The Soul Healer

by Melissa Giorgio

  Charles stood so suddenly I jumped in shock, nearly toppling out of my chair. Gone was his calm demeanor as his brown eyes flashed with a familiar rage. There he is, I thought, wondering if provoking the man who so carelessly killed his best friend was the smartest thing to do. This time, I didn’t have Philip to back me up.

  This time, I realized as I swallowed, I had, I was alone. Philip and Nina were who knows where, detained or punished or something equally frightening, while I was stuck here, with furious Charles.

  Whoops.

  I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if I could make it to the door before he throttled me, but Charles, following my gaze, said, “You are not going anywhere, Gabiella, until you explain what you just said.” His words came out as a throaty growl, sending a shiver racing down my spine. Maybe I liked raging Charles better. This quiet one? He scared the crap out of me.

  “Um,” I said, stalling. So far, Charles hadn’t moved from behind his desk, so maybe that meant he wasn’t going to hit me. Actually, I had given him quite a few opportunities to hit me since we’d first met, and he hadn’t yet. Hopefully, that meant he never would, but with the way he was looking at me right now? I shuddered and pressed my back against my chair, wishing the wood could absorb me, taking me away from Charles and his wrath.

  “My patience is growing thin. What did you mean by that?” Charles leaned forward, balancing himself on his desk so we were eye to eye. “What do you know about Liam and Rosa’s deaths?” I assumed Rosa was Rafe’s mom. “Who told you about them?”

  “Rafe, obviously,” I said and he blinked, as if he realized he should have known the answer to his question. “But Nina filled in the details Rafe had left out. Like how you and Liam were up for the director’s position, and then Liam so conveniently died, allowing you to seize the position.” Charles had paled at my words and despite knowing I should probably shut up, I continued, heading straight for the edge of the cliff and falling right over it. “You were best friends, but that didn’t matter, did it, Charles? You still sent that demon, telling everyone you were testing Rafe’s Sightless abilities, when meanwhile, you gave it instructions to kill Liam!” Now I stood on shaking legs, shouting the last bit. “So I’m sorry if I don’t believe you about wanting to help me. You’re an evil jerk who ruined Rafe’s life, and you’re not even sorry about it!”

  “Enough!” Charles slammed a fist against his desk, knocking a picture frame onto the floor and shattering the glass. “I did not kill Liam and Rosa! Sending a demon to test Rafe’s abilities? Where did you even hear that?” His face reddened with anger. “Did Nina tell you that?”

  “No, Matthew Davenport did.” Charles was like an angry, vengeful god, scary enough that it made me shake like a leaf, but somehow my voice managed to stay calm. “He told Rafe the truth about Silver Moon. We thought he was crazy—he was crazy—but that stuff he said was true, wasn’t it?” Charles and I locked gazes. “Silver Moon—no, you sent the demon to that apartment.”

  “No.” He shook his head over and over again, as if that movement could somehow chase away my words. “No, of course not. Silver Moon fights demons, not its own members. Davenport was a raving lunatic and a betrayer to our sacred oaths. He mixed his blood with a demon’s—Gabiella, you cannot believe a word he said. He wanted to take down Silver Moon, so he spun lies to convince Rafe to join him. That is all they were: lies.”

  I had said the same thing to Rafe while we were battling Davenport, but now, with the additional information about Liam and Charles, I didn’t know what to believe. What if Davenport had been right? “But Liam—”

  “Was like a brother to me,” Charles said hotly. “When he was murdered, I felt as if a piece of my soul had been extinguished.” He lowered his gaze to his desk, like he was uncomfortable with sharing his feelings to me. “I almost left Silver Moon, that’s how deep my grief was. After Liam was gone, I didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to become the director. But then I looked at Philip. He wouldn’t have left, and I was afraid of something happening to him if I did. I had already nearly lost him once, and I wasn’t about to lose him again.”

  It sounded convincing, but Charles could just be a really good actor. He had to persuade everyone that he was just as broken up as they were or else they would grow suspicious. And why hadn’t anyone been suspicious? I wondered. Were they all so biased that they couldn’t even see what was right in front of them? Was I seriously the only one who knew?

  Crap. Why hadn’t I told Philip about my fears? Or Nina? Rafe needed to know the truth. He needed to know about his parents so he could avenge them, and I needed to get out of here so I could tell him. But I had done such a great job of escaping last night, and I knew until he got what he wanted, Charles was going to keep me on an even tighter leash from now on.

  As if reading my mind, Charles raised his brows and said quietly, almost sadly, “You don’t believe me.”

  “Why should I?” Frustration and anger made my voice shake. “You killed them. I know you did!”

  “I am sorry that you feel that way.” Charles closed his eyes briefly. “Obviously, you are too distraught to listen to me, and therefore there’s no reason for us to continue this conversation. You will remain here while I wait for your temper to cool.” He waved a hand and an invisible force pushed me back into my seat. I glared at him, struggling against his spell, but it was like there was a boulder sitting on my lap, making it impossible for me to rise. “I’ll take the spell off after I leave the room,” Charles walked to the door and paused, his hand on the knob, “but I will be locking the door from the outside with magic, and you won’t be able to open it. I’ll return in a few hours with food, food that you no doubt won’t eat because you’ll believe it’s poisoned.”

  Ugh, sarcastic Charles was even worse than creepy Charles! Before I could respond, he stepped outside and shut the door behind him. I heard a quiet click and felt the effects of his spell wash away. Jumping to my feet, I ran straight for the door and twisted the knob.

  Locked.

  So Charles did know how to tell the truth.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  I spent the better part of an hour trying to see if I could escape Charles’s office. With no windows, my only option was the door. I threw my chair at it a couple of times, almost whacking myself in the face with one of the legs and nearly giving myself a concussion in the process. Bruised, battered, and sweaty, I gave up on the door and decided to snoop around the office. Really, he left me in here, what did he expect me to do with myself? Sit around like a good little girl? Come on, Mister Director, you know me better than that…

  I checked the desk first. The drawers, much to my disappointment, were all locked, and the papers piled neatly in the upper right-hand corner were boring documents about things I would never care about. Out of spite, I swiped the papers to the floor, like Philip had done the last time we had been in Charles’s office, hoping I had messed up his precious organized pile.

  As I came around the side of the desk, the frame he had knocked over caught my eye. I picked it up, careful to avoid the broken shards of glass. Curiously, there was no picture in the frame. Who keeps an empty frame on their desk? Maybe there had been a picture of Philip inside, and after last night, Charles had pulled it out and shoved it somewhere he wouldn’t see it. Like a locked drawer, I thought, eyeing the desk wistfully. There were probably all sorts of interesting things in there. Maybe there was a key hidden somewhere?

  I faced the wraparound bookshelves and sighed. If I wanted to hide something, I’d pick one of those books. But did I really want to search through each and every book? I glanced over my shoulder at the locked door and shrugged. It’s not like I had anything better to do. No TV, no computer to surf the web… What was a captive girl to do?

  Make a mess, I thought with a grin, reaching for the first book I saw. Opening it, I flipped through a few boring pages about legal proceedings, made a face, and threw the book to the floor. It landed with a solid thump, and
my grin spread. This could be fun…

  Except, an hour later, it really wasn’t. I sat on the floor, surrounded by piles of books, my eyes aching, my head throbbing, and my stomach growling. Part of me wished Charles would show up with his promised tray of food, take one look at the mess I had made, and put me out of my misery. Do to me whatever it was he did to Philip and Nina. At the thought of my friends, my stomach clenched. Charles wouldn’t hurt them, would he? I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my head atop them. I hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt because of me, and look at what had happened. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Nina with the knife pressed to her chest, or Philip getting blasted with a spell. Were they okay?

  Who was I kidding? Of course they weren’t. It would have been better for everyone if we hadn’t met, I thought glumly. Would Charles leave them alone if I promised to cooperate? If I healed Alexandra? Or had I finally pushed him too far, and he would take his anger at me out on them? Can’t let the stupid Soul Healer get hurt, right?

  For someone who had the ability to fix what was broken, I was really good at screwing things up.

  My pity-party lasted a few more minutes before I wiped my face and stood up, assessing the room. This couldn’t be it. There had to be something in here I could use to help me escape. And then I would march downstairs (if the stupid elevator or stairs were unlocked) and out the door and to hell with everyone.

  Okay, that was the dumbest plan ever, but I didn’t care. Philip and Nina couldn’t help me. Evan wouldn’t help me. Kain was possibly a traitor. And Rafe—

  I paused, reaching for my necklace. Somehow, through everything, it still rested under my shirt, unharmed. I squeezed the rose in my fist, imagining that it was a magical amulet, filling me with power.

  What would Rafe say, if he saw me sitting on the floor, wallowing in my misery? He wouldn’t have even recognized me! During the fight with Davenport, when he had nearly given up after hearing about Silver Moon betraying his parents, I had yelled at him to snap out of it. How could I say that stuff and then give up myself? What would Rafe think?

  It didn’t matter because Rafe wasn’t ever going to find out what a pathetic wimp I became when things got a little bad. So the door was locked. Big deal. I was going to pick that uncomfortable wooden chair back up and throw it at the door until something broke. (Hopefully, not my face.)

  I hurled the chair at the door. Nothing happened. I picked it up again, yelling this time as I threw it. Still, nothing happened. What the hell was the door made out of? It looked like wood, but I hadn’t even made a dent in it yet. Am I really this weak? I had told Rafe I needed to start lifting weights. I’m sure he had some lying around his apartment. Of course, they probably weighed a billion pounds (and he could probably lift them with one hand), but if I asked, he would definitely buy me some cute, pink barbells. Had I just said pink? I picked up the chair again, laughing at myself. Nina had rubbed off on me way more than I had realized. And I meant that as a compliment, too.

  So get out of here and tell her how much she means to you, Gabi, I told myself. Philip too. And for god’s sake, apologize to Rafe for saying things you hadn’t meant!

  Oh my god, what had I been doing, these last few days? I felt like I had just woken up from a long sleep. Everything was clearer now. I had been wasting my time here, feeling sorry and scared for myself for nothing. So what if I was a Soul Healer with an expiration date? Crying about it wasn’t going to change anything! And these stupid Silver Moon assholes weren’t going to do anything about it, either. Time to cut my losses and get going. Sorry, Evan, sorry, Alexandra (even though we had never met). I wasn’t apologizing to Charles because I wasn’t sorry about leaving him. I felt bad about Philip and Nina, but I knew, somehow, that they would understand. They had risked so much to get me out of HQ, and they would be pissed if I just sat around, doing nothing.

  “I’m leaving,” I said with a nod. “I’m leaving and then I’ll figure out how to get you guys out of here. Although you’ll probably free yourselves, since you’re a lot more capable than I am. But I’m going to get better. I’m going to learn how to use my strengths and become a better person. And now I’m going to shut up, because I’m talking to myself like a crazy person.”

  I hefted the chair once more, ignoring the screams of protests from my arm muscles. (Yeah, I really needed to have started weight training…yesterday.) This time, I was going to do it. This time, I was going to break that freaking door. And hopefully no hunters would come running at the noise because that would totally screw up my plans of escaping.

  I let out a battle cry at the top of my lungs and ran toward the door. But before I could collide with the wood, there was an audible click, and the door slowly swung open. My cry ended with a startled curse, and I veered sharply to the left, crashing into the wall hard enough that my teeth clicked together painfully.

  “You idiot!” I yelled at whoever had opened the door. “Stupid, I almost took your head off!” I didn’t know why I was yelling—if it were Charles, then I should have hit him with the chair. He deserved it!

  No one answered, and I felt an unexpected chill wash over me. Turning my head slowly to the partly open door, I gasped as the very last thing I expected to see stood there, watching me.

  A demon.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “You have to be freaking kidding me,” I said. What the hell was a demon doing in HQ? Had it risen from the dead in the autopsy room, grabbed its head, and come upstairs to eat me? How had it broken through Charles’s spell and opened the door anyway? What the hell was going on!

  A sudden, scary image of dead hunters littering the halls of HQ filled my mind. Were they under attack? Had the sorcerers come, angry at the hunters for killing their beloved summoned pets? And was I smack dab in the middle of their stupid war?

  “Yeah, no way,” I told the demon, who remained in the hallway. “I just decided that I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for others to come to my rescue, so I’m sure as hell not going to let one of you drooling idiots ruin my plans for the day, okay?” I shook my chair at it, pretending I was a lion tamer. “You want a piece of this, jerkface?”

  The demon didn’t respond (I didn’t expect it to, as most of them were too stupid to form words), but it must have understood me because it pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

  I promptly dropped the chair and screamed, backtracking as fast as I could.

  It was a spider! A freaking spider-demon with three arms on each side and fifty-billion eyes on its hairy spider face. Holy crap, it’s disgusting! Where was the bug spray!

  Okay, obviously I wasn’t squeamish and could deal with watching my boyfriend behead demons or see them all cut up for an autopsy. But spiders were a different story. I had never been afraid of them until I was ten years old, and my dad sent me to stupid sleep-away camp, and I woke up with one the size of my fist crawling on my face. I wasn’t exaggerating. It was huge, hairy, and on my face. I screamed bloody murder, waking up all the girls in my cabin, which set them off once they saw the monster crawling around. The camp counselors tore the cabin apart and never found it, so needless to say, no one slept that night.

  The next morning, I called my dad and told him to come and get me or else I was going to set the cabin on fire, as that was the only way I could be convinced that the monster was dead. He made it to the camp in three hours (it was a four hour drive), packed me up, and we never spoke about it again. Nor did he complain when I made him kill spiders lurking in my shower drain or crawling across my ceiling.

  Sorry, but six years was not enough time to get over that traumatic experience. I could be sixty, and I would still be petrified of spiders. Which is why I wanted to cry, throw up, and develop superhuman strength that allowed me to crash through the wall and run far, far away from the most horrible thing I had ever seen.

  I was so scared, I couldn’t even come up with a name for it. Sob.

  The demon walked toward me, opening its mou
th and making a retching noise. Stomach turning, I inched away slowly, wondering if the thing had a hairball stuck in its throat and was about to hurl it at me. The noise it was making sounded kinda like what Bo, Rafe’s kitten, made, except Bo was a cute little ball of orange fur, and Charlotte over here was nasty. Charlotte? Yeah, I guess that worked. The demon opened its mouth and grinned, revealing a set of extra pointy, very white teeth. It made another nasty, nausea-inducing noise, and spit something at me. Screaming again, I dove out of the way, and Charlotte’s spitball of doom narrowly avoiding hitting me on the shoulder. It landed on one of Charles’s now empty bookshelves, and proceeded to burn a hole into the wood.

  Oh. My. God. Charlotte’s spitballs had acid in them. If I didn’t start moving now, I was going to end up looking like a piece of Swiss cheese.

  I jumped to my feet and ran to my right, which took me away from both Charlotte and the door. The demon turned to follow me, shuffling slowly. Too slowly. Seeing my chance, I made a sharp turn, heading straight for the doorway. When I shot through the door, Charlotte was still turning around, waving its arms and making more retching noises. I had no desire to stick around and see what it was going to do next. Halfway down the hallway, I realized I probably should have shut the office door behind me, but there was no amount of chocolate cake in the world that would make me go back there.

  Reaching the elevator, I smashed my palm against the down arrow, but the button didn’t light up. Of course not. Try the stairs, I told myself, remembering my earlier plan to escape. Nothing had changed. Well, except for the horrible arachnid demon chasing me, but everything else was still the same.

  I had only seen the stairs once, from the lobby, so I knew they had to be around here somewhere. But when I turned two corners and still didn’t see them, panic began bubbling up my throat, threatening to burst out at any second. Calm down! I scolded myself, taking deep breaths. So what if I could hear Charlotte’s footsteps creeping after me. If I couldn’t find the stairs, I’d pick a room, barricade the door, and hide inside until it went away. You’re fine. Stop worrying!