Endlessly (Paranormalcy) (5 page)

O
h.
My. Galloping. Gremlins. My head hurt so bad that when I opened my eyes, everything was the same shade of blinding white. My tongue felt thick and dry and too big for my mouth, and my entire body ached. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them again, trying to blink away the whiteness.

Which was when it hit me. The white wasn’t in my eyes. It was outside—and all around me. I sat up from my small cot and stared in horror at the seven feet by seven feet cube of a room I was in. My hand went immediately to my neck. My
necklace, with the iron heart that Lend gave me, was gone.

My heart raced, panic setting in. No, this was wrong. They just brought me in to chew me out, or demand I work for them again, or—

I reached a hand down to my ankle and was immediately sick to my stomach over the small bulk beneath my jeans hem. No, no, no, no, no.

I’d been bagged and tagged. The ankle bracelet I was wearing was as familiar to me as Tasey; I knew exactly how it worked, and even then it was all I could do to keep my fingers from trying to rip it off.

I’d only get electrocuted again.

I stared at the open doorway, tormenting me with a free pass to freedom—or at least, freedom for anyone who hadn’t been tagged. And if I had to guess, I’d say I wasn’t in Containment or the normal cellblock. If they had any brains, they’d have put me in the Iron Wing.

Which wasn’t to say I thought they had any brains at all, because the second one of them came in the room, he was going to get the surprise of a lifetime. I didn’t think they knew what I could do besides seeing beneath glamours. They never knew that Viv and I were the same. Raquel wouldn’t have told them; I had to believe that.

Which meant that I was armed, and they had absolutely no idea.

Normally I wouldn’t even consider using my abilities on
a werewolf, much less a human. Their souls were already so fragile, everything about the idea felt wrong. Even Vivian never sucked a normal human dry. But there was no way I was going to sit around in lockup while my boyfriend was being held prisoner. I didn’t care what it would take to get out of here.

“HEY,” I shouted, walking barefoot right up to the doorway. “HEY. I wanna talk to Raquel.”

No response. I went back to my cot and tried to pry it up to throw out in the hall, but it was bolted to the floor. Figured. I grabbed the scratchy gray blanket and tossed it out into the hall, followed by the thin mattress.

“HELLO! You better get whoever’s in charge the bleep in here or you’re going to regret it! People know I’m missing! And by people I mean paranormals the likes of which you can only imagine in your worst nightmares!”

Well, that was probably a lie. I’d walked out on them. And why would they think to look for me here? Still, I was going to play every card I could. “You think last April was bad? Wait and see how many of you are left standing if you keep me in here, you bunch of—”

“Evie,” a gruff voice said and Bud, my old trainer, came into view. He looked older than the last time I’d seen him, and much sadder.

“Bud! Listen, you have to let me go. This is a huge mistake.”

He shook his head, the heavy creases in his grizzled face deepening. “Sorry, kid. Things have changed around here.” He looked both ways down the hall, then leaned in closer. “And not for the better.”

“Bud. I just—I have to get out of here.” Tears of desperation pooled in my eyes. “My boyfriend, he’s been kidnapped by faeries and I’m the only one who can help him. Please, Bud, they’re going to hurt him. Help me. Where’s Raquel?” I wasn’t trying to manipulate him by crying, really I wasn’t, but the second I wasn’t angry I was overwhelmed with fear and hopelessness.

He looked torn, then shook his head. “I’ll tell them you’re awake. I wish there was something more I could do for you, I really do.” Frowning, he walked out of my vision.

I cried harder. Then I straightened and wiped my eyes. I was not going to cry in front of anyone else here. Ever. They were screwing with the wrong girl.

I paced my room—one-two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven.

One. Get out of the bleeping Center.

Two. Get to the Faerie Realms.

Three. Kill the Dark Queen.

Four. Save Lend.

Five. Make IPCA pay.

Six. Help the paranormals figure out another way home.

Seven. Finish plans for the Winter Formal.

Simple enough.

One. Get out of the bleeping Center, assuming anyone ever came to talk to me.

Two. Get to the Faerie Realms, assuming I could somehow get a faerie name and then control that faerie even though half the faeries wanted me dead and the other half wanted to use me.

Three. Kill the Dark Queen, assuming I could get within twenty feet of her without falling under her thrall and also somehow drain her before she snuffed me out of existence.

Four. Save Lend, assuming he was still…

“Get me out of this freaking white cell! Come on!” I screamed. “Get. Me. Out. Now. If my boyfriend gets hurt because of this, I swear I will come back here and BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND!”

“Now, now,” said Anne-Whatever Whatever, stepping in front of my doorway but just out of arm’s reach. “Calm down, Evelyn.”

“Let me go. You have no right to do this, and you have no idea what you’re messing with.”

“Actually, we have every right. You’ve violated enough sections of the charter to qualify for lifetime lockup.”

“I’m not a member of IPCA anymore!”

“No, but you’re not a person, either, not legally. You remain a Level Seven paranormal of unidentified origin.
Which means that I have final say in any and all containment policy.”

My insides turned to ice, and I stood straighter, glaring at her. “What do
you
know about being a person?”

She sniffed primly. “We have a lot to discuss. This would all be much easier if you’d cooperate. Wouldn’t you rather be useful, make a difference to humanity, than be locked up in this cell for the rest of your life?”

I laughed. “Don’t talk to me about humanity. I know a pair of freaking seals that have more humanity in their flippers than you do in your whole organization. You want to talk about protecting humanity? If you don’t let me out, the best person I have ever known will get hurt. If you have any shred of human decency in you, you’ll let me go right now so I can save him.”

She raised an eyebrow, and I continued, desperate.

“Let me go right now, and I swear I’ll come back. I’ll work for you however you want me to, whatever you want me to do. You want me to come back full-time to the Center, I’ll do it. You have my word. But please, please, please, let me go.
Please
.”

She cocked her head. “What I think you fail to realize is that you’re not in any position to bargain here. You’ll do what I want you to because you have no other choice. Think about that, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

She started to walk off and I felt like I was going to
explode. “Stop!
Stop!
I want to talk to Raquel! She’s a Supervisor—you have to let me talk to her.”

Anne-Whatever Whatever stopped and looked back at me with a small smile on her face. “
Was
a Supervisor. Have a good night, Evelyn.”

Y
ou’ve
got to be kidding me,” I said, lying spread-eagled in the hall with only my ankle inside the room that kept me prisoner here. They really should have thought of that and tagged my neck or something. Judging by the looks the tall, annoyed werewolf guard was giving my ankle, he was thinking the same thing. And still staying out of reach, dang it all.

“Please confirm.” His voice was low and terse. “Werewolf or not?”

He had a woman by the elbow. Her shoulders were hunched inward, her face terrified, eyes darting every
which way avoiding mine. Her corkscrew-curly brown hair was wild and unbrushed, but her clothes seemed nice.

See, with werewolves, unless it’s a full moon there’s really no way to tell. Silver only affects them when they’ve wolfed out, and no one else can see their true nature like I can. And since the full moon had just passed, they had no way to confirm what she was until the next one. Somehow they thought I would do it for them.

I looked up into her yellow wolf eyes and felt nothing but compassion and pity. “Actually, you’re way off.”

“Oh?” the guard asked.

“Yup. She’s not a werewolf, she’s a chupacabra. Have you noticed a lot of missing goats lately?”

He growled his frustration. I bared my teeth back at him in a smile. “Tell Anne to come see me.” It had been at least six hours. Or twelve. Or a hundred, for all I could tell, and I was ready to rip my hair out.

He turned, and the wolf woman finally made eye contact with me. “Hey,” I said, “it’s going to be okay. And if you see a faerie, any faerie, tell them IPCA has the Empty One.”

“Ignore her,” the guard said, pulling on the woman’s elbow roughly.

“What’s your deal? I mean, come on, why are you working with them?” I sat up, ankle still safely in the room. “Don’t you get it? I can help you! Get me out of here and I’ll take you with me.”

His face turned a peculiar shade of red as he turned and loomed over me. “Help me? You’ve already helped me plenty. You know who bit me, who turned me into a monster? One of the werewolves that
you
set loose on the world, doing your little good deeds and ‘rescuing’ them from IPCA. I’m here because of you. Now get back in your room and rot, or so help me I will come back here with more than a Taser.”

He stalked off down the hall and around the corner out of my sight, dragging the wolf woman in his wake.

“Well, that’s just great,” I muttered. “I make friends everywhere.” While I had to admit that his situation did totally stink, and I could see why he would want someone to blame, I
wasn’t
going to feel guilty about it. A) I didn’t have time, and B) freeing all the Center’s werewolves had freed Charlotte, my tutor, reuniting her with her family. I couldn’t hold myself responsible for the actions of every paranormal I’d ever come into contact with one way or another.

Okay, maybe I could have done more to make sure they were all accounted for and had plans in place to control themselves at full moons. I banged my head back against my doorframe. Not my fault. Not my fault. Not my fault.

A voice from one of the other cells I couldn’t see into drifted toward me. “
Leibchen
, are you still sad? I could help.”

Yeah, because being trapped with no way to get out and save Lend and all IPCA against me wasn’t bad enough, my
block mate was the creeptastic uber-vamp stalker I partially drained on Halloween. He kept trying to start up a conversation, but even his voice set my teeth on edge. And then there was the matter of the part of his soul I was carting around inside myself.

But thinking about draining him made me wonder…if I could still feel nervous energy from him, and rushing chill from the fossegrim, and sparks from the sylph…I scooted back into my room, ignoring Uber-vamp. If I could concentrate the energy from souls enough to open gates between worlds, I should be able to do something else with it. Maybe.

It was worth a shot. I rolled up my pant leg, then closed my eyes, breathing deeply. Focusing inward, I tried to pick out the sense of the sylph’s soul, the sparking, dry heat, the rush of wind. There! And there! Willing it to come together, I mentally directed it to my hand, and then to my pointer finger. It took a while, but eventually I could feel it building up, gathering there like a miniature storm. I opened my eyes and saw sparks dancing along the length of my finger beneath my skin. I squealed with happiness, and they scattered.

Bleep. After repeating the process, I finally had all the sylph energy more or less concentrated. “Here goes nothing,” I muttered, then reached down, put my finger against the ankle tracker, and willed the sparks to leave.

And then screamed as currents of electricity shot back
and forth between my finger and the ankle tracker. I shook all over but couldn’t control my muscles enough to move my finger. Finally it stopped and I collapsed on the ground, my nose assailed by the smell of burned plastic and skin.

I moaned softly, biting my tongue against the pain in my ankle and willing myself not to scream. After what felt like forever I was able to sit up and survey the damage. Angry red marks were already bubbling into blisters around the ankle tracker, which, as far as I could tell from the warped surface and faint smoke still drifting up, was out of commission.

I braced for an alarm, but none went off. Which meant I probably had a few minutes tops before the computer system registered that my ankle tracker was down. I stood up and gasped over the pain screaming through my ankle.

Okay, electricity burns? NOT. FUN.

But I could hurt later. Right now I had to get out and save Lend.

I limped over, then hesitated at the doorway. I didn’t think I could handle another shock, but there was no avoiding it. Taking a deep breath, I pushed my foot across the threshold into the hall.

Nothing.

“Thank you, you crazy sylph,” I whispered, then hobbled hurriedly down the hall away from Uber-vamp’s voice. I had never known this wing existed when I lived here, but Jack had brought me here to visit Vivian. Just after my
entire life fell apart and just before he left me in the Faerie Paths to die. So I hadn’t been paying the best attention, but I was pretty sure the door was at the end of this hall.

I paused. Vivian was still here, on the other end of the hall. I had trusted Raquel with her care, but now that Raquel was somehow out of power, I didn’t want to leave Viv alone and asleep. But I didn’t have time to grab her, and even if I did, I didn’t think I could execute what was probably already an impossible escape while carrying her on my back.

I shook my head. I’d come back for her soon. She’d wanted me to get to Lend as fast as I could; she’d understand. I needed to get out of this hall. After that, my only hope was to run into a faerie. I hurried to the end of the Iron Wing and opened the door.

Where I found myself face-to-face with Anne-Whatever Whatever herself.

I pulled my hand back to punch her. “What are you—” she started, when her eyes went wide and she collapsed on the ground, revealing Tasey in the hands of a teen boy with blond curls, blue eyes, dimples, and the most impish smile I’d ever seen.

“Hey-oh, did you miss me?” Jack asked.