Toxic Heart (24 page)

Turk’s eyes widen. “What about it?”

“Last night. I tried to find it at the spot where she died, but I couldn’t.”

“You snuck out of here last night?” Turk asks, shocked.

“Keep your voice down!” I say. “And … yes. That’s what Hunter and I were fighting about. Well, that’s what we
started
fighting about.… Anyway, I found the canal where she died, and I swam to the bottom. But it was dark, and I couldn’t see anything. I think if I go during the day—”

“You thought her actual corpse would just be lying there at the bottom of the canal?” Turk asks. “Just, you know, looking at her watch, waiting for you to turn up?”

His voice is thick with sarcasm.

“Aside from the fact that her flesh would be rotted, there are currents and tides and all sorts of things that would have carried her bones away,” he continues. “Her heart is the only thing that would have remained—a mystic heart is impervious to the elements. But you’ll never find it without knowing the ways of the water. The trick is to know how the currents move and where they go. The sort of thing sailors used to know.”

“So should I look it up on my TouchMe?” I ask, reaching for my pocket.

“No,” Turk says. “You need an expert. These days, you’d probably have to find the oldest sailor alive to get an idea about that stuff.”

“So let’s go find him.” I hurry past the dining tables, down the long hallway toward the front of the town house.

“You think we can just walk outside and find some ancient sailor?” Turk says. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Why not? There must be hundreds of gondoliers in the Depths. At least one of them must know how to trace the currents.”

When I reach the foyer, I glance back at Turk. “Are you coming with me or not?”

He’s standing still, hands stuffed into his pockets.

“Fine,” I say angrily. “Have it your way.” I open the door and step outside, onto the stoop.

At least, I
think
that’s where I’m going.

Instead, I find myself reentering the town house through the back door in the dining room, where we’ve just had breakfast.

I stare at the empty wooden tables and the yellow walls. What just happened?

I rush back down the hallway and past the kitchen into the foyer, to find Turk standing where I left him. He looks like he knows something he’s not telling me.

“Are you messing with me?” I ask him. “What’s going on?”

Turk shrugs. “Not me. Hunter.”

“He’s done something with all the exits?”

Turk nods.

I yank open the curtains to one of the living room windows and press the touchpad on the wall. The glass slides open, and hot air filters into the room. I grab the edges of the window and stick my right leg through the open space, then watch as it disappears—but to where?

Damn him
, I think. I draw my leg back in, then stick my head out the window.

“Aria, don’t!” Turk calls, but I’ve already done it.

There’s a whoosh of air and suddenly my head is coming through a
different
window in another room, where I can see the entryway to the hall. Unlike passing through the force field, which feels like being squeezed in a vise, this doesn’t feel like anything is happening.

What has Hunter done?

I pull my head inside, and I’m back in the living room, in front of the window. “This is insane,” I say to Turk. “What’s the deal?”

“He came back early this morning and looped all the doors and the windows,” Turk says. “Every exit has a partner. If you open one, the other opens, too, and if you try to leave through any of them, you’ll only end up back inside the house. None of us can leave until he breaks the loops.”

I have to give it to Hunter—he’s smart. Irritatingly so.

“So everyone knows about this and just decided not to tell me?”

Turk gives me a sheepish look.

Pushing past Turk, I rush up the stairs to my bedroom on the third floor. I hear him pounding up the steps behind me.

There are five windows in the bedroom—three on the wall next to my bed, and two on the adjoining wall that look out onto the street.

I head over to the closest window and press the touchpad to open it. I stick my head out—

And find myself staring into the window of the second-floor library. It’s empty, with papers and leftover cups of coffee scattered along the conference table.

“Argh!” I scream again, pulling my head back inside. I turn, and Turk is right behind me. “So every floor—every possible exit—is blocked?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. “Which is exactly what I told you downstairs.”

“This is so unfair,” I say. “How could Hunter do this to me? You have to help me get out of here. Please, Turk.”

He averts his gaze. “I can’t. I promised Hunter I wouldn’t.”

“What about what you promised me?” I say.

Turk shakes his head. “You’ve gotten into too much trouble, Aria. You don’t like to play by the rules, which I get, but I don’t want to be responsible for you getting kidnapped—or worse. I’m sorry.”

He gives me a tight-lipped smile, then turns and heads out of the bedroom.

In some small corner of my mind, I know this isn’t Turk’s fault. If anything, he’s sympathetic, but I don’t want to think about that now. It’s easier to be angry with him.

“Fine,” I yell. “Go!” I slam the door shut. I hope he feels awful.

What am I going to do? Wait until Hunter shows up and decides he’s not mad at me anymore? Now that I know he’s planning to set off a bomb, is there any chance he’ll let me leave the hideout before the peace summit?

Not likely. Hunter was the one who freed me, who saved me from my parents. But ever since then, he’s kept me cooped up, first in the mystic compound, and now here.

He’s not the boy I fell in love with. And I’m not the girl he fell in love with. Have we changed too much to stay together?

Maybe our love wasn’t meant to last a lifetime.

Just then, a head pops through one of the open windows in the bedroom.

It’s Jarek, his impossibly broad shoulders filling the window frame.

“Shh.” He holds a finger to his lips, motioning for me to be silent. “I can help you.”

I have no idea why Jarek is offering to help me, but I don’t want to give him time to change his mind.

“Come on,” he says. He grabs the ledge and pulls himself into the room, careful not to make any noise. No one can know what we’re up to.

Quickly, I take off my locket and slip it into the pocket of a ratty-looking sweatshirt in the closet. Since the rebel hideout is untraceable, if I leave the locket here, then whoever is tracking me won’t realize I’m gone.

And since it’s probably Hunter who put the trace on me in the first place, well, he’ll think I’m still here. His pretty songbird in a cage.

“Aria, seriously,” Jarek says, looking nervous. “Let’s go.”

I pull out the bag I stuffed under my bed last night, removing the blond wig I purchased in the Depths; it came with a cap, which I stretch over my skull. Then on goes the wig.

The reliquary and the goggles are still tucked safely inside the bag. I grab another pouch of coins from the cabinet in the wall and toss the bag over my shoulder.

“Whoa.” Jarek lets out a low whistle. “You look …”

“Strange,” I say, glancing at myself in the mirror, seeing a girl with my features and bright platinum-blond hair staring back at me. I am instantly reminded of my mother and her friends, who love nothing more than going to the salon and having their hair infused with mystic dyes and sculpted into pieces of art.

I’ve never been one to focus much on my looks. The most my father ever said to me about my style was that I looked
respectable
, and that was on the night of my engagement party to Thomas. Kiki was the one who loved mystic-enhanced skin and hair, and she could spend thousands of dollars on one outfit. She tried to get me to highlight my hair once, and I refused. We got into a fight and didn’t speak for three days.

“I was gonna say intense,” Jarek says.

I look back at the mirror. Why didn’t I choose a more demure wig? The shiny blond hair is almost white, with an asymmetrical cut shooting from the nape of my neck to just below my chin.

“Ready?” Jarek asks. “We’ve gotta leave now, before people start looking for us. The others are showering or training, and Diamond and Roderick are gone, so the place is pretty empty.”

“Who?” I ask.

“You know,” Jarek says, swiping his hair back behind his ears, “those older dudes who never speak to us.”

Oh—those guys. Hunter’s henchmen. “So where should we go?” I ask. “All the windows and doors are looped. That’s what Turk told me, at least.”

“At the core of the building, sure,” Jarek says. “And we can’t go up because there’s a force field closing us in from the outside, and
Hunter surely wired that as well to make sure you didn’t jump off the building or whatever.”

I stare up at Jarek, confused. It’s obvious he’s figured out a plan.

He tilts his head down at me. Even if I stood on my tiptoes, I wouldn’t reach his chin. “Why am I helping you?” he says.

“Hmm?”

“That’s what you’re thinking,” he says. “Why am I helping you?”

“I appreciate it, but … yeah. That
is
what I was thinking.”

He lets out a long breath. “What Hunter did, it’s not cool. You should only be here if you want to. Not because anybody says you need to be.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that. And I thought you didn’t even like me.”

His face is still. “I don’t.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling my heart race. “Well—”

“I’m just kidding, Aria,” Jarek says, rolling his eyes.

“Ha, ha,” I say, letting my arms relax at my sides. “So … you’re helping me, which is wonderful, but we can’t go out and we can’t go up. What’s left?”

Jarek gives me a crooked smile. “Down, of course.”

We sneak down the stairs to the first floor and pass the kitchen and the armory. The door to the basement is open, and I can hear Shannon yelling. “Blast him like it hurts, Ryah!”

Jarek peers down the steps, making sure no one is coming up, then waves me past him. The door to the infirmary is closed, then we’re in the dining area. The long tables are empty.

“Where are we going?” I whisper.

“Here.” Jarek strides over to a table that’s against the far wall and moves it a few inches. He drops to his knees and runs his hands along the large stone tiles.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

His fingers stop on a groove next to one of the tiles. He pushes down with his thumbs and the tile drops into the floor, creating a space wide enough for one person.

Jarek glances over his shoulder. “Emergency exit.”

I peer into the darkness. “So we just … jump?”

He laughs. “Of course not. Are you crazy? The drop is over twenty feet.” He reaches down and presses a button on the inside of the shaft. Suddenly, the vertical tunnel is full of light. “Ladies first,” he says.

A metal ladder is fastened to one of the walls. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Yes. Now go. We don’t have much time.”

I nod, stepping onto the ladder. I’m glad I’m not claustrophobic, because there’s barely an inch on either side of me. I feel like I’m burrowing into some sort of cave.

Above me, Jarek begins to descend, and I hear a scratching noise as the tile above us slides back into place. Tiny circles embedded in the walls cast a pale green glow over the dark cement. There’s a dripping noise coming from somewhere, and the air smells stale, as though it’s been trapped in this passageway for years.

“You all right?” Jarek speaks quietly, but his voice echoes like we’re inside some huge cavern.

“Yes,” I reply. The rungs are a bit slippery.
Focus on your grip
, I tell myself.

“Almost there,” Jarek says after what feels like a full ten minutes. “Should be, anyway.”

My shirt is sticking to my back, and beads of perspiration line my forehead and drip down my cheeks. I reach my foot toward the next rung, and it lands on solid ground. “I’m at the bottom,” I say, relieved. I step to the side to make room for Jarek, when—

“Watch it!”

Jarek grabs my arm just before I fall.

The ground is actually a cement platform, no wider than two or three feet. Below us is a sheet of water: a pool of black liquid that slaps lightly against the walls.

I nearly toppled right into it.

Jarek jumps down next to me and pulls me to the middle of the platform. There’s barely room enough for both of us, and he slides his hand around my waist to balance us.

“What
is
this?” I ask.

“A sub-sub-subbasement,” he says. “We’re way underneath the training room right now. This was built as an escape route in case the hideout is ever raided. It shouldn’t loop, because this is the only exit in the entire house below water level, and that’s the extent of the force field.” Jarek grips me tighter. “There’s a loophole down there somewhere. All you have to do is swim through it.”

I stare into the water. I see something shimmer and I think I can make out the green loophole beneath the surface, but then I look again and the water simply looks black. “Though in all honesty,” Jarek says, “I have no idea where it lets out.”