Page 44 of Lovesick Titan (Lovesick #2)

“That door leads to the largest area besides the main room,” Priestly said. “Has a bathroom attached, complete with showers.”

Mal pushed Lucy aside, thinking that at any moment Danny might appear and catch them. “Helios,” he said once he’d confirmed the door wouldn’t budge, “fry it. ”

Dom raised her hand with a grin.

“ Wait, ” Lucy hissed. “You’re forgetting to use your brain, idiot. Relax.” Pushing Mal out of the way as he’d done to her, she rapped her knuckles on the door. “Anyone in there?”

Mal stiffened, because a broken lock did not mean it was safe to announce their presence.

A silent moment passed, but when Lucy backed away and Dom readied to burn the door to cinders, a voice called back.

“Who’s there?”

“Andre?” Lucy flew back to the door. “It’s Lucy. You alive in there?”

“ Gaia? ” Vaughn rejoiced. “You are a goddess , no joke. Prometheus and Helios with you?”

“With bells on,” Mal said. “Open up.”

“We can’t. Danny did something to the door.”

“Move back!” Mal called louder, then shooed Lucy away so he could blast it with his ice. He reared back with a kick once it was frosted over, but whatever the door was made of, it was more reinforced than he expected. He turned to Dom.

With a nod as if to say ‘about damn time’, she took aim and burned every inch Mal’s ice had touched, further destabilizing the integrity. When she stepped forward and gave an impressive kick to rival Mal’s, it gave way with a cascade of smoking dust.

Lucy dove through ahead of Mal, and he followed with Dom right behind them. The room they discovered was a mess, with blankets and dishes strewn about, as if those inside had been there…well, all day and last night.

Everyone they’d hoped to find—Grant Senior, his adopted daughter and son, Vaughn and Rivers—were accounted for. They looked tired and haggard, and Rivers had an arm in a sling like it had been sprained or broken.

Mal scanned the room with a hush and a finger to his lips like he’d done with Captain Shan. There were several surfaces Ludgate could use as a window.

There . No computer or laptop, but a tablet rested on the counter. Mal went to it, found the USB port, and plugged in the flash drive. Every surface that had been glossy and reflective turned matte .

“Hey!” Vaughn said in accusation, untangling from Lucy’s embrace.

“What happened?” Mal demanded. Grant stood back with his children, Vaughn remained by Lucy, and Rivers sat in a chair cradling her injured arm. “Scratch that,” he shook his head, “there isn’t time. Have you seen Ludgate since Danny…changed?”

“No.” Grant frowned. “But we know he’s behind this.”

“That’s why Danny turned off the Miasma Maker,” Vaughn said, gesturing to the frosted surfaces.

“Has to be. But we haven’t seen the guy.

Only Danny. It’s like some Jekyll and Hyde trick.

We’ve been trying to figure out some way out of here, but every time we come close, Danny appears.

His lightning jumps kind of make it easy to be everywhere at once.

And everything we’ve come up with so far to get one over on him might seriously hurt him. ”

“Tell me you have a plan,” Grant’s daughter said—Stella. Mal had seen her before, he realized, at the shelter in his neighborhood, but he didn’t have time to dwell.

Twenty minutes had come and gone. They had to move. “This,” Mal indicated the flash drive, “only works on one room at a time. Your Miasma Maker—it can affect the whole morgue?”

“Yes,” Vaughn nodded.

“Where is it?”

“In the main room, my computer. We just need to turn it back on.”

“Then let’s go. We turn it on…then wait for Danny. With my amplifier—”

“Cho!” Shan’s voice blared over the comms, causing Mal to wince.

“What is it?” he held a hand to his ear.

“You better be ready. Grant just left.”

“You got that, Hephaestus?” Mal said. “Tell us the second you see Zeus or any lightning through those camera feeds.”

“Got it,” Priestly said.

“ Move ,” Mal told the others.

While Dom helped Rivers from her chair, Mal bee-lined for the door, but Stella caught his wrist, suddenly behind him as if she were the one with superpowers.

“He’s been better. Even when he wasn’t…he was never like this. What do you think Ludgate did to him? ”

Mal paused before looking back at her. “I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out. And we will get Danny back. We owe Ludgate now—all of us. So first we need to make sure he can’t get inside. Then we’ll save Danny.”

Stella nodded as she released him, wholly trusting, which Mal wasn’t used to from so many seeming strangers.

Like a human train, one after the other, they made for the door to return to the hallways.

Mal had to wave his hand in front of the opening to see clearly, since the frozen ashes were still drifting downward, creating an odd sort of smoke shield, and the main lights were still out, casting everything in blue.

Then, just as he was about to step through to the other side, he choked— literally , as a hand caught him by the throat and a tall, familiar figure started to push into the room from out of the ash.

“Dann—” Mal tried to speak, while the others gasped. Why hadn’t Priestly warned them?

“Tell me, Cho,” Danny said with a terrible, manic grin on his face and a cold look in his eyes as he held Mal aloft without any effort. “Did you miss me?”