The Inquisitor's Mark (8 page)

JAX STARED AT HIS
phone.

The message was hours old, texted only minutes after Thomas had bumped into Uncle Finn at the bus station. Assuming Thomas meant
scent
, he was saying that Finn Ambrose had the smell of an Emrys on him. And since Jax knew the man had been nowhere near Evangeline, it meant he'd been in contact with Addie.

Jax swore under his breath with every curse word he could think of and texted both twins.

A few seconds later, replies appeared.

Yeah, Jax knew that. He'd just scrolled through a total of seventeen messages from all three Crandalls.

That had been Jax's plan: to grab Billy and get out in the middle of the night. Now he'd have to scrap that.

Jax hadn't had a chance to see what Tegan had shoved into his backpack. A quick search turned up a ring with several keys on it but no sign of his uncle's wallet. Well, the Donovans
were
thieves.

There was no reply. Jax guessed the twins were having a night on the town, courtesy of Finn Ambrose's wallet.
That was okay. They deserved it. Picking Uncle Finn's pockets had been Thomas's idea. And when Jax had first arrived in the city, before he'd called Billy to arrange the meeting with his uncle, Tegan had introduced him to her dad's friend Smitty. Together, they'd set up a fallback plan Jax hoped they'd never have to implement—but which he was glad to have in reserve.

He turned the phone off, wishing he could call Riley and get him to command Billy out of this place. Mr. Crandall was right. These people had done something to Billy. His friend was geeky, not stupid. Even if the Ambroses had fooled him into thinking they were nice, Billy should've picked up on Jax's urgency to leave. And the way he looked like he was going to pass out when Jax hit him with the backpack . . . Something was wrong with him, although Jax couldn't prove it with Dorian watching them like a creepy little owl.

Jax was certain Dorian was awake and spying on him right now.
If I thought I could get Billy out of here tonight, I'd jump you and tie you up with your stupid school tie, cuz.

But now Billy wasn't his only responsibility. If there was a chance Addie was in this building, he had to search for her. Jax fingered the keys Thomas had stolen from his uncle's pocket. Both the doorman and Uncle Finn had looked upset about the loss of these keys.
I need to search tonight, before they replace the locks.

He lay in the top bunk waiting for Dorian to fall asleep
and occasionally stabbing himself in the palm with the keys to stay awake. It had been a long night already, facing his relatives and fending off their questions. Looking at photos of his father as a young teen had almost made him sick. That Dulac woman—
my grandmother?!
—had shown him pictures of Dad skiing, boating, and golfing with people whose existence his father had denied.

You never took me skiing, Dad. Not even once.

Here was an instant family—the kind Jax had been longing for—and he wanted nothing to do with them. Lesley seemed okay, but the rest of them creeped him out. They'd asked about Evangeline and Riley repeatedly during that torturous dinner, and he'd had to repel their inquisition talent.
Not good. Not good at all.
Jax wished he could be long gone before Riley and Evangeline reappeared tomorrow night, but if Addie was here, he couldn't leave without her.
And if I wait long enough for Addie to appear, I run the risk of Riley coming to New York to “rescue” me.
Jax was going to have to scope out the situation, figure out if Addie was here at all, and then call the Crandalls and make sure they
and
his guardian stayed in the mountains. It was one thing for Riley to present himself to the Table in front of all the Transitioner clan lords; walking up and ringing the doorbell of Ursula Dulac's lair was another thing altogether!

Jax waited long past the point when he was sure Dorian was asleep. He needed the adults to be asleep too. When
his phone said 2:15 a.m., he removed his honor blade from inside his backpack and strapped the sheath around his waist. He hadn't worn it on the bus, and bringing it out for dinner seemed more hostile than necessary. No one in the Ambrose family had been wearing a blade, although some Transitioners carried them concealed. But now he was going to need it to enhance his talent. He lowered himself from the top bunk and removed his shoes. Stocking feet were quieter.

Slipping out of the bedroom and across the apartment, Jax let himself into the fifth-floor hallway and approached the elevator. Instead of the normal up and down buttons, there was a keyhole. He fumbled through Uncle Finn's keys until he found two of the right size. One didn't work, but the other caused the elevator shaft to whir into mechanical life. When the elevator arrived, Jax opened the gate—something he'd only seen on television—and went in.

Now what?

He drew his dagger and balanced it on his left palm.
I need to find Addie, if she's here.
Just because Uncle Finn had been in contact with her didn't mean she was in the building. And Addie wouldn't be
anywhere
until Grunsday. But Jax could sense Evangeline's location even on days she wasn't physically present. If Jax was an Emrys vassal, he technically served Addie too.

Before he knew what he was doing, Jax punched the
button for the first floor. The elevator shivered down five floors and shuddered to a halt at the lobby. Jax froze, wondering what to do next. Hard-soled shoes rapped across the tiled floor as the doorman started over to investigate why the elevator had come down but no one was getting off. Jax's eyes fell on the separate elevator button labeled B with its own keyhole.
Down, down, down,
pounded his heart.

He shoved the other key of the right size into the lock, stabbed the B button, and the elevator lurched downward. His head passed out of sight just as shiny black shoes appeared on the lobby floor above him.

The elevator stopped with a jerk and a clanging sound at the basement level. Jax opened the gate and cautiously stuck his head out. From the elevator, he could turn left or right and travel a short distance in either direction before reaching a corner. No one was in sight, but he heard dull footsteps on concrete flooring not far away—coming from the right. Slapping a random elevator button with one hand, Jax shoved the gate closed from the outside and took off
left
in his stocking feet. Gears ground loudly as the elevator started up again, covering any sound Jax made as he pelted down the short hallway and right at the corner. A much longer corridor lit by yellow fluorescent lights stretched in front of him. There were doors spaced along the walls on either side, and Jax fingered the ring of keys as he ran.

This door. This key
.

He fell through a doorway midway down the corridor and whirled, pulling the door closed behind him. A few seconds later, footsteps passed outside. Jax glanced at the key in his hand, in awe that he'd randomly picked the right one for this door.

When he was scared and desperate, his talent guided him. On math tests, not so much.

He groped for a light switch. Tubular light bulbs flickered eerily, then came on one by one, illuminating tables and computers as well as a solid steel rack of cages and a bank of refrigerators with glass doors. Jax screwed up his face in distaste as he approached, but the closer he got, the more he was sure. The refrigerator shelves were filled with trays holding vials of blood.

Or tomato juice. But I'm thinking blood.

Painted on the wall above the refrigerators was something that looked like the symbol Evangeline had taught A.J.
Aha!
These people did know how to create Kin wards and might be using them to shield Addie, as well as this laboratory. But there were no wards on the other three walls, which was strange, because Evangeline said a place needed warding on all sides for the protection to work. Then Jax turned to look into the cages and leaped back with a startled yelp.

A dozen faces stared back at him.

Furry flat faces with black, glittering eyes.

Brownies.

Some chattered at him, baring their sharp incisor teeth. A large brownie with a tuft of white fur on its head shook the cage door like a jailed criminal. Its thin, dexterous fingers gripped the bars, and Jax noticed that brownies had hands, not paws.

What were brownies doing here on a Tuesday? Or rather, a very early Wednesday morning? Weren't they eighth-day creatures?

The solid metal sides of the cages were marked with wards similar to the single one painted on the wall of the lab. Even the tops of the cages were marked, as well as the placard on the front of each barred door where someone might normally stick a label. Were the wards holding these eighth-day creatures in the seven-day world? Jax glanced at the vials of blood. What was going on here?

Did it matter?
Using animals in experiments sucks and so do the Dulacs!

Jax unlatched the cages and threw open the doors. The brownies leaped to the floor. Jax planned on opening the corridor door next, giving them access to the rest of the basement. Hopefully they'd make like rats and disappear into nooks and crannies until Grunsday, when they could transition back to their own timeline. But instead, the brownies all made a beeline across the lab toward the opposite wall . . . and vanished into the cinder blocks.

Jax gaped at them. The last brownie, the one with the white-topped head, paused to look back. Its round little
ears twitched and rotated, like the creature was considering Jax with interest. Then the brownie curved the fingers of its hand toward its body before diving into the wall.

Did that thing beckon me to go with it?

Jax ran his hands over the cinder blocks. Rough, cool, a little damp—just what he expected until he reached the spot where the brownies had disappeared. Those blocks felt spongy. Jax pushed firmly, and his hand vanished into the wall.

After a few seconds of groping blindly, he pulled back his hand and examined it. No harm done.

Jax stuffed his head in.

Weird. When he was outside, he couldn't see his hand inside. With his head inside, he couldn't see his body outside, but he
could
see the rest of the lab—dimly. It was like peering through tissue paper, if tissue were elastic and smooth to the touch. Straight ahead, a narrow tunnel passed through the wall and into a room full of furnaces. He took an experimental breath. There seemed to be air. Should he go in? What if it closed behind him and he couldn't get out?

The brownie had motioned for him to follow.

“What the heck,” he muttered, and climbed in.

The first thing he did was confirm he could get back out. Then he stood up and took a couple of steps forward. There was some give to the substance around him, but he couldn't push through it except for that one spot on the
laboratory wall. When he passed into the furnace room, he couldn't get out there, either. He had to follow the path of the tunnel, which went all the way through the room like a tube in the kiddie play zone of a Chuck E. Cheese. Only this one was transparent and made of magic instead of plastic.

The tunnel led him across the furnace room before swerving through a wall and into the basement corridor. Here Jax's hand, groping along the side of the tunnel, felt a spot where the elasticity of the walls gave way to an actual hole. He didn't stick his arm through to test it, though. There was at least one other person in this basement who might see it if he did; Jax had heard the footsteps. He was pretty sure he was invisible as long as he kept all parts of his body inside this tunnel. The brownies had disappeared when
they
entered it. However, he also suspected that from inside, he couldn't see anyone on the outside—the same way he couldn't see the rest of his body with his head inside the tunnel. There might be a guard walking down the corridor right now, and Jax wouldn't see him.

On a hunch, Jax took out his phone and wasn't surprised when it wouldn't turn on. Phones didn't work on Grunsday because computer chips didn't recognize the eighth day. Was the tunnel outside the seven-day timeline? It was charged with magic. Jax knew that much. The sensation was similar to the time Evangeline had given him a spell to hold. His whole head buzzed with talent.
Jax grinned. Whatever this tunnel was, it was perfect for searching the basement unseen.
Do the Dulacs know it's here?
Jax wondered. With an entranceway right in their research lab, how could they miss it? He had to assume they knew.

The tunnel cut across the corridor and into another room, and Jax's heart rate sped up. There was a bed, a sink, and a toilet. This was a cell. It appeared to be empty, but if his theory was correct, anyone outside the tunnel was in a different timeline than he was. Of course, if this was Addie's cell, she wouldn't be there on a Wednesday anyway.

Jax had no sense of an Emrys presence, but maybe the magic in the tunnel was blocking his vassal bond. When he patted along the wall, his fingers slipped into another hole. He got down on his knees and thrust his hand through experimentally, but he couldn't even see his hand groping around. He needed to exit, he realized, and then perhaps he'd be able to detect whether Evangeline's sister had been imprisoned in this room.

No sooner had he stuck his head through the hole than a hand grabbed him by the hair and yanked him bodily out. He hollered and fought, but somebody stronger than he was dragged him to his feet and pushed him against a very solid cinder-block wall.