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Chapter Twenty-One

“Don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.” I said to Gwen once we were on our way to the hospital. Jake had arrived in one of the security team’s Jeeps. Fine by me. They were as well armored as the cars and, because they didn’t have the dividers between the front and back seats, felt less formal. Even though Jake still insisted we both sit in the back. I’d retrieved the photo file from the game and forwarded it to Damon, Mitch and Cassandra. So far, no one had called me back.

“Saying something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.”

“Jack hasn’t managed to get anywhere near Damon or me since his first attempt. He won’t get to you. Damon’s team will be checking all the security links they can get their hands on. The city feeds, everything. If he shows his face in public, they’ll find him.”

“What if he’s not wearing his face?” Gwen pointed out. “If he’s a strong witch, he could alter his appearance, couldn’t he?”

Well, crap. Yes. Jack was more than capable of that kind of illusion. One of his minions had imitated Yoshi at the tournament. “We can’t rule it out. But you can’t change things like retina scans or palm scans.” At least I hoped you couldn’t. “So he’s not going to get very far anywhere with decent security. I know for a fact he’s flagged on every Riley system there is. And Cassandra’s house is warded against him, too.” Lizzie and Zee had enough of a taste of Jack’s magic when we’d fought him at my house to be able to add some specific wards against him.

Gwen chewed her thumbnail, staring at the back of Jake’s head. She squinted in a way I was coming to recognize, before she muttered. “Orange.”

She was right. Jake’s aura was a clear sunny orange.

I smiled. As nervous tics went, aura checking was kind of cute. But if she was nervous, it was time to be the calm older sister. “Right, we can both sit here and stew for the next fifteen minutes or you can tell me how you got out of the game.”

She stopped chewing. Straightened in her seat a little, looking glad of the distraction. “I kind of just…did?”

I snorted. “That’s not that helpful. Explain to me what you were thinking about?”

“Well, you said Callum could do it. So I wondered if it was like moving things in the realm, or moving it around you.”

“Like the Ways?”

“No, those are for long distances. Leaving the game isn’t going far. And it’s all in your head. A switch in your reality. From the game back to the real world.”

Clear as mud. “So you moved yourself?”

A shrug. “Not exactly. I tried to see the energy fields in the game but I couldn’t really get anything. But I could feel it around me. The way you can feel the magic in the realm—you can do that, can’t you?”

“Yeah.” It felt like an ocean of power, one waiting to send a tsunami to drown me. But for Gwen, being tanai, it would be different. Friendlier, perhaps. Or, at least, familiar.

“So, I felt it and I could feel where it was connected to me. So I pushed at the connection and it…broke, I guess? It’s hard to describe. But it worked. I was out of the game.”

“You’re sure you didn’t use the kill switch?”

She nodded. “I’m sure. Well, as sure as I can be without a witness. I did it a few times and one time I put my arms inside my T-shirt so I couldn’t hit the kill switch and it still worked.”

Right. Wearing a headset, she’d have been thinking of hitting the physical switch on the chair. Not giving a mental command like you could with a chip. “Well, that’s given me things to think about.” My attempts had always focused more on breaking the illusion the game was creating in my brain, rather than my specific connection to the tech. Callum had never said anything about that. But maybe he did it differently.

“Does it help?” she asked, looking hopeful. Kind of like a student waiting to hear she got a good grade from her teacher. “I’m not sure how else to explain it.”

I smiled. “It does. I’ll have to try it for myself.” I hadn’t been practicing often since we’d returned from the realm. Callum had been busy, so we’d only managed a few hours of gaming. I should pin him down. Or try Gwen’s approach.

Though I also wanted to see her with Callum, so he could test her magic from a Fae perspective. With what she’d managed to do with the game and the ease with which she’d picked up seeing the energy fields, I suspected Cassandra’s assessment of Gwen’s potential was correct.

I was still thinking about Gwen’s approach when we reached the hospital. I accompanied Gwen up to see Meredith, who checked out her arm, pronounced herself satisfied with the progress and replaced the surgical shield with a fresh one. When she was typing up notes, Gwen leaned over and whispered, “Very green.”

I laughed. It was true. Meredith’s energy field was a soothing verdant green.

She also had good hearing. She stopped typing. “You can see my energy field?” she asked Gwen.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s useful. But pay attention to whoever is teaching you. Magic isn’t the same out here as in the realm.”

“I’m following orders,” Gwen said.

Meredith rolled her eyes. “Okay. We’re done. You have an appointment in another week. We’ll do some final tests and you’ll be good to go. You might have a scar, of course.”

“Scars are cool,” I said. “She can make up stories about how she got it.”

Gwen giggled. “Shark attack.”

“And on that note, the two of you are free to get on with your day.” Meredith politely waved us to her door. We made our way back down to the parking garage where Jake was waiting for us. Gwen kept coming up with new stories for a scar. My favorite was skiing accident while chasing a yeti.

I was still laughing about that when we started across the Bay Bridge. The silliness of it was a relief, but the reality that we were heading to Cassandra’s to talk about Usuriel’s news about Jack was starting to push aside the momentary reprieve. “Cassandra will probably have cookies,” I said. “Or biscuits, you’d call them. What’s your favorite flavor?”

Gwen didn’t answer. I glanced sideways and realized she’d gone very still, staring at the back of Jake’s head. I nudged her arm gently and when she looked round, raised an eyebrow at her.

Her eyes were wide, the color gone from her face. She mouthed something I couldn’t quite make out.

“What?” I whispered sharply.

She nodded once in Jake’s direction. “Not orange. Blue .”

Blue? What? It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up. Jake’s aura was orange. But auras didn’t change color. So this wasn’t Jake…it was someone else.

Someone with a blue aura. Like Jack….I reached for my magic, but before I could think what to do in such close quarters, whoever it was twisted casually in his seat and tossed a handful of…glittering dust in our direction. I heard something I thought might be ‘two for the price of one’ as my vision dissolved in jagged sparking light before the darkness rose up and sucked me down into its depths.

I woke up to the sensation of someone lifting my arm. I jolted, but didn’t move, as though my body didn’t quite want to respond. I thrashed—or tried to—but barely managed to twitch. Fear ripped through me, clearing the remains of sleep and bringing the image of Jake and glittering dust back to me.

We’d been taken. And I was still affected by whatever it was that had been thrown at us. My head felt like it was bathed in acid, pain rippling from temple to temple in nasty waves that made my stomach heave. I clamped my jaw shut and forced my eyes open.

Jack Miller stood beside me, his hand clamped around my right wrist, though the sensation was oddly distant. He wore a Riley Security uniform. Bastard .

I tried again to move. My arm stayed right where it was. He smiled at me and I dropped my gaze, taking in my surroundings. A room. White walls, beige carpet. A beige door off to my right. A desk I could half see to my left. Light coming from behind me. A bank of windows? So, an office? The surface beneath me felt soft, but not like a bed. A sofa, maybe? I couldn’t see more, because I couldn’t turn my head.

Where the hell had he taken me? And what had he done with Gwen? And Jake?

“Awake are you?” Jack said, his tone perfectly conversational as though we were discussing the weather. “I imagine you don’t feel so good. That particular cocktail is rough, but you should feel better in an hour or so. Not that it matters how you feel. It will decide what it wants to do with you once it’s here. Maybe it will send you through to the one who wants you so much.”

It? I tried to think through the pain. Nausea rolled over me again as I realized. A demon. He was talking about summoning a demon. Or a lesserkind. Not that a lesserkind was any better.

“Let me go and you might survive this,” I snarled. My tongue felt thick in my mouth, so the words came slowly, stripped of the threat I intended.

“That’s optimistic of you,” he said. “But I think I’ll take my chances. Now that I have my daughter, this will all be much easier.”

Fuck . He’d just admitted it. I was suddenly grateful for the drug slowing my reactions, keeping them off my face. He was our father. Fury rolled through me, and I closed my eyes, not wanting him to see, wrestling it under control. He’d said daughter, not daughters. He didn’t know about me. I had to use that. Keep the secret. Focus on Gwen.

He had Gwen. Bastard. I pushed the anger away and opened my eyes. I managed to move my head, enough to see more of the room. Definitely an office. But no sign of Gwen.

Where was she?

I had to think. An office building. Probably an abandoned one unless he owned it? There were plenty of industrial parks scattered around San Francisco and its surrounding cities that had never gone back into business after the Big One. Too many, in fact. It was one of the rebuilding projects Damon was still working on with the city consortiums.

Too many. Making us hard to find. And plenty of scope to stash Gwen somewhere that might not even be in the same building.

I swallowed. “Some father you are. What makes you think she’ll want to have anything to do with you?”

He still looked unruffled, his pale blue eyes all ice, no emotion. The same color as Gwen’s, but hers were warm. Jack was cold to the core.

“It’s not ideal, I’ll admit. But she’s not like you, Maggie. She hasn’t got the Cestis at her beck and call, and she has no idea how to use her magic like a witch. I made sure of that from the start. Of course, this would have been easier if she hadn’t decided to leave London, but what’s done is done. She’ll help me in the end, whether she wants to or not.”

Help him what? Summon a demon? I stared at him, hoping he could feel the loathing. At least he didn’t seem to have realized he was my father, too. Which could be bad for me. He’d have no compunction about killing me if he thought I was just an inconvenient witch.

I had to think. It took a huge amount of power to summon a demon. Could Jack manage it? He’d summoned imps. Was he strong enough to call a lesserkind. Who could then summon a demon. Not to mention take Gwen over. And with Gwen’s magic, maybe Jack could manage to bring a demon through.

Fuck. We should have spent more time teaching her how to shield.

“You’ll still die.” I managed. “No one survives a demon. Not for long.”

“Too many idiots try. I’m far from an idiot.”

I would have laughed if he wasn’t so terrifying. If he believed what he said, then he was insane, not just stupid. No point trying to reason with a crazy man. I had to play along and buy myself time to get us out of here.

I pictured my hand smashing into his nose, the way Callum had taught me, but my wrist barely twitched. What the fuck had he drugged me with? I had to move my wrist a certain way to activate the panic button in my chip. I tried again, failed, and bit back a curse.

Jack laughed. “Much as it’s charming to see you again, Maggie, I have places to be. And so do you.” He held up a cuff in the hand not holding my arm.

I tried to jerk away, knowing what it was, but his grip and the drug or spell or whatever it had been held me motionless. “This will keep you quiet until I need you. If I do.” He slid the cuff into place and snapped it closed.

Pain pulsed through my head, worse than before, and suddenly I was inside an unpleasantly familiar plain white room.

He’d locked me into a VR environment.

Again.

But this time, Jack didn’t know I had a potential escape route. And I didn’t want to let him suspect I wasn’t as freaked out as I’d been the first time. I scrambled to my feet, cursing and demanding to be let out, just like I had then.

“Feel free to waste all that energy, darlin’.” His voice boomed out of nowhere. “You’ll be easier to handle in the end.”

“Fuck off and die.” I didn’t have to fake that response.

No response. Had he gone? Was he watching? Pinky had freed me the last time I’d been locked in one of these things. He didn’t know I didn’t need the cuff removed this time. So he probably thought I would be stuck until he came for me.

I had no way of knowing. Unsurprisingly there was no response when I waved my hand to try and bring up a menu and only silence met my attempt to send an inquiry to the system through the chip.

Right. So it was free myself, or nothing.

But I had to be sure Jack was gone. So I would wait. Bide my time. Let the drug clear my system, though the lingering pain of being forced into the VR by the chip was now making it hard to tell if my headache was easing at all. I sank down to the floor, resting my head in my hands, breathing slowly. Let him think I was slumped there, despondent.

Instead I tried to push the pain away, move it outside my shields. I knew little about healing, and was usually bad at what I’d tried, but it seemed to help a little. The pain felt more distant, leaving me room to think.

Jack said he needed Gwen, so presumably she wasn’t in immediate danger. Well, not of him killing her. But when it came to demons, death wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. So I had to try to thread the needle. Give Jack long enough to stop paying attention to me and for the drug to wear off more, but not long enough to let him hurt Gwen.

And hope he didn’t have too many others helping him.

Demon summoning seemed to be a solitary activity. If you wanted the power a demon offered, you probably didn’t want to share. Or were more than willing to stab anyone you convinced to help you to keep the power for yourself at the end.

Jack must have help to stay so well hidden for all this time. Not to mention getting back into the country. But even if he had minions, so to speak, I doubted there’d be many of them with him or he wouldn’t have come for us himself.

I didn’t have a weapon, but I could fight and I could sneak around like a pro thanks to Callum. So I’d cross the deal-with-minions bridge if I had to.

Besides, Damon would be looking for me. Once Cassandra realized we were late, she’d raise the alarm. Presumably Jack was smart enough to ditch the car, but that wouldn’t stop Damon. He’d find me.

I couldn’t afford to believe otherwise.

I started counting my breaths, waiting for the pain in my head to ease, soothing the coil of anger and fear in my gut. I’d deal with how I felt about knowing Jack was my father when we were all safely out of here. I could use the emotion for fuel, but it couldn’t control me. I’d reached thirty minutes by the time the pain receded, time enough to focus, to dial into my magic and get ready to try to break out.

Hopefully no one was watching me. Jack had no reason to think I could get free and if he was arrogant enough to think his cuff was enough and no one needed to be guarding me, then I was delighted to use his delusion against him.

I tested the simple way first, sending a disengage command to the system. Nothing. Which didn’t surprise me.

Right. So we were going to do this the other way. And while I was sure that if I gave into my panic, I would be able to use the emotion to break myself free as I had in the past, Gwen’s way—if I could use it—would be faster. And less draining.

Find the energy. Break the energy .

I closed my eyes again, focusing on the sensations around me. I could feel the hum of the game, the sensation of being in VR, familiar as breathing these days. I tried to feel my magic, to feel the energy I gave off. To see where the two connected.

There.

A thread. The faintest hint of connection hovering at my wrist.

See the energy, break the energy.

Here goes nothing.

I shaped my magic into a spike, much like I would if I was trying to attack the way Callum had been teaching me. And, taking a final breath, hoping I wasn’t about to set fire to myself out in the real world, I stabbed the spike at the connection.

Pain. I bit my lip, determined not to scream. If someone was watching, I wasn’t going to give myself away before I even got started.

The pain ebbed. I cracked my eyes open just enough to check where I was.

It had worked. I was back in the office.

Yeah, take that you arrogant asshole, I thought viciously. I tore the cuff off, then waited to see if anyone came bursting through the door. When they didn’t after a few minutes, I sat up carefully.

My head throbbed like it was on fire. I waited it out, breathing slowly until it felt safe to risk turning my head to see where I was.

Yep, an office. Blandly corporate. The UV screens on the windows seemed to be mostly intact and there was still enough outside light to tell me that either only a few hours had passed, or I’d been out more than a day. Surely I’d be hungrier and thirstier if that was the case? I pushed to my feet, trying to get a better view out of the windows.

I’d been right about the abandoned office park part as well. The building I was in faced a row of what I had to assume were similar office-type buildings. The pavement of the parking lot was cracked in several places, weeds growing through it. The painted lines outlining each parking spot were mere suggestions, worn away by weather and time.

There was nothing beyond the buildings to give me a clue where I was. Just more industrial-looking structures. No lights on in any of them. No cars anywhere. No sign of occupancy.

So, no immediate chance of help. Not that I wanted to drag innocent bystanders into this.

I flexed my wrist, activating the panic button in my chip. But I had no idea where I was or how long it might take Damon’s team to find me. So I was rescuing my damn self. And my damned sister. I studied the sun again through the UV shields. Midafternoon. I was going to assume it hadn’t been a full day. The room was cold, the air smelled damp and dusty, which suggested a recently revived cooling system. Which didn’t help me figure out the time. But I was going with still Friday. After all, Jack hadn’t summoned a demon yet. Or I’d be dead. Or enslaved.

He needed time to convince Gwen to help him.

I had to find her first.

So. I’d have a better chance if I had a weapon. Or two. I turned my head slowly, not wanting to set off the headache again. There were shelves on one wall, but they were empty. There was also a small filing cabinet in a corner, but its drawers were half open and I could see they were empty as well.

Which left the desk. Two closed drawers, one narrow, one deep.

I pushed myself up, wobbled slightly, clenched my jaw and crossed the room. The drawers slid open smoothly. The top one was empty. Not so much as a paperclip.

But the second one…the second one held…my backpack? I stared at it blankly. Was Jack that arrogant? So sure of his cuff holding me that he didn’t even bother to ditch my belongings?

Crazy , I reminded myself. Crazy and convinced he was winning. A dangerous combination, but one I could use against him. He thought I wouldn’t be able to get out. More fool him.

I eased the backpack out of the drawer and pushed the tiny spot underneath one of the pocket flaps where a panic button was sewn between the layers of fabric. I pressed it, just in case the one in my chip hadn’t worked. My datapad was gone, so was the small penknife I kept stashed in one of the inner pockets, suggesting Jack wasn’t entirely stupid. As I searched through the backpack, Cerridwen’s bracelet rattled against one of the clips.

Oh, good. Jack hadn’t taken that either.

I sent a small burst of power into it. The Fae equivalent of a panic button. Might as well summon all the cavalry. Particularly if Jack was planning to bring demonkind to this party. That done, I shoved it into the pocket of my jeans and kept rifling through the pack.

I hadn’t been carrying a gun, but as far as I could see, Jack hadn’t taken anything besides my datapad and knife. The tiny torch, a bottle of ibuprofen, a few protein bars and the small pouch I used to carry around a lip balm, Band-Aids, gum, and other basic necessities. I dry swallowed two of the ibuprofen, hoping they’d help chase away the last of the headache, forced myself to take a bite of a protein bar, and reached for the hard case I carried my sunglasses around in. The one with the secret section under the lid where I hid my lockpicks.

I slid them into the pocket of my jeans, debated whether I should bring the backpack with me, but slid it back into the drawer. I didn’t need extra weight. I crossed to the door, which only had a standard mechanical lock that had been reversed so the nib was on the outside, leaving me with the keyhole.

Perfect. I paused by the door, listening and trying to breathe as quietly as possible. There was no sound at all.

I stretched my senses farther, feeling for magic, reaching for all the skills I’d built in my sessions chasing Cerridwen’s illusions around the city. I knew the feel of demon magic now. Could sense it several blocks away. And I doubted Jack had found himself a lair that big.

There. Off to my right. Magic. Bad magic. Greasy, slimy, just-plain-wrongness. I made quick work of the lock with the picks and slipped out through the door. It went against all my instincts, but I headed toward the magic.

The corridor was dimly lit, half the lights dark. Fine by me. I pulled a ward around myself and made my way slowly down the rows of offices until I came to an intersection with another corridor. I glanced down to the left. An exit sign glowed faintly at the end of it.

I took half a step toward it before I stopped. As tempting as it was to get the hell out of there, to see if I could find help, I wasn’t going to leave Gwen here.

Help is coming , I told myself firmly and turned back in the other direction.

I made it about twenty feet before someone stepped out of a doorway behind me and clapped a hand over my mouth, dragging me back into the room.