Custo sighed. “I know. I know. Sounds absurd. I don’t expect you to believe me when I don’t believe it myself, but there it is. The only way you’re going to know either way is to trust me. I’m asking you to trust me.”
Silence.
Jacob had loved to play games with Adam’s memories, to trick him into painful recollections of times when life was full and whole. Custo refused to do the same—to pull out their shared past to manipulate his friend. Not that Adam would be moved. He had learned to turn a deaf ear to the insidious ramblings of a wraith in a cell, the clever pleas for release, though the wraith had the voice of his brother or long-lost friend.
Dropping his arm back on his knees, Custo sighed. He could feel Adam’s presence on the other side of the concrete, a bright condensation of identity. Adam couldn’t afford mistakes. If the world were anything like it had been before, there was no way Adam could take a chance on him.
Adam’s mind came to a decision.
Custo brought himself to standing as the lock released on the cell door.
“I want a lawyer. You’ve got no right to hold me against my will!” Annabella yelled at the slit in the wall of her weird holding cell. It was worse than the prison cells she’d seen on TV—cold, nondescript gray, like an awful basement, with only a shitty folding table and a shitty pair of folding chairs. At least the room was somewhat lit. If she stayed near the door, she should be fine. The dim corner on the other side was out of the question. It seemed like the kind of place the wolf would hide. She wanted her flashlight to burn him out.
She slapped the palm of her hand on the table to make some noise. In the concrete room, the slap was like the report of a gun.
“Hello, damn it! I’m frickin’ exhausted in here!” Her voice was rough and shrill. She was terrified out of her mind, cringing at the least little thing. If she were getting sick from all this Custo crap, she was going to kill him. Kill that Adam bastard, too. She should have never agreed to share that cab. “I want a lawyer!”
Annabella dragged a chair around to the bright side of the table. The damn thing started to collapse into itself and she had to fight with the seat to get it properly unfolded again. She banged it on the floor when she got the seat open, and lowered herself carefully onto it.
“I. Must. Chill,” she said aloud. Obviously no one was listening to her. “I must chill. I must stay calm. I perform in”—she calculated the number of hours before she’d be onstage—“twenty hours-ish. I must keep it together. Deep breaths.” She inhaled until her lungs were bursting, then let out the air slowly. And again. Much better.
She glanced over her shoulder at the slit in the concrete. Screw it. “Get me out of here!” Her screech broke on
This was
“Maybe I’ve gone completely insane.” Sure seemed more plausible than any other explanation. “That’s it. I’m insane. This is not a prison cell; this is a padded room in some very low-budget hospital. I am not being hunted by a wolf—that’s only a manifestation of all my fears and stress. And that man Custo is…”…
Concrete scraped loudly against concrete. Annabella stood, knocking her chair onto the floor. The huge, thick door retracted. She felt her anger rising again. Whoever was responsible for her unlawful imprisonment was going to get an earful from her. And charges filed with the police. And a civil lawsuit for attempting to ruin her performance.
“I want some ans—” Annabella began. She broke off when the door finally retracted enough to reveal her jailer.
A short, very pregnant woman. If Annabella was exhausted, the woman looked ready to pass out. She was deathly pale, dark circles under her eyes, both aspects accentuated by white-blonde hair pulled back in a day-old ponytail.
Annabella fought to hold on to the outrage and obscenities she planned to hurl at whoever came through that door for kidnapping her and locking her in a creepy basement. Not to mention she was starving to death. She’d just danced for four hours.
The woman gave her a little smile.
“Oh, damn it,” Annabella said, surly. “Let me get the chair for you.” She turned to offer it, but, of course, the damn thing had fallen in on itself again.
The woman chuckled and waddled forward. “I appreciate it.”
“Well, you look ready to pop,” Annabella grumbled, getting the metal chair unfolded again. “Here.”
“Not for another two months. Twins.” The woman used the table to lower herself down. The metal door slid closed and locked with another loud scrape.
“Uh…” Annabella looked at the door, her body flushing with anger again.
The woman squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’m Adam’s wife, Talia. We won’t be in here long. He’s spying on Custo now, but he checks on me all the time.” She sighed heavily. “All the time,” she emphasized with a roll of her eyes.
Annabella wrestled with the second chair. “Where is here? And why the hell am I being held hostage?”
“You’re not a hostage. And you are just north of New York City, at one of Segue’s holding facilities.”
“This is criminal.”
Talia shrugged. “The president himself has granted us the authority to apprehend and hold wraiths.”
“I’m not a wraith,” Annabella shot back.
“But you believe it anyway.” Talia flashed that tired smile again, pulling her hand back with a satisfied sigh. “Want to tell me why?”
Why? Like she’d have any clue why the world suddenly became crazy-scary. First the wolf, then the surreal encounter with Custo, and then the soldiers dragging them both away from that hideout in the city.
Talia lifted her eyebrows in friendly interest. “How about starting with how you met Custo?”
“How about letting me out of here?”
“Custo first,” Talia said. “Besides, I promised Adam that I wouldn’t release you from the cell.”
In spite of her anger, Annabella felt herself crack a smile. “But left out the fact you planned to join me?”
Talia shrugged again. “He’s a little distracted with Custo’s return, and I took advantage.”
“Will you catch hell?” The woman seemed so whipped already. It would be just like that SOB Adam to stress her out some more.
“Adam will want to yell at me so bad the little vein on the side of his head will bulge, but he won’t. Poor man has it tough these days.”
“Poor man? He frisked me! As in…
“Lucky. I wish he’d frisk me.” That tired smile again.
Annabella gave Talia a once-over. “Looks like he frisked you just fine seven months ago.”
Talia’s smile lifted further and lit her eyes. “He did at that. Our belated honeymoon to Paris was very good to us. Tell me about Custo before Adam gets back or someone tattles on me.”
Custo? What about a little freedom first? A little due process?
Annabella met Talia’s steady, weary gaze, and felt the last of her anger crumbling. “Oh, fine.”
She thought back to the moment she first saw him. It was only a flash really: The dress rehearsal had been typically good and bad. She’d barely started the final solo when the wolf appeared. She’d ignored the animal, figuring that if he were real, it was already too late to run, and if he weren’t, she didn’t have anything to worry about. She’d spotted Custo on the other side of her, hidden behind a bit of scenery.
“He came out of nowhere,” Annabella said. “One minute I was dancing alone onstage, the next Custo was with me, tackling my hallucination of a wolf.”
“I beg your pardon?” Talia’s brow furrowed. “A wolf?”
“Yeah. You’re not going to believe me, but I swear it’s the truth.” Custo believed her; maybe this woman would, too. “There is a huge wolf…in the city…that is made out of shadows, and he has been stalking me for two
