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“What about ID_9967? Those coordinates are way off.”
“What?” Damien taps the link frantically, opening a map. A red location icon pinpoints a place two hours away from Chicago’s city center. “Fuck. She’s either thrown something away or she’s done the stupid thing and gone alone to the new cult.”
I put the shaker down, feeling suddenly unwell. Was I too late? I should have come here yesterday.
Without saying anything else, I walk around the bar, heading straight upstairs. Damien follows me, understanding where I’m going in an instant.
“The green door,” he says when we get to the first floor.
I push the handle, stumbling into the room. I expected it to be locked. The bed is made and all of Tanya’s things are arranged neatly on the small dresser at the foot of the bed.
Clothes, shoes, makeup. Even a history book.
But no Tanya.
It feels like she’s disappeared from this world to slip into another one.
“We have to go there,” I say through gritted teeth, pointing at Damien’s phone.
“We’re all going,” he says.
“But we must do it right this time.” The cogs in my mind turn, estimating every possibility of success and failure.
“What?”
“No solo missions. No running there without proper prep. You failed to destroy Koschei’s cult once and the Arcana failed, too. Now we pool our resources and destroy him once and for all.” I pick up one of Tanya’s rings and look at the way light reflects off the stone. “Time to take his immortality away.”
Chapter 36
My timing couldn’t be better. Jenya told me that in the whole building, there’s us two, a random girl Koschei has been looking after, and between four and six other men. I’m sure they’re hired help, so they’re probably not too loyal. All I have to do for me to succeed is have some time alone with Koschei, overpower him, kill him, and convince the guards that Sophie will pay them better.
What about Jenya? She’s the wildcard in my plan—she can help or hinder me and by the timid way she’s been behaving, I can’t be sure which one it will be. Her innocence and hope for a better future might be my end, so I have to be careful.
I’m in the small one-bed cell that the men who took me put me in, pacing back and forth, waiting for them to come back and take us to breakfast. My stomach rumbles at the thought of food.
I’m hungry, but I won’t be eating. After spending years in Lavender watching drinks get spiked and people hurt, I’m not going to take chances.
It’s hard to tell the time without my phone, but when the men come back, the sun has been out for a while. It’s probably somewhere between eight and ten in the morning.
My door swings open, crashing into the wall with a bang. I roll my eyes. What if I was next to it?
“You’re so strong,” I say to the man in a mocking voice. This one doesn’t have a mask, but he has such an average bully face that I will probably forget it the minute he’s out of sight. Natural camouflage.
He grabs my upper arm and drags me roughly down the corridor. Behind me, Jenya’s door opens. I listen for any words exchanged between her and her guard, but they’re both silent, their steps much less erratic than mine.
My defiant stance is part of my armor. I’m terrified that if I slip into Tatiana from the past, the one who was meek and obedient, I would lose the path to who I am now. I would accept humiliation and punishment like a normal part of life and lose my inner spark.
So I grit my teeth and take deep, forceful breaths. I will not spiral. I will look Koschei in the eyes and spit at his feet. I will be his worst nightmare, and if he punishes me, at least I would have earned it.
The long gray corridor seems to go on forever, the grip on my bicep tightening every few seconds.
“So strong, you need to constantly prove it,” I mumble under my nose and earn a glare. I grin, shielding myself from what’s to come in temporary insanity. Ruining this guy’s day makes me feel so much better.
My smile is wiped off my face as we go through a door into a large dining room. There’s a long table in the middle, displaying every breakfast food I can imagine. Whatever this is, it isn’t what I remember from my time at??????????????. On a good day, we had porridge. On bad days, a slice of bread and watered-down tea.
“Welcome!” Koschei’s voice is also unfamiliar. It has a shaky quality to it, a rattle I don’t remember.
I lift my eyes to examine him, primal fear spreading within me like a flame in the middle of a page. It starts in my chest, choking the air out of me, then moves across to my limbs, paralyzing my arms and legs, turning me into a statue. It tingles at my fingertips, my toes, my scalp. It leaves me vibrating like a string. The sound of terror comes as ringing in my ears, both loud to me and silent to everyone else.
