pink. I stood up and took the dress from Cariena, promptly tossing it on the bed. She looked aghast that I’d gotten up without falling over. Considering all that had happened recently, I couldn’t blame her.

“Your m-majesty, what—”

“Cariena, we’re getting out of here.”

“We can’t!”

“Oh, we can, and we are. Where’s Markelle?” I had a feeling I was going to need an accomplice with a bit more boldness. “And Raina?” I rarely saw the third gentry girl around here and had no clue to her attitude, but she needed to be accounted for.

“Raina’s in her room. She was—disrespectful. And Markelle is preparing herself.”

Preparing herself for a lifetime as a sex slave. I grimaced. “And Abigail?”

“She’s upstairs. Watching…” Cariena groped for the unfamiliar word. “…the television.”

“Okay, okay.” My mind was spinning now. It seemed to be recovering faster than my body. “Here’s the deal. I need a weapon. Is there anything you’ve seen that would work as one?”

“We can’t do this. We can’t—”

“We can,” I ordered, making my voice hard and fierce. This girl had been beaten into weakness, and if those shamans scared her, I would make sure that I—her queen—scared her more. “And you will obey me. You’re my subject. You’ll get out of this alive—I swear it. You’ll see your family.”

She was still scared out of her mind, but she gave a weak nod. “I see Abigail and the Red Snake Man carry weapons, but there are none around. I couldn’t touch them anyway.”

“Alright. We’ll make do with…hey, is the garage attached to the house?”

“Garage?”

“Another building. One where they keep cars.” I recalled the garage but didn’t know if it connected directly to the house. Surely she knew what a car was.

She nodded. “Yes. They go in and out of it sometimes. It’s attached to the kitchen.”

“When you come down here, whose room do you pass first out there in the hall? Mine or Markelle’s?”

“Yours…” Cariena was clearly puzzled now.

“Perfect. I know what we’re going to do. Take me to Markelle.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, and I knew this was the turning point of whether she could help or not. The door was unlocked; I didn’t need her. But if I didn’t have her assistance, I’d have to knock her out to keep her out of the way.

“This way,” she said at last.

Markelle nearly threw herself into my arms when we walked into her room.

“Your majesty! I knew you’d do it. I knew you could…”

She wore a strappy little red sundress and had been applying makeup. Funny. I got dressed up like gentry royalty, and the girls here were dressed like human whores.

“Shh,” I said. “We’re not out of here yet.”

I hastily whispered my plan to them. Markelle understood instantly, and although Cariena still seemed terrified, she also appeared determined. I returned to my room, body tensed for action as I waited for my plan to unfold. Pressing my ear to the closed door, I listened as Cariena’s feet thudded up the stairs. Presumably she spoke to Abigail, but I couldn’t hear anything. A few moments later, two sets of feet came downstairs, walked past my room, and went to Markelle’s.

I opened my door a crack to make sure the hall was empty. Next door, I could hear Markelle having the nervous breakdown we’d planned—saying she was afraid to leave, afraid to meet this man, didn’t know what to wear…. Abigail, clearly irritated, began to scold her, much as she had responded to Leith’s whining. I waited to hear no more and turned in the opposite direction, heading for the stairs.

When I reached the main floor, I did a double-take. The house was beautiful, all new construction and designer decorating as befitted the neighborhood Art lived in. The gentry sex dungeon below us kind of detracted from the maple cupboards and crown molding, though. All the curtains were closed, the windows covered with iron grating, and outside I could just barely make out the Sleeping Beauty hedges blocking the windows too. Art’s lawn maintenance had been about more than aesthetics. The patio drapes I’d so admired weren’t laced with silver thread. It was iron.

The garage was adjacent to the kitchen, just as Cariena had said. The top half of the door leading out to it had a window covered with more iron grating. I turned the doorknob. Locked. There were no signs of keys anywhere, which meant I’d have to do it the hard way. First, I double-checked the kitchen and living room, looking for any other weapon options. On a good day, I could have taken Abigail with my own fists. This was not a good day. Kitchen drawers revealed butter knives, nothing sharper.

With a sigh, I returned to the garage door. This was it. The grating was loosely bolted, enough to keep it up and prevent the girls from touching it. Hoping I’d gained enough strength, I gripped the sides of it and tried to jerk it off. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, in one movement, it ripped from the wood. I froze, waiting to see if anyone downstairs had heard, but the deed appeared to have been performed fairly silently.

The next part, I knew, would not be so quiet. I dragged a chair up to the door and then grabbed a smaller stool used to get into high cupboards. It was metal and had some heft to it. Would it be enough? I stood on the chair and swung the stool forward into the door’s window. Yup. Enough heft. More than half of the glass broke. One more swing got the rest of it out, and I climbed through the hole into the garage. The whole maneuver was a bit awkward on my part; I wasn’t in that good of shape yet. But, I made it through, incurring only a few cuts on my arms and legs.

I knew, however, I was seconds away from Abigail’s arrival. There was no way that breaking glass had gone unnoticed. Small patches of light streamed into the darkened garage from narrow windows as I peered around. Yes, it was a normal garage—albeit it one with a Jaguar in it. I guessed that was why Art had to keep the SUV in the driveway. Part of me wanted to go kick in the car’s door, but there was no time. I had to assess the garage’s other contents. Scattered tools. Bags of fertilizer. Art’s gardening equipment. A heavy metal wrench held my attention for a moment, but then I decided I needed more leverage with my weakened state. I selected a shovel from Art’s gardening stash, its scoop heavy metal and wooden handle sturdy.

From inside the house, I could hear shouting. It wasn’t going to take Abigail long to figure out where I’d gone when she saw the glass. Grateful for the darkness, I darted over to the side of the door that led into the house, pressing myself as flat as I could against the wall. There was a click as the door from the kitchen opened, but no one came out right away. I could picture Abigail standing there, looking around for any sign of me.

After several heavy seconds, I saw a hand holding a blade—an athame—come out the door first, defensively positioned in case I came charging at her. That wasn’t my intent, though. I wanted to get her from behind. She took one step out, still cautious and slow, looking around everywhere. I had to give her credit for that. She didn’t just barrel forward; she knew I might be waiting by the door. And in fact, when she looked in my direction, that’s exactly what I was doing. My shovel hit her in the side of the head before she could react.

She crumpled to the ground, athame clattering against the concrete floor as it fell from her hands. I knelt down and immediately scooped it up and left the shovel. There was a bloody mark where I’d struck her, and her eyes were only half-open. My hand checked her pulse and found she wasn’t dead yet. She was going to have a hell of a headache or concussion when she woke up—which wasn’t something I could allow to happen any time soon.

I left her lying there on the garage floor and stepped back into the kitchen. I opened a few cupboards and found what I’d hoped I would: the household’s stash of medicine. Tylenol, multivitamins, et cetera. Behind them were a couple of prescription bottles. One I didn’t recognize, but I thought it was some sort of heart medication. The other was Ambien, and I smiled. Just like me, a lot of shamans were insomniacs.

I popped a pill out of the bottle, reconsidered, and grabbed a second. I then propped up Abigail and managed to shove the pills down her throat, with the help of a glass of water and some acrobatics with my fingers. “Payback’s a bitch,” I said when her reflexes kicked in and she swallowed the pills the rest of the way. She wouldn’t be waking up any time soon.

I stepped back into the kitchen and saw all three gentry girls standing there and staring at me. Cariena and Raina looked afraid. Markelle, though she bore a red slap mark on her face from the confrontation earlier with Abigail, looked excited and defiant. I ordered them to carry Abigail downstairs and lock her in one of the rooms. I didn’t know which way Art would enter the house and couldn’t risk him finding her on the garage floor. Of course, if he did come in through the garage, the shattered glass was going to be a dead giveaway that something was up.

Before they took Abigail away, I frisked her, hoping to find another weapon. Nope. Just the athame I’d already taken. I did, however, discover something nearly as useful: a set of keys. On the ring were several tiny keys, the ones that opened up the iron cuffs and bracelets the girls wore. Once they’d stashed Abigail away, I removed all the iron. Relief flooded the girls’ faces, and I scowled when I saw the welts and bruises left from where iron reacted with gentry skin.

“You should have your magic back,” I said, reaching for the phone. “We can use it when we get out of here. What can you guys do?”

I was dialing Roland’s cell phone, and the girls described their magic to me as the line rang. Cariena had a knack for helping plants grow, kind of like Shaya. Raina had some healing ability. Markelle could summon beams and balls of light. I disconnected when I got Roland’s voice mail and promptly dialed Kiyo.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. None of the girls’ powers were going to help us. And honestly? It wasn’t a surprise. If I were Leith and had wanted to catch girls who would make docile servants, I too would have picked ones with little or no offensive magic.

Kiyo’s phone rang only once before going to voice mail, meaning it was off or he was in the Otherworld. I hung up and prepared to dial my parents’ home number. If Roland hadn’t answered his cell, he likely wasn’t home either, but I had to try. Before I could punch in the numbers, I heard the sound of keys at the front door on the far side of the house. I turned to the girls.

“Downstairs!” I hissed. “Now!”

Markelle looked like she would have stayed, but a stern glance from me sent her scurrying down with the others. Meanwhile, Art’s voice rang through the house.

“Abigail?”

I’m not sure how he knew something was wrong. For all he knew, Abigail could have just been downstairs. Maybe it was just some sixth sense, but I heard him hurrying down the hall toward the kitchen, footsteps fast on the hardwood floor. I had a split second to react, no chance to find a hiding spot as I had with Abigail. Surprise was my greatest weapon now. As soon as he entered the room, I leapt on him with the athame.

The thing that gave me a fighting chance was that he’d armed himself too well in his wariness, a gun in one hand and an athame of his own in the other. Full hands prevented him from fully deflecting my attack, though in many ways, the strength of his arms were more than good enough to block the worst of it. I got a swipe in on his face, however, gaining a fair amount of satisfaction in seeing the blood it produced.

“You bitch,” he said, circling with me in the kitchen as we each sized each other up for an attack. “Where’s Abigail?”

“Taking a nap,” I said. I gave him a wicked smile, hoping I sounded stronger than I felt. With that one shove alone, I’d been painfully reminded that I was not in peak condition quite yet. I couldn’t let him know how weak I was. “Don’t worry. You can join her.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let him keep you here,” Art growled. “I should have made him drag you back by your hair to your own fucking world like a caveman. But he was too afraid they’d find you.”

“It’s too late. They know I’m here already. See the phone? I got a call in just before you arrived.”

A lie, but an effective one as it turned out. Art’s eyes flicked to the portable phone lying on the kitchen floor. It had come open when I dropped it, and the battery lay nearby. With that slight distraction, I tried again, lunging toward him. I got a kick in—not as strong as one of my usual ones, particularly since I was still in that fucking gentry dress—but enough to throw him off-balance. He was still stronger and faster, though. He’d dropped the athame earlier and grabbed me with that free hand, wrenching my arm painfully to get me to drop my athame. In his other hand, he held the gun but seemed hesitant to use it.

At last, his hand was too strong, and my fingers unclenched, releasing the blade and leaving me defenseless. Triumphant, Art slammed me back against the cupboard and tried to turn me around, probably to bind my hands. I’d noticed a glitter near his pocket earlier and suspected he had handcuffs on him. I fought him the whole time, refusing to turn around, and with only one hand free, he had a bit of difficulty in maneuvering me.

“Stop struggling, or I’ll blow your head off,” he yelled. “No one’s coming, and you know it. Play nice, or there’s nothing that Leith can offer me to keep you alive.”

“I doubt that. Your whoring operation seems to bring in a lot of money. Are you going to give that up so easily?”

“There are other ways to get gentry girls,” he grunted, still trying to shove me around and subdue me. The unfortunate thing was, he was getting closer. My strength was rapidly fading. “Other people will make deals. I don’t need Leith or his half-breed whore to—ah!”

I saw the chair before I saw Markelle. It was the one I’d used to climb through the garage door. Abigail had shoved it aside when she went outside, and now Markelle had snuck up and clobbered Art with it from behind. It was hardly a blow to render him unconscious, but it caused him to release me and stagger back. Markelle immediately scrambled away, but Art’s attention wasn’t on her. His eyes were back on me. Weak or not, I knew I had to use that opening to take him down. I surged forward again, fists ready and—

He shot me.

So help me, that bastard shot me. The bullet took me in the right shoulder, and I flew back against the cupboards, sinking down to the floor as my left hand instinctively flew to the wound to stop the blood. Art walked swiftly toward me, gun pointed down. “The next one goes through your heart,” he said. “Now turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“I’m kind of fucking bleeding here,” I snapped back. My shoulder was on fire, and I couldn’t even really move my arm. “How much more incapacitated could I get?”

His smile was bitter. “Eugenie, you won’t be incapacitated enough until you’re dead.”

I saw Markelle come up behind him again. Her chair was gone, but her fists were out as she pounded him on the back, desperately trying to get him away from me. It was noble and tugged at my heart, but I wanted to yell at her to get the hell out of here. She was no more than a mosquito to him. With ease, he turned around and backhanded her, and I swear, she hit the floor harder than I had when I was shot.

In those fleeting seconds, I snaked one of my feet out as hard as I could manage and hit Art in the shin. He stumbled, leg buckling, but didn’t fall. The gun, however, did fall from his hands. It hit the floor with a clatter and slid far out of my reach—but not out of Cariena’s. She’d apparently been standing on the far side of the kitchen this entire time. When the gun slid up to her, the timid girl didn’t hesitate. She picked it up—screaming as her fingers made contact with the metal and polymers—and slid it back across the floor to me.

I grabbed it. All the while, Art’s eyes had been following the gun’s journey, so when it came to my hand, he was facing me. I had the gun aimed in a flash, and while I wasn’t a great shot with my left hand, I wasn’t horrible either. No hesitation: I fired. The bullet bit into his chest, and he fell backward, blood immediately pouring from the wound. I’d hit the mark.

Markelle and Cariena ran up to me, Raina following moments later. “Are you all right?” exclaimed Markelle.

“Me?” I asked incredulously. “He smacked you across the room.”

She shrugged. “They’ve done worse since I’ve been here.”

Between the three of them, they managed to help me to my feet without putting too much pressure on the wounded shoulder. Raina attempted some of her healing magic—maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss their powers after all—and we found bandages to wrap the wound. Her power only lessened the pain; she could do nothing more extensive.

“It’s made of iron,” she said apologetically. Of course it was. Art would have had it loaded for wayward gentry.

“It’s okay. I’m fine.” We were back in the kitchen, and I was leaning against the counter, attempting to straighten the bandage. We were all kind of trying to ignore Art’s body. “Okay. I can try to call for help again, but I think we need to get out of here on foot. I know where the gateway is, and it’s kind of a long ways, but we should be able to—”

“Eugenie? What’s going on?”

I’d set the gun on the counter while tugging my bandages straight, but in the blink of an eye, the revolver was back in my left hand, pointed toward the new addition in the kitchen. I knew the voice before I saw the face. How could I not? I’d been listening to that voice over and over this whole week, both sleeping and awake. A voice that was a contradiction because it promised love and devotion while only delivering pain and humiliation.

I’d numbed out the worst of it with sheer will and the nightshade’s effects. But now, pumped full of adrenaline, on the verge of escape and in control of my senses, the true magnitude of it all slammed into me. The horror. The terror. The helplessness. Emotion after emotion burned through me, but in the space of a breath, my mind immediately dispatched any feelings that wouldn’t help me right now. That left only the dark ones. Rage. Fury. Malice.

I tightened my hold on the gun and narrowed my eyes at the man I hated most in the world.

“Hello, Leith.”

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