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Puck. What horrible timing. I turn my back, fish out my phone as quickly as I can, and type out: Hush. Let’s talk in a sec—
A steely hand grabs my shoulder, spinning me around. “None of that.” Kain grabs the phone and crushes it in his grip.
“Bailey?” Felix squawks. “What’s going on?”
Kain makes pincers with his fingers and snatches the earpiece from my ear with a strike worthy of a cobra.
It’s as I feared. With his vampire hearing, he detected Felix’s voice. I wonder if he’s been hearing it all along but just didn’t bother to do something about it. I hope he at least doesn’t know who’s on the other end of the conversation—I don’t want Felix to get in trouble.
“Consider her dead,” Kain growls into the earpiece. “And if I learn who you are, you will be as well.”
Okay, so he doesn’t know. One piece of good news in this avalanche of manure.
Tossing the device on the floor, Kain grinds it into powder with his foot. Then he rips the camera Felix was seeing through from my shirt and gives it the same treatment.
“You should’ve solved the case,” he tells me grimly and strides toward the cell entrance.
My gaze falls on the sliding bolt on my side of the door. As soon as he’s outside, I lunge and snap it into place.
“That’s not going to help,” Kain sneers from the other side of the bars. “I can rip that door off the hinges. Or I could just let you sit in this cell until you starve.”
On that cheerful note, he padlocks the door on his side and leaves.
My breathing is so fast I’m inhaling too much of the foul dungeon air. Bile rising, I frantically locate the horrific hole in the floor meant to be a toilet and lose the bananas from my stomach into it.
Perfect. Now I’ll starve that much sooner.
Muttering obscenities under my breath, I stand up and begin to pace. I feel like a caged animal. The seconds tick by, each one longer than the next. It feels like an hour passes as I pace back and forth, trying to avoid the sewage hole. After the third time I nearly fall into it, I plop down on the floor and hug my knees to my body.
Puck. Puck. Puck. How could I have screwed up so badly? The goal was to save Mom. Now I’ll be executed, and without me, she’s as good as dead too. If I’d finished Valerian’s job, I could beg him to pay her bills, extending her life a while longer, but I don’t have my phone or my powers so I can’t even do that much.
My throat constricts, my eyes burning as a sob bubbles up in my chest. Another sob quickly follows—those bastards travel in packs—and no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop the tears from sliding down my cheeks. I cry for myself and for my mom, for all the dreams I’ll never walk in and the conversations the two of us will never get to have. For the apologies I’ll never get to make. I’ve never wished I could turn back the clock so intensely, have never wanted to rewrite history this much. But I only have that power in the dream world; out here, I’m as useless as a human, utterly at the mercy of the Council and their whims.
Eventually, my tears dry up and I just sit, beyond miserable. If I had my powers, I could at least escape into the dream world. But no such luck, at least not until tomorrow—assuming there is a tomorrow.
Of course, there is another form of escape, a way I could make myself feel better. The vial of vampire blood is still in my pocket. Even as diluted as it is, it would make me feel good. Very good.
But no. I’m showing signs of addiction—there’s no doubt about that anymore. Then again, I’m awaiting my execution, so does it matter?
I take out the vial. It’s so tempting. It would make me forget everything, if only for a little while. And when I’m dead, I won’t have to deal with the consequences of addiction.
No, screw that. I’m not dying an addict. Besides, using this stuff might’ve contributed to how I ended up in this hellhole. I can’t help the feeling that if I’d just let myself get a good night of sleep, with my mind fresh, I would’ve figured out who the murderer is.
Grimly resolved, I push up to my feet and step over to the hole in the floor. Unscrewing the vial, I make sure Nessie isn’t staring at me from the murky water and ceremoniously pour out the liquid.
“Never again,” I vow out loud.
To my surprise, I feel a little better—enough to resume pacing for a while instead of crying. Eventually, I tire and sit again, my eyes dry and gritty as I count the bars on the cell door.
