I squinted until I could make out the letters. The only light came from a ventilation grate roughly a foot square, high above our heads. We couldn’t escape through it—even if we’d been small enough, metal bars blocked our way.
You were born into darkness, but you became light. We all believe in you.
“That’s…that’s…so lovely.”
“Not every girl is lucky enough to have four fathers. Naz also told me that the difference between a survivor and a quitter is her spirit. My spirit’s got me through life so far, and I don’t intend to die now.”
“I… Neither do I.”
Not when I’d finally found happiness. When I had a man who would love me until the end of time. And what would happen to Chaucer?
Last week in England, I’d finally got a taste of how the rest of my life could be. It wasn’t a vacation, but it sure felt like one compared to my years with Piers. Alaric had needed to work on a report—one of Sirius’s bread-and-butter projects, he said. Their client was considering a move into new markets, and they wanted to understand the pros and cons of doing business in Ukraine—any problems they might encounter, that sort of thing.
So I’d helped to organise all the issues and benefits into a presentation as well as buying a new printer, arranging travel to Vermont for Ravi, and a flight to Vienna for Judd. Working hours were relaxed. If I wanted to start early, then ride Chaucer in the afternoon and do a bit more in the evening, nobody minded. And of course I got to spend time with Alaric, and Gemma too. She was still staying at Judd’s, as was the new girl. I hadn’t quite worked Nada out yet. She didn’t say much, but she liked to cook in the evenings.
I didn’t want to give up that life, and Rune wanted to go home too.
So we’d brainstormed and come up with our rudimentary water collector. It was raining outside—we could hear it hammering against the wooden sides of the house—so we tied my cotton sweater to the bars of the ventilation window with one sleeve trailing in a puddle outside and the other hanging inside over an old metal pail we’d emptied the spiders out of. And now I heard the most glorious sound in the world: the drip, drip, drip of water plopping into the bucket. Which was a whole lot better than what had plopped into the other bucket we’d found yesterday. We’d each had to take it in turns to answer the call of nature while the other turned her back. Old Bethany would have died from embarrassment, but new Bethany realised there were more important things than appearances.
Like staying alive.
And to do that, we needed food. Rune had a packet of glucose tablets with her for emergencies, but they wouldn’t last long.
“What do you suppose is in those old mason jars?” I asked.
We’d spotted them when we explored our prison, stacked on wooden shelves screwed to the wall at the far end of the cellar, filthy, covered in cobwebs, with peeling labels. At that point, I’d still hoped Ridley might bring us something to eat, but two days after we arrived, there was no sign of him. The jars were the only possibility for sustenance.
Rune shuddered. “Either food or body parts. This place feels like a serial killer’s lair.”
As best as we could ascertain, we were in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. There was no traffic noise, but the local wildlife seemed particularly active at night. Screams and grunts and cries were commonplace. A bear or a serial killer both seemed very real possibilities, as did Bigfoot. The place was straight out of a horror movie.
I cringed as I reached for a jar, then nearly dropped it when something skittered over my hand. Another spider? A centipede? A cockroach? Yuck. I wiped away some of the grime and held my prize up to the light. Orange blobs floated inside.
Rune stood on tiptoes to read the label. “Peaches. August eighteenth, 1982.”
“Urgh. They’re ancient. Probably full of bacteria.”
“I’m not so sure. Alaric bought me a book on shipwrecks, and I remember scientists testing hundred-year-old canned goods they found underwater and concluding they were edible.”
“Really?”
“The vitamin content had degraded, that’s all.”
In the absence of any other options… “I’d better try them first.”
I popped the top on the jar, flipped it back, and gave the contents a sniff. What do you know? They actually smelled like peaches. I wiped my hands on my jeans and fished one of the slimy little suckers out of its juice.
“Wish me luck.”
It didn’t taste of an awful lot, which I guessed was a good thing under the circumstances. I gave a quiet whoop.
“It’s okay! Can you eat them?”
“As long as I’m careful about the salt and sugar content.”
“Here, try one.”
There were at least fifty jars stacked up, and if even half of them were edible, we could cope for a fortnight. As long as I didn’t succumb to hypothermia without my sweater, that was. At least I’d worn a raincoat on my visit to Riverley—Rune and I could curl up under it at night. Would Alaric be able to narrow down our location? Would Black pay up? Or would Ridley come back and finish us off first?
CHAPTER 46 - EMMY
“WE FOUND HIM once, and we’ll find him again,” Black told Alaric, but fifty hours after Beth and Rune had been taken, we were worryingly short on clues.
We knew for certain that Ridley was our perpetrator, at least. The police hadn’t been convinced at first because what escaped murderer would drive a hundred miles hell-bent on revenge instead of going to ground? A psychopath, that
