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“My demon friend will get me out. He can shift us into the demon realm—”
“Then why ain’t he already done it?”
“Because he won’t leave me! That’s why I have to get to him—he doesn’t know I’m out!”
Red mulled this over.
“I’ll also need your coat,” I added.
His hand closed on the neck. “Fer wot?”
“It’s cold.”
He just looked at me some more. And then decided he didn’t care. He shrugged out of the nice wool number, but caught my arm when I went to grab it. “If you do get out o’ here, return it to the Bull and Bollocks. I’ll se
e you don’t lose by it.”
“What?”
“It’s . . .” He looked awkward. “It’s just . . . me mum made it fer me, and she’s . . . not here anymore, and . . .” He looked at me. “Y’tell anyone I said that, ’n I’ll cut yer throat!”
“No, I . . . just never heard that name before,” I told him.
“Wot name?”
“The pub name.”
“Y’ never heard o’ the Bull?” He looked astounded.
I shook my head. “Is it any good?”
“Good?” The incredulousness grew. “It’s where hope dies, and then sobers up and kicks you in the bollocks. But if yer itchin’ fer a job or trying ter lay low, ain’t no better place.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told him.
He nodded and shrugged out of the coat. And I took a deep breath, wondering for the eighty-seventh time today if I was crazy. And for the eighty-eighth, I decided I really didn’t want to know.
“Here goes nothing,” I told him. And a second later, the kitchen winked out, and there was only darkness.
Chapter Twenty-one
The dark, dark world of nothingness inside the snare was a lot less comforting this time, maybe because I wasn’t quite as punch-drunk. In fact, it was seriously creepy, a noiseless, frictionless, lightless cage that wasn’t a cage, since I couldn’t even feel any walls around me. I stared at the dark and tried not to imagine that it was staring back.
I assumed that the Circle knocked most people out before they put them in these things, unless they were planning on taking them out shortly for questioning. I stared around some more. And wondered if they ever forgot. And then I wondered if they ever “forgot.”
It was more than a little disturbing that I wouldn’t be willing to offer odds either way.
But there was nothing to do but wait. And worry, because there was no way to tell time in here. Or to tell if I would “rematerialize,” or whatever it was I’d been doing, inside the tiny, tiny space of the dumbwaiter. Because that would be . . . bad. Really bad. Cassie-breaks-every-bone-in-her-body bad. But I hadn’t materialized on the table before; I’d hit the ground in front of it, so presumably . . .
I really wished I’d thought of this before.
I really wished an LED clock would light up all this darkness.
I really wished I didn’t have to pee.
Damn it!
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I scrunched up my eyes, even though there was nothing to see, and concentrated. And fell onto a desk covered with papers, stabby little pencils, and a porcelain vase that rocked back and forth and to and fro and no, no, no, I thought, grabbing it with both hands.
