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“I’m here,” I said.
“Good girl,” he said. “Here’s how this is all going down. I know you have the fourth spirit seal, so don’t even bother lying about it. You hand over the seal and my renegade flunky to me. I hand over your boyfriend—relatively untouched—to you. Sound good?”
Shit, he thought we still had the seal. Of course. How would he, or any of the demons, know we were giving them to Queen Asteria? Shadow Wing probably thought we were gathering them to use for ourselves! I kept my mouth shut. I might be naïve sometimes, but I wasn’t stupid. Camille glanced at me, her jaw set.
“How long do we have to find it? We haven’t got the seal. Not yet.”
“Sure you do. But just on the off chance that you’ve somehow lost track of the gem, allow me to be generous. Reflect on what your detective means to you. And you should know, if you decide to back out of our little deal, your boyfriend takes a one-way trip back to the Subterranean Realms, and I’ll sell him into slavery.”
Taking a deep breath, I asked, “How do I know Chase is still alive?”
“A logical question. One I’d expect, so tell your sister—or that damned sprite you share your house with—to go look on the front porch. I’ll wait.”
I motioned to Camille. She headed for the front door. When she returned, her face was ashen, and her hand shook as she held out a small, open box. In the box was the last knuckle of a pinkie finger and a ring. It looked like the fingertip had been bitten off. The ring was Chase’s. I forced myself to swallow the bile that was rising.
“What the fuck did you do to him?”
“You like our little gift?” Karvanak laughed. “As a bonus, I’ll even let you talk to him.” There was a muffled sound as the phone changed hands, and then a familiar voice came on the other end.
“Delilah—Delilah—” Chase sounded both frantic and in pain.
“Chase! Oh great gods, are you all right? Your finger—” I wanted to ask him where he was, but Karvanak was smart. He’d kill Chase if he even suspected I was trying to cadge information out of him.
“Never mind my finger,” Chase said. “Listen. I’m sorry about everything. I love you.”
“I love you, too—” I said, breaking into tears. “We’ll save you. Just hang on. Do what they say. We’ll rescue you.”
“No! Don’t deal with them,” Chase said, his voice raspy and fearful. “You can’t let them have the seal—”
“Enough.” Karvanak was back on the line. “Use the tip of his finger for scrying if you want to know it’s his for sure. And meanwhile, think about this: There are a lot of demons who like to play with humans down in the Subterranean Realms. There’s always a great call for slaves there, and toys. And we’ve perfected the art of keeping our prisoners alive, even when they’d rather die.”
I kept my mouth shut. It wouldn’t help Chase at all if I showed how upset I was. “We need time—”
Karvanak laughed. “I thought you’d see it my way. I’m in a generous mood. You have thirty-six hours. Don’t expect any extensions, and don’t let the charge on your cell phone die. Both would be very, very bad ideas.”
As the line went dead, I closed my phone and looked at the others.
“You talked to Chase?” Camille asked.
I nodded.
“I assume Karvanak wants the fourth spirit seal.”
“He wants a little more than that. He also demanded that we hand over Vanzir. If we don’t, he’ll sell Chase to the Sub Realms, into slavery.” All of my anger at Chase vanished in a sea of worry. I broke down, lowering my head to the table as the stinging salt of tears washed over my face. “I can’t let anything happen to him. I . . . I . . .”
Camille rested her hand on my shoulder. “You love him, even if you are mad at him.” As I nodded, she rubbed my back, and Iris hurried to fetch me more tea. How the hell were we supposed to handle this? Unable to keep up pretenses any longer, I gave in to my fear and wept until there were no more tears to come.
CHAPTER 22
As soon as dusk hit, we gathered around the table. We’d managed to clean up most of the mess, though the house looked a lot more empty than it had that morning when we left. Most of our knickknacks were gone, and some of the furniture had been destroyed.
We’d already sent Morio through Grandmother Coyote’s portal to Elqaneve, to tell them we needed a new Whispering Mirror. He returned a couple of hours later with the promise that we’d have one before the week was out.
Now, Smoky and Morio sat on one side with Camille. Zach and I sat opposite them. Menolly parked herself at the head of the table, while Iris and Roz took the other end.
Menolly had instructed Luke—a werewolf who was her head bartender at the Wayfarer—to take over for the night. I’d asked Vanzir to join us a little later. We needed to discuss matters before telling the dream chaser he was technically part of Chase’s ransom. No telling what he might do once he found out that Karvanak had plans for him, and they probably didn’t involve a welcome-home party. Not that I intended to hand him over. He knew too much about us and our operations by now.
“What do we do? We can’t give him the spirit seal. For one thing, we already handed it over to Queen Asteria. Even if we did still have it, we couldn’t trade it. Not even to save Chase.” Camille had a strained look on her face. We all did.
