by Pat Esden
In a flash, the oil once again took effect, the weight slamming back into my body as I jolted from ethereal to solid.
Chase had Lotli by the arm, pulling her off the platform. He glanced toward me. “Run, Annie! The tunnel. Get to it.”
He took off with Lotli, speeding toward the tunnel’s dark mouth. I caught up with them a second later.
“Guards!” Malphic’s voice rang out behind us. There was the swish of swords leaving scabbards, but we were already in the tunnel, sprinting as fast as we could toward the intersection. Only one goal drummed in my head: Escape. Get out. Run.
Jaquith was waiting for us at the intersection, but not Mother.
We skittered to a stop. “Brother,” Chase said, giving Jaquith a quick embrace, “it’s been a long time.”
“Too long. Now get out of here.” Jaquith waved us to the right. “I’ll send the guards the other way. Don’t worry about Susan. I’ll bring her to the spire. Stay strong. Stay proud. Stay free,” he shouted as we raced off.
The tunnel stretched ahead of us. We ran, hard and fast, until we reached the tapestry with the stars and moon on it. I slid to a stop. “Jaquith told me this leads to the spire. I know you didn’t want to use them, but—” The memory of Lotli grinding her hips against Chase’s face flashed in front of my eyes and a shockwave of emotions hit me head-on. My throat squeezed. Tears flooded my eyes. “Why, Chase? What the hell was going on up there?”
Chase pulled a Bowie knife from his waistline and shoved it into my grip. “Take this. For backup. I’m going to help Jaquith get your mother.”
My hand took the knife, but my brain didn’t register a word he said. “Didn’t you hear me?” I raged. “What were you and Lotli doing?”
“It’s this place.” Lotli’s voice trembled. “The aftereffects. We didn’t mean—”
Chase cut her off. “Annie, I want you to take Lotli and go. I know what I told you about the carpets. But do it.” He took me by both shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “We’ll talk about this later. Lotli’s right. It wasn’t me—or her. I love you,” he said.
The shock of those words and strength of his grip brought me back to my senses. Suddenly, I was aware of the knife in my hand and what he’d said when he gave it to me. “No, Chase,” I shrieked, terror ricocheting through me. “You can’t go back there! Let Jaquith get Mother.”
“Remember”—his eyes bore into mine—“you promised to leave if I asked you to. Now go. Wait for us on the balcony. Ten minutes. No more. It won’t be long before guards figure out what’s happening.” His worried gaze lingered on my face. But something darker and wilder moved beneath that expression, something unfamiliar, raw and feral, almost hungry. I wanted desperately to keep him talking, to find out what was going on inside him and make damn sure it wasn’t a part of the change. I wanted to know more about the dance, too. Was it planned? Was it Lotli’s fault things spun out of control? But there was no time for questions about feelings or magic, not without endangering us all. He loved me—and I had promised.
“Chase, don’t go. Stay with us,” Lotli whimpered.
“Take care of yourself,” I said to him.
Chase nodded and took off back down the tunnel.
Lotli latched ahold of my sleeve, tugging me toward the carpet. I held back, watching Chase fade into the distance before I relented and let her pull me into the carpet’s center.
Entering it was like stepping into a waterfall of static shocks. Pressure sang in my ears. A musty smell plugged my nostrils and flavored my tongue. When we stepped out, it was into total darkness.
Shifting the knife into my other hand, I pulled out my flashlight and turned it on.
We stood in a big linen closet, piled high with rolled carpets, and shelves crammed with sheer curtains and tasseled pillows. I fanned the flashlight beam over all four walls, scanning the carpets that hung on each of them. It was weird how sharp my mind felt, alive with renewed energy. I suspected it was from Chase saying he loved me. He loved me. He really did. And he’d said it out loud in front of Lotli.
I studied the carpets again, dread building inside me: Blue. Purple. Red. Silver. “Jaquith told me to take the carpet with the gold wasps,” I said to Lotli. “Do you see it?”
“Gold? There aren’t any gold ones!” she shrieked.
Jaquith’s voice rang in my ears. “Be careful. I once took a carpet with green butterflies on it instead of red ones and ended up down in the berserker quarters.” Green. Red. Gold. An art dealer had once told me about a collector who couldn’t tell green from red. But the man’s color blindness had extended beyond that. What appeared to be golden to him was in fact red.
“We’ll take the red one,” I said, striding to it.
Lotli shrank back. “No. We can’t. What if you are wrong?”
“I’m not. Jaquith’s colorblind. At least, I think he is.”
I shone the flashlight at her.
The color had leached from her face and tears streaked the gold eye shadow down her cheeks. She dragged her fingers through her hair, her voice bordering on hysteria. “We need to go back,” she wailed. “We can’t leave Chase. He didn’t mean to hurt you. We didn’t. It’s . . . The aftereffect. The wine. This place. Our head.” She gripped her skull and groaned, “You shouldn’t have broken the egg.”
I shoved the knife into my strap, next to my little dagger. It seemed like when we’d arrived in the realm, she’d gotten over the magic’s aftereffect faster than this. I hadn’t noticed her drink any wine, but that could explain what was going on.
Before I could change my mind or she could guess what I was up to, I lunged forward, grabbed her, and threw both of us through the carpet. Please, let me be right. Just this once.
We stumbled out onto the narrow landing, exactly where we needed to be.
“Wait a second,” I said.
Sliding the flashlight into my pocket, I retrieved a bag of salt. While she shivered and stared at me like a woman possessed, I sprinkled the salt across the floor beneath the bottom of the carpet. Chase, Mother, and even Jaquith would be able to get through, but it would prevent full-blooded genies from passing.
Once I finished doing that, I used the other bag of salt to draw a line across the top of the staircase. It wouldn’t keep us safe for long, but it might buy us a few minutes.
I glanced at Lotli, rocking back and forth like she’d totally lost her mind. I nibbled my bottom lip. If she was still capable of playing the flute, we could escape as soon as Chase and Mother got here. If she couldn’t play, we still could leave at sunrise when the oil wore off. She or I or Mother could cloak Chase to get him through, unless Malphic cast a new warding spell and sealed the veil.
“Come on.” I led Lotli to the balcony and settled down in the shadow of the horse statue. With the aurora fading and the moon setting, that end of the balcony was darker than before. But streaks of pink-and-gray daylight stretched along the horizon. Sunrise wasn’t far away, not at all.
The pulse of drums drifted up from the arena. I crept to the balustrades and peered over. I’d expected to find the arena nearly empty, what with Malphic and all the guards and warriors having left to hunt us down. But the grandstand was still packed, and so were Malphic’s and Mother’s tables.
Fear paralyzed me. Slowly, I let my gaze drop to the middle of the arena. Three fighters. On the center platform. My pulse jumped. Three fighters. Why was my gut screaming that one of them was Chase?
No. I shook my head. It wasn’t him. What I was seeing was a normal, scheduled fight. Intruders or not, Malphic wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint his guests; the festival had simply gone on as usual. However, I wasn’t foolish enough to believe there weren’t guards still searching for us.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Lotli?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
I did a double take. Her voice sounded normal. She wasn’t pale or staring like a madwoman. The fresh air must have driven off the last of the magic’s aftereffect o
r the wine or whatever had affected her. Lotli appeared totally okay, thank Hecate—or whoever.
“We are sorry about everything,” she said. A flush tinged her cheeks and she bowed her head. “We are so embarrassed.”
I blinked at her, my shoulders weighed down by the power of her regret. And my mind went back to a few moments ago: her eyes streaked with tears, her voice bordering on panic. And further back, to before the dance: Chase devouring the ribs with uncontained lust and tossing the bones on the ground. That wasn’t like him, not at all. The dance wormed its way into my head. The truth was, even though a large part of me believed Lotli wanted to have sex with Chase, I couldn’t believe she had wanted to do it in front of an arena full of frenzied genies. Besides, I was far from guilt-free when it came to abnormal behavior. My rage and jealousy had been totally out of control in the arena. I’d felt like killing Lotli and probably would have stabbed Chase a couple of times if the dance had gone on one second longer. And I hadn’t drunk the wine or eaten the meat, or worked flute-magic for that matter. It was this place. Its energy had brought out the worst in all of us.
“I’m sorry too,” I said. “You gave me that pendant out of friendship. It was wrong of me to break it, a stupid thing to do. I was jealous beyond reason. But honestly, I had no idea it would affect the oil that way.”
“We understand. This place . . . It is too much,” she whispered.
I hugged myself, tucking my hands under my armpits. The danger she was in right now really wasn’t fair. We were here to rescue my mother. Chase had freely made his choice to come. But she was here because Kate was putting money in Zea’s bank account. What we’d done to her was wrong.
She held up her hand to silence me. “Do you hear something?”
I sucked in a breath. Voices filtered up from lower down in the spire. Oh shit. Guards. It was only a matter of time before they searched this level and spotted us.
Spotted us.
That was the answer. Adrenaline rushed back into my blood. Maybe Zea had sent Lotli here, but I could get her out. Make up for endangering her life.
“How long do you need to play to open the veil?” I asked.
“Not long since the wards are already broken, only a minute or so.”
I snagged her arm, pulling her up. “We need to leave now. Once we’re safely on the other side, you can start playing again to reopen the veil, every few minutes until sunrise or until Chase and Mother get up here and come through.”
Her eyes brightened. “You are right. We can open it no matter which side we are on.”
In a second, we were back inside the spire, standing on the landing. Lotli raced behind the curtain and into the niche. Flute in hand, she turned toward the spot where we’d come through.
I peered over the stairwell. Way down, I could see guards hurtling upward from the floors below. The clank of weapons and the rumble of their heels quickly grew louder, like a cyclone drawing near.
“Start now,” I called to Lotli, “but wait until I say it’s time before you step through.”
The flute’s eerie song began, drowning out the guards’ footfalls. The air vibrated. There was a ripping sound. A blast of cold air smacked the back of my head.
The guards were one floor below now, charging up the stairs. To make my plan work, I needed to wait long enough for them to catch a glimpse of the veil closing. Just enough to convince them that everyone had escaped.
I flew to the curtain and pulled it to one side. “Go, on the count of three,” I shouted at Lotli. “One. Two.” I took a deep breath. “Three!”
She stepped into the crackling gap and out of the djinn realm—and I turned in the opposite direction and dove back through the carpet. She deserved to get away. It was only right. But no way in hell was I leaving, not without Mother—and Chase.
CHAPTER 29
Give me a name older than the sky, a name more powerful than the burn of salt. Give to me a name that means victor, one strong enough to scorch light into the darkest of hearts.
Prayer to Hecate,
The Three-faced Goddess, Protector of the Gateways
I turned on the flashlight, praying I was in the linen closet. Its beam washed over carpets and shelves piled with folded curtains. I let out my breath. Perfect, so far.
I set the flashlight on a shelf and laid my dagger and knife next to it. I yanked off my boots, the leather strap, and my robe. As fast as I could, I snagged a couple of the sheer gold curtains, draped them over my head and shoulders, and around the linen shift. They billowed and flowed, softer and finer than any fabric I’d ever felt. I twisted and knotted them until they stayed in place, then veiled my face as best as I could. I had no jewelry or anything with flair except the purposely frayed mitts Chase had made for me.
Chase’s face swept into my mind and a pang of longing shot through me. All I’d wanted was for him and Mother to be safe, for us to get back home—and look at the mess I’d dragged everyone into. Reluctantly, I pulled the mitts off and tucked them into my waistline. I would rather have kept them on since their warmth made me feel like he was with me, but plain was better than strange. And anything was safer than looking like a petite eunuch.
I tied the strap back on, tucking it into the folds of billowy fabric, and shoved the knife in where only its outline could be seen. Then I did the same with my little dagger. Carrying weapons couldn’t possibly be taken as odd; after all, I was an unescorted female.
Once I’d bundled my boots and robe, and tossed them into a dark corner, I headed toward the carpet leading to the tunnel. On this side it was decorated with purple wasps. But on the tunnel side it had been decorated with a moon and stars. Chase and Jaquith had warned me that these things could lead anywhere. But what choice did I have?
Hoping I’d get lucky again and wondering what purple wasps could possibly represent or symbolize, I switched off my flashlight, hid it between my boobs, and stepped through the carpet and—
I smacked into something rock-hard and tunic-covered. A guard. Shit.
I looked up at his face and gulped. The Hulk.
His lips lifted in a slow smile. “What have we here? A pretty lost morsel, all by herself?”
Lotli had flirted and insinuated him into doing her bidding before, but I didn’t have time for that. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a bodyguard and a eunuch to back me up either.
He bent closer, his aura reaching up under my shift, hot and moist, fingering my thighs and moving upward. He smelled like musty wine. Lots of wine.
“I’m not lost. I’m late,” I said, pushing past him.
He grabbed my shoulders, twisted me around to face him, and shoved me backward toward the carpet’s gateway. “You’re going to enjoy this,” he said with a nasty leer.
I pulled the knife and pushed it against his belly. “Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t,” I hissed. “But do you really want to explain to the Sovereign Mistress why her freshly washed gift tastes like your spewed seed?”
He froze. “Vephra?”
“Of course, idiot. Who else would I mean?” I longed to spit in his face or give the knife one good thrust. Instead, I gave him a lusty grin. “Pregnant women have special needs, you know.”
With that, I spun away and stalked off down the empty tunnel, head up and my bare feet slapping the floor. But inside, my stomach tossed like I might throw up and my instincts told me to run back to the spire and get the hell out of here. Still, I paraded onward, the distant roar of the arena crowd and the clang of weapons growing louder, my fear mounting with each step.
When I was certain the Hulk hadn’t followed, I began to jog. First I needed to go ringside, make absolutely sure it wasn’t Chase fighting. I needed to find Jaquith, too.
My fingers shook as I slid the knife back into its hiding place. Unless I was wrong and the fight I’d seen from the balcony wasn’t one of the scheduled ones, Jaquith could have betrayed Chase. Maybe he wasn’t ever really on our side.
I upped my pace, jogging even
faster. Where were the other tunnels: the crossroads, the intersection? It hadn’t seemed this far from the moon and star carpet before.
As I started to sprint, sweat sliced an icy trail down my spine. There weren’t any side tunnels. None at all! I couldn’t have run past them without noticing, right?
I glanced over my shoulder and my breath ceased in my throat. The tunnel behind me was gone, replaced by a wall-size thicket of thorny glass branches. And it wasn’t just standing there. The thicket was following me, moving steadily closer and closer.
What Chase had said that night on the widow’s walk came back to me. He’d told me that when the slaves went to the arena to fight they’d walked down a tunnel. “There were these rosebushes, glass instead of green leaves and thorns. They roofed the tunnel and would block it off behind us as we marched forward, so we couldn’t leave.”
Every trace of fear drained from my body, replaced with pure anger, cold and hard. Slowing to a walk, I flexed my fingers around the handle of the knife. I was Chase, a boy forced to fight when I should have been walking to a school bus with my mother. I was my mother, stolen when I should have been with my husband and child.
I raised my chin and strode forward, determined and strong. Ready to meet what lay ahead. Enough was enough.
A screech followed by a high-pitched whine reverberated behind me.
I glanced back. To my horror, the glass branches were untwisting, forming into a wall of—my face went cold as I recognized their shape—a wall of thorned spears.
I stood transfixed as hundreds of them aimed themselves at me.
My brain screamed, Run, Annie, run! But my feet wouldn’t listen. A ping reverberated, followed by another and another as all the spears flew at me as if thrown by invisible hands.
I let out a piercing scream, turned, and ran, the whistle and whine of the spears behind me growing loud and closer. My veils came loose, entangling my legs and feet. I yanked up my skirts and pumped my legs faster. There was light ahead. Oh God. Not just light. It was the arena.
