by Rysa Walker
“Has she shown any abilities?” I ask.
Sophie shrugs. “Nothing I can pinpoint, but you better believe that was something both of the Creggs were interested in. Same with the other three babies who were at The Warren, except they were just second-gen adepts. Lily is third-gen. The only one, far as I know. She’s not a Mover or a Zippo, or I think we’d have had a sign by now. But I was a low-level Peeper before they shot me up with this blocking serum. And Lily seems a little more intuitive than most babies. At least to me. But then she’s mine, and everybody thinks their kid is special, right? I hope she’s not this kind of special, though. Things would be a lot easier for her if she’s not an adept.”
I don’t ask whether Lily’s father was an adept, and the uncomfortable expression that Pfeifer is wearing leads me to think one of the hitchers picked up on something disturbing. If I was forced to hazard a guess, I’d say the father was one of the Fudds, and I doubt it was consensual. No point stirring up bad memories for Sophie.
“We’re just lucky she’s not like Anna was at that age,” Leah-Pfeifer says. “Before she learned to keep her walls in place, Anna was a regular spirit vacuum, sucking up anything in her path. Not a huge deal in most places, but there’s so much negative energy here. I can’t sense the actual ghosts, but Scott says there are dozens of them. That’s one reason he’s . . . hanging back a bit. We’re worried that he could pick someone up, and it’s already rather crowded in here. The atmosphere in this place has several of our current guests on edge, as it is. Keeping them mellow is going to become a challenge if we’re stuck here for much longer.”
I look around the cell nervously, even though I’m still not sensing anything. But then, I’ve got my walls at maximum and risperidone in my system.
The faint noise of helicopter rotors causes me to automatically look toward the wall, even though there’s no window in this cell. We haven’t heard any noises from outside since last night when we heard the chopper take off. This sounds different, although I guess it could just be the difference between takeoff and landing.
“If that’s Smith coming back to check on Miller, he’s not going to be happy that his orders weren’t followed,” Daniel says.
Pfeifer’s eyes go vacant and he stands silently for a moment, head cocked to the side like he’s listening. “It’s not Smith. Can you fly a helicopter?”
“Me?” Daniel asks. “No. I’ve jumped out of a few . . .”
Sophie and I both shake our heads, and Leah-Pfeifer crawls back into the bottom bunk. “It’s going to be hard to control them, and this is not our best chance to get out of here. So, if she asks, Miller is keeping me drugged.”
If she asks . . . “It’s Dacia?”
“Yes,” Pfeifer says, and I’m getting the sense that both my mother and my father are in the back seat right now. “Seven others. Two are kids. I can’t read one of them clearly. Drugs, maybe.”
Daniel’s face falls. There are a number of kids at Sandalford who might need to be medicated before a flight—all of the Zippos, for example. But we already know that Caleb is one of the adepts that Magda traded, so odds are strong that two of the four additional people in the helicopter are Caleb and Ashley. I can’t imagine they would risk taking Caleb without the one adult who has had at least some degree of success keeping him calm.
About ten minutes later, the gate clangs open and someone enters the corridor. Even without Pfeifer’s advance warning, I’d have known it was Dacia from the telltale clack of heels on the cement floor. But there’s another set of footsteps as well.
“Sophie?” Dacia calls out. “Are you in this block? We are looking all over.”
I can tell that Sophie is struggling with whether to answer. She looks around at the rest of us, and Daniel nods. There’s really no point in keeping silent. Maybe this is how we get out of here?
“I’m down here.”
The heels head this way.
“Ugh,” Dacia says as she comes into view. “This place is oribil. Worse than they told me. I am sorry you must stay here, Sophie, but is only a few days. Where is that man? Miller. He is supposed to be here.”
The guy walking behind Dacia is dressed in one of the all-black uniforms that the WOCAN bear brigade tends to favor. He looks like a young Steven Seagal, with a face that might be tolerable if not for the sneer. One of his hands is wrapped around the arm of a frightened little girl.
Maggie. I didn’t even hear her footsteps over the noise of the others. Her eyes are red and swollen from crying, and her cheeks lack their usual pink hue. I give her a small wave. She bites her lip and stares down at her shoes as the tears start again.
“Is he still unconscious?” Dacia asks, nodding toward the bunk where my father is stretched out.
“More or less,” Sophie says. “Miller gave him another shot this morning.”
“Maybe for the best,” Dacia says. She takes one of the grocery bags the man is holding and pulls out a six-pack of Enfamil. Regular, not soy.
“I have food for the Lily Bee! Milk and baby bananas and cereal . . .” Dacia shoves a container of mashed bananas through the bars and then hands the bag back to the man. “Why do you just stand there? Break them apart! Put them through bars.”
While the guy breaks the formula bottles out of the case, Dacia pulls a ball out of the other bag and holds it up for the baby to see. “And look! Just for Lily Bee.” The ball is too large to fit through the bars, though. Dacia tries to flatten it a bit but finally gives up and drops it on the floor. Lily isn’t interested anyway. She’s clutching Sophie’s shirt with both hands.
Aside from her question about Pfeifer, Dacia ignores everyone in the cell other than Sophie and Lily. I’m generally okay with being ignored by psychopaths, but this really isn’t Dacia’s style. She’s more the kind to kick you when you’re down, and it’s hard to believe she’s passing up a chance to taunt me about being on this side of the bars, especially when it means that Graham Cregg is locked up in here as well.
But her attention is fixed on Sophie, and when Sophie doesn’t answer or respond in any way, Dacia makes an exaggerated sad face. “It is out of my way to come here, but I take trouble on a very busy day to make sure you and Lily are comfortable. You do not even say thank you.”
“Thank you.” Sophie’s voice and expression are both as dry as bread crumbs, but she snatches up the baby food and formula.
Dacia sighs. “Sophie. I know this is not what I promise. But you are needed more here, so you must . . . how do they say? Take it for team. Maybe it is safer for Lily, too. The new boy . . . he may make a bigger bang at the lab than we are thinking.”
I don’t know if she notices Daniel’s eyes narrowing, but she turns toward him. “Yes, I see you trying to push me around, Daniel Quinn. You squint your eyes up all you want. Even if Sophie and Maggie were not here to block you, I do not push so easy as Alexandra Cregg. Not anymore. And maybe I have my own pusher now.”
On the last two words, she grips the cell bar with her gloved hand—the one with the missing pinky.
“It was you, no? You leave the little poison pill in her head to kill grandpa. It might have worked, too, if I hadn’t been there to peek inside her tiny little mind.” Then her eyes take on a malicious glint. “Not going to ask me about your family?”
“No point. You’d only lie. And we already know they’re okay.”
Dacia arches an eyebrow. “Do you, though? Are you so sure? The Senator says they are of value, so maybe I left the soldati behind to watch them. Or maybe because you are big pain of my ass I stay behind at cabin. Maybe I take care of them myself.”
She draws out the last sentence deliberately, baiting us. Tall, Dark, and Scowling is getting impatient, though. “We need to go, babe.”
Dacia gives him a wither-and-die look, but she turns to follow.
“Maggie wasn’t part of the agreement, Dacia. Senator Cregg isn’t going to be happy about this.”
I’m not sure why I say it. It’s likely to r
ile her up, and I don’t even know for certain that it’s true. I guess I just want Maggie to know that someone gives a damn. That she’s not simply a pawn.
My words hit a nerve, apparently. Dacia stomps back toward the cell, blue eyes blazing. “Maybe I do not care what the Senator wants or about his agreements or his timeline or if he will be stupid președinte. Who is he to tell me what to do? If I did not tell him Alex is brainwash, he would be dead. Lucas was right. He is a nothing and a thief. Big-shot Senator can do nothing with his normal, boring brain, and so he thinks to tell me how to lead?”
“You could just leave Maggie with us. Miller could take her back to Sandalford, and . . .”
Dacia laughs and tosses a remark over her shoulder as she walks away. I don’t understand Romanian, but I’m certain it wasn’t a compliment.
Once the gate clanks behind her, I turn to Daniel. “You couldn’t nudge her?”
“I wasn’t trying. Pfeifer’s right. They didn’t have the key to the lock, and I had no way of knowing if Maggie was blocking. Dacia said Miller isn’t here. So he must have gone into town for supplies for Lily. The smartest move is to wait until he gets back.”
“Did you actually nudge Alex Cregg to attack her grandfather?”
“Yeah. Figured it was worth a try.”
Pfeifer tosses the blanket back and sits up. His movements don’t look . . . right to me, and he’s tilting his head to the side again. Listening, but not with his ears.
“Dacia seems awfully eager to keep in your good graces,” Daniel tells Sophie.
“Why wouldn’t she be? I’m a blocker. We’re rare . . . it’s just me and Maggie, unless they’ve managed to make another one who survived. And Dacia’s lying when she says you can’t nudge her. She’s built up a little resistance, but she can be pushed, her mind can be read, she can be set on fire by a Zippo. All of it. And do you have any idea how many people Dacia has pissed off? Her plan is for me to be her shadow. She’d be even happier if Lily inherited my ability, because she’d be a lot easier to brainwash.”
“But if she’s got Maggie now,” Daniel says, “doesn’t that mean she no longer needs you?”
“I think it’s more likely Maggie winds up with the Senator and his wife. A politician would find it a lot easier to sell Maggie as a niece or as some poor little orphan they adopted. A twenty-three-year-old black girl with a mixed-race baby might raise a few eyebrows among the Senator’s base. So if Maggie can shield the Senator, and I get Dacia, it might maintain their rather shaky balance of power. Those two have some trust issues, believe you me.”
“Maggie may not last long enough to do the Senator any good if they’re using her to block Caleb. Magda already tried that. It drains Maggie. When she’s around Caleb for more than a few hours, she comes back looking like a zombie.”
“Which means they’re both in danger.” Daniel pauses as we hear the helicopter take off. “Along with Ashley and anyone else in that helicopter.”
It occurs to me as he’s speaking that there’s a very real chance Deo could be one of the passengers. Maggie wasn’t mentioned in Magda’s note, and yet she was just here. Who’s to say Dacia didn’t ignore the agreement to save herself a second trip?
Daniel paces the length of the cell. “Do you know where they’re going, Sophie? Dacia mentioned a lab.”
“I . . . can’t remember the name. But it’s outside of Knoxville. They’re planning to do another one of their WOCAN attacks there. Something to give a boost to the Senator’s antiterrorism speech tonight.”
“They have no idea what they’re dealing with,” Daniel says. “Miller better get back soon because we need to get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Pfeifer says. “We’re not waiting on Miller.”
His face goes blank for a moment. Then he stands up and pulls the mattress off the bottom bunk. He’s moving oddly again, the way he did earlier, and I’m not seeing Scott-Pfeifer or Leah-Pfeifer in his eyes. This is more Furies-Pfeifer.
He looks over at Sophie and says something in a different language, pointing to her and the baby. Then he holds up the thin mattress in front of him.
“Bareeyeer. Mattress bar-ee-yeer.”
And then he gestures toward Daniel’s mattress. “Go. Get.”
I catch on before Daniel does and tug the mattress off the bed. “She wants us to get behind it. Mattress. Barrier.”
Daniel and Sophie exchange a glance that says they’re not at all convinced this is a good idea. I agree. But I don’t get the sense it’s negotiable.
“I think that’s . . . Oksana.”
The name puts both of them in gear. I never saw her alive, but Jaden once described Oksana as not the most stable isotope in the lab. And in my experience with her spirit, I think that may have been an understatement.
Sophie scoops up Lily, and we hunker down behind the mattresses. I’m a little worried about Pfeifer, who is standing off to one side, totally exposed, but he’s okay in my vision. And I don’t think Oksana would be reckless enough to hurt the body that’s carrying her around.
The sound of screeching metal is almost earsplitting, and it’s joined a second later by a series of pings. I feel something—several things, actually—ricochet off the mattress.
When the barrage stops, we slowly lower the mattresses. Tiny chunks of the chain are scattered on the floor. Every single link was shattered, and the lock itself, one of the heavy-duty types, is now a twisted mess.
My father grins, a bright, maniacal expression that’s more than a little unnerving, and then Oksana, or whoever that was, is gone. It’s just Pfeifer now, befuddled, looking at the scraps of metal around his feet. Not a single one hit him.
“Seems a bit . . . dramatic,” he says. “Could have popped a single link, and we’d have gotten the same result.”
“Or simply waited until Miller arrived and let me nudge him to unlock the cell,” Daniel says.
“No,” Pfeifer says. “He’ll have his weapon drawn, and he’ll be expecting trouble. This way, we stand a better chance of taking him by surprise.” He glances toward the windowless wall, and I think he’s heard something outside, but maybe he’s just listening to one of his inner voices. “We need to go.”
We grab some of the supplies and push the door open. As we head toward the exit, I notice the ball that Dacia brought, still leaning against the bars. I check to ensure that no chain shrapnel is embedded in the plastic and then extend it to Lily.
She frowns at first. Then she takes the ball and hurls it past me with a defiant “No!” as it bounces down the hallway. I go after it, mentally kicking myself for not realizing she’d think it was a game, and worried that she’ll start screaming for the damned thing when we’re halfway to the exit.
But when I bring it back, her bottom lip juts out. “No. No baw.”
She clutches her mom tighter, and her frown doesn’t go away until I put the ball back on the floor. I half expect her to change her mind before we reach the gate, but she’d doesn’t. Lily remembers exactly who brought that toy.
There’s no sign of Miller when we reach the cafeteria, and a quick look outside confirms that the van I saw parked by the cloverleaf building last night is gone. It’s possible we could just walk out the front gate, but given that someone has invested money to renovate those cells, I suspect it’s locked. They’d need to keep out thrill-seeking teens wanting to snoop around a purportedly haunted prison. We also have no idea how far it is to the main road. Plus, Miller and a van (probably this van) are in my vision. So the only sensible alternative is to wait until he returns.
Daniel and my father head to the far end of the room and take up position on opposite sides of the door we came through last night. There’s really not much Sophie or I can do, so we take the baby into a small guard station inside the cafeteria. Someone removed the door and, judging from the wires jutting out of the shelves, the monitoring equipment. I do a quick search for weapons, but the place is empty, aside from one battered office chair and a crum
pled MoonPie wrapper.
And I’m pretty sure there’s a spirit in here, too. My walls are up, so I’m probably safe, but no way am I touching that chair or anything else in this room. I crouch down on the floor near the doorway, next to Sophie.
I’m a little worried Lily will start chattering again and inadvertently tip Miller off. But for the moment, at least, she’s happily gnawing on a teething biscuit and tugging items out of the diaper bag.
Luckily, we don’t have to wait long. Lily has barely made a dent in the teether when I hear the metal door creak open. The noise is followed by a guttural scream and a heavy thwack as something hits the floor.
Daniel says, “Any weapons on your body are now red-hot, Miller. They’re burning through your pockets . . .” Whatever else he says is drowned out by whimpering noises and the sound of weapons clanking to the floor.
Lily’s interest is piqued by the action in the cafeteria, so I shift over to block the doorway. I have a clear line of sight now and see Miller currently suspended about eight inches above the floor, pinned to the wall. Blood trickles from his nose, and he’s holding two fingers in his mouth. A plastic grocery bag is on the floor in front of him, along with a pistol, a taser, car keys, his wallet, a couple of spare zip cuffs, and his phone. Miller wasn’t taking any chances. Apparently, everything that was in his pockets has been dumped onto the floor in front of him.
After Daniel scoops everything up, the force causing Miller to hover above the ground ends abruptly. Miller crumples to the cement, landing hard on his knees. He screams again, muffled this time by the fingers in his mouth. The burns were all in his head, but I’m pretty sure those fingers are now hurting for real, since they were between his teeth when his knees hit the floor.
Daniel shoots an annoyed look at Pfeifer. “That was risky. I mean, he deserved the punch. But why didn’t you pin him to the wall first?”
“Because it was one of my guests pinning him up there, and I wanted to actually feel his face under my fist,” Pfeifer says, and then looks back at me. “If you’d like to hit him yourself, Anna, I’d be happy to—”
