"Justin, this one is also bound."
"Why do you keep saying 'this one'? Do you know how to use pronouns?"
"Pronouns—yes. There are many words inside. And some rules for using them."
"Okay, well rule number one, start using pronouns. You sound like an imbecile."
"This one—I will."
"That wasn't so hard, now was it?"
"This one does not feel the 'I' inside—in me."
My brain struggled to decipher what he'd just said and gave up. "What are you?"
"An entity."
I groaned. "What kind of entity? You sound male. Are you a vampire?"
"I do not know. I look like the others."
"Like Maximus? The tool bag who was in here talking to me?"
"Yes," he said in the same unfaltering tone. "Therefore, I must be a tool bag."
I would have laughed if not for wanting to cry even more. Great. Just great! Not only was I trussed up as Maximus's personal snack pack, but I had the intellectual equivalent of a lobotomized yak to talk with.
The willpower to talk abandoned me. I had to think, dammit. I closed my eyes and saw Maximus's leering face. When I'd accused him of kidnapping my sister, he'd been completely surprised. He didn't know a thing about it. Could Daelissa be behind this trick? Had she somehow faked the entire video? The memory of Bigglesworth's mocking smile and laughter slapped me in the face. His complete lack of concern for Ivy's kidnapping made sense now. That ball of sludge was in on the joke.
Heartache abruptly stabbed me in the chest as another possibility came to mind. What if Ivy had participated in the sham? What if this was her way of getting rid of me?
Please, no.
Daelissa may have cooked up the idea, but it didn't mean she hadn't used Ivy and the others to stage it. Maximus obviously hadn't lent his voice talent to it, but there were other ways to fake or use recorded versions of his voice. I thought back to the recording on the ASE and tried to remember exactly how Maximus's voice had sounded on it. But my memory was imprecise.
And now, it really didn't matter.
"Are you also a tool bag?" the voice from the back of the room said.
"I'm a tool bag. We're all tool bags." My hands and jaw clenched with rage, frustration, and worst of all, sorrow. My sister thought I was evil. She despised me enough to toss me to the vampires so they could enslave me and drink my blood forever. I felt the hot sting of a tear trickle down my cheek. Betrayal was such a wicked thing. I had tasted it when Mom left. When she told me Dad and I were no longer part of her family. I'd felt it again when Dad told me he was giving up on Mom and marrying Kassallandra. And with this added betrayal, I just felt like crying.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I forced back the tidal wave of pity threatening to flood from beneath my lids. I thought of Elyssa and the Templars and wondered if they'd made it out of the ambush alive. Worry burrowed into my chest.
This isn't helping!
I had to do something. Figure out how to free myself. Sure, this table and the straps were made from what I had been told was nearly unbreakable material. By "nearly" I didn't know if I'd need an atom bomb or just a dragon to part the material. I'd seen Meghan press the ends of a diamond strap against concrete, bonding it to the surface. I'd seen her touch two ends of the material together to form a loop. To open the straps, she'd touched the material. Come to think of it, I'd toyed with it before as well, connecting and disconnecting it with a simple touch.
How did the material know when to bond and when to release? If I could reach one hand over and touch the strap holding the other, would it release me? Or did it somehow magically know I was the prisoner here and I couldn't free myself?
Why in the hell didn't I find out stuff like this until it was too late?
It didn't matter. I didn't have a free hand, and I couldn't slide one of my hands or bend my wrist enough to touch the straps holding them. There had to be another solution, something I was overlooking. And then it came to me. I might have the answer if I could only figure out how to use it.
Magic.
Chapter 10
Elyssa
Elyssa and Bella trudged down the road back toward La Casona. The motorcycle had apparently given its life during the chase and wouldn't start when Elyssa tried.
"I can hotwire one of these scooters," Bella said as they passed a line of them outside a restaurant.
"Why bother?" Elyssa shook her head as weariness and numbing fatigue settled over her. She felt helpless. Hopeless. This day had taken so much from her. Now all that remained of her loved ones were her mother, Leia, and Michael.
"We'll get him back," Bella said, touching Elyssa on the arm. "I promise you."
How was that possible without her father or Christian to direct the troops? Who'd be in charge now? Michael? A stranger? She slumped onto a set of stairs outside an apartment building and pulled out her arcphone. She touched the screen, but only saw garbled static.
"It appears to be dead," Bella said, taking the arcphone and looking it over. She touched her wand to it. The screen flickered and went blank a moment, then reset and came up normally. "Or maybe it just needed a restart."
Elyssa took the phone. Pulled up Michael's number and stared at it. Should she call him? Maybe he already knew about the day's events.
Bella grabbed Elyssa by the shoulder and jerked her to her feet. The short woman gave Elyssa a stern look. "I know you've been through a lot, young lady, and you're in shock."
Elyssa stared numbly at her. She wanted to say something in her defense, but the words jumbled in her mind and refused to come out. Was she in shock? She didn't feel the burning surge of anger or the gripping agony of sorrow. She felt nothing.
"We need to get you back," Bella said, and marched Elyssa to a tiny car parked at the curb. She touched a wand to the lock, opened the door, and shoved Elyssa inside. Climbed into the driver seat and hotwired the car with her wand.
A few minutes later they reached a road jammed with cars and people. Bella muttered something and got out. She spoke with a man and got back in the car. "The police have blocked the road. Looks like we'll have to walk the rest of the way."
Elyssa nodded and pulled herself out of the car. Her legs felt leaden. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. A fierce look from Bella quashed that notion. The sorceress motioned the Templar to follow. After a long slog through back alleys and side streets, all while dodging police barricades, they made it back to the outskirts of La Casona.
The burnt-out shell of her father's vehicle still gave off plumes of greasy smoke. The front end looked like it had been dipped in molten lava. The SUV Elyssa and Justin had been in looked almost as bad. The other vehicles were gone. A man in a black suit and dark glasses talked to a police officer nearby. Another similarly dressed man caught sight of the two women and approached them.
His eyes gauged Bella, and then Elyssa. He said something in Spanish.
Elyssa didn't understand. "What?"
"I said you'll have to leave this area. It's off-limits during our investigation."
"You're a Custodian?" Elyssa said.
The man's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
"Elyssa Borathen."
"Ah." He nodded and pointed toward a black sedan. "The driver will take you to the compound. It's important you don't speak with the local authorities Let us deal with them."
"I understand," Elyssa said.
"What are Custodians?" Bella asked as they approached the waiting car.
"They clean up supernatural incidents so the noms don't notice."
"Mhmm, so these are the same Templars who cleaned up the mess at the Friendly Hotel after Vadaemos's rampage?"
Bella's question reminded her of Jack. Her brother was dead. Her father was dead. "Yes." Elyssa muttered. Even talking was an effort.
The driver pulled out of the cordoned off area and into a blind alley.
"What are you doing?" Bella said, her voice alarmed.
The driver, a woman in the same type of black suit as the men, didn't say a word, but slashed her finger across what looked like an arcphone display in the dashboard. The car rose into the air. Bella gasped. Through the front window, Elyssa saw the hood shimmer into invisibility. Within seconds, they were skimming silently in the air over the jam-packed streets below.
"You Templars get the best toys," the sorceress said, watching the city roll past beneath. "I thought my flying rug was neat. How do you power invisibility for so long?"
"I couldn't say, ma'am," said the driver. "I just work here."
A short time later, the car set down in the center of a compound at the outskirts of the city. A young woman with dark hair, fair skin, and a strong Italian nose met them as they disembarked.
"Trouble follows your boyfriend everywhere," she said with a frown.
"Good to see you too, Fausta," Elyssa said, overcoming the urge to simply grunt at her. "What happens now?"
Fausta bared her teeth. "We kick some vampire ass."
"That's the spirit," Bella said holding her hand out for a fist-bump.
Fausta quirked an eyebrow but didn't leave the enthusiastic Arcane hanging. "I'll take you to the briefing room."
They entered a circular building in the middle of the compound. A guard unsealed the door to the room and let them in. The moment the door opened, Elyssa felt her knees go weak. Fausta and Bella gripped her before she slumped to the floor.
Bella looked up and gasped.
Thomas Borathen met his daughter's gaze for a brief second before continuing his speech. It took everything Elyssa had not to run over and hug him.
He's alive!
Relief and anger collided in her stomach with the force of a locomotive. Why hadn't anyone told her he was alive? Why hadn't he called her?
Bella seemed to know what she was thinking. "We went after Justin in the middle of all the confusion, dear. He probably didn't realize you thought he was dead."