Toxic Heart (32 page)

“What
is
this place?” I whisper.

“It’s spooky, that’s what,” Turk says. He tugs on my sleeve. “Ready?”

I nod. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

We meet up with Ryah and Landon, who are standing outside the warehouse a few steps behind Shannon. The wispy line of energy is still trailing from her mouth, snaking through an open window.

“Eew.” Ryah turns up her nose. “This place stinks.”

I have to agree. The salty water mixed with the stench of the Depths makes for a very unpleasant smell. I wonder if it will be any better inside.

“This way,” Shannon says quietly, waving us forward. I grip the pistol that’s strapped to my side—just in case.

It seems too obvious to enter the front of the warehouse, so we sneak around the back. Forming a single line, we press ourselves as close to the wall as possible, moving stealthily around the bits of crumbled stone and twisted metal scattered on the ground.

Shannon disappears around the corner, and Landon and Ryah quickly follow. Turk and I are next, and we see the three of them waiting for us in front of a hole twice my height. It’s jagged around the edges, like it was made by a wrecking ball.

“Come on,” Landon says. “Quiet now.”

I glance behind me at Turk, who gives me a thumbs-up, and we all follow Shannon through the hole. The inside of the building is pitch-black.

“Stop, please.” Ryah creates a muted green light with her energy, holding her hand up near her head so we can see. It casts a chilling glow over us; I feel a jolt of nervous energy that makes me shiver even though the air is warm.

“Let’s go,” Ryah says.

I step carefully; there are unexpected breaches in the cement every five steps or so, and I don’t want to accidentally twist my ankle—or worse.

I can’t see much except Ryah and, in front of us, the line of energy emitting from Shannon’s mouth. Shannon makes a sharp right. We follow her, and my foot sinks into something wet. There’s about an inch of water covering the ground.

“Careful,” Turk whispers. “If there’s water here, then there must be a leak somewhere in the building.”

We continue forward, the water growing deeper with each step. Shannon leads us left, then right. The water begins to taper off.

Ahead, something white pierces the darkness of the hallway. It looks like a tiny glowing ball that seems to be beckoning us. With each step, the ball glows brighter—until we reach a room filled with light.

Ryah shakes the energy from her hand, and I look around in awe.

It’s a large loft space, two stories high. A set of metal stairs leads to a catwalk that lines all four walls and overlooks the room, extending halfway into the open space. The walls here are intact, made of gray cement. Exposed copper pipes run along the ceiling.

In the middle of the space is Jarek.

Bound and gagged.

His huge body hanging off a thick chain that dangles from a giant hook in the middle of the ceiling.

The ball of white light is coming from a fixture in the ceiling, illuminating the entire space.

When Jarek sees us, he begins to struggle, though he’s wrapped in so many heavy chains that he can barely move a finger. His weight begins to swing the chain like a pendulum.

On the floor beneath his feet is the cooler.

Landon lets out an audible sigh. “What the—”

“Shh,” Turk instructs, stepping out from behind me. I glance up at Jarek. His eyes are wide over the gag.

He’s terrified.

The trail of energy from Shannon’s mouth is wrapped around Jarek’s ankle. She closes her lips and bites into the ray, severing
her connection to it. It whips across the floor and untangles from Jarek’s leg—then it bursts into nothingness.

Turk takes a step into the room.

Jarek shakes his head violently. Who tied him up like that? It must have taken someone powerful to subdue him. And is whoever did it still here?

There’s a
zip
in the air and a burst of green light.

I look up on the catwalk.

Standing with her arms raised, energy pulsing from each of her fingertips, is Elissa Genevieve.

She looks more powerful than ever. When I knew her, she was masquerading as a drained mystic—covering her face with makeup to look so sallow and weak so no one would question her, when in reality she was healthy, a double agent who was working for my father.

Now there’s no makeup to conceal who she really is.

Her blond hair is loose, her thick curls cascading down to her shoulders. This isn’t the Elissa Genevieve I remember from my father’s office. She has abandoned her corporate attire for a shimmering golden catsuit nearly as bright as the sun. She looks like a character out of a movie: the garment fits her like a second skin, so shiny there must be crushed crystals in the threads. Her knee-high black boots look painfully pointy.

“She’s certainly dressed for the occasion,” Landon mutters.

Turk starts forward, but I hold him back.

“Aria Rose!” Elissa cries out.

Our eyes meet and she spreads her arms, sending the bright green energy exploding from her fingertips across the room.

“Oh!” she says, her voice filling the vast space. “A reunion.” She smiles a dazzling white smile. Her lips are painted a deep red. “Me. You. Davida—or rather, the only part of her I care about.”

Elissa squeezes her right hand tightly, as though there’s something delicate in her palm that she wants to destroy. The five individual rays of energy braid themselves together into one thick, powerful ray.

Elissa’s energy looks almost black. Lethal. A darker green than I’ve ever seen from any mystic.

She sweeps her arm across the room and the ray shoots forward, stopping directly in front of the cooler holding Davida’s heart.

Elissa closes her eyes.

She murmurs something and her entire body shudders, nearly launching her off the catwalk.

And then the energy from her hand begins to spin in midair.

The ray narrows itself to a fierce point, making a noise as loud as an electric drill. It spins so quickly that it almost looks like it isn’t moving at all, darkening with every passing second.

Then Elissa drags the fierce green beam across the cement floor, just parallel to the cooler. The ray burns a charcoal mark into the cement with a sharp hiss as she moves the beam along the edge of the cooler.

“What is she doing?” I whisper to Turk.

As she maneuvers the narrow beam, a sheer greenish-blue wall rises from the mark she’s made in the floor. The wall is approximately three feet high, extending well past the top of the cooler.

Then she draws another line.

And another, until the cooler is surrounded by a force field of semitranslucent energy. She completes the force field with a
lid over the cooler, sealing it off completely. When she’s finished, Elissa retracts her rays with a sound like the bursting of a hundred balloons.

The force field remains intact, shimmering incandescently. It’s so beautiful that I almost want to reach out and touch it.

“One can never be too careful,” Elissa says, her voice echoing off the walls. She focuses her attention on me. “You tend to have greedy little fingers, if I remember correctly.” She motions to the force field and the cooler inside it. “And I want
this
all for myself.”

Ryah and Landon stare at Elissa in silent awe. She looks terribly impressive standing atop the catwalk, the golden collar of her bodysuit flipped up against her neck, her blond hair glistening in the light. I once thought Elissa was my friend, my confidante.

I was wrong.

She is responsible for so many deaths: Violet Brooks’s, for one, as well as many of those killed in the Conflagration twenty-odd years ago, not to mention in this year’s war.

Elissa is the reason—one of them, at least—that the people of Manhattan are starving and fighting and killing. Anger begins to swirl inside me like boiling water.

Jarek makes a noise, but his cry is muffled by the gag in his mouth.

“Ah,” Elissa says from the catwalk. “Silenced screams.” She moves directly above where Jarek is hanging, staring down as if he’s a museum exhibit. “Reminds me of home.”

“Is this it?” Landon shouts from behind me. “You lured us here so we could watch Jarek hang from the ceiling?”

“Landon!” Ryah says. Her left hand is twitching nervously, her fingers hovering just above the gun strapped to her waist.

Elissa blinks at us. “
Lured
you here? You stumbled into this room of your own accord.” She points directly at me. “I was looking for
you
.”

“My parents and brother aren’t enough?” I say. “What do you want with me?”

Elissa stares at me with keen interest. “Your family has proved a helpful alliance, it’s true. But I’ve decided to go out on my own. Roses need dirt to grow, Aria. But me—I need nothing but air.”

“What does that even mean?” Ryah whispers to me.

Landon puffs out his chest. “What are you talking about, Elissa? You brought Jarek here. Why?”

“Jarek. Is that his name? Silly boy,” Elissa says. She reaches for the chain that Jarek is hanging from, giving it a gentle push so that his body swings back and forth. “I’d hardly say I
brought
him here.” Elissa catches the rope, steadying it. “It was an unexpected turn of events, really.” She touches something hanging from her neck. I squint and realize she’s wearing a locket.

My
locket.

“Look familiar, Aria?” she asks.

“How’d she get your locket?” Turk asks. “I thought Jarek had it.”

“So did I …,” I say, and then I realize what must have happened—why didn’t I think of this before? Neither Hunter nor Kyle put the mystic trace on me. I stare up at Elissa. “
You
. You’re the one who tagged me.”

“You figured it out,” she says. “Took you long enough. At first I thought you were
pretending
to be simple. But no. You’re just daft.”

Turk steps forward. “Hey—”

“Take one more step, boy”—Elissa holds up a hand suffused with her particular dark green mystic energy—“and I will annihilate you.”

He glances back at me, and I shake my head. Elissa is too dangerous. I won’t let him get hurt because of me.

“And why am I simple?” I ask. Maybe if I can keep Elissa talking, one of us will come up with a plan to stop her.

Elissa sighs. “I tagged you when we were with that one”—she points to Turk—“about to enter the underground. Right before the battle where poor little Hunter lost his mommy. I thought it would be handy, a way to keep tabs on you. You never felt a thing.

“As part of my arrangement with your father, I’ve been keeping him apprised of your whereabouts. I even told Thomas Foster you were at that compound upstate—just in case things ever went south with good old Johnny Rose. It’s always good to have a backup plan.” Her voice is as exactly as I remember it—steely and calm.

“But this war is
draaaagging on
,” Elissa continues, “and I’ve decided to take things into my own hands. I followed the tag tonight, thinking I would find you. My plan was to ransom you off to the highest bidder, to use you to gain control over your parents
and
the Fosters.”

She glances over at Jarek with disgust. “How was I supposed to know you had it transferred to your locket? A smart trick, so obviously you didn’t think of it yourself.”

Elissa removes the locket from around her neck and dangles it above Jarek’s head. “Then this little thief shows up. I was about to kill him outright when I realized that he had a surprise with him:
a mystic heart
. And not just any mystic’s heart—your old servant, Davida’s. Jarek here was going to use the heart for himself, isn’t that right?”

Jarek says something, but it’s muffled by the gag.

Elissa cups her hand to her ear. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

He repeats himself, but his words are still incomprehensible.

“Poor thing.” Elissa reaches forward and pulls the gag out of Jarek’s mouth, letting it rest on his chin.

“I’m sorry!” he cries, gasping for air. “I just wanted to be powerful.” He closes his eyes. “I didn’t know … I didn’t think …”

“But you
do
have power,” I say to Jarek. “You saved me and Turk in the Aeries. We wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”

“It’s not the same,” Jarek says rapidly. “I was going to ingest the energy myself and then sell the heart to Kyle when it was worthless. Would’ve served him right.”

“So you’re working with him?” I ask. “That’s why you came here?”

“No,” Jarek says. “I just thought he’d pay a hefty amount of money for the heart, and by the time he figured out that I’d already drained the energy, I’d be far gone. I came here to find him. I didn’t know that she—” He looks at Elissa and holds back whatever he was about to say.

“And the locket …,” Jarek says, “I didn’t even realize it was yours, Aria. I saw it on the ground back when Turk and I found you at the excavated canal. I figured somebody dropped it, that it was something I could pawn. But I was wr—”

“Enough.” Elissa stuffs the gag back in his mouth. “I liked him better when he talked less.”