Magic… right.

  There were boxes everywhere, many of them stacked on top of each other. Burlap sacks lay around the place, some filled with grains, others with flour, potatoes, and dry vegetables. Somehow, these foods looked a little closer to what I would’ve expected to see back home, not the green carrots and the pink mash I’d witnessed a moment ago.

  “This way,” said the Viscount, and he gestured toward a tunnel nearby; a tunnel which began lighting itself slowly.

  I moved through the cellar and into the tunnel, which grew a little colder the deeper I went. Straight away I noticed a door not far from where we had been standing. Using his key, the Viscount unlocked the small, brown door inset into the wall—one door of a few along this corridor. Inside, there were two small beds, a wardrobe, a desk with a chair, and a door set into one of the walls. There were no windows in here, no lights, and probably no ventilation either.

  It was a dank hole with the absolute minimum number of amenities a prisoner might require.

  “This sure looks like a prison cell,” I said.

  “It is not,” he said.

  “Really? Because you’re shoving me into a hole in a cellar.”

  The Viscount gently pushed me into the room. “At least it’s not a dungeon.”

  I spun on my heel and stared at him. “You can’t just lock me away in here.”

  “I can decide the manner of your accommodation, and I feel this is adequate.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  The Viscount paused and watched me from where he stood. He ran his fingers through his hair, then he shook it loose, and as impossible as it sounded, his hair changed. It had been short and black until now; a douchebag cut. But in an instant, it lengthened, falling to just above his shoulders. It also lost its darkness, taking on more of a chestnut color with light, wavy curls.

  When he tucked his hair behind one of his ears, I noticed it had grown longer too; longer, and it now had a point.

  “What the hell is that, man?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “I have told you before,” said the Viscount, tugging on his shirt and squaring his chest.

  “Magic? I find that really hard to believe.”

  “And yet, it’s all around you, is it not?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I know you can’t just keep me locked up in here.”

  “I think you’ll find that I can, and I’m going to. I am the Viscount of this house, and I—”

  “—maybe that word means something here, but it won’t mean a thing when the cops get here and they throw your ass in jail.”

  A smirk tugged at the corner of the Viscount’s mouth. “It’s… cute… that you think the authorities are coming. I already told you before, nobody knows you’re gone. And even if they did, no one would ever find you here, Avery.” He paused, then advanced, taking a step into the room—a step closer to me. “You are in Arcadia, now. In the Kingdom of the Spring Fae. This is your new home, so long as the Rite of Hospitality holds; and I must warn you, there is a time limit.”

  “Time limit?”

  “The very word, Hospitality, implies a time limit. When that time runs out, there will be nothing keeping me from putting an end to all this nonsense so that we may go back to the business of our Great House. I suggest you work on making yourself useful. I may be inclined to extend your stay after your time runs out if you do well.”

  “And if I don’t? You’ll send me back home?”

  He shook his head. “Arcadia is your new home, and she is as beautiful a place as she is dangerous to your kind. Keep out of trouble, human.”

  I wanted to punch him in his smug face, but he turned around to leave before I could get a shot off. Once he was out of the room, he shut the door, locked it, and left. A moment later, the Viscount was gone, taking with him not only the scent he seemed to radiate, but some of the warmth I’d felt until now. The room grew even colder, and a little darker, too. My hands flew to my shoulders, and I rubbed them, trying to fight the creeping chill as it made its way into my bones.

  I was alone in here.

  Alone, in a cell, in some huge mansion, in a place called Arcadia. Or had he said Australia? There was a chance I’d misheard him. I wasn’t sure exactly how being in Australia was better than being in Arcadia. It meant I’d flown halfway across the world in the blink of an eye; almost overnight. But it certainly beat the idea that I had been brought to another world of magic and people with pointy ears.

  Trying to wrap my head around that was enough to make my brain break, so I decided not to. There had to be a logical explanation for everything that had happened so far, for everything that I’d seen and experienced since arriving in this strange place. If I could puzzle it out, then there was a chance I could make it out of here alive.

  Glancing around at the room I was in, checking out the beds, the desk, the wardrobe… it was a little spartan, but the bed was comfortable, at least. I wasn’t sure why there were two of them, but that didn’t seem to matter too much right now.

  The other door in the room was curious, though. I headed toward it, placed a shaky hand on the handle, and opened it. It was a bathroom, with a tub, a sink, and a toilet. Maybe it was a little cramped, a little tight, and cold, but it smelled clean and—something moved inside of the tub, and my heart leapt into my throat.

  The curtain was drawn, but I’d heard something scramble behind it, the curtain wafting from the sudden jolt.

  My lizard brain kicked in. It could’ve sent me running out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom, but it didn’t. Instead, my instincts forced my hand to jerk outward, grab the curtain and yank it aside in a blind panic.

  There was a girl in there, small, scared, and pressed up against the farthest wall. She had long, black hair, she was stick thin, and she had one of her hands stretched out toward me. At first, I thought she was sick or something. It looked like she had boils and warts all over her arms. But they weren’t warts; they were scales. Green, blue, and purple scales that shimmered as the low, ambient light in the room touched them.

  It wasn’t just her arms that were covered, but her legs, too. “What the hell?” I gasped.

  “Don’t hurt me!” she shrieked.

  Chapter 9

  “Woah, hold on!” I said, sticking my arms out, “Nobody’s hurting anyone.”

  “Then leave!” the girl hissed.

  “I really wish I could, but I’ve been locked in this room, same as you.”

  The girl in the bathtub said nothing, and as the heart-pounding seconds passed, I started to realize she wasn’t a girl at all, but a woman. She was thin and malnourished, and she had bruises on some of the parts of her arms where there weren’t scales. Her eyes were incisive, and violet, and sharp. I could tell she was afraid, but whoever this was, she was ready to throw down if I got too close.

  I backed up a step, giving her space, and she grabbed the curtain and pulled it around herself. Clearly, she didn’t want me looking at her or being anywhere near her. Something also told me she was here against her will, just like I was. That made her the only relatable person in this entire messed up place.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are,” I said, “I just got here, so I don’t know who anyone is, or even where I am, really, but I’m not gonna hurt you. Okay?”

  “Lies,” she said, her voice a low whisper. “All you people do is lie, and take, and hurt. You care for nobody but yourselves.”

  “You people?”

  “Who else?”

  “Are you talking about the Fae? Because humans fit the exact same bill, too.”

  “What do you know about humans?” she hissed.

  “Well, as crazy as I feel saying this out loud, I am human, so I feel like I know what I’m talking about.”

  A pause. “You’re… human?”

  “Last I checked.”

  “And they brought you… here?”

  “That’s exactly what’s just happened.”

  A moment of hesitation passed before she spoke again. “You’re lying.”

  “Why would I be lying?”

  “Because they would never have let you live, let alone bring you to this wretched place.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a long story involving a drake, or a sprite thing, and a Rite of Hospitality. I would much rather be back in the real world, but instead I’m stuck in this mad house with no idea how to get out.”

  “You don’t get out. None of us do.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, I’m really enjoying this pessimism, but this is going to get us nowhere… so, let me start over.” I paused, examining the silhouette behind the curtain. “My name is Avery, and I was just kidnapped and brought here. What’s your name?”

  She radiated hesitation. I could feel it, even from where I was standing. Seeing her sitting in that tub reminded me of a cat I found once in the alley under my apartment. It was scared, and thin, and mangy. Somehow, it had gotten one of its back legs tangled in a bit of fishing wire, and it couldn’t move. It had tried wriggling out, but that had only made the wire tighten around its leg to the point where it had cut into its skin.

  It was bleeding when I found it, maybe it had been there for days. I couldn’t say. Lucky for it, I always carried a switchblade. I was able to cut it loose, but not before receiving a couple of deep scratches for my trouble. As soon as the fishing wire came off, the cat went skittering into the night and I never saw it again. I had always wondered what had happened to it, if it had survived.

  I still had the scar on my arm where it had cut me the deepest.

  “My name… is Thea,” she finally said.

  “That’s a pretty name, Thea,” I said, “How did you get here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember how I got here. Or when. I only know that I am here, and there is no escape.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. There has to be a way out of here. Sooner or later, that door is going to open, and someone is going to bring us food, right?”

  “No!” she shrieked. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t eat the food here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because that only accelerates the change.”

  “Change?”

  Thea had no reply to that question, and in the silence, I heard footsteps coming down the hall just beyond the door, then a pause, then the jingling of keys. Thea took a deep breath. “He’s here!” she hissed.

  “Who’s here? The Viscount?”

  “No, the master.”

  My hackles rose and I leapt into action, moving back into the bedroom and positioning myself as near the door as possible, but also as far out of sight as I could. The door was going to open outwards, not inwards, so I could only hope whoever was about to come in didn’t happen to look in my direction as they entered.

  I checked my pocket for my switchblade, but it wasn’t there. I must’ve been frisked when I was taken. Cursing silently, I waited as the door opened and someone came through. It wasn’t the Viscount, though. It was someone else; a fat man, short and round, with thinning, wispy black hair, a long nose, and pointed ears.

  He came in breathing hard, as if the walk down the hall had left him winded—and he hadn’t looked in my direction.

  “Let’s go, fish girl,” he barked, his voice raspy and harsh against the ears. “Today you’re going to cooperate, or so help me—”—I didn’t let him finish the sentence.

  Before he’d finished speaking, I was on him. With a swift shoulder charge an NFL player could’ve been proud of, I shoved the fat man into the opposite wall. He hadn’t seen me coming, and he hit the wall hard. Grunting, gargling words of displeasure, the fat man tried to right himself, but I took a step away, pulled my leg back, and delivered a swift kick to his nuts that sent him plummeting to the ground.

  Squealing like a sick pig and cupping his testicles, the fat man writhed. I stared at him for half-a-heartbeat, then glanced at the door to the bathroom where Thea was. That was when I caught a whiff of food from the kitchen one level up. The door to my cell was open, the way was clear, but the man on the ground wasn’t going to be down forever.

  On any other day, at any other moment in time, I would’ve been out of that door without a second thought. The scar on my arm had taught me no good deed went unpunished, but leaving that poor, terrified girl here just wasn’t an option. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep at night if I just left her, assuming I made it out of here at all.

  “God dammit,” I cursed, and I dashed back into the bathroom to find Thea still hiding behind the curtain.

  “What did you do?!” she screeched.

  “I kicked a Fae in the balls,” I said, “And now we need to get out of here.”

  “You hurt the master! Do you have any idea what he’ll do to me now?”

  “He won’t do anything to you if we can get out of here, but you have to move. Now!”

  “I… I can’t.”

  “You can’t?”

  “I can’t leave!”

  I rushed toward the bathtub and yanked the curtain back, easily pulling it free from her grip. “What do you—” I asked, but I ate the rest of the sentence. “What the… fuck?”

  Thea was trying to shield my eyes from what they were seeing with her scaly hands, but it was no use. The entire lower half of her body was covered in the same kind of scales as her forearms and the back of her hands. She didn’t have two legs, but one long, giant tail that was as beautiful as it was horrifying to see. And at the end of that tail? A huge, purple and green fin.

  “Bullshit,” I said, the word falling out of my mouth.

  “Don’t stare at me,” Thea said, “It’s hideous!”

  I kept staring, if only to drive home the fact that I was looking at… a mermaid? I could feel the nuts and bolts inside of my head start to come apart, my brain threatening to pour out of my ears like wet cake, but I had to think fast, and act even faster.

  “Alright, come on,” I said, and I rushed over to Thea and wrapped my arms around her.

  She should’ve been light, given how thin she was, but the massive tail and fin she was carrying around weighed her down and made it difficult for me to lift her up and out of the tub. As I turned to stare at the bathroom door, with the mermaid in my arms, it dawned on me that there was no way we were going to get out of this. There had to be a hundred people between us and the main exit, and we weren’t exactly inconspicuous.

  Still, fortune favors the bold, doesn’t it?

  Sucking in a quick breath, I got moving, making it to the bathroom door before being hit across the face by what felt like a wooden mallet. The crack reverberated through my skull like it was bouncing off its walls. Stars exploded in front of my eyes, and I staggered off to the right. I managed to stay on my feet only because I was inside of a doorframe and the arch kept me from going any further.

  Blurry eyed, I tried to look for what had hit me. It was the fat man, his dark silhouette dancing in and out of view, but he was standing on the other side of the room and nowhere near me. I blinked hard, trying to fight the daze and not drop the mermaid at the same time.

  “You piece of filth,” said the fat man in a gurgling, raspy voice. “You would dare lay a hand on me?”

  “It was a foot,” I said, tasting the blood in my mouth.

  “Master, I had nothing to do with this!” Thea shrieked.

  “Silence, fish girl. You’ll pay the same price as this miscreant.”

  The blurry shape in front of me came into focus. I saw him raise his arm toward me, and a moment later, my windpipe started to close. I tried breathing, but I couldn’t, and by the sounds Thea was making, she couldn’t either. It was as if he’d grabbed our throats from a distance and was squeezing them shut.

  “If this doesn’t teach you your place,” he said, advancing slowly, “I’ll have to take more drastic measures.”

  My legs started shaking as the lack of oxygen weakened my muscles. I kept telling myself not to drop to my knees, not to drop Thea, but as the seconds passed and my vision darkened at the edges, it became impossible to hold on.

  I fell, hitting the ground hard and dropping the mermaid I had been carrying. I could hear the pounding beat of my heart inside of my head. It was slowing. No matter what I did, I couldn’t catch a breath. It was my turn to writhe this time, and wriggle, and gasp, and I could tell the fat man was enjoying it.

  Getting off on it, probably.

  Pervert.

  With the last bit of strength I had, I crawled over Thea, throwing an arm around her and putting myself between her and him. I wasn’t sure what the plan here was. If he wanted to take her, to hurt her, there was nothing I could’ve done about it. I’d be unconscious in a couple of moments, and he’d be able to do whatever he wanted to do.

  To either of us.

  Thea’s lips were already going blue. She was staring at me, her wide, violet eyes strained and fading, and she was crying. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I shouldn’t have gone back to get her. Maybe if I’d left on my own, she wouldn’t have gotten caught up in this. I wasn’t one to learn from past mistakes, though.

  I kept hoping someone would intervene and stop this. Somehow, my mind went to the Viscount. I wanted him to come in here and break this up, then scold the fat man for hurting me again. As the lights went out, though, I realized that wasn’t what this place was about.

  I was on my own out here.

  Chapter 10

  I’m floating.

  No, not floating… sinking.

  Someone’s calling my name. Kady? Kady. I don’t know where she is, but she’s trying to reach out to me. I can hear the panic in her voice, the fear. I open my mouth to speak, but instead swallow salty water.

  I’m choking.

  Choking and sinking.

  I can’t breathe, and the fat man’s coming to hurt me again. I don’t know why, but I’m scared of him, and I’m not usually scared of anyone.