was on Thornton, her eyes full of hope and expectation. Isaac stared down at Thornton, the wrinkles around his eyes and forehead deepening with concern. Philip was unreadable behind his sunglasses. I didn’t like the way he was still wearing them inside. It reminded me too much of Underwood.
I looked at Bethany next. Though she was facing me, she didn’t meet my eye. She hadn’t looked my way once yet. It bothered me. It bothered me a lot more than I was comfortable admitting to myself, but maybe it was a blessing in disguise. At least this way I didn’t have to see the disappointment in her eyes again.
Then, suddenly, Gabrielle laughed, her face lighting up, and she wiped a tear from her eye. “He squeezed my hand. He heard me. He’s still with us.” She lowered his hand gently back into the glowing water. “I’ve got you, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I really don’t think this is a good idea—” Bethany began.
Gabrielle cut her off. “Stop it, Bethany. Just stop it. It’ll work. It has to.”
Under the golden-hued water, Thornton lay like a corpse, his eyes closed and his hands clasped over his chest.
Twenty-four
With nothing more to be done for Thornton but wait and let the Methusal spring do its job, Isaac decided it was as good a time as any for a good old-fashioned interrogation. His questions ran the gamut of predictability: Who was I? Why had I lied to Bethany and Thornton? What was my mission? Who was Underwood, what was my connection to him, and what did he want with the box? Easy enough questions to answer—most of them, anyway—if I were at all interested in cooperating, but I wasn’t about to tell him anything. Someone had sent the shadowborn to the safe house to kill us and steal the box, and the more I thought about it, the more Isaac became my prime suspect.
Bethany said mages like him were powerful enough to carry magic inside them without becoming infected, but what if she was wrong about that? I’d seen proof that Isaac carried magic inside him. What if it had infected him after all, made him decide he wanted the box for himself and the rest of us out of the way? The clues were as clear as day in my head. Isaac had sent us to the safe house. He knew where we would be, and with his knowledge of the safe house he could tell the shadowborn exactly where to go so the ward couldn’t hide it from them. But why would Isaac send the revenant of Bennett to get me out of the way? What was the point of that?
“I asked you a question, Trent,” Isaac said, interrupting my thoughts. He stood in front of me, crossing his arms over his chest. Philip and Bethany flanked him, waiting, their faces like stone. Bethany was finally looking at me, but there was a coldness in her blue eyes that felt like ice. I liked it better before, when she wasn’t looking at me at all. “What were you planning to do with the Van Lente Box?” Isaac pressed. “Give it to Underwood? Sell it?”
I smirked up at him from where I sat tied to the chair. “You know, you didn’t need magic to put me to sleep. Listening to you talk would have done the trick just fine.”
“Just answer the question,” Bethany said. “The sooner you do, the sooner we can figure out what to do with you.”
Her voice was colder than I’d ever heard it. I’d blown any chance she would trust me again. She probably hated me. I deserved it, I supposed, but that didn’t make it any better.
“You told me you wanted to destroy the box because it was the only way you’d be free,” Bethany continued. “What did you mean? Free from what? Or was that just another lie?” I kept my eyes on Isaac and didn’t answer. She continued, growing more frustrated, “So what was the plan, Trent? You knew the shadowborn were coming to the safe house, so you came back to … what? To look like a hero? To get us to trust you so we’d take you to the box? It’s not like you were in any real danger from the shadowborn, right? You knew they couldn’t kill you. Not permanently, anyway.”
Damn, she really knew how to push my buttons. I wanted to tell her she was wrong about me, but I couldn’t risk giving Isaac any information. Instead, I turned away from her. It was just as well. I couldn’t stand the way she was looking at me.
“Bethany said you claim to have amnesia,” Isaac pressed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe it. Pretending not to have any memories is a long con to play, Trent. Sooner or later, you’re going to slip up. It’s inevitable. You might as well come clean now.”
I looked up at him sharply, trying to bite back my anger, but the floodgates broke. “It’s not a lie.”
Standing next to Isaac, Philip said, “Sure it’s not. You know who lies about who they are? Criminals. Thieves. Spies.”
I glared at him, forcing myself to keep my mouth shut. Why couldn’t the others see it? Why couldn’t they piece it together the way I had? Maybe Isaac had cast some kind of spell on them.
Philip let out a frustrated groan. “This is bullshit. Give me five minutes alone with him and I’ll get him talking.”
“That’s not how we do things,” Isaac said. “You know that.”
Philip shook his head. “Humans. I’ll never understand you. Trust me, the best way to loosen his tongue is to tear part of it out. But if you’re not going to do that, and he’s not going to talk anyway, you might as well just get Gabrielle to do her Vulcan mindmeld thing and get it over with.”
Isaac nodded, taking a deep breath. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but I don’t think he’s left us much choice.” He turned to Gabrielle, who was still kneeling on the carpet beside the clawfoot tub where Thornton lay submerged, still holding his hand in the water. “Gabrielle? I’m sorry, I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important, but we need you.”
She turned to Isaac, the golden hue of the water reflecting on her face. She looked angry. “Not now. Find some other way.”
“I would if I could,” he said. “None of us have your special talent. You’re the only one who can get inside his mind and tell us what you see.”
“Wait—what?” I stiffened in the chair. Were they serious? Could Gabrielle really do that? Of course she could, I realized. At this point it was foolish to be skeptical about anything these people were capable of. Still, withholding information from Isaac was the only leverage I had, and if she told him everything, I’d lose that.
Gabrielle let go of Thornton’s hand and stood up with a sigh. “Fine, but let’s keep it quick.” She walked over to me, inhaled a deep, steadying breath, and held my face in her hands. One was still wet from the tub, the spell in the water tingling against my skin like the brush of a feather. I tried to pull away from her, but with my wrists bound behind the chair there was nowhere to go.
“Don’t do this,” I said.
But it was too late. She was already in my head. I could feel her there, leafing through the pages of my mind as effortlessly as she might a magazine on the beach. She closed her eyes and bent closer, close enough that I saw the wet trails her worried tears had left in the corners of her eyes and along the sides of her nose.
She pulled my memories to the surface, dredging them from the swamp of my mind. In my head, unbidden, I saw the abandoned Shell gas station on Empire Boulevard. She saw it, too. Then she peeled the image away like the outer layer of an onion, and beneath it was my room in the fallout shelter, sparse and dreary, the overhead light flickering dimly. She peeled that one away, too, and beneath it she found what she was looking for.
“It’s Underwood,” she said. “I see him.”
The memory of Underwood’s face hung like a ghost in my mind, remaining frozen there no matter how hard I fought to keep my mind blank. Gabrielle was too strong. Now that she was inside my head, she could look wherever she wanted and I couldn’t stop her.
“Do you recognize him?” Isaac asked. “Is he someone you’ve seen before? Maybe under a different name?”
She shook her head, her eyes still closed. “No, I don’t know him.”
“But Trent does,” Isaac pointed out. “Tell us what he knows.”
She burrowed deeper into my mind, sorting through random images as if they were photographs: Underwood slapping my cheek and calling me a good dog. Underwood handing me a gun. Underwood sliding the
