Before she could answer, something tried to rip me out of my body again. That was the best way to describe the feeling—and there was also no way to resist it. Even as I thought the words, I could feel myself pulling into the lowest sections of my feet, where I supposed I’d be pulled right out of my body, Indie along for the ride.

  “Anchor yourself,” she demanded, her tone beyond urgent. “Use anything you can find.”

  But there wasn’t anything. No magic in the room. Just me and her and the White Thieves intent on dragging us to someplace other than hell. What did they do with the spirits they caught? Store them elsewhere? Rip them apart and eat them like piranhas? It was really unnerving not to have any answers to my questions.

  Pop. Suddenly I was floating, separate from my body, hand in hand with Indie. We were floating above the bed and I still couldn’t move. Freezing fingers danced over my hands, laughing, saying, “Yes, yes, come to us.”

  White faces full of sharp-toothed smiles leered down at us, pulling us across the room, up and up until we almost collided with the ceiling. Then something solid wrapped around my wrist. I felt it distantly like pins and needles, but it was definitely there. Then, with a suddenness that startled us both, we were dragged back down to our bodies as if something within me had just reached up, grabbed our ghostly ankles, and yanked us back down again. I bolted upright, a strangled scream escaping my lips.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” an airy, female voice said. “I thought I was going to lose you there.”

  The voices above me were furious. Writhing white clouds swarmed us, trying to take us away, but now that I was awake, they could only shriek, “Come to us, come to us, come to us!”

  “Can you hear me?” the female voice asked.

  “Yes,” I said. Or tried to say. It came out, “Mmf.”

  The laughter that followed the slurred word was weak. When I finally pried my eyes open, I found what looked like a child hovering over me, concern written all over her round face. She didn’t look much bigger than a six-year-old. Her body was slim and waifish, with almost no curves to indicate her gender. Her dark hair was styled in a pixie cut, which made the bones of her face look more angular, and her eyes larger. They were the precise shade of a newly bloomed violet, startling in their depth and hue.

  “Hi,” she said sheepishly when my eyes finally focused on her. “I’m sorry they managed to pop you loose like that. You must have an interesting soul for the White Thieves to be so intent on taking you, especially from this place.”

  It was Indie’s soul they wanted, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. The girl was probably on my side (hopefully anyway), but if I started talking about the voice in my head, she might decide I wasn’t worth the trouble. Or worse, if she was actually working with Simon, she might tell him about Indie, and that would only make me more valuable to him, not less.

  “Who... are you?” I asked, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. Even the stale stuff in this room tasted like ambrosia after that horrible feeling of dissociation. Being a spirit, even briefly, was too disturbing for words.

  “Bluebell,” she answered. As I got a better look at her face, I decided she wasn’t a kid, after all, but she looked more like a teenager, even if she was the size of a child. “But a lot of people call me ‘Bella’. Fewer questions and comments that way, you know.”

  I didn’t, but Indigo did. She’d gotten the round of questions about her unusual name from pretty much any human she interacted with and left them with an itching hex for irritating her. On days when she was especially peevish, she’d curse them with persistent acne. She should have partnered with Clearasil because she was probably making their stockholders a fortune. Indie was rarely in a good mood.

  “Right,” I said, sitting up. “Um... when did you get here?”

  “The Appropriator placed me in here while you were sleeping. We’re part of the same lot number.”

  She gestured to the embroidery on her shorts. Sure enough, the numbers matched mine. Her legs looked so terribly thin and pale contrasted with the black, baggy material. The shorts stretched tight on me, with my thighs, but Bella was the size of a child.

  “No, she is a child,” Indie said. “Faeries age very slowly. Some of them look eternally childlike, but they’re rare exceptions. Most of them just age at a fraction of the way humans do. To look like an adult, they have to be at least a century old. To look actively mature, they have to be several centuries old and to look elderly, they have to be at least a millennium old. This one is a sprite, and I’d say she can’t be more than twenty if she looks like a human kid without her glamor on.”

  So, Simon had thrown a little girl into the cage with me, making her a part of the sale. The question was—why? To try to trigger some kind of maternal instinct within me? Did he think I was going to be so focused on taking care of Bella that I wouldn’t try to escape until it was too late?

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but... why are you here, Bella?”

  Her face fell, and she shifted awkwardly, sitting back on her haunches, not quite looking at me. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible, coming out in a muted mutter.

  “I’m an extra.”

  “An extra?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t sold on my own for several auctions, so he’s pairing me up with something he’s sure he can sell—you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m a junk piece he wants to get rid of. He can only feed so many mouths at a time, after all.”

  Something hot and furious kindled to life in my chest. Not just because Simon had called this little girl ‘junk’, but because she clearly believed him. Everything in her body language screamed ‘broken’ and misery wafted off her in waves. He must have had her for several years, enough to break the youthful spirit inside her and make her compliant.

  I didn’t let the rage show on my face, though. She’d probably think it was aimed at her. If Simon had been standing in front of me, I’d have killed him, no magic required. I’d take my manacles and use them like a garrote to wring his scrawny neck.

  “Finally, a little fire out of you. I was beginning to think I got fused to a complete dud.”

  “Just shut up, Indie. I don’t want to hear from you right now.”

  Out loud I said, “So, how did you rescue me just now from the White Thieves? There isn’t supposed to be any magic in this room.”

  Bella’s slim shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Not for you, maybe. You have to draw it into yourself like a sponge. It isn’t just in you.”

  “And you?”

  She shrugged again. “Faeries don’t need to take from the outside world.” She tapped a slim finger against her pointed chin. “It’s like... you’re a phone that needs an outlet to charge, whereas I run on a battery pack.”

  She beamed at me, proud of her analogy. It was almost heartbreaking to see how pleased she was to have someone to talk to. Was I the first person she’d talked to in days? Months? I didn’t want to know the answer. All I did know was that if I ever managed to get out of this crappy place, I was taking her with me.

  “And that’s the kind of thinking that will get you killed.”

  I ignored Indie, which was just as well, because an idea occurred to me then. “Does Simon know that about you? That you can cast magic in this room?”

  Bella shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. The last time I was in here, I was all alone and I didn’t have enough strength to try.”

  “Spring faeries are social creatures,” Indie explained. “They need contact with others. Isolation would be the purest form of torture for someone like Bella.”

  Reason 369 that I owed Simon some payback. He’d locked a child in a room with no one for so long that she hadn’t had the will to even try to escape. Being paired with me must have looked like paradise, even though she thought of herself as just meaningless junk. Well, we’d have to change that.

  “So, if he doesn’t know,” I whispered, very aware of being overheard. “There’s a chance you could be a magic source. I could draw on you and use your magic to break us out of here. If there’s enough magic, we could probably make it back to Earth somehow.”

  It was a long shot. Indie could barely draw power from the surroundings using her familiar, let alone do it unaided. And me? Well, I was a real liability when it came to magic. But if I wanted to make it out of here without getting sold off to some demonic creep, we had to try.

  “We can’t do that,” Bella whispered. “He’d be so angry.”

  “If we get to Haven Hollow, he won’t be able to take us back,” I argued.

  “Haven Hollow?” she repeated.

  I nodded. “It’s a Hollow, which means we’d be safe there.”

  “I know what it is.”

  I nodded. “But I can’t get out of here without you.” I paused. “Will you help me?”

  Bella’s eyes grew comically round and practically sparkled with hope. She was tragically cute, like a cartoon damsel with an inferiority complex. I once again felt the urge to give Simon a taste of my knuckles.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll help you, just as long as you take me with you.”

  “Deal.”

  “And speaking of deals,” I thought at Indie. “You owe me an explanation. No more stall tactics, no more evasion.”

  I was done with being kept in the dark about this and about her and about why she was joined with me and who was after her. I waited in tense silence as she thought it through.

  “Fine,” she answered on a sigh. “I promise to tell you as soon as we get the spell out of here.”

  Chapter Ten

  Lydia

  It was impossible to tell how long I’d been in the room.

  There wasn’t much difference between day and night, and the pulsing ember glow of the floor played tricks on my eyes, stretching the shadows into impossible shapes that made my heartbeat pick up every time I spotted them out of the corner of my eye.

  Bella’s chatty presence soothed my nerves a little, but the promised conversation with Indie sure didn’t. I found my pulse beating a furious tattoo against my temples as I tried to ward off the headache I could feel coming. Instead of waiting until we could get the hell out of here, she’d opted to finally tell me the truth (maybe because she didn’t believe we’d be able to get the hell out of here).

  “So, let me get this straight,” I said slowly, drawing out the syllables for emphasis. “I not only managed to get fused to a witch, but I also managed to get fused to a witch guilty of several felonies.”

  “I’m no longer a felon if you want to be technical about it,” Indie hedged. “I took a plea deal when the Hexus Rangers brought me in. I was supposed to remain in a sort of witness protection until I could testify against the syndicate that I was a part of.”

  “But clearly that didn’t work out,” I seethed. “So, you came into my shop and got yourself blown up. And because I was wearing a stinking potion that my superstitious grandmother gave me, I got stuck with you! And the real kicker: if anyone finds out you’re attached to me, I’m going boom next!”

  “Calm down, will you?”

  “No! I am not going to calm down!” Really, the nerve of her. “What kind of criminal gang were you running with, anyway? And why?”

  “That’s a long story and not one I can tell you.”

  “You’re impossible!”

  “On this subject, yes, I am. If you want the rest, you’ll have to master basic thought control.”

  “Why are you so secretive?”

  “Because there are telepaths who could pick up your surface thoughts and expose us. I’ll just say that our world is getting dangerous and sometimes working with bigger monsters is the only way to get by. And I’m not the only witch who thinks so. Scarlet Velardi, the High Witch of the Sub Rosa Coven, married a human mobster. I guarantee she’s doing underhanded magic. Lucretia Boline just hasn’t caught her at it or doesn’t have enough proof to convict her if she has.”

  I rubbed at my temples. I definitely had a headache now. Never in a million years did I think I’d have to contemplate the concept of a High Witch mob wife. Every day I spent in this world got weirder and weirder. Part of me was praying this was all a nightmare and that I’d wake up tomorrow to be greeted by my sexy realtor instead. Yeah, so much for that.

  Bella’s head whipped up, and she pivoted toward the door, body quivering with tension. All my worries about Indie faded at that moment, replaced by trepidation. What we were about to try was very dangerous, and I’d only get one shot at it. Failing could possibly kill us both. It took me longer to hear what she had, but sure enough, a few minutes later I heard footsteps outside the door. Then the lock clicked, and the door swung open and Simon stepped through.

  The bastard.

  He approached lazily like a cat who was confident its prey was cornered. I recoiled when he produced a needle and brandished it at me.

  “What do you plan to do with that?” I demanded, hoping it wasn’t a sedative. I couldn’t make good on our escape if he drugged me again.

  “Calm down,” Simon said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not poison. I need a vial of your blood.”

  “For what?”

  Simon didn’t reply. Instead, he wiped the needle down with an alcohol swab. Considerate of him, I supposed. He didn’t want me getting a disease before he could sell me. Damaged goods wouldn’t fetch as high a price. He positioned the needle over the most obvious vein. “This will sting. Try not to fuss. I hate a drama queen.”

  The needle went in, and I used his distraction to my advantage, reaching for Bella’s hand. She took it, giving it a squeeze. To Simon, it probably looked like a gesture of solidarity. In reality, though, I was trying something I’d never done with anyone but Checkers. I pulled at Bella’s magic. It didn’t come easily at first, clinging stubbornly to its owner. I pulled harder than I meant to and felt a pang of guilt when she winced. A huge portion of her magic then came free, though. Enough for a spell, Indie thought. I breathed slowly until Simon pulled the needle free of my skin, half-filled with cherry-red blood.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked again. According to every book I’d read on the subject, blood was a powerful magic focus. He could do any number of unpleasant things with it. There wasn’t enough to kill me with a spell, but it could be enough to torment me. Maybe that was what this was about then. Keeping me in line. I shuddered.

  The door opened. Simon moved to step into the hall, his back turned to me completely. I wouldn’t get another chance—that meant it was now or never. I raised a hand, half letting Indie guide me. I wasn’t the one we needed at the moment. She spat a word in a language I didn’t know and, in response, force lashed out at Simon’s retreating back. There was a violent spark and the limited light in the room dimmed, and Simon’s back arched once in obvious agony. He collapsed to the ground a moment later.

  “Come on,” I said, seizing Bella’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  We leaped over Simon’s prone form, sputtering and seizing on the ground, and ran down the hallway, around the first corner we found, and, thank God, found a door a few minutes later. I didn’t bother to check to see if it was unlocked. Indie blew the whole thing off its hinges and a second later alarms started blaring. The alarm might have been connected to the door, or maybe Simon had regained enough bodily control to signal one of his buddies. It didn’t matter. We were through.

  But then my pace faltered when I processed what I was seeing. An inky black sky filled with sulfurous stars, like a mockery of the world above. Yellowish vapors hung ominously over us. Craggy mountains rose to meet them and disappeared into the fog. A red ribbon ran the length of the sky like a white-hot scar through the middle. I expected the air to be hot, but strangely, it was frigid, filling my lungs like solid ice. I gasped, unable to draw in enough air. Black spots began to spread over my vision.

  Someone shouted another word, this time in what I’d come to recognize as a demonic tongue. There was an enormous whoosh then and orange light suddenly enveloped me. Pain seared into my back as a fireball hit me, melting my shirt to my skin. I screamed and dropped to the ground. Bella dropped to the ground as well, clutching my hand for dear life. I could barely feel it past the pain.

  I rolled in the direction of the caster and found Simon stalking toward me, his human form faltering in the light of his rage. His fingers were black and tipped with sharp claws. Sparks danced between them, ready to drizzle onto my skin. His face wasn’t human either, so full of rage that it resembled a gargoyle’s sneer. I rolled over and tried to catch my breath. When I regained my feet, I swayed.

  I had to get out. I had to, or Simon was going to kill us. Or worse. I ran, still gasping, dragging Bella with me.

  Another word and my legs buckled. I fell to the ground and couldn’t get up again.

  “You are going to regret that,” Simon hissed.

  “Fuck you,” was the last thing I managed to force out before the blackness took me.

  ***

  Angelo

  “Drive faster,” Fifi urged, the fingers of one hand drumming impatiently on the dash. The other was buried in Chex’s fur, where he lay, sleepy and contented on her lap. He was getting fur all over her designer clothes, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” I responded, shooting a poisonous look at the thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit sign as we passed it. The 5 was covered up by a tree branch. It was the sort of speed trap that helped cops reach their quotas at the end of the month. Visitors probably blew past all the time without seeing it. Only my enhanced eyesight allowed me to see it before we roared into town going highways speeds.

  It was something like two in the morning as we pulled into Dewinter, North Carolina. The mountains loomed over the town, butting up against the sky, blue with distance until we grew close enough to make out more colors. It was the width of the mountains that really struck me. I’d always thought of them as peaks that jutted straight up, taller and taller until they petered out. These mountains started very low but instead of rising immediately, they rolled, becoming lots of little mountains that transformed into much larger formations. We’d be hiking to the base of one of the nearest in order to reach the portal into the infernal layers. From there, we’d have to meet up with one of the auctioneers.