Shadow Fall

command. Dance!

“I can’t here. I’m trying to find another way out,” she said, brushing away wetness on her cheeks. Custo had told her she needed to learn to control her magic. Now there was no time left to learn.

Anger rolled from the beast’s chest as she looked around the room. It was packed with stuff, leaving little space to move. No way out. The smell was metallic and dusty-old at the same time, but far better than the wraith cells. White sheets covered narrow panels closest to her, obscuring the boxes and crates beyond. Maybe if she climbed up, there would be an escape. Otherwise she was trapped. Custo and Adam would find her any second. And the wolf would attack.

Putting as much distance as she could between her and the snarling wolf, Annabella inched by one of the panels to get to a box. She climbed a couple crate steps upward, but couldn’t see anything other than more crates, and the wood didn’t look very sound. Where was the way out?

The wolf barked again, and she whipped her head around, fear trembling her body.

He was facing one of the larger panels. The sheet had fallen off.

Annabella angled her head to see what bothered him. It was a canvas, one of Kathleen’s, depicting the great Other-world of the Shadowlands.

Annabella scrambled down and ripped the coverings from the other panels. All were Kathleen’s art. A stack of three looked very similar to the ones that hung in Adam’s bedroom apartment. She inspected them closer; they were the same paintings. Had to be.

Why were they here? Why was Kathleen’s art shoved out of sight, locked in the bowels of Segue?

The wolf’s body pressed at her legs, urging her forward. Its tail brushed her thigh, its growl vibrating on her skin. A shudder ran through her at what was to come, her body tightening with deep apprehension…but not desire. The realization was quick and sharp. She didn’t want the wolf anymore, not that way. Not any way. She loved Custo. The wolf might have tricked her into going with him to Shadow, but he’d never be able to really reach her now. Not after the night she’d spent with Custo. The satisfaction of that knowledge gave her the strength to go on, though her stomach clenched, shakes mounting.

Annabella turned back to the large painting. It portrayed a shadow-laden copse, ageless trees stretching upward, exceeding the boundaries of the canvas. Though darkness saturated the area, the trunks, gnarled branches, and hanging purple leaves had their own illumination, a shimmer of magic imbued by Kathleen’s imagination and rendered by her brush. If Annabella allowed her eyes to lose focus, she could almost see the boughs moving.

Oh.

So Abigail had shown her the way out. The one with the least amount of violence, just as Zoe said.

Tears burned Annabella’s eyes; she didn’t want to go. Terror gripped her, white and cold. A part of her wanted to hide behind Custo or her mother, like a child. But it was her turn to take care of them. To do what was necessary.

The wolf’s growl grew louder, rolling toward the strike of his bark.

Hot, wet drops ran down Annabella’s cheeks. There was no need to dance; a medium of transport was right there. All that was required was a shift of perception, a mental blurring of reality and fantasy, and the trees took on depth, heady scent, texture. Shadow was always that close.

For Mom. Custo. And everyone else.

Annabella laid her shaking hand gently on the canvas, and yearned for passage. The gift for magic opened inside her, thrilling in her blood as it raced over her body.

An impulse glimmered bright in her chest, and she allowed it to propel her forward. The wolf was panting at her side. One moment she was at Segue, the next she was…

Custo leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Dr. Powell. “Gillian, you’re not telling the truth, not the whole truth. We have proof that you contacted someone outside of Segue.”

He wasn’t interested in her verbal answers; his concentration was fixed on the mental scramble of the doctor’s mind, which like her allegiance to the wraiths was confusing and backward.

He can’t know about…I was so careful…

He was not letting her go until he’d wrenched every last morsel from her mind. But damn, it felt good to sit in the same room with this woman and know her for what she was. The informant, the elusive insider. For her, he’d come back to mortality.

Custo leaned forward again, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped so as not to shake the answers out of the woman. “Look, Adam trusts you with Talia. He’ll understand if you were manipulated or coerced into relaying information.” That was a lie. Custo was pretty sure Adam intended to see Dr. Gillian Powell locked up for the rest of her miserable life. He might even be tempted to throw one of those stinking wraiths a doctor bone. Give ‘em both what they want.

Dr. Powell’s lips pressed together, holding her secrets inside.

“How did you contact the wraiths?”

Talia’s phone. “I just said I have never been in contact with the wraiths.”

Adam would have to search Talia’s phone records. “What do you stand to gain?”

The last cup of wraith immortality. Don’t want to die. Came too close once. “I’ve answered that already. I refuse to answer again. I want a lawyer.”

Immortality? Was that still possible?

Adam had told him about the demon bile that granted living death in the guise of perpetually renewing life, a perversion of the Holy Grail. Seemed like there was still some left, scraped off the floor of the ship the Styx. Anyone would be tempted; who wouldn’t want to be young, to live forever? Apparently, Spencer had gotten to her at Segue, charmed her. Her brush with death had done the rest. She seemed to have overlooked how ugly the reality of the wraith alternative was.

“We’re almost done here,” Custo said. “I know this is difficult, but these are all questions I must ask. Standard. I interrogated a unit of soldiers just this morning.”

She squirmed in her seat.

“What do the wraiths want?”

Dr. Powell examined her nails—Talia’s babies. The wraiths want Talia’s babies— then brought her gaze up with an innocent little no-idea shrug.

Custo turned his head to the side to hide his revulsion. The woman was a menace, worse than the wraiths, because as a person she should still have a shred of humanity. Talia’s babies were bound to be special, like Talia was, but to prey on infants was beyond obscene. To facilitate their capture was no less reprehensible. At least now the threat to Talia and her unborn children was revealed.

Custo gave the doctor a half smile. “When was the last time you contacted the wraiths?”

Yesterday. Tower location. Had to tell wraiths. But she said, “I have never initiated any kind of contact with the wraiths.”

Custo went very still, a mercury-cold fear creeping up his spine. “And why did you inform them about the tower?”

Dr. Powell set her jaw and folded her arms, locking herself down. Her eyes were full of suspicion.

Right. She hadn’t spoken that last part. He’d just screwed up. Shit.

Custo scrubbed his scalp to get the blood flowing. He needed to think, find a way to recoup. Probably have to double back to other topics and approach from…

An alarm sounded, deafening and painful as it echoed off the concrete.

Custo’s concentration broke. His gaze flew to the observation window, though he couldn’t see through that way. Then he sought Adam’s mind to find out what had happened.

But Adam wasn’t in the observation booth. He was outside of the holding area, thinking hard, Annabella. Gone. Annabella. Gone.

Custo lurched off his chair, pitching himself toward the open door. He scrambled around the corner, and when he hit the main corridor, ran.

How could he have missed Annabella leaving? There’d been no shouts of alarm, no sounds of a fight. Those