I close my eyes and just try to breathe. Maybe the frat boys laced the hotdogs with something. Maybe it was rotten, and this is a fever dream. I don’t know, but I can’t seem to get a grip on what’s real. That scares me more than anything else, because I know what happens when you lose touch with reality. I’ve seen it firsthand, and I can’t let it happen to me. Iwon’t.
“Moira. You’re safe here, okay? I took really good care of you. I flew you slowly. Me and Tink. Very safe as flying goes. All right?” He says it placatingly, as if his crazy talk is supposed to somehow make me feel better about being kidnapped. And was that a shadow that attacked me?Hisshadow?
“Moira?”
Then it hits me.Oh, shit. He knows my name. How? My mouth goes dry, and I open my eyes and stare at him.
“Let me go.”
“Okay.” He releases his grip on my arms, and I back up, pull my limbs in tight lest he try to grab me again.
With my back against the stone wall, I finally take in a deep breath and look around again. “Where am I?”
“In the cave.” He smiles, boyish and charming, as if kidnapping isn’t a felony. “The pirates can’t find us here. Don’t worry.”
“The pirates. Riiiight.” I glance around, looking for some sort of a weapon. I refuse to getThe Lovely Bonestreatment in whatever underground dungeon this psycho has stashed me.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
I just blink at him. Hungry? I’m fucking terrified. No, I’m not hungry. But then I realize this may be my chance to distract him. If I play along, maybe I can find a way out of this.
Forcing a smile, I say, “Yes, very.”
He smiles again, all charming. “All right. I’ll see if Slightly made supper like I told him.” He stands, his head brushing the top of the cave. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Mmm-hmm” is all I can manage to give him in response.
He turns and strides out of the small room, the little firefly following close behind, flitting around his head.
I rise, my legs surprisingly steady. If I was drugged, it seems to have worn off quickly. Good. I need to have all my wits to get out of this nightmare. I creep to the open doorway and cringe when I accidentally step on one of the small arrows. It snaps beneath my foot, but thankfully the guy doesn’t come running.
Holding my breath, I peek out the door. It leads into another room with a few candles, the ceiling higher and the room a little less claustrophobic. I move through it slowly, looking around and spotting two doors leading off into the dark.
One’s as good as the other, so I choose the one closest and ease my way along a narrow hall until I hear the clatter of cookware. There’s a series of small, misshapen windows ahead, none of them bigger than a fist, and I peek into one. On the other side is a kitchen filled with several men, including my kidnapper. They’re arguing and grumbling, each of them grabbing plates or pots, one of them rattling mismatched silverware in a drawer.
“Where’s the soup?” It’s the guy from earlier. “I thought I said I wanted soup for Moira.”
“I made soup. Look!” One of the men points to a pot on a rough table in the center of the kitchen.
My kidnapper leans over it and inhales. “Ah, it’s the carrot soup?”
“Obviously.” The other one scoffs then grabs some bowls—many of them chipped and cracked—from a sideboard. Another man, who must be the silverware guy’s twin given their matching red hair and freckles, grabs bowls and places them haphazardly on the table.
“Perfect.” The kidnapper takes one more inhale of the soup then stands straight again, and I glance down into the pot he just sniffed.
That’s when I realize just how utterly screwed I am. Because there’snothingin the pot. There’s no soup, much less carrot soup.
These people areinsane.
The kidnapper turns toward the windows, and I duck beneath them, creeping down the hallway. I need to get as far away fromthem as possible, so I keep going, the kitchen clatter fading as the hallway begins to open more.
When I enter a room that soars away above me, I stop. “What the hell?” I whisper. There seems to be huge furniture ahead of me, like enormous wardrobes that reach impossibly high. It’s dark in here, so dark that I hesitate to move farther. But I hear something smash behind me, then a loud curse from one of the men. They must’ve broken a plate.
The sound spurs me onward, though the ground beneath me is precarious now. No longer smooth, it seems to be littered with ropes. My eyes slowly adjust until I realize the huge shapes aren’t wardrobes, they’re tree trunks, seven of them it looks like. The floor is made of twisting, twining roots.
I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have to keep going. So I circle the first tree I come to, then stop when I realize it’s hollowed out. When I step in and look up, I only see more darkness. Maybe I could somehow wedge myself inside it and climb up? No, that’s dumb. Then I’d just be stuck inside a tree.
I step out, then move around to the next tree, its lighter trunk veined in dark shades of black and brown. I pause when I see something dangling inside it. Leaning forward, I realize it’s a rope ladder.Huh. I look up inside the hollow tree, but it’s just as dark as the one before.
