“I don’t see Asher,” I whispered.
“Nor I,” Darius said.
“Can you sense him?”
“Not specifically, no.”
The fear inside me surged again, tightening my throat.
“We’ll find him, Gray.” Darius’s voice, even at a whisper, was confident and sure. I took a breath, trying to borrow some of that confidence. Darius was right. We’d come this far. We wouldn’t leave here without him.
“Oh, shite,” Darius breathed, all his calm confidence evaporating.
He pointed at the ceiling inside one of the cells. Some kind of sickly yellow-green smoke crept out from the vents. I didn’t need to smell it to know it was poison gas.
One of the witches started coughing. Then another. And another. Then, all at once, the screams began. I spun around on my heel. Tendrils of poison curled into every single cell.
“Jael!” Darius shouted. “We’ve got a problem!”
“I’m working on it.”
I pounded frantically on the glass, watching helplessly as four young witches choked on poison air. Their mouths were foaming, their eyes bulging, their skin turning purple.
“Jael! They’re choking to death!”
“Almost there…”
“Jael!”
“Got it!”
A tremble rolled through the room, rattling the metal tables around us. The lights flickered, then popped. A dim set of emergency lights illuminated the floor.
When the room finally stopped shaking, I glanced into the closest cell. The witches were lying in a heap on the floor, unmoving. The poison had dissipated, the air clear once again.
Seconds later, the glass windows slid open in a single, unified hiss. I set down my sword, and Darius and I rushed into the nearest cell, slowly rousing the witches to consciousness. One of them coughed, then sat up on her own, sucking in deep breaths of clean air.
Slowly, agonizingly, the others came to.
“Gray? Is that you?”
At the sound of a familiar voice, I darted over to the adjacent cell, my heart hammering in my chest.
Haley Barnes stood before me, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wet with tears of relief.
Her head was shaved, her skin gaunt, her bones jutting out where before she’d had curves for days. But it was still her, those light green eyes sparkling.
I beamed at her, pulling her into a hug so tight I was probably cutting off her air supply again, but I didn’t care. She was my sister. I wasn’t ready to tell her about all I’d learned just yet—there would be time for that later. But now that I’d found her again, I didn’t want to let her go.
“I’m happy to see you, too!” She laughed, finally wriggling free of my embrace. Her smile didn’t last, though. How could it, after what she’d been through?
“Tell me you’ve seen Reva,” she said.
“She’s safe,” I assured her. “She made it to the precinct and told us everything. That’s how we were able to track you guys down. Is this everyone?” I asked gently, gesturing toward the witches stumbling out of the cells. They were all pale and thin and severely exhausted, but it looked like everyone could walk. That was a good sign.
“If you’ve got Reva, then there are twenty-three of us here.” She scanned the room, doing a quick count. “That’s all of us. The only one missing is Asher.”
My heart leaped at the sound of his name.
