Authors: Gabriella Pierce
J
ane pressed her ear to the door, searching for any signs
of life. Silence greeted her, and Jane said silent thanks that Lynne hadn’t stayed around to listen to the show. She opened the door as carefully as she could, wincing at the tiny creak. In the quiet, and in her fear, the click sounded almost like a scream. But there was no hint of voices or footsteps, so she had to assume that most of the noise was just a product of her frayed nerves.
Jane made Charles walk ahead of her to give her as much room as possible to escape if they ran into someone. Fortunately, they made it to her room without incident. Once the door clicked shut behind them, she went straight for the closet, feeling more and more urgent every second. Her luck couldn’t hold out forever, and her room only had one exit; she had to hurry or she could get cornered. She whipped her navy Burberry trench over her tired-looking wedding dress and scooped up the compact little flight bag she had packed for her “honeymoon.” She glanced at Charles, who was standing fixedly in front of her bathroom mirror, apparently entranced by her moisturizer.
She thought about just sneaking out of the room, but her conscience got the best of her. “Charles,” she whispered, and his head swiveled around. “You remember what I said, about picking something as a present? You can take anything you want, and then go back to your room, okay? Because your mom might be angry if she sees you here.” She dug quickly through his mind for illustrative examples, showing him Lynne in a variety of unflattering snits.
He ambled over and, with a hopeful expression, held up a little stuffed dog a MoMA vendor had sent her. Jane nodded, her heart panging as he hugged it to his chest.
“Okay, fine. Now I’m going out and then you count to ten—do you understand? You count to ten and then come out and go back to your room.” She caught a glimpse of his mind’s interpretation of her instructions, which involved her tied to his bed again in just a thong. She began to rifle through his thoughts for something a little closer to her plan, but her focus was abruptly interrupted when he slapped her across the face. She reeled back. He stared at her with a reasonably pleasant expression on his slack face, all things considered, and she reminded herself that he wasn’t just misunderstood—he was also nuts. “Ten,” she reminded him firmly, rubbing her stinging cheek, and slid silently from the room.
The hallways remained mercifully deserted, but it felt like it took her a month to reach the staircase. She chose the service entrance rather than the main door, in case Gunther was awake at his post for once, but didn’t really breathe until she was on the street.
It was surreal: bright, peaceful, normal, and completely separate from the lunatic world just a few stories above it. The trees in the median, leaves just beginning to bud, waved gently in the breeze.
I’m free,
she thought, trying to make the news sink into her still-terrified brain. Her hands were shaking and she clenched them, trying to steady her heart.
I can go anywhere I want now, and they’ll never—
“Jane,” a molten-gold voice murmured behind her, and she let out a tiny scream.
Malcolm.
She spun around, but the sidewalk was empty.
“Jane,” Malcolm’s unmistakable voice said again, and she whipped her head back and forth, trying to find him.
Just get in a cab and get the hell away!
her brain shouted, but something was wrong. His voice sounded wrong. Her body hovered halfway between the stairs and the curb, between danger and freedom, waiting for her mind to click to a decision.
“I have to get to Jane,” Malcolm whispered, and she finally understood: she wasn’t hearing his voice. She was hearing his mind.
It doesn’t matter. Just get in a damn cab!
But she hesitated again, glancing at the main door a few yards away. No one was coming yet, and she’d see them first if they did, wouldn’t she?
It’d be useful to know as much as I can before I go,
she told the skeptical part of her brain, but the truth was that Malcolm’s “voice” sounded choked and desperate, and she just wanted to . . . check.
On your grandmother’s murderer,
the skeptical part reminded her, but she shushed it. As true as that statement was, so was the desperation and love she felt in his thoughts. She stood frozen, indecisive, then flattened herself against the gray stone of the mansion, pushing very quietly into Malcolm’s mind.
He was somewhere dark with stone walls—a basement? It was hard to get a clear picture of his surroundings through his eyes, though, because he had surrounded himself with mental images of Jane. Everywhere she looked, there she was, laughing, blushing, brushing on lip gloss, eating, showering, working. They were meeting, flirting, arguing, making love, and getting married, but fear infiltrated every image. She followed the thread of fear, and there she was again: bloodied, broken, tortured, and dead in hundreds of painful-looking ways. In most of the images, Lynne was there, gloating, and something nagged at Malcolm’s memory wherever his mother appeared. Jane couldn’t quite catch it the first few times that it flickered by, but the repetition felt significant.
She tapped her foot impatiently while, in the newest vision, Lynne snapped her neck and she fell to the ground. She waited for the flicker to pass by again, and this time she saw it coming.
I chose wrong,
he was thinking and, carefully so as not to alert him to her presence, she drifted toward that thought.
“No other member of this family requires so much handling, Malcolm. Can’t you try a little harder to remember your loyalties?”
“I don’t see why we can’t just—”
“Malcolm,” Lynne snapped, twirling a gleaming black pen between her long fingers. “You’re simply not qualified to make this sort of decision.”
“It’s murder,” he said, but his voice wavered, lacking conviction.
“It is,” she snarled softly, dropping the pen. “But do you remember what happened the last time you had the slightest bit of responsibility for our family’s welfare?” Malcolm flinched, and his mother leaned toward him, dark eyes glowing cruelly. “Don’t you realize that you are the reason why it has come to this at all? We only need this girl because you have never wanted to be responsible. So I’m making it easy for you: no hard choices, no moral dilemmas. All you have to do is exactly what you’re told. Enough of that and maybe you’ll come close to making up for what you did to my darling girl.”
Malcolm recoiled as if he’d been slapped, but Lynne’s hands had risen to cover her face, and her shoulders shuddered with what looked like sobs. He crossed the distance between them in two long steps and knelt by her feet, tears standing in his own eyes.
Then memories of Annette crashed in on him and Jane both: a little girl with a round face and a light-brown bob, in a pink bathing suit, shoveling sand into a bucket while the grown-ups hid from the sun’s glare in their shady house. Malcolm, thin at twelve but already growing tall, had wandered off down the beach, drawn by the sight of older boys playing soccer. Then there were frantic calls behind him that quickly became desperate wails, and he saw that the bucket and shovel were still on the sand, purposeless and ownerless.
“You’re right,” Malcolm whispered against Lynne’s trembling knees. “I’m sorry, Mom. Of course I will. I’ll do whatever I have to. Just don’t cry. I’ll get the girl here. I’ll make this right.”
Jane threw herself violently away from the memory, revulsion making her clumsy. Everything spun around her as Malcolm became aware of the intruder in his thoughts.
Jane!
his mind shouted.
Jane, get the hell away from this place!
Then, with a snap, he expelled her from his mind. She gasped and fell into her own body again. The everyday New York sounds of cars revving, pedestrians laughing, and cell phones ringing swooped in on her at full volume. Jane kicked the stone wall in frustration, leaving a gray smudge on the point of her ivory shoe. She could never forgive Malcolm for what he’d done, but now she had to admit that she couldn’t hate him, either. His family had twisted him until he broke. It was Lynne who had made him what he was . . . but that could also make him an asset to Jane. No one knew Lynne better—strengths, weaknesses, everything—than the son who had disappointed her so thoroughly.
Jane tapped in the code to the service door, feeling a reckless rage boil up slowly but steadily. It was time to storm the freaking castle.
T
he stairway was just as still as it had been on her way
out, but there was a charge in the air that made the hairs on the back of Jane’s neck stand up. She tried to tell herself it was just her nerves, but her nerves were telling her quite firmly that the hunt for her was on. She wasn’t sure how far along it was, but there was no doubt she’d been missed.
The door at the bottom of the last flight of stairs looked like it had been built to withstand a nuclear blast. It was reinforced steel with three dead bolts on the outside—not one of them locked. She flew through it, the maze of pipes indicating that she was in the basement. Although with its array of hooks, chains, and what she was fairly certain were a variety of medieval torture devices, “dungeon” would have been a more appropriate term.
Is that a freaking rack?
Chained to the far wall and naked to the waist was Malcolm. He raised his golden head in terrified disbelief. His right eye was swollen almost shut, and a trickle of blood ran from a nasty cut on his nose. But the worst damage she could see was the absolute despair in his eyes. “Jane, what the hell are you doing?” he rasped. “You need to get out of here.”
“Malcolm, honey,” she choked, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Did
you
know your mother was this kinky?”
“Jane, seriously,” he wheezed.
She crossed the dungeon at a run, her stupid wedding shoes clacking obnoxiously over the concrete floor. “I’ll go as soon as you do,” she promised him, reaching for his chained wrist. “Just tell me where those bitches hide their keys.”
He shook his head and winced. “No keys. She conjured the chains out of thin air.”
The rage was boiling faster and redder now in Jane’s body, coalescing behind her eyes. A familiar electric tingle came with it, and she knew her magic had fully shaken off the dampening effects of whatever Lynne and the twins had done to her. She took a step away from Malcolm.
“Thank God,” he mumbled, clearly taking her step back as a retreat.
Footsteps sounded overhead, along with shouts. Time was running out. Inhaling a deep lungful of stale air, Jane called together all of the power in her body.
Conjuring? They’re not the only ones who can do tricks.
She let out a dry laugh as the magic formed a hard, angry ball in her chest.
Malcolm’s head lolled up, uncomprehending. “Jane . . .” he began, but he met her eyes and clamped his mouth shut.
She moved the ball of fire outward, toward her fingertips, and clenched the chains around his wrists. She felt a detonation somewhere inside her, and at the same time the chains exploded into rusted sand that rained down on their feet. Without the chains to support his battered body, Malcolm slumped to the damp cement ground.
“Jane,” he whispered, dark eyes wide.
“Shush,” she told him. “Talk later. Right now we’re in the middle of a daring escape.” They headed for the service door, Malcolm limping miserably on an injured leg while Jane tried to contain her impatience.
You’re the moron who insisted on rescuing him,
her mind informed her huffily, and she smiled in spite of herself.
The smile lasted through their slow progress up the stairs, but disappeared abruptly when the service door refused to open. “Shit.”
She entered her code again, and then Malcolm’s, and, finally, what she was pretty sure was Laura Helding’s, but the little LED flashed red and the door didn’t budge. “Shit shit shit shit.” The footsteps sounded louder now, more frenzied. She channeled a few exploratory tendrils of magic into the keypad, but they bounced back painfully into her hands.
Magic-proof—I’d want that, too, if I spent my time going around killing other witches’ families.
“Let me try,” Malcolm offered, stumbling toward the door. He winced, and she wondered if he’d cracked a rib or two.
“No point,” she disagreed. “They’ve locked the place down.”
Malcolm looked stricken. “Then it’s over. They’ve won.”
Jane fought the urge to shake his broken-looking shoulders. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded. “Why are you so in awe of your family? They’re just witches, not gods. Are you really going to just give up? Stand here and wait for them to come and make up a new set of chains for you?”
Something changed in Malcolm as he processed her words. He seemed to stand up straighter, and his eyes blazed beneath his puffy, blackened lids. “We have to get to Gunther’s desk,” he said resolutely. “Which means—”
“That we have to go through the main house.”
He nodded slowly, and without waiting for more discussion, she dragged him grimly toward the main hall: if this was the end, they’d go down swinging.
A shout echoed through the high-ceilinged entryway when they burst into it, and Jane spun toward the sound. Belinda Helding was raising a bony finger to point at them, but Jane—who didn’t bother with the dramatic gesture—was faster, and the woman smashed against the wall before slumping to the floor in an unconscious heap.
Jane had never felt so powerful, so angry—but also so in control. She ran toward Gunther’s desk, shoving Belinda’s limp body out of the way with her shoe. “Malcolm, tell me what all this is,” she urged. The control panel was an incomprehensible mass of buttons and lights.
He shook his head helplessly. “Can’t you just . . . ?” he wiggled his fingers as a demonstration.
She consulted the magic sparking through her veins for a moment, finding power but no intelligence, and shook her head. “I’m pretty sure I’d blow the whole thing up, which probably wouldn’t open the doors.”
He turned back toward the console. “What if we—”
Ding.
It was the softest noise, but they both turned toward the sound as if it were machine-gun fire. It had to be Lynne. Heart pounding, Jane funneled all the electricity in her body to her hands, where it crackled almost visibly.
The elevator doors slid open painfully slowly. Jane started to launch her magic at it, but managed to pull it to the side just in time as Malcolm’s father stepped out, scotch glass in hand, looking beyond dazed.
“What are you kids doing setting fireworks in the hall?” he slurred, crashing into the door frame as he staggered toward them. He didn’t appear to notice the charred hole in the marble wall beside his head, the remnant of Jane’s aborted attack. He did stop when he reached Belinda’s prone form on the floor, but only for a brief moment before he stepped over her body. “Huh. Never liked her.” He turned to his son. “Malcolm, Blake’s got a poker game on two”—he frowned suddenly—“but this isn’t two.”
“Dad,” Malcolm said carefully, “do you know how the security system works?” Jane stared at him incredulously: the man couldn’t even work the elevator. But Malcolm nodded reassuringly as his father tottered toward them.
“I always did think these gizmos were neat,” he announced happily, setting the scotch down so hard on the desk that some sloshed out. “Malcolm, have you talked to your mother? I think she’s mad at you. You know how she gets. I got worried so I locked her in our room upstairs, but I think she’ll find a way out. She always does.”
Malcolm put a hand on his shoulder. “Dad, we’re leaving,” he said softly.
The older man turned his bleary eyes up to his son’s face, taking in the damage there for what appeared to be the first time. “That sounds right,” he agreed, turning back to the control panel with a shrug. “Wish I had . . . well, water under the bridge. You remind me of her,” he added suddenly. Jane, who’d been watching the stairway for more intruders, frowned in confusion when she realized that he’d been talking to her. She was like
Lynne
?
“She was sweet when we met,” he explained, his words alternately hesitating and running together. “Smart young thing, and pretty, too. More like you, less on her shoulders. You two should go now,” he added sadly, and a soft beeping noise was followed by an audible click. He frowned at Malcolm’s naked torso, quite possibly noticing it for the first time. He unbuttoned his own pink shirt and handed it to his son before settling into Gunther’s padded chair in just his undershirt. “Even taxis still have standards. Some things do stay the same.” He sounded sleepy.
“Malcolm, come on,” Jane urged, pulling him toward the door, but he resisted, wincing at the pressure on his ribs. “It’s only a matter of time before your mom gets free.”
“No!” Malcolm cried. “We have to—
you
have to do something about my dad. When she finds out he helped—”
“Don’t worry ’bout a thing,” his father slurred in a relaxed singsong, swiveling the chair back and forth. “Never did figure out how you managed to hide things from her, kid. Bet it’s good—you always were a smart one. But my way works, too.” He winked and raised his scotch glass pointedly and drank a lengthy farewell toast as Malcolm finally let Jane pull him through the carved wooden door for what she fervently hoped would be the last time.