Liz and Brady just happened to both die accidentally after leaving Lyle House?
Okay, that was unlikely.
Rae’s birth mom and Simon’s dad both happened to have a falling-out with the Edison Group and fled, taking their study subject kids with them?
No, there was definitely something wrong here. I needed answers and I wasn’t going to find them locked in my cell. Nor was I eager to meet that thing in my room again.
Just as I thought that, Dr. Davidoff arrived to take me back there. As I followed him down the hall, I scrambled for an excuse to go someplace else in the building, any way to add details to my mental map of the place.
I considered asking to speak to Aunt Lauren. I’d have to pretend I’d forgiven her for lying to me my entire life, betraying me, and tossing me to the mercy of the Edison Group. I wasn’t that good an actor. And Aunt Lauren wasn’t that stupid. There was a reason she hadn’t tried to see me. She was biding her time, waiting until I got lonely for a familiar face, desperate for excuses. Until then, she’d stay away.
There was one other person I could ask to speak to….
The thought made my skin crawl almost as much as the thought of seeing Aunt Lauren. But I needed answers.
“Dr. Davidoff?” I said as we approached my door.
“Yes, Chloe.”
“Is Tori here?”
“She is.”
“I was thinking…I’d like to see her, make sure she’s all right.”
Six
DR. DAVIDOFF DECLARED THAT a “splendid idea,” meaning he had no clue I’d figured out that Tori was the one who’d tipped them off to our escape. As for getting a better look at the place—that plan didn’t work so well. Her cell turned out to be only a few doors from mine.
The doctor ushered me in, then locked the door. When the bolt slid home, I inched back, ready to scream at the first sign of trouble. At my last up-close-and-personal encounter with Victoria Enright, she’d knocked me out with a brick, tied me up, and left me alone in a pitch-black basement crawl space. So I could be forgiven if that locked door made me nervous.
The only light in the room came from the bedside clock. “Tori?”
A figure rose from the mattress, her short hair a halo of spikes. “Huh. I guess if stern lectures don’t work, they can always resort to torture. Tell them I surrender, as long as they take you away. Please.”
“I came to—”
“Gloat?”
I stepped toward her. “Sure. I came to gloat. Get a good laugh at you, locked in a cell, just like I am down the hall.”
“If you say ‘we’re in this together,’ I’m going to hurl.”
“Hey, we wouldn’t be in this at all if it wasn’t for you telling the nurses on us. Only you didn’t count on getting locked away yourself. That’s what we call dramatic irony.”
A moment of silence. Then she gave a harsh laugh. “You think I ratted you out? If I’d known you were running away, I would have packed your bag.”
“Not if I was leaving with Simon.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “So in a fit of jealous rage, I spill your plans, getting you and the guy who rejected me sent away to a mental hospital? What movie is that from?”
“The same one where the cheerleader knocks out the new girl with a brick and leaves her in a locked crawl space.”
“I am not a cheerleader.” She spat the word with such venom, you’d think I’d called her a slut. “I was going to let you out after dinner, but Prince Not-So-Charming got to you first.” She slid from the bed. “I liked Simon, but no guy is worth humiliating myself over. You want someone to blame? Check the mirror. You’re the one who stirred things up. You and your ghosts. You got Liz sent away, got Derek in trouble, got me in trouble.”
“You got you in trouble. I didn’t do anything.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
She stepped closer. Her skin looked yellow, and purple underscored her brown eyes. “I’ve got a sister just like you, Chloe. She’s the cheerleader, the cute little blonde, bats her eyelashes and everyone comes running. Just like you at Lyle House, with Simon tripping over himself to help you. Even Derek rushed to your rescue—”
“I didn’t—”
“Do anything. That’s the point. You can’t do anything. You’re a silly, useless Barbie, just like my sister. I’m smarter, tougher, more popular. But does that matter? No.” She towered a head above me, staring down. “All anyone cares about is the helpless little blonde. But being helpless only works when there’s someone around to save you.”
She lifted her hands. Sparks leaped from her fingers. When I fell back, she grinned.
“Why don’t you call Derek to help you now, Chloe? Or your little ghost friends?” Tori advanced, the sparks swirling into a ball of blue light between her raised hands. She whipped her hands down. I dove. The ball shot over my shoulder, hit the wall, and exploded into a shower of sparks that singed my cheek.
I got to my feet, backing toward the door. Tori raised her hands and swung them down, and an invisible force knocked me over again. The room shook, every piece of furniture rocking and chattering. Even Tori looked surprised.
“Y-you’re a witch,” I said.
“Am I?” She bore down on me, her eyes as wild as her hair. “Nice for someone to tell me. My mother insisted it was all in my head. She shipped me off to Lyle House, had me diagnosed as bipolar, and gave me a cartload of meds. And I gulped them because I didn’t want to disappoint her.”
She slammed down her hands. Lightning bolts flew from her fingertips, heading straight for me.
Tori’s eyes went wide with shock, her lips parting in a silent no!
I tried to scramble out of the way, but I wasn’t fast enough. As those crackling bolts came at me, a figure materialized—a girl in a nightgown. Liz. She shoved the dresser, and it shot from the wall and into the bolt’s path. Wood splintered. The mirror glass shattered, raining shards down on me as I crouched, head down.
When I lifted my head, the room was silent and Liz was gone. The dresser lay on its side with a smoldering hole through it, and all I could think was: That could have been me.
Tori sat huddled on the floor, her knees pulled up, her face buried against them as she rocked. “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. I get so mad, so mad. And it just happens.”
Like Liz, making things fly when she got angry. Like Rae, burning her mom in a fight. Like Derek, throwing a kid and breaking his back. What would happen if I got mad enough?
Uncontrollable powers. That wasn’t normal for supernaturals. It couldn’t be.
I took a slow step toward Tori. “Tori, I—”
The door whacked open, and Tori’s mom barreled in. She stopped short when she saw the destruction.
“Victoria Enright!” The name came out in a snarl worthy of a werewolf. “What have you done?”
“I-it wasn’t her,” I said. “It was me. We argued and I—I…”
I stared at the hole blasted through the dresser and I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I know very well who’s responsible for this, Miss Chloe.” Tori’s mom turned that snarl on me. “Though I don’t doubt you played your role. You’re quite the little instigator, aren’t you?”
“Diane, that’s enough,” Dr. Davidoff snapped from the doorway. “Help your daughter clean up her mess. Chloe, come with me.”
Instigator? Me? Two weeks ago, I would have laughed at the thought. But now…Tori said this all started with me, with the guys wanting to save the helpless little girl. I hated that idea. Yet she had a point.
Derek had wanted Simon to leave Lyle House and find their dad. Simon wouldn’t leave Derek, who refused to go because he was afraid he’d hurt someone else. When Derek figured out I was a necromancer, he found his weapon to beat down Simon’s defenses. One damsel in distress, to go.
I was the poor girl who didn’t know anything about being a necromancer, who kept making mistakes, getting closer and closer
to being shipped off to a mental hospital. See her, Simon? She’s in danger. She needs your help. Take her, find Dad, and he’ll fix everything.
I’d been furious with Derek, and I’d called him on it. But I hadn’t refused to go along with the plan. We needed Simon’s dad—all of us did. Even Derek, who’d eventually joined us when our escape had been uncovered and he had no choice.
If I’d known what was going to happen, would I have stopped searching for answers back at Lyle House? Would I have accepted the diagnosis, taken my meds, shut up, and gotten released?
No. Harsh truth was better than comfortable lies. It had to be.
Dr. Davidoff took me back to my room, and I told myself I was fine with that. I needed to be alone so I could try again to contact Liz, now that I knew she was still around.
I started slowly, gradually increasing my efforts until I heard a voice so soft it could have been a hiss from the vent. I looked around, hoping to see Liz in her Minnie Mouse nightshirt and giraffe socks. But there was only me.
“Liz?”
A soft, hesitant “Yes?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, getting to my feet. “I know you’re angry with me, but it didn’t seem right not to tell you the truth.”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m going to find out who killed you. I promise.”
The words flew to my lips like I was reading a script, but at least I’d had the sense to shut my mouth before promising to avenge her death. That was one of those things that made perfect sense on the screen, but in real life, you think Great…and how exactly would I do that? Liz stayed silent, like she was holding out for more.
“Can I see you?” I said. “Please?”
“I can’t…come through. You need to try harder.”
I sat back on the floor, hands wrapped in her hoodie and concentrated.
“Harder,” she whispered.
I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined myself pulling Liz through. Just one huge yank and—
A familiar tinkling laugh sent me scrambling to my feet. Warm air slid along my unbandaged forearm.
I yanked my sleeve down. “You. I didn’t call you.”
“You didn’t need to, child. When you summon, spirits must obey. You called to your friend and the shades of a thousand dead answered, winging their way back to their rotted shells.” Her breath tickled my ear. “Shells buried in a cemetery two miles away. A thousand corpses ready to become a thousand zombies. A vast army of the dead for you to control.”
“I—I didn’t—”
“No, you didn’t. Not yet. Your powers need time to mature. And then?” Her laugh filled the room. “Dear Dr. Lyle must be dancing in Hell today, his agonies borne away on the thrill of his triumph. Dearly departed, scarcely lamented, deeply demented Dr. Samuel Lyle. Creator of the prettiest, sweetest abomination I have ever seen.”
“Wh-what?”
“A bit of this, a bit of that. A twist here, a tweak there. And look what we have.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the urge to ask what she meant. Whatever this thing was, I couldn’t trust her, no more than I could trust Dr. Davidoff and the Edison Group.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“The same thing you do. Freedom from this place.”
I settled onto the bed. As hard as I looked, though, I couldn’t see any sign of her. There was only the voice and the warm breeze.
“You’re trapped here?” I asked.
“Like a fairy under a bell jar, metaphorically speaking. Fairies are a product of the human imagination. Little people flitting about on wings? How positively quaint. A more fitting simile would be to say that I am trapped like a lightning bug in a bottle. For magical energy, nothing quite compares to a soul-bound demi-demon. Except, of course, a soul-bound full demon, but to summon one and attempt to harness its power would be suicide. Just ask Samuel Lyle.”
“He died summoning a demon?”
“The summoning is usually a forgivable offense. It’s soul binding that rather annoys them. Lyle should have been content with me, but humans are never satisfied, are they? Too arrogant to contemplate the possibility of failure, he neglected to pass along the true secret of his success: me.”
“Your magic powers this place. And they don’t even realize it?”
“Lyle guarded his secrets to the grave and beyond, though taking them into the afterlife was not his intention. I’m sure he meant to tell them about me…had he not died before he got around to it. Even a necromancer as powerful as you would have difficulty contacting a spirit in a hell dimension, so now I am bound here, my power enhancing the magics cast in this place. The others—this Edison Group—think it’s built on the junction of ley lines or some such foolishness.”
“So if I freed you…?”
“The building would collapse into a pile of smoldering rubble, the evil souls within sucked into Hell, to be tormented by demons for eternity.” She laughed. “A pleasant thought, but no, my departure would merely hamper their efforts. Significantly hamper, though—putting an end to their most ambitious projects.”
Release the demon under promise that I’d be repaid handsomely, my enemies destroyed? Hmm, where had I seen this before? Oh, right. Every demon horror movie ever made. And the horror part started right after the releasing part.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Ah, yes. Set me free and I shall take my revenge on the world. Start wars and famines, hurl thunderbolts, raise the very dead from their graves…Perhaps you could help with that?”
The voice slid to my ear again. “You are still such a child, aren’t you? Believing in bogeymen. Of all the wars and massacres in the last century, demons are responsible for perhaps a tenth; and that, some would say, gives us too much credit. Unlike humans, we are wise enough to know that destroying the world that sustains us is hardly in our best interests. Free me and, yes, I will have my fun, but I’m no more dangerous out there than I am in here.”
I considered it…and imagined the audience screaming. “You stupid twit! It’s a demon!”
“I don’t think so.”
Her sigh ruffled my shirt. “There is no sight sadder than a desperate demi-demon. After decades alone in this place, beating the bars of my cage, howling to deaf ears, I’m reduced to begging favors from a child. Ask me your questions, and I shall play schoolteacher, answering them at no cost. I was a schoolteacher once, you know, when a foolish witch summoned me and invited possession, which is never wise, even if you’re trying to destroy the dreadful little Puritan village that accused you of—”
“I don’t have any questions.”
“None?”
“None.”
Her voice snaked around me. “Speaking of witches, I could tell you a secret about the dark-haired one you visited. Her mother—too ambitious by far—heard of another witch bearing a sorcerer’s child, so she had to do the same. Now she’s paying the price. A mixed-blood spellcaster is always dangerous.”
“Tori’s dad is a sorcerer?” I said in spite of myself.
“The man she calls Daddy? No. Her real father? Yes.”
“So that is why—” I stopped. “No, I don’t want to know.”
“Of course you do. How about the wolf boy? I heard them talking to you about him. I remember the pups. They lived here, you know.”
“They?”
“Four pups, cute as could be. Perfect little predators, flashing fangs and claws even before they could change forms—all but the biggest of the litter. The lone wolf. The smart wolf. When his Pack brothers flashed those fangs and claws one time too many, those who’d opposed the inclusion of the beasties got their way.”
“What happened?”
“What happens to pups that bite their owner’s hand? They were killed, of course. All but the clever one who didn’t play their wolfie games. He got to go away and be a real boy.” Her voice tickled my ear again. “What else can I tell you…?”
“Nothing. I want you to leave.”
/> She laughed. “Which is why you’re lapping up my every word like sweet mead.”
Fighting my curiosity, I found my iPod, stuck in my ear-buds, and cranked up the volume.
Seven
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, DR. Davidoff knocked at my door again. Time for a history lesson, apparently. He led me to his office and entered the code to a closet-sized vault lined with bookshelves.
“We have more reference books than this, naturally. The rest are in the library, which you’ll visit soon. However, this”—he waved at the closet—“is what a public library would call its special collection, containing the rarest and most prized volumes.”
He slid a red leather-bound one from the shelf. Silver letters spelled out Nekromantia.
“The early history of the necromancer race. This is an eighteenth-century reproduction. There are only three known copies, including this one.”
He lowered it into my hands with all the ceremony of passing over the crown jewels. I didn’t want to be impressed, but when I felt the worn leather, smelled the mustiness of time, a thrill rippled through me. I was every great fantasy hero raised in ignominy, then handed the magic book and told “this is who you really are.” I couldn’t help falling for it—the story was hardwired in my brain.
Dr. Davidoff opened a second door. Inside was a surprisingly cozy sitting room with leather chairs, a jungle of plants, and a skylight.
“My secret hiding spot,” he said. “You can read your book in here while I work in my office.”
After he left, I checked out the narrow skylight, but even if I could manage to climb twenty feet to get to it, I’d never fit through. So I settled into the chair with the book.
I’d just opened it when he returned.
“Chloe? I need to leave. Is that all right?”
Leave me alone in his office? I tried not to nod too enthusiastically.
“If you need anything, dial nine for front reception,” he said. “This door will be locked.”
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