Donovan fell silent, leaving the room quiet until Avery huffed a breath.

  “Is there something you’d like to add, Mister Hale?” Grimm asked him.

  “Nope,” came the clipped reply.

  “Fitch,” Grimm rumbled. “The visitor pass? I’d like to be out of here before morning.” His chuckle grated on me.

  I looked up to see Ripley watching with the faintest hint of judgment in his eyes. Anger flared, and I snatched the badge from my pocket, ready to throw or drop it and make him pick it up off the floor.

  Before I could do either, commotion in the hall outside piqued my interest.

  “We’ve got company!” Avery announced.

  “That shadow bitch must’ve led them right to us,” Vinton added with a growl.

  The visitor pass had been forgotten in my hand until Ripley skirted by and plucked it free.

  Weight from the prison’s antimagic poured over me. I swayed, abruptly queasy and too dizzy to focus on the supposed healer as he marched alone toward the hallway I imagined to be crawling with guards.

  “Masks on!” Grimm roared.

  Voices clamored outside, too, but I didn’t bother to discern them. My attention lingered on Ripley, who stood with his back to us while drawing an impossibly deep breath.

  He expelled it in a soft, hissing sound like a pressure valve releasing. Sickly yellow smoke followed. It didn’t billow in clouds or plumes. Instead, it spilled like incense in a fountain, flowing down then across the floor.

  More shouts came from the hall, accompanied by what sounded like a call for retreat. Boots dragged against the cement floors, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t make it far.

  Grimm pressed a gas mask against Donovan’s chest. “Time to go, my boy,” he said, his words muffled by his own mask.

  Donovan looked from our leader to me. “Come with us,” he said.

  “Donnie, I can’t—”

  “You break the rules all the time,” he argued. “Why not now?”

  A glance at Grimm found him wordlessly watching.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Donovan. My mantra of late.

  The smoke, which had first moved only forward, began to roll back into the close quarters of the infirmary. Was it deadly? I hoped not. For Grimm’s plan to progress, I needed to survive this.

  I grabbed the gas mask from Donovan’s limp grip and placed it over his head. The antimagic was staggering, causing the room to spin around me. I closed my eyes in a hard blink, then opened them to Grimm’s summons.

  “Get up on the bed, son.” He gestured to the nearest gurney. “We have to give you a story you can sell.”

  The handful of steps to the rolling gurney felt like slogging through mud. I was trembling by the time Grimm came beside me and used the handcuffs to secure my wrist to the bedrail.

  “Relax,” he said, an impossible request while the room around us filled with an unknown toxin.

  Held breath began to go stale in my lungs. When Grimm turned to go, I exhaled in a call after him.

  He stopped to look back, and I hated myself for what I said next.

  “Take me with you.”

  Hello, bargaining.

  Smoke crawled up the wall and onto the gurney. I thought to hold my breath again, but that would only delay the inevitable.

  Finally, Grimm bent down and patted my cheek. “I’ll see you in court, Mister Farrow.”

  In the aftermath of the jailbreak, they forgot to put me back in isolation. Or maybe my time there had been served. I was surprised they didn’t lock me down there and throw away the key after the Bloody Hex practically emptied the place and made fools of everyone left in their wake. Which included me, so maybe I’d earned a bit of sympathy. Something must have gone wrong, after all. The gang wouldn’t have left me behind on purpose, would they? I struggled to believe it myself.

  I spent the night in my old cell, finding it too quiet and lonely without Clyde. I hoped he escaped and hadn’t met a worse fate like some I’d seen in the riotous mess that had been made of the prison. Blood smeared the walls, bedsheets hung from cell doors, and at least one had been tied as a noose off the walkway railing outside. A woman’s corpse hung between the third and second levels for hours before they finally cut her down.

  I waited for someone to talk to me. A guard, the warden, even Holland Lyle. Surely they wanted to know how the Bloody Hex successfully sacked the prison, and where they went next. But I was as ignorant as everyone else. Was it part of Grimm’s plan to keep me in the dark? He’d given me a story I could sell, but no one was buying.

  Time proved difficult to track with the daily schedule so thoroughly disrupted. No one was permitted to leave their cells, which was fine at first. Gradually, though, complaints arose as shouts echoing from one side of the cell block to the other. Within an hour or so—my best guess—it turned into a full-blown screaming match that no one bothered to silence. The guard staff was nowhere to be seen, content to let us sweat it out or howl ourselves hoarse.

  I huddled in bed with my head sandwiched between the folded sides of my pillow. Sleep proved impossible with all the racket, so I laid awake, hunger gnawing at my stomach while the noise drowned my anxious thoughts.

  “You’re going to trial, and you’re going to win.”

  Absurd.

  I never stood a chance at being anonymous. I’d been paraded around the Capitol in my youth as an exemplary specimen of the coming generation, then publicly kidnapped with my face plastered on every missing person poster, news bulletin, and milk carton in the city. My appearance hadn’t changed much between my teenage years and now, even if I’d managed to keep a low profile during my time with the Bloody Hex. But unlike Vinton, Avery, Grimm, and my kid brother, I was sighted publicly, and often. I didn’t recall how it started. Maybe I thought if the Capitol saw me, they would come to my rescue and save the day like the heroes my father convinced me they were.

  But those hopes were dashed when the powers that be shifted from offering rewards to anyone who could find me to advertising bounties to those brave enough to hunt me down. The Capitol had wanted me dead for a decade. Now that I was firmly in their sights, they wouldn’t miss their shot.

  The jeering and heckling in the cell block outside grew louder and targeted enough that I sat up and peered through the barred door. A guard—the first I’d seen since they’d dragged me out of the infirmary—approached.

  “Got your court clothes, inmate.” He held a rolled garment bag and wore a look of disdain. Tossing a pair of polished black shoes through the bars, he said, “Just putting lipstick on a pig, if you ask me.”

  He stuffed the garment bag in next and let it drop onto the floor.

  “Someone’ll be by in a bit to take you to the showers,” he added, then turned on his heel.

  “Are they gonna watch me, too?” I called after the retreating guard. He stopped and looked back, chagrined.

  “I’m not shy,” I continued, “and I could use a lookout. This may come as a shock, but there are people in this place who want me dead.”

  Or maybe not. Jax and his cronies might have made their getaway during last night’s chaos, but I had no way of knowing for sure.

  The corner of the guard’s mouth curled in a sinister grin. “Oh, we all want you dead. But we’ll make sure you get out of here alive. And all the way to the guillotine, too.”

  He left then, dodging random objects hurled by prisoners in the cell next door.

  It would take days or maybe weeks to restore order to this place. Even with half the inmate population missing, the staff had lost all control. I was trapped in this powder keg, but only temporarily. I’d be long gone before it exploded.

  Slowly, I climbed down the bunkbed ladder and went to inspect the offered clothing. Anything would be an improvement on my stained, smelly coveralls, and I was eager to get out of them. Unzipping the bag revealed a gray suit coat with a vest and slacks, a black button-down, a leather belt, and a tie. A small velvet pouch tumbled loose, and I caught it before it hit the floor. Inside nestled a tie pin, pocket square, and cufflinks. Checking the tags on the clothing found them to be my size.

  Hot damn.

  The clothes and shower would mask the past week of suffering. They might even convince a jury I was too young, too handsome, too great of a talent to waste. Regardless, if I was going to trial—and a possible death sentence—at least I would look good doing it.

  23

  On Trial

  Transport to the Capitol felt different this time. I had my own seat, for one thing, squeezed between two guards in the backend of a nondescript black SUV. And, while the shock collar was fastened around my neck, no one touched the corresponding remote for the duration of the drive.

  When the car turned down the road toward the Capitol building, I peeked out the window. Sunlight poured over a mob gathered on the sprawling marble steps. The crowd spread across the lawn, interspersed with tents that implied they’d been camped out for days.

  Signs held aloft or stuck to poles in the grass became legible as we drew nearer.

  “OFF WITH HIS HEAD” one proclaimed in bold, black print.

  Another had a crude drawing of a wooden doll hanging from strings. It read, “PEOPLE AREN’T PUPPETS.”

  Finally, a banner flapped in the breeze, declaring, “MARIONETTE = MURDERER.”

  “Fuck,” I groaned and sank into my seat.

  My hopes of being brought in through the side entrance were dashed as the SUV rolled to a stop. Noise from outside—chanting with scattered shouts—increased in volume and proximity. When a camera bulb flashed beyond the glass behind my head, I jumped.

  “Time to move, inmate.” One of the guards grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door as it swung open.

  I scrambled after him, determined not to stumble or fall and be crushed by the surging horde.

  Reporters pressed in, accompanied by cameramen with boom mics that lowered from overhead. Jeers and taunts filled any space between rapid-fire questions as my name was shouted over and over again.

  The guard clung to me with a painful grip, forging a path ahead. More than once, someone tried to wedge into the arm’s length gap between him and me. They were shoved aside or jostled, then displaced. We slowed for nothing.

  Handheld recorders thrust toward my face; one even hit me in the cheek as I squeezed past. Thoughts of magic niggled in, tempting me to part the sea of bodies with a sweep of my hands. People would topple like dominoes until I could finally breathe. But I quashed that compulsion because I could do nothing with the shock collar locked around my neck.

  Climbing toward the entrance, the mob grew in size and ferocity. Fingers clawed at me; a few clutched papers and markers for autographs. Cameras flashed, blinding, and I finally tripped. When the guard hauled me back up, I was almost grateful, determined as I was to reach the open air.

  Investigators flanked the gilded doors, ushering us inside. Whatever they said to our arrival was drowned in the thunder of my pulse in my ears.

  The lobby was cool and calm. People clustered in groups of two or three, mostly investigators who eyed me warily, and a select few reporters currently interviewing what I assumed were the opposing legal teams.

  Ahead, water cascaded down a ribbed metal wall. The trickling sound was so deeply ingrained in me that I could never forget it. Three glass elevators occupied the center of the room, adjacent to a grand staircase. White and gold bedecked the space, with a soaring ceiling at least three stories tall. This had been my childhood playground.

  Donnie and I used to dart in and out of the elevators, bolting past office staff and investigators alike as we scurried up the stairs or splashed in the fountain. We spent as much time here as at home, doing schoolwork at random desks in the Investigative Department and eating family dinners in the cafeteria.

  Little had changed in the past decade. Witches had no concept of retirement, so even the staff remained largely the same. A few faces were recognizable already, most notably Willem Briggs, the head of the Investigative Department, and my dad’s old partner.

  When he looked my way, I paused midstride. Briggs peered down his hawkish nose at me with contempt like I’d never seen. He had been a constant fixture in my young life, my father’s best friend both on and off-duty. I remembered him as an affable if occasionally hot-tempered man, always kind to me, so it shook me to see such spite on his face now.

  Beside him, Holland Lyle chatted with a journalist. She, too, had gotten dolled up for court. Her platinum hair spilled from a half updo, and she wore a black suit over a sheer top showcasing a bandeau bra. I would have lingered longer on that if Briggs hadn’t persisted in staring me down, wordlessly urging me to be on my way.

  As if sharing the same thought, the guard tugged on my arm, turning me toward the cluster of reporters who currently questioned a dark-skinned man in a green suit.

  Talbot Collier—hopefully him this time and not Grimm in disguise—saw me coming and broke away from the media sharks. He closed the gap to us while beaming a broad smile. “Mister Farrow, I see you managed to weather the storm outside.”

  I expelled a breath as the guard relinquished his bone-bruising grasp.

  Talbot looked me over with a nod. “You clean up shiny as a penny. Glad the clothes fit.” When his attention hung on the steel ring around my throat, all signs of approval fled his face.

  Turning to my escort, he said, “You’ll be taking that off of him now, I hope?”

  “No, sir.” The guard shook his head. “Liability concerns.”

  Talbot’s scowl deepened, but it melted away when he returned his focus to me. He held up his hands, reaching forward. “May I?”

  I nodded without knowing what I’d agreed to.

  Taking my jacket by the lapels, he pulled me close. With deft movements, he loosened my tie and unbuttoned my shirt to let the collar slide down. The shirt closed and the tie snugged over it, a little bulky, but less obtrusive than what could hardly be dismissed as an interesting choice in neckwear.

  When the guard handed Talbot the remote, the lawyer pocketed it with a sneer. “Barbaric.” He flapped his fingers at the guard. “Be gone. I’ll take it from here.”

  The guard harrumphed at the dismissal but didn’t linger.

  Talbot watched him go before speaking again. “Mister Farrow, it is my honor and privilege to make your acquaintance.” He dipped in a bow. “I must say you look even younger in person. You’ve lived quite a lot in your short life, hmm?”

  “I guess.” The statement sounded as shaken as I felt.

  Talbot cocked his head. He grabbed my arms to rub his hands up and down them. “Liven up,” he said. “And breathe, for God’s sake. You’re as pale as death.”

  I didn’t doubt it. The past twenty-four hours had been one doozy after another. A shower and a nice suit could cure many ills, but I had a laundry list. Even so, the lawyer’s confidence and calm demeanor settled my nerves.

  The other man leaned closer, eye to eye with me like a coach in a pre-game huddle. “I need you with me for this,” he said. “Get your dander up, all right? We’re here for a fight. I trust you know your way around those.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Better.” He squeezed my arms, then stepped back.

  The other occupants of the lobby began to file out, heading toward the hall beyond the elevators, and the courtroom beyond that. Talbot followed my gaze, then gave his shimmering suit a dust off.

  “Shall we?” He motioned ahead.

  Before I moved, I asked, “Is there anything you need to know? From me?”

  I hoped he was ready for what came next because I felt sorely unprepared. Who would give testimony? Would I be called to the stand? Interrogated? One thing I did know was that witch trials were notoriously brief. While humans deliberated for weeks, our court ruled in twenty-four hours or less. Whether that would work for or against me remained to be seen.

  “You’d like to keep your head attached, I assume?” Talbot said.

  A nervous laugh slipped out. “I prefer it that way.”

  His smile returned in full force. “That’s all I need to know.”

  Following my lawyer to the courtroom felt undeniably ominous. I rubbed my sweaty palms on my slacks, then raked my fingers through my hair, trying to sweep back the strands already falling in my eyes. I understood why most guys in prison shaved their heads. My blond mop required pomade and spray to avoid looking like a shaggy dog, and neither of those things came in the Thorngate welcome kit.

  When we reached the wooden double doors, Talbot paused to give me a final, appraising glance. “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded, and in we went.

  The gallery was full to bursting. People packed in on both sides of the center aisle, lining wooden pews. Stained glass windows streamed jewel-toned light onto the arched ceiling. It was church-like, with a makeshift congregation and an altar-esque podium where Maximus Lyle presided.

  It hadn’t been silent when Talbot first pushed into the room but, as soon as I crossed the threshold, the crowd went deathly quiet.

  Talbot led the way toward a table with two chairs, adjacent to an identical setup where Willem Briggs sat with a female attorney I didn’t recognize.

  On the right side of the room, the jury occupied staggered seating. I dared a glance in their direction, wondering what kind of selection process this must have required. Finding a dozen people who hadn’t heard of me or the Bloody Hex, and who didn’t have opinions about which circle of hell was best equipped to house us, must have driven the Capitol to turn over every rock in the city. Of course, they could have just asked Clyde. Marionette’s biggest fan would never have sentenced him to death but, for me, all bets were off.

  Maximus remained on his feet, wearing a crimson robe. His peppered hair was impeccably trimmed, and his face was sternly set as he looked our way. “Mister Collier, are you and your client ready to proceed?”

  Talbot leaned into my ear, whispering fast and sharp. “Chin up, buttercup. Don’t speak unless spoken to, and no admissions of guilt or otherwise, got it?”