I waited for him to continue, to explain further, but he didn’t.
“And what’s that?” I asked. My voice was small and weak sounding.
“Magick.” His eyes flashed with a strange sense of power-hungry eagerness that shocked me.
I forced myself to relax my legs away from my chin and sit cross-legged, deciding that I would eventually maneuver myself into sitting with them dangling off the cot. My strategy was to get into a position where I could easily stand and bolt past him for the door…even if I had to freaking bum-rush him along the way.
I was getting out of this room one way or another.
“When Admer came to me and asked if I wanted to help him set the balance of Soul Harbor right, to get my family and friends out from beneath the thumb of the Van Rooyens by helping to bring you here, I knew I had to agree,” he said. His eyes blazed with an intensity I’d never seen in them before. It was jarring. This was not the same Kace I’d met and had grown to care deeply for. “It was an easy choice, really.”
He dropped his stare to the ground again, a twisted smile playing on his face, and I glanced around the room, recalculating the distance between where I sat and the metal door.
Where the hell was I, somebody’s secret bunker?
“Admer had already done all of the hard work, you know. He’d found out the details on your grandmother’s house, changed a few things around with the help of some powerful Hoodoo magick. He even found your mother. All he had to do was wait until you were eighteen and could legally inherit the house without having it go into the hands of a property guardian until then.” Kace paused and shifted his gaze to me. “Once your mother passed—which I still think Admer had a hand in—you came to town with your adoptive parents. I was told to bump into you somehow in order to awaken your magick as well as my own, but you were in town for too short of a time and always with your parents. Before you left though, I bought a Call to Me spell from the Van Rooyens and released it on you. After that, well, you know the rest of the story.”
A conceited smile twisted his lips, and smugness lit his eyes. I felt sick to my stomach. How had I fallen for him? How could I have been so freaking blind? He seemed like such an ass now.
“So it was all an act?” I asked. “Perfect, good to know.” Sarcasm dripped from my words, but I didn’t care. It was my way of covering how incredibly hurt and humiliated I was.
Kace shook his head. “No. It wasn’t all an act. I really fell for you. There was something between us—is something between us—something that isn’t just the spell I used to help things along. At least, I like to think there is.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he playing with me or was he being genuine? I couldn’t tell. My heart palpitated in my neck, and I swallowed hard.
“Then why are you helping keep me here?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
Kace walked closer to the cot and sat beside me. My mind—still stuck in that fight or flight decision-making process—only noticed how there was no longer an obstacle standing between the partially opened door and me.
I could make a run for it, if I timed it right.
He held up his hands. “Hold on. Let me give you the details, okay, before you let the jury cast its final ruling on me and send me packing.”
“All right, I’ll hear you out,” I said.
In all the movies I’d watched and the books I’d read involving situations where people were held captive, the one thing they all agreed on when it came to escaping their captor was this: You had to keep them talking while you waited for your moment to flee.
This was my chance to get him talking.
“Thanks,” Kace said. His voice was low, sweet even, and that damn dimple I’d grown to adore on his right cheek became visible when he flashed me a small smile. “I really appreciate you taking the time to hear me out.”
He placed a hand on my thigh, and I grew sick from the sight of him touching me and the muted sensation of magick that coursed beneath my skin due to the contact. He didn’t deserve to feel that from me now. That sensation was sacred.
I pulled my leg away, praying it seemed like a nonchalant move when it was anything but. He didn’t even seem to notice. His face was contorted in thought. I figured it was because he was trying to pinpoint where to start.
“I tried to tell you what I knew early on…that Admer was your dad, but I couldn’t. If I had, you’d have wanted to know how I knew, and if I’d been put on the spot, I wouldn’t have been able to come up with a quick-thinking lie to cover.”
I thought back, trying to figure out when he’d attempted to tell me anything. A memory of him mentioning that he thought Admer was playing some sort of a game flashed through my mind. It was followed by a moment right after when he had mentioned he thought Admer was my father.
The sharp pounding in my head returned with a vengeance while I tried to wrap my mind around all of this. I decided I needed to just stop—stop thinking about the whys and hows of what I was doing here and focus on how I was going to get out.
“Honestly, I thought he’d fess up when you asked how Elementals' elements were chosen. I mean, that would have been the perfect moment.” Kace chuckled. “Everyone knew then…or at least they all suspected, because I don’t think anyone had ever thought of that before you’d said something.”
A slow smile spread across his face. He was back to being my sexy-sweet Kace, and I hated it.
“You haven’t really answered my question. Why am I here?” I asked as nicely as I could manage. He was focusing on me too much, and I needed to keep him talking.
Kace placed his hands on his knees as though he were bracing himself to say something horrible.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. His eyes met with mine, and I knew in an instant that he was telling the truth. “I was never filled in on that part. I got the phone call from Admer to come help him. I went to the shop, and then he came up from behind you with a rag soaked in chloroform like something from TV. End of story.”
End of story, my ass.
“So, you did what? Help him carry me out the back door to his car without any questions?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” he replied. His eyes dropped back to the dirt floor as guilt seemed to consume him.
My body went numb with his admittance. I stared at him, unbelieving he had taken part in something so horrible as kidnapping me. His body slouched forward, and his hands clasped together tightly in his lap. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t seem to notice me shifting my legs free from the cross-legged position I’d been sitting in.
I took that as my moment and sprang into action without hesitation.
Jolting from where I sat, I sprinted across the tiny room in a matter of seconds. I knew Kace was taller than me, which meant his legs would be longer and therefore his stride longer, but I didn’t care.
Maybe the element of surprise would be used to my advantage.
My hands brushed the cool metal that made up the door, and I felt a sense of exhilaration surge through me at the touch. I’d made it across the room. Now all I had to do was make it out.
Warm arms locked around my waist and pulled me back into the room as soon as I pulled the door open in front of me. I screamed and thrashed about as hard as I could, but it did me no good.
Kace was stronger.
Then something happened—something that I’d forgotten about, something that could potentially hold the power to save me.
I caught on fire.
Kace released me instantly. I could hear him freaking out behind me, but I just kept going without knowing where I was headed. The flames that licked at my skin and clothes lit my way up an unsteady-looking set of stairs and through another solid metal door, which stood partway open.
I was in a house. That much I was sure of. But whose house? Admer’s?
When I cleared the door at the top of the stairs, I found myself standing in a dark kitchen. Jesus, did these people not know how to use a freaking light s
witch? The sound of Kace barreling up the rickety stairs behind me unglued my feet from the kitchen floor. My eyes darted around, searching for an exit, but all I saw was an extra-large kitchen with every upgrade imaginable.
A door made up of tiny square, stained-glass windows caught my attention to my right. I bolted for it. Using both hands, I twisted the cold metal knob and pulled. It was locked. I realized this after several attempts. Turning the lock just above the knob at the exact second Kace made it into the kitchen made my heart leap into my throat.
“Holy shit,” Kace gasped from behind me. “How are you able to do that?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I tugged the door open and plowed right into Admer, who was waiting on the other side.
“Going somewhere?” he asked, gripping my elbows.
I flailed around in an ill-fated attempt to free myself from his firm grasp, but it was useless. His grip only tightened, causing me to cry out from the pain of it. The flames shooting across my body dulled, until finally disappearing altogether.
“There, that’s better,” Admer said. He pushed me backward and into the house.
“How did I not burn you?” I asked. My voice sounded breathy and exhausted.
Admer smiled at me as he kicked the door closed behind him. His green eyes were wild and frightening.
“Don’t you remember my element?” he asked in a condescending tone. “Water smothers Fire. Nothing you attempt to do to me physically with your fire will work.”
My heart shrunk, and my chest tightened as a heavy sensation weighed down my limbs. Any hope I’d had of escaping withered away to nothing with his words.
“That was badass,” Kace gushed. “How can you do that?”
Admer spun me around and guided me back toward the creepy cellar. Kace gripped my other arm as I passed him.
“The tether,” Admer said. There was an excitement embedded within his voice I’d never heard him possess. It sent a shiver along my spine. “She’s part Conjurer now.”
How did he know that? Had he known that was what would happen after the initiation all along?
“Is that why you pushed the initiation as a way to break the tether so hard, because you knew that would be the outcome?” I asked weakly as I was forced down the stairs and back to the confinement of my room.
I was drained—both emotionally and physically.
We’d reached the small room. Admer forced me through the doorway and shoved me in the direction of the cot with a laugh. It was a dark, wicked laugh, which made the fine hairs along the back of my neck stand on end.
“That, my dear, was just an added bonus that played out greatly in my favor,” he said.
“I don’t understand how.” Kace said exactly what I’d been thinking. “What is your plan anyway? Think you can at least fill me in now?”
I glanced at him from where I sat on the edge of the cot. His eyebrows were drawn together in a straight line; he was as lost in all of this as I was.
“In due time.” Admer smiled. “No need to get hasty.”
Admer turned and left the room, Kace followed behind him like a lost puppy, and then I heard the click of a few locks. I sunk down into the cot, my head resting against the grimy wall.
How in the hell was I going to get out of here now?
I’d lost track of any sense of time long ago. I knew when I’d been taken it had been midmorning. I also knew that the one time I’d attempted to escape it had been nightfall. I knew I’d been offered twenty-six meals since I’d been shoved back into this hellhole. I’d tallied each up in the dirt beneath my cot, using the end of whatever silverware I was given to eat with each time.
If my math was correct, I’d been confined to this room from anywhere between eight to thirteen days, depending on how many meals they were choosing to feed me per day—two or three.
I’d been given a large bucket and a roll of toilet paper to use as my bathroom, and a jug of warm water along with a washcloth twice to clean myself up.
Disgusting did not even justify how grimy I felt.
The only person I ever came in contact with was Admer. My guess was he didn’t trust Kace anymore with the tasks involving me since his mishap when I’d nearly escaped. Because of this, I was unable to use my Fire to free myself.
I lay across the sickening cot I’d been sleeping on for what seemed like forever and stared up at the ceiling, wondering for the millionth time if anyone was searching for me. Surely someone had to have reported me missing by now, whether it was my mother when I didn’t answer her phone calls or Callie when I didn’t come home for a few days.
Or was Callie in on it?
I pictured her sweet demeanor and charismatic personality. No. There was no way she was in on whatever crazy plan Admer and Kace had created together.
Sighing, I draped my arm over my forehead, allowing it to block my eyes from the harshness of the exposed lightbulb hanging overhead. I never turned it off. There was something horrible about the thought of being locked in a room in solid darkness. My days and nights might be mixed up, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t sleep. After all, there wasn’t anything better to do.
Footsteps sounded down the termite-ridden stairs, and my body stiffened. A low growl escaped my stomach, and I cursed my body for caving so easily yet again.
Try as I might to not eat and be a stubborn guest, as Admer had called it, I could never hold out for long. How people survived without eating for days at a time while they were trapped somewhere, or worse, how they starved themselves by choice, was beyond me. I couldn’t be sure how many hours I’d made it in my rebellion against eating, but I was positive it couldn’t have been for too long.
The metal door caging me in swung open on its rusty hinges and in stepped Admer. He held the same Styrofoam sectioned-off plate in front of him as always. It made me feel as if I were a toddler to eat off that thing, but at this point, I had bigger issues.
A glimpse of Kace caught my attention. I watched him as he pushed open the door farther for Admer. His icy eyes grazed over me for the briefest of moments, and I got the impression the pointed glance in my direction was merely to see I was still alive and all right, for the most part, because then he dropped his gaze back to the dirt-covered ground of my room as he closed the door behind Admer.
“Well, hello there, sunshine,” Admer beamed as he walked over to where I lay and held out the Styrofoam plate.
I didn’t answer him, nor did I take the plate from him. Same as always, I ignored the fact he’d entered the room.
Admer moved to sit on the cot beside me. It moaned and bent under his added weight. He held the plate in front of my face. Warm roasted turkey met with my nose and made my mouth water instantly. The sight of creamy mashed potatoes smothered in just the right amount of gravy, and a large, steaming wheat roll screamed out to my stomach.
Usually I was given a sandwich of some sort, a bottle of water, and a little bag of chips for my second meal. Why was this one so extravagant? Had we finally reached whatever timeframe Admer had been waiting on?
That couldn’t be a good thing. A slight shiver ran along my spine and made my mind prickle with panic.
A loud rumble twisted through my stomach, betraying me yet again. Admer chuckled under his breath and moved the plate of food around in front of me, as though attempting to tease me with what he held.
I knew I needed to eat, regardless if this was my last meal or not. I’d reached the point of hunger where you either chose to eat something or dry heaved. I hated that feeling.
Memories from when I was little and would attempt to skip a meal because I was having too much fun playing trickled through my mind. I remembered my mom rubbing my back once when I was nine and holding out an oversized pretzel while telling me with a large smirk that the world wouldn’t end if I took a moment to stop and eat every once in a while.
“Hungry?” Admer asked. He continued to move the plate from side to side, enticing me further to take it from his hand.
“Care for a glass of wine?” he asked.
I froze. Wine? Glancing at his other hand, I noticed there was actually a large goblet of red wine resting between his fingers. How had I missed that, and why was he offering it to me? A sinking feeling slithered through me. The glass was added confirmation that this was indeed my last meal. I swallowed hard and licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry.
“Don’t look so afraid; this is a celebratory meal,” Admer said.
My heart picked up pace, and my fingers tightened around the plate of food.
“What are we celebrating?” I asked, my voice sounding shrill.
“The Dark Moon,” he answered, his eyes lighting with excitement. “The night I’ve been waiting for since the initiation—the entire reason I wanted you to become initiated—it’s finally upon us.”
Awesome. So everything had finally come to a point. Hence the Thanksgiving dinner I held in my hands.
Admer set the glass of wine down on the floor at my feet and stood.
“Enjoy your meal.” He smiled. “I’ll be back for you just before midnight.”
I didn’t speak as I watched him walk to the metal door and knock in a rhythm four times. This was something he did each time he brought me a meal or came to check on me. The only difference was that each rhythm he used was different from the last. I wondered if this was something they coordinated before bringing me my food each time. The thought made me chuckle, which turned into a full-fledged laugh as the metal door swung closed with a bang.
I had definitely cracked.
Containing myself, I listened to the footsteps as they made their way back up the rickety stairs leading to the first floor. I balanced the plate of food on my thighs and reached for the warm roll first. It was soft and squishy. Steam wafted in my face as I carefully tore it in two.
Confined (A Tethered Novel, Book 3) Page 15
