out there wanted us alive, and they were willing to murder Triads to get us.
“Evangeline,” Isleen said. “You must run.”
I glared. Her lavender eyes gave nothing away. Footsteps echoed around us. Small, many, and closing in fast.
“You must. They want you, child.”
“Alex—”
“You have no friends, only duty.”
A familiar line, one that Wyatt had tried on me once upon a time, back when I was new to the Triads and just learning the ropes. It didn’t work back then, and it wasn’t working in the mall. I did have friends. Friends I could no longer protect.
Isleen handed me the gun. I took a breath, turned, and bolted back down the mall corridor, toward the Sanctuary, firing over my shoulder as I went, hoping to get a target. No time to look, no time to see who was hunting me.
The only thought in my head was escape. Live to fight another day. I was completely alone. The Sancutary seemed to call to me, beckon me toward its powerful center. Everything blurred and, for an instant, I was sure my feet left the ground. I saw the interior of the Sanctuary, smelled the incense. Felt the warmth. Two places at once.
One … two … three stings in my lower back. Cold permeated my legs, my arms, my chest. I fell toward blackness, even as the floor rushed up to meet me.
Chapter 18
43:10
Consciousness returned like an anvil. A headache and queasy stomach dropped out of nowhere and knocked me back to the real world. The dim room and stark ceiling sent a bolt of panic through my abdomen. Adrenaline set my heart pounding. I jerked my hands. Instead of finding them bound above my head, they moved easily at my sides. My back was on something hard and cool.
It still smelled of waste and sweat, but I wasn’t in that damnable closet again.
“Evy?”
The familiar voice startled me. I rolled onto my side and drew my knees up, prepared to spring. The sudden movement sent my stomach churning. My vision darkened. I swallowed against the overwhelming need to vomit.
I was in a jail cell of some sort, five-by-eight maximum, with no cot and a bucket in place of a toilet. Iron bars made up three of the walls, with cement blocks the fourth. A bare orange bulb glowed from an open fixture just outside of the cell. Others dotted the corridor every ten feet or so. I could see straight through to the other cells. The two on my left were empty. The one immediately to my right was not.
Wyatt knelt on his side of the bars, hands clenched around the slim poles. I blinked, certain the apparition would disappear. It didn’t. A purple bruise colored his left cheekbone. His nose was red and slightly swollen, and his knuckles were flecked with dried blood.
“You’re alive,” I said.
“So are you.”
He smiled, and I nearly broke my nose trying to hug him through the bars. My arms were slim enough to make it through, but he could only squeeze my shoulders and touch my face. I pressed my lips to his forehead, inhaling his familiar scent.
“I didn’t think I’d find you again,” I said.
“It’s not quite the rescue I was hoping for, but I’ll take it.”
Rescue. Shit. “I screwed up, Wyatt. I let myself get caught.”
“Doesn’t matter, Evy, we’ll figure this out. We always do.”
I looked past him, at the cell on his other side. It was empty. “Did they bring Alex and Isleen here, too?”
“You met Isleen?”
“We ran into each other at the train station earlier today.” Or yesterday, depending on how long I’d been unconscious. “She’s been helping us. She was there when we were captured.”
“I haven’t seen her.” His frown hardened. “Another guy was here for a while. They took him about an hour ago, while he was still unconscious.”
Fear twisted my stomach. I grabbed my throat and found bare skin. I gazed at the floor of my cell, even down the front of my T-shirt. The cross necklace was gone. God damn me for losing it. “They? Who’s doing this, Wyatt? It can’t be the Triads.”
“It’s not them, Evy. After they picked me up at the burger place, they took me to one of our holding stations near the Anjean. It was mostly Kismet and Willemy, and I spent an hour or so not answering their questions. Rufus showed up and said he wanted to talk to me. The door opened again, and suddenly he was shot….”
He looked down. I squeezed his hands, urging him to finish.
“I remember a flash grenade and a lot of shouting, and then I woke up here. Broad daylight and they’re running around like it’s nothing.”
“Vampires?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Halfies. I didn’t even see them until they brought you two in a few hours ago. No questioning, no talking.”
It was still the same day, probably evening. Not as much time had passed as I’d thought, but that still didn’t explain—“What do Halfies want with us?” They’d gone through a lot of trouble to capture us alive—just a little more proof that they had, in fact, been targeting my partners at the train bridge. Not me.
“I’m not sure, Evy. The Halfies aren’t organized enough to be the brains of this, whatever this is. They’re following someone else’s orders.”
“Orders like setting me up, getting me hunted down, and keeping us locked down here for God knows how long?”
“Something like that.”
“What about your Gift, Wyatt? Why haven’t you used it to summon a key or something?”
He pointed toward the far wall of the corridor. At first, I saw only more cement blocks. But dangling from a nail, wrapped in twine, was a slender orange crystal. “It’s blocking me,” he said. “Every time I try to do something, it zaps me like a cattle prod. I’ve never been cut off from my power source before. It’s so strange, like I’m missing an arm or something.”
I realized the distant sense of static I’d felt since my rebirth was, likewise, gone. The crystal cut us off from the sources of magic—what Isleen referred to as Breaks—but how in the blue blazes did a Halfie get hold of one?
“Well, if they haven’t questioned you, why take Alex?”
“Dinner?”
I slapped him harder than I intended. He stared, hurt sparking in his black eyes.
“I’m sorry, Evy,” he said.
“He’s a nice guy, Wyatt. He didn’t have to help me, but he did.” The idea of Alex surrounded by Halfies, each one taking a bite out of his arm or neck or leg, enraged me. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know. Have you remembered anything new?”
“Boy, have I.” I fed him the details of my
“When you didn’t come back to the hotel by noon,” he said, “I knew something was wrong. I should have started looking for you sooner.”
“You wouldn’t have found me. Wyatt, is it possible that the alliance we’ve heard about isn’t with the ruling
