by D. N. Hoxa
“I didn’t kill or kidnap anyone and you know it,” I said through gritted teeth. I’d known they’d want to put all that had happened on me. Very convenient—and who was going to make them work harder to really figure out who was behind this?
Me, that’s who.
“Why don’t you tell me what you know so I can lock you in a holding cell where you’ll be perfectly safe while you await your trial? It’s a good offer, Monroe,” Dumont said, and he sounded like he meant it.
“It’s a shit offer I have no intention of accepting. I have information—more information than you about what’s going on, and I’m going to tell it all to Christopher Ford. Now, be a good kitten and go make the call.”
He clenched his teeth so hard, I heard it all the way from across the table.
“If you didn’t do it, who did? And why?”
“There’s a picture inside the folder I had with me when I got here. Show it to Ford. Tell him that all of them are gone. Some of them might already be dead. Tell him he’s next.”
“Are you threatening the head of the Order of Magians?” Dumont said.
“Wow, you’re a very shitty interrogator, Detective,” I mumbled. “I’m not threatening anyone. He’s the target of whoever is doing this, and he needs to know. Now, before it’s too late.”
“Where did you get the picture? Who told you that everyone was gone?”
I pulled my lips inside my mouth to show him that I was not going to tell him anything.
“All right. What about the dogs? This was obviously not the first time you saw them. Or fought them. What are they and where do they come from?”
I kept completely silent and never broke eye contact. It was in times like these that I really wished I had two good eyes. It made staring down someone easier.
“He’s not going to want to listen, Monroe. You’re wasting both our times here,” he said, desperate to control his anger, but it slipped through his voice.
“Then I’ll happily await my trial. But call him, Dumont. Call him now.”
He tried to ask me more questions. He even asked me about Logan, but I kept my mouth shut. Not a single word.
Eventually, Dumont gave up. He seemed rather disappointed. He took me to the other side of the building and into one of the seven holding cells—all empty. I was thankful for that, at least. He put me in the first one, closest to the door. The room was small, surrounded by thick, white bars built close together. It had a steel bench on one side with perfectly round edges and a small toilet in the corner behind a sheet of the same steel, which didn’t do much to hide anything. And it smelled awful in there, too, but I wasn’t complaining. If this is what it took to get Christopher Ford to come to me, I’d take it. I just hoped that Nana could afford to wait, too.
16
Another woman came to interrogate me, but she didn’t bother to take me to the interrogation room. She just dragged a chair in front of the bars and sat. A mage, if I were to guess, very comfortable to show off her perfect shape in a tight skirt and almost see-through white shirt. I almost asked her where she bought the nude lipstick she was wearing but stopped myself.
She asked me a lot of questions. Not only about the recent events but about my life before I came to Richmond, too. She wanted to know where I’d been, how I’d survived. She even went as far as to ask me how many people I’d killed in the time I’d been on the run from the Magian Ministry. I just smiled and winked at her. She was less than thrilled.
She was persistent, I’d give her that, but almost an hour later, she gave up when she realized that I wasn’t going to say anything when I spoke, other than: “I want to speak to Christopher Ford.”
I don’t know how much time passed. Eventually, I slept on the steel bench and got chased by evil dogs to the edge of the world. When I woke up, I felt more tired than the night before. They brought me food eventually: two pieces of toast, scrambled eggs, two pieces of cheese and some pudding that smelled weird. I ate because I was starving and I was going to need my energy for the day, assuming it was already morning. There were no windows that I could see, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was at least eight a.m.
I was singing to myself, trying to keep myself distracted from the fact that Nana might not have time to wait for me to figure all this out. I wondered if she regretted coming to me for help. When the door opened with a buzz and Dumont came in, he’d changed clothes and looked just like me—worse today than he had the last time I saw him.
“You look well rested,” I mumbled. Couldn’t help myself.
“You, too,” he said with a grin and stopped in front of the door with his hands in the pockets of his grey trousers.
“I take it you’re not here to let me out?” Easy guess.
“I’m here to tell you that I’ve spoken to Mr. Ford, and he has no intention whatsoever of meeting you before your trial date,” he said.
It felt like a sack of rocks fell at the bottom of my stomach.
“He won’t make it to my trial date. I hope he knows that.” I tried my hardest to remain calm. Even if Ford really refused to come see me, Logan would get me out. There was time. There had to be.
“You have a chance to help people here, Monroe,” Dumont said, his voice slightly rising.
“I’m trying, damn it!” There. Just like that, I lost my cool.
“No, you’re not. Whatever you’re trying to do here, it isn’t helping. If you share what you know with us, we can do something to put a stop to this. You can’t honestly think that you’re better than all of the Magian Ministry, can you?”
“Was that speech written for you by the human police? Are you planning to hand me over to them like you do everything else?” I said through gritted teeth. It was my way of reminding him that whatever the MM doesn’t want to handle or whatever the humans think they can handle better on their own, the MM just hands it over like a good little puppy.
“No, we’re not going to hand you to anyone,” Dumont said. “Monroe, you have a real chance here. To help us. To help yourself.”
“But that’s just it—you are the authority here. You shouldn’t even need information from me! You shouldn’t have even needed me to come back here to acknowledge that one of the high priestesses of the city was kidnapped!” I stood up and walked over to the bars to look him in the eye. “How can you expect me to trust that you’ll do a good job? That you’ll do anything really, to figure this out?”
“You can trust in me,” he said. “I trusted in you, didn’t I? I let you spend the night at the Enclave, even though I could have gotten to you easily. I let you chase me away from the Enclave, too, the first day you came back. I gave you the benefit of the doubt because I thought you were trying to help. Don’t prove me wrong, Monroe.”
Oh. So he’d known about my being in the Enclave. Shit.
“Just get Ford down here, Dumont. I don’t know enough, but if he can answer my questions, we’ll know everything. We’ll figure out the motive—and the person behind this—but not before I see him.”
He had to see that. He had to see that I was really trying to help, damn it.
But he didn’t.
He stepped away from the bars and sighed. “Think about it, Monroe. Let’s help each other. You can save people’s lives here.”
“Dumont, come on!” I shouted, slamming my hands on the bars when he turned around to leave.
But he didn’t stop.
“Hey! Just get Ford in here, please! Those people don’t have much time!”
The door slammed shut with that annoying buzz, and I was all alone again. I screamed at the top of my lungs, desperate to get some frustration out, but it didn’t work. I sat on the bench with my head in my hands.
Was Dumont right? Was I going to cost people’s lives—Nana’s life—by keeping what I knew to myself? What if Dumont could really help? What if I told him everything and he could piece it all together without me?
I’d be in jail, but at least Nana and all those other people wou
ld be alive.
My eyes squeezed shut, and suddenly, I had the urge to see Logan, to talk to him, to ask him what he thought I should do.
It looked like I’d made the worst mistake of my life when I decided to turn myself in.
***
I was going to do it.
I thought about it for what felt like the longest hours of my life. Apparently, holding cells have that affect on you.
There was no point in dragging this on any longer. Christopher Ford wasn’t going to come here. He wasn’t going to answer my questions. Dumont was all I had, and now that I was in here, locked up like a fool, I had no other choice.
I waited with my heart in my throat for that door to open again, and when it did, I let go of a long breath.
But when I looked up, I realized that the man coming inside was not Ryan Dumont.
He was on the thin side, more than six feet tall, with a pointy chin and nose. His eyes were dark, almost completely black, but it could have been the awful lighting. He didn’t look older than forty.
Also, I could have been mistaken, but he looked a lot like he was in a hurry. Just the way he looked back at the door when he came in and then practically ran the three steps it took to get to my cell.
“Who are you?” I asked, confused. I’d never met him before. He wasn’t an officer. He didn’t have the uniform on, only a black shirt and pants.
“Do not tell Detective Dumont anything,” he said, his voice hushed.
What the… “Excuse me?”
He grabbed the bars of my cell, which made me lean away a bit, and then looked at the door again. Almost like he was afraid.
“Do not tell the detective anything. Christopher Ford will come. He will come here and meet with you, but you mustn’t tell the detective anything, do you understand?”
Hell, no. “Who are you? How do you know about Christopher Ford? Did Dumont tell you?” That was probably it, but the way he looked, so afraid and guilty and just creepy, I had to ask.
“Don’t say a word, Ruby Monroe,” he said in a hiss and then tried to literally push his face between the two bars of my cell. His chin and nose made it all the way to my side. “Tanana’s life depends on it,” he whispered, and just like that, he turned away and ran to the door.
“Hey! What the hell, hey! Come back here!” I shouted. This was nuts. Who the hell was that guy? How dare he come to me and tell me that?
What did he know about anything?
But the guy didn’t stop, no matter how loudly I called. I noticed, when he opened the door, and closed it again, it didn’t buzz. And there was no officer right outside it, either, like it had been earlier with Dumont and the other woman who’d come to interrogate me.
Stunned, I walked back to the bench and fell on it. My ass hurt, but who cared? You’d think things would have become clear by now to me, but no. My confusion had reached level ninety by now.
And the next time the door opened, I didn’t need to look up to see that it was Dumont. Because the door buzzed, and I could hear the officer right outside, telling Dumont he could go in.
My mind spun with thoughts of what was right and wrong. I just didn’t know anymore. How could I trust a complete stranger who snuck into my cell, somehow knowing what I was about to do and telling me not to do it?
“Well, Monroe?” said Dumont, standing right outside the bars of my cell.
Torture. I met his alien blue eyes and I felt completely torn. Half of me wanted to just spill everything out already, tell him every detail I knew, as well as what I suspected. The other half wanted me to keep my mouth shut, based on a warning from a man I didn’t even know.
What to do?
“You can’t keep me here waiting all day,” Dumont said, that same look of disappointment on his face as before. So what? I was used to disappointing people. I’d disappointed Avery, Nana, even Logan. Dumont would be just another name on that list.
Screw it. I had to take the chance.
“Let me know when Christopher Ford gets here.” I lay down on the bench and put my arm over my good eye.
“Your funeral,” Dumont said, and his footsteps echoed in my head as he left the room.
Now, I couldn’t wait to find out exactly how disastrous the mistake I just made was going to be.
17
The way I justified my actions to myself was this: Nana wanted me here for a reason. She wanted me to find her for a reason, and that was what I needed to do. What if I left everything in the hands of the Magian Ministry, and they blew it all up? Nana and all those other people would never even be found. Now that was something I would have never forgiven myself for.
It occurred to me that the guy who’d snuck in my cell had been sent to me by Dumont himself, but what would have been the point? He wanted me to give him the information, and I was going to. It would be foolish of him to stop me.
Nevertheless, I still felt the guilt. At times, it became so much that when they brought me lunch, I returned it. I wasn’t hungry. I was desperate for an answer, that’s all.
But I no longer expected it.
Dumont came back, God knows how long after, and I thought he was going to try to get me to talk to him again. I was tired, exhausted by my inability to separate the good thoughts from the bad, my inability to stick to my decision and be confident in it. I wasn’t. I was completely torn.
But Dumont wasn’t there to talk.
This time, when he came in, another man was with him. An officer wearing the officer uniform.
Holding a key in his hand.
He put it in the keyhole of the door to my cell and turned it. Unlocked the door.
Meanwhile, I just watched from the bench, speechless.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Dumont said. He was angry. Good. Angry was better than disappointed.
“Like what? I’m not looking at you like anything.” I was looking at him with confusion, in fact.
“You got your wish, Monroe. Mr. Ford is here and he’s going to see you.”
No. Way. In. Hell.
I jumped to my feet, convinced I’d just sprouted wings and I could fly. That would have certainly been cool, but alas, I only managed to jump real high.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, laughing. “Are you kidding me!”
Dumont couldn’t hold back a smile but recovered quickly from it. “It’s not smart to keep him waiting, so if you don’t mind…” He waved his hand for me to walk out of the cell.
“Oh, I don’t mind. Not in the least,” I said and rushed outside, feeling like a free woman already. That guy had been right! The stranger who’d snuck in my cell had been right! My God, to think that I’d been this close to telling Dumont everything.
I’d never felt happier over a decision I’d made.
I could barely contain my excitement as Dumont and the other officer took me outside the holding cells room, into the main hallway again, and this time to the back room where all the cubicles were. There were a lot more people there now, and it was bright daylight outside. Even the sun was shining—I could see it through the windows. Oh, how I’d missed it. I hadn’t been in the holding cell that long, but I’d missed freedom like I’d been trapped for a thousand years already. Which just proved that I was not going to do well in prison. At all. So any means I deemed necessary to keep out of it from now on would be justified.
Dumont took me to the back offices. There were seven of them, and each had a name engraved on the upper half of the doors made of frosted glass. We entered the second office, which belonged to Howard Stannel.
I recognized him the second I walked in because the only other man in the room was Christopher Ford. A magian—a very powerful one. You could tell by the way Ford had Captured. He looked like a copy of the man he was when the picture was taken. He hadn’t changed at all.
At the sight of him, my smile dropped, and I forgot all about Howard Stannel, who was standing to the side of the big desk behind which Ford sat, with his hands in his pockets and his c
heeks bright red. Anger? Shame? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe both.
“Mr. Ford,” Dumont said with a nod and stepped aside to expose me to Ford completely. I felt naked, suddenly. My tongue was completely tied. “This is Ruby Monroe.”
I stepped forward, closer to the desk, and swallowed hard. Ford was easy on the eyes. Gorgeous, with the kind of beauty you saw in the old Hollywood stars. His brown hair was a little too long, like he’d been too busy and had missed his last barber appointment. His blue eyes were small, but they emanated power. His full lips were turned downward, and his square jaw was locked in place as if by force. He wore a suit and tie, probably tailored to him since it hugged his shape perfectly. Not muscular, but you could tell he was far from weak. His long fingers were intertwined over the table, and in front of them was my phone and the folder I’d had with me when I turned myself in.
“Ms. Monroe. I was told you wanted to speak to me,” Ford said. His voice was not too high but not too low, either. Perfectly concise and clear. “Please.” He waved for me to take a seat. I’d hate to have to sit still right now, but I also didn’t think it would be a good idea to keep standing. Screw how I felt. He was here, and now I had a real shot at figuring out where Nana was.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Ford,” I said. I sounded breathless, but I didn’t really care. I’d thought about what I was going to say to him before, so my speech was semi-prepared. I didn’t go in rounds. I went straight to the point. “About a week ago, one of Tanana’s students found me and told me that Tanana was taken from her Enclave, and whoever took her left two bodies in the house. I came back the next morning and found the house almost torn apart. The place where Nana was taken from was still burning, even a week later, with the runes that you can see in the pictures on my phone.” I nodded at the desk. Ford didn’t move, but Dumont took my phone, opened it without needing my password, and put it back on the desk so Ford could see. “I spoke to some friends and was told that these are Egyptian runes.”
