Daryl dumped Sawyer on the floor. “I’m not carrying him anymore. And I’m not waiting around while you have make-up sex with your girlfriend either. I only agreed to this because you said Nimue was loose, and she might be dangerous.”
Sex? Nora recoiled from Owen. She might be happy to see him, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to have sex with him.
Owen sighed heavily. “Daryl, you are vastly becoming more of a liability than an asset.” He took Nora by the arm and led her to the room that he’d pointed at.
The room was sparse. One wall was the original stone of the tower, the others blank white. A ragged couch sagged against one wall, flanked by a wobbly-looking coffee table.
Owen left the room, grabbed Sawyer by the feet, and dragged him inside as well. “It seems that I’m going to have to deal with Daryl before I do anything else. You two stay comfy in here.”
He pulled the door closed after himself, shutting them inside. Then, the door opened back up a little. Owen poked his head inside. “Listen, if you were thinking about doing something creative and calling down the Influence and the muse police, don’t bother. Nimue made sure this place was completely off the muses’ radar.” Then he slammed the door. Nora could hear a lock click closed after him.
She was disappointed. She’d wanted to see Owen, but now he was leaving her. And she really did wish he hadn’t tied up Sawyer. Sawyer didn’t look very comfortable at all.
“Nora, this is so bad,” said Sawyer.
“Is it?” said Nora. “I can’t tell.”
“That’s because he’s messing with your head. You’ve got to fight it. You’ve got to remember how you really feel about him.”
“Oh, but I know how I really feel,” said Nora. “I’m glad to see him.” That was the one clear thought she had.
“No, Nora, how you really feel.”
She was puzzled. “That is how I really feel.”
He sighed. “Maybe you should just try and untie me. Can you do that?”
Nora considered. “Sure. I don’t think it will make Owen very happy, though.”
“Good.” Sawyer struggled to sit up. “We don’t want him happy.”
“We don’t?”
“Nora, you have to fight this.”
“Fight what? I’m only really sure of one thing, and that’s that I’m happy to see Owen.” She sat down on the floor and began to work on the knots at Sawyer’s wrists. “I wish he hadn’t gone away, though. We’ve been apart for so long.”
“Nora, you hate Owen.”
She pulled away from him. “I do not.”
“You do. Don’t you remember what he did to us last year? He killed Dirk. He threatened Maddie.”
Nora nodded. “Sure, I remember those things. But that was then. This is now. It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.” She went back to Sawyer’s wrists. Maybe Sawyer was only grumpy because he was tied up.
“He looked into your eyes when you got here. Don’t you remember that Owen could brainwash you by looking into his eyes? Don’t you remember that?”
“Well, sure,” said Nora. She did remember. She remembered her horrified realization last year, that Owen had always been trying to control her, through any means necessary. Back then, she’d felt disgusted with him, but now he made her feel warm and fuzzy. That didn’t make sense exactly, but she didn’t know what she could do about that. “The world is a strange place, Sawyer. You feel one thing one moment and something else the next. Owen’s kind of a jerk, but I still care about him. I can’t help it.”
Sawyer’s face fell. “No. I guess you can’t.”
She was making progress with the knots on Sawyer’s hands. She thought she’d be able to get them undone very soon now.
“All right, then, Nora. Try to remember. When he used to do this stuff to you in the mundane world, when he used to make you look into his eyes and convince you of things, did it ever... wear off?”
Nora was struggling with a particularly difficult knot. She tried to think. “At the time, I didn’t really know he was doing it to me. I never paid much attention. But I kind of think it did, because I know I used to get really annoyed at him when he’d leave me for long periods of time. But as soon as I saw him again, I would always forgive him.”
“How long do you think it took to wear off?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.” She tugged on a loop of rope. “Ha. There.” The knot at Sawyer’s wrists came free.
Sawyer stretched his hands. He looked around the room, which was mostly bare. “Try the door.”
“I heard it lock.”
“Just try it.”
So Nora got up and went to the door. “Yep,” she said cheerily. “Locked.”
Sawyer swore underneath his breath. He went to work on the rope that tied his ankles together. “Well, maybe he said not to be creative just to psych us out. I’m going to make up a song.” Sawyer began singing. “I’m trapped, and I want to go home. I’m trapped, and I want to go home.”
Nothing happened.
After several moments of this, he stopped singing.
Since Sawyer seemed to be working on his own knots, Nora sat down on the couch. She wasn’t sure how to help him anymore. He seemed very upset. She chewed on her lip. Why was he upset? She felt like she should know. But nothing seemed to make sense right now. Maybe she should ask Sawyer. “Why are you upset?”
He looked up from the knot. “Owen really messed up your head, didn’t he?”
Nora shrugged. Was her head messed up? Was that why nothing made sense?
Sawyer gave her a patient smile. “I’m upset because we’re being held prisoner by a psychotic madman.”
Nora felt panicked. How had she missed seeing a psychotic madman? “We are? Where is he?”
Sawyer was beginning to look less patient. “Owen is the psychotic madman.”
Nora sat back on the couch, scrunching up her forehead in confusion. “He is? But then why am I glad to see him?”
“Because he messed with your head,” said Sawyer.
Nora tried to digest this. “You’re saying that what I’m feeling isn’t real?”
“Exactly. That’s good.”
“But then...” The implications were simply horrid. If she couldn’t trust what she felt, then she couldn’t trust anything. She hugged her knees to her chest. “You’re okay though, right?”
Sawyer managed to undo the rest of the knot. He got to his feet. “Yeah. I’m fine. But I don’t know if it matters. I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“You’re here because Daryl took us to the mundane world, and Owen was waiting for us.”
Sawyer sat down on the couch next to her. He took her hand. “I know how we got here. What I mean is, I don’t know why Owen would want me. I know he would want you. He always wants you. But he was angry with Daryl for not bringing Maddie along. So he must have specifically asked for Maddie and me to be brought to him. And I don’t know why he would do that.”
Now that Sawyer mentioned it, it didn’t make a lot of sense. She knew that Owen would go to great lengths for the two of them to be together. But he didn’t care very much about Sawyer or Maddie. She tried to think over what she had heard. “Daryl said something about Nimue. And Owen said that Nimue did things to this place.”
“After everything, he is working with his mother,” said Sawyer.
Nora shook her head. “But when he was under the truth candle, he said he hadn’t seen her.”
“Owen’s evil plan is not important, okay? The important thing is that we get out of here.”
“But we’re locked in. And I’ll have to be away from him if we go. And I was so happy to see him. We haven’t even had a chance to talk.”
Sawyer narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure talking is what he has in mind.”
Nora thought about the sex comment that Daryl had made. It still made her feel uncomfortable.
Sawyer took both of her hands in his. “The most important thing is that you do
n’t ever look into his eyes again. If you do that, he’ll mess with your mind even more.”
Nora chewed on her lip. “But he has such pretty blue eyes.”
Sawyer swallowed hard. He looked at the ceiling. “What are we going to do?”
They were locked in the room for a very long time. After a while, Nora fell asleep. Sawyer kept shaking her and waking her up, saying that she had to stay alert. He didn’t understand how she could be comfortable enough to fall asleep in this room. But Sawyer was the only one who was upset. Nora didn’t feel upset at all. And she was tired. She couldn’t help that her eyes kept closing, and she kept nodding off.
Eventually, Sawyer stopped waking her up.
Hours later, she roused for good. Her neck was sore, because she and Sawyer had both been trying to sleep on the couch. There wasn’t a particularly comfortable position to do that. Sawyer was scrunched up at the other end. His face looked troubled, even in sleep.
Owen was standing over her.
The sight of Owen shot panic through her. She flinched away from him.
“Damn it,” said Owen. “Look at me, Nora. I’ll make it all better.”
His mind trick had worn off. God. She’d been acting like a complete idiot. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t look into Owen’s eyes. She wouldn’t cooperate. “I’m not looking at you.”
He sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I need you clearheaded anyhow. Doing that to you always made you a little bit stupid.”
He was giving up? Nora opened one eye so that only a slit shone through. Owen wasn’t even looking at her anymore.
“Get up,” he said. “We have things to talk about.”
“What if I say no? What if I don’t get up?”
Owen lightly rested his thumb on Sawyer’s closed eyelid. “How pretty you think your little girly boy would be with only one eye?”
Did he know? Did he know that she had developed an attraction to Sawyer? No. He only thought they were friends, or he would have ripped Sawyer apart. Nora stood up. “You’re horrible.”
“So I hear,” said Owen. “Are you coming?”
“Where’s Daryl?”
“I sent him away. I got the dimension device from him. He wasn’t useful after that.”
“Did you send him back to Helicon?” Nora was frightened that Daryl was in fact dead.
Owen laughed. “And have him tell them what I’m up to and where I am? I don’t think so. No, I sent him somewhere else. Another dimension. He should be safe there.” He smiled at her wryly. “Don’t worry. No one will ever find him.”
Nora blanched.
“Let’s go, Nora.” Owen crossed the room to the door. Nora didn’t feel like she had any choice but to follow him.
Owen let the two of them out but locked the sleeping Sawyer inside.
“So that’s why you wanted Sawyer and Maddie,” she said. “So you could threaten them. So you could control me.”
“I knew you wouldn’t look into my eyes forever,” said Owen, still walking. “But I didn’t want you to be lonely, either. I want you to be happy. I think that’s why I messed it up so badly last time. You were miserable, because I cut you off from your friends. I won’t make that mistake again.”
Nora felt sick. He wasn’t planning on letting her go. Maybe ever. She hurried to catch up with him as he strolled across the kitchen. “You won’t be able to keep us here forever. When they see that we’re gone in Helicon, they’ll know something happened to us.”
Owen chuckled as he mounted a set of spiral stairs. “That’s where you’re wrong. I wish I’d had something to do with Maddie’s disappearance, because I couldn’t have planned it better myself, and I’d love to be able to take credit for it. The three of you are gone, the dimension device is gone. They’re going to assume that you stole it again. A tween prank.”
He was right. Nora started climbing the narrow steps behind Owen. She felt defeated.
“Nothing to say to that?”
“You won’t get away with this.” She tried to muster confidence she didn’t feel.
“Oh, I think I will. You place a lot of faith in the muses, but they really aren’t any good at all at dealing with threats. They’re weak and disorganized. They’re vulnerable.” As they ascended the steps, the trappings of modernity faded away. There was no more drywall or electricity. There were only ancient stone walls, bits of moss clinging to them. The air was damp. Owen grinned down at her. “That’s why I’m going to help them. They need someone strong to defend them.”
Nora’s hand went through a cobweb, and she recoiled, wiping her hand against her cowgirl skirt. “No one is threatening them except you.”
“Nimue is threatening them.”
Daryl had said something about that before, hadn’t he? Under different circumstances, Nora might have been curious. But right now she only could focus on the fact she’d been kidnapped. Also, now that she had touched one cobweb, she kept feeling as if cobwebs were all over her. She kept trying to brush them off, but there was nothing there.
“Nothing to say to that either?”
“Do you know what Nimue did to Helicon? Do you know about the massacre?” If it was something that Owen remembered, he’d never told Nora about it.
“I heard about it from Daryl,” said Owen. “He kept me pretty well informed of what was going on in Helicon this year. At least before he got his panties in a bunch in the summer, anyway.”
“But you don’t remember anything about it? Your mother didn’t tell you anything about it?”
“Nope.”
It seemed as though they’d been walking up the stairs forever. Nora looked up and could see that they stretched all the way to the top of the tower. “Where are we going anyway? Why are we even here? You said that Nimue did things to this tower. Is it connected?”
Owen paused on the steps. He turned and looked at her. “Don’t you remember this place? I was hoping that if I took you up these steps, you’d remember.”
Nora had never seen this place in her life. “Have I been here?”
Owen started climbing the steps again. “This is where she brought us. After she stole us from Helicon, she brought us here.”
“You know I don’t remember anything about that.” Nora climbed after him. “I remember being in the abandoned house in the winter. Nothing before that.”
“That abandoned house is only two miles away from this tower. We escaped from this place, and we ran into the woods. We found that house. If you can remember the house, you can remember this. You were four years old.”
Nora looked at the decrepit stone walls. A shiver ran up her spine. “I don’t remember.”
“Maybe you will when we get to the top,” said Owen.
Nora swallowed. “What’s at the top?”
“It’s not what’s there. It’s what happened there.”
Owen didn’t speak for the rest of the climb. It was just as well with Nora. When he spoke, he frightened her. It didn’t matter if he frightened her with thoughts of the future or thoughts of the past. She had no use for either of them. She especially didn’t want to remember whatever it was that had happened at the top of the tower. Nothing she had seen so far was jogging anything loose. No sights or smells or sounds from when she was four years old. But the higher she climbed up the steps, the deeper a feeling of dread took root within her. It terrified her, but in some perverse way, it also drove her forward. Upward.
She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed when they reached the top. No flood of memories seized her. There was a small round room up here, and she looked around. It didn’t look familiar. There was nothing much in the room. A broken desk turned over on its side. Nora stepped up the last step, stood in the center of the room, and turned in a circle.
That was when she saw the man.
He was completely encased in a slab of crystal. Only his face stuck out. At first, Nora thought he was dead. But then he moaned.
Nora let out a little cry of her own.
>
“Oh,” said Owen, “that’s just Merlin. He doesn’t really say anything that makes any sense anymore. He’s been driven completely crazy by the visions he has. He’s powerless to do anything about them. Also, he’s been stuck here all by himself for hundreds of years. It would drive anyone crazy.”
Merlin. Nora remembered the story that Ned Willow had told them. Nimue had trapped Merlin somewhere. A tree or a cave or a... tower. So that’s what this tower was. It was the place where Nimue kept Merlin prisoner. “Can we help him?”
Owen shook his head. “You can’t break the crystal. It’s impenetrable. Besides, it’s the only thing keeping him alive. If you did manage to get him out, he’d die.”
Nora took a deep breath. “Maybe it would be better if he wasn’t suffering.”
“Like I said, you can’t break the crystal.” Owen strolled over to a narrow window, the only light source in the room. “I didn’t bring you up here to see Merlin.”
No. She supposed he hadn’t. She could still feel the dread. She didn’t want to remember this.
“Come to the window, Nora.”
Nora shook her head. “No.” Something told her that she didn’t want to go anywhere near that window.
“Come to the window.”
Nora was trembling. “Why do you want me to remember? Why does it matter?”
“Because I need to be sure. I need to know that you saw what I saw.”
“I didn’t see anything. I don’t remember anything.”
Owen stalked across the room, grabbed Nora’s arm, and dragged her to the window. She didn’t offer much resistance, but she slammed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to look out that window, because she knew that if she looked down at the ground, she would see...
Mangled flesh and bone. Blood.
She remembered.
* * *
Nora and Owen were supposed to be playing in the tiny room at the top of the tower. But there was nothing to play with, and Owen was in a bad mood. Also it was very cold. She could see her breath, and her fingers were numb. She had been crying, because she wanted to go back home. She missed the big castle playground. She missed Jolie. The nasty lady didn’t like it when Nora cried. That was why she’d made them play all the way up here. She’d said, “If you’re going to scream your head off, do it up here where I can’t hear you.”
The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4 Page 56