My body language is clear; I am turned away from Spencer and toward Reece because I want no further conversation from the smug, mind-stealing prick, so I miss the reason for the sudden tantrum that erupts out of him.
“Cass,” he snarls, “didn’t I instruct you to place Ophelia in the grey room next to mine?”
She nods her head breezily and goes back to cleaning up the orange mess on the counter.
“Then why have you taken it upon yourself to put her in the one next to you?”
“Oh, stow it,” Reece pipes in. “I told Cass to put her in the room down by ours. I think it’s best if she’s near Cass, in case she needs anything during the night.”
“Oh, you mean like some more ridiculous clothes?” Spencer asks.
Suddenly I am no longer hungry. The shame from this get up apparently has no end.
“I will explain about the reformatories tomorrow when we go on our little field trip, as well as get her some adult clothes and whatever else it is she will need. I want her in the grey room so that if Brand somehow finds us here, I can get her out in time.”
Reece bristles at Spencer’s words. “Are you trying to insinuate that you would be better able to protect her? You, who would have left her with Donovan to be abused again and again? Bull. Shit.”
Spencer works his jaw, seemingly trying to hold back a torrent. I have had it.
“Shut up, both of you!” I manage to screech out through my annoyance. “I’m flippin’ tired and I don’t give a rat’s ass about either of your posing. I’m going to go to sleep, and I’m going to do it in the room next to Cass because that is the only one that I know how to find. You two can stay here and fight about it until you’re blue in the face, kill each other, I don’t care!”
And with that, I stomp out of the kitchen and head to the tranquility of my cell. Just as I enter the room, it dawns on me—damn, I forgot to ask Reece what kind of Mage I am. That’s what happens when you go for the dramatic exit, you leave questions unanswered. Oh well, at this point, I’m so tired I don’t even care…much.
I awaken the next morning to find a pile of clothes and a pair of boots in front of my door and smile to myself thinking of Reece and how he came to my room last night after I stormed off. It warmed my heart that he would deliver the food that I had left behind. He came to apologize for the scene between Spencer and himself and to tell me that he was sorry for fighting over me like I was a piece of property.
“I’m sorry,” he had said. “It’s just that after the last two years of keeping surveillance on you, I kind of feel like it’s my job to protect you or something. It probably seems weird, some guy you don’t even really know acting all possessive like this. I know it’s sudden, but I see you as a friend already. You don’t know me much and I hope that changes, but I feel like I know you. I hope that you’ll see me as someone who is on your side. I silently watched you being hurt for so long and I just...I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch the same thing happen to you again.”
It took me by surprise and I couldn’t help the tears that had formed in my eyes. No one has cared for me like this since my mother died. I had thought Donovan did, but even as I look back on it now, he always seemed a little distant to me even when we were dating. He never would have made a declaration like that. It took two years of dating for him to even tell me he loved me. I told him five months in. I guess that should have tipped me off that there would be misfortune to come, but at the time, I just thought he was practical and careful with his heart. Now I know the truth, he never had a heart to begin with.
I smiled at Reece because it felt nice to finally feel as if I have a friend. I haven’t had anyone who I could give that title to in so long that I am practically jumping for joy at the thought of it. Reece’s hopeful eyes as he waited for my response, told me enough. He really is just a good guy looking out for me, and I am more than happy to let him.
“Of course we’ll be friends,” I told him and I meant it. Just by giving him those words, I felt some of the weight of loneliness come off of my shoulders. Finally having one other person in this world who cares feels like being tossed a scrap of food when you haven’t eaten in weeks and then having hope that you may just survive the famine after all.
Feeling real happiness for the first time in years, I bend over to retrieve the pile of clothes and grab the piece of lined notebook paper that’s folded into one of the boots and scowl. Written in block letters is, Get dressed, get some breakfast, and meet me in the ops room. There is no name signed to it, but I know it’s from Spencer. It makes sense as I rifle through what he has left—a pair of dark jeans, a white racer-back tank top, a black fitted jacket, and a pair of nude Calvin Klein bra and panties, all in my exact sizes. A case of the jitters breaks out down my spine, knowing how he gleaned the knowledge, but I pack it away in my box of things that I’m trying not to think about and shove it to the back of my mind.
I dress quickly and let my new black shit-kickers take me to the empty kitchen where, after digging around in a couple of cupboards, I am able to make myself a bowl of Oh’s and eat a banana before heading in the direction of the ops room. It is so eerily quiet that I am beginning to wonder if everyone deserted the place during the night, but I breathe a sigh of relief when I get closer and can hear the clicking that is Jinx at the computer.
Spencer is standing behind him, looking over Jinx’s shoulder at one of the monitors when I walk in. I clear my throat to get his attention.
“I know you’re there, Ophelia,” he says in his Mr. Know It All way. “Give me a minute.”
He goes back to whatever it is they’re looking at and Jinx says, “Everyone is in place. If you get there by ten, you’ll have front row seats to the show.” He smiles up at Spencer, and I notice the look of excitement and camaraderie that passes over Jinx’s face. Whenever Spencer started doling out the Kool-Aid for this merry little band of rebels, Jinx was probably the first to get in line. I wonder how a kid like Jinx got tangled up in this mess and where his family is. He can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
I’m startled out of my quandary by Spencer slapping Jinx on the back. “Great job, Jenkins,” he says. I can truly feel his sense of pride at whatever it is that Jinx has just accomplished. He turns to me. “Are you ready to get on the road? There’s a show we have to catch with a ten o’clock curtain call. Don’t want to be late.” He seems almost giddy but I’m not following.
“I thought you were going to be taking me to see a reformatory or whatever the heck a crumble is.” I’m keen to going out and seeing what I need to see, learning what I need to know, and getting back to my room and Reece and Cass. The less amount of time that I have to spend with Spencer one on one, the better.
“So eager for the truth, Ophelia,” he sneers. “I like it. We are going to see those things and more, but if I’m going to give you the truth, I’m going to give it all…well, as much as I am allowed to give. Made a deal with Reece last night and it looks like he is going to be teaching you, or trying to at least, how to use your powers. I will, however, be working with you to get as many of those Binds off as we can, but that will come later. Truth first.”
He smiles at me, a smile so wide I could probably count all of his teeth, and it dawns on me that he is really excited about something. I can feel his excitement coming off of him in waves as he puts his leather jacket on over another tight-fitting Henley, white this time, and pulls a set of keys out of the pocket of his worn, faded blue jeans.
“Let’s roll, Seminole,” he says and doesn’t even throw a goodbye in Jinx’s direction. I follow him out of the ops room and around to the other side of the apartment where there is a set of elevator doors. The thought of riding in the enclosed space with him is enough to make me break out in hives. He doesn’t notice my discomfort, or if he does, he doesn’t say anything as the doors close behind us and he presses the button for the garage. He starts whistling a tune; I recognize it as the theme song for the Andy Griffith s
how. My mom used to watch it when I was a kid and I liked it. It’s now the worst tune of all time.
I’m relieved when the doors open and I can put some space between us. I look around at the garage full of luxury cars, a couple Hummers, and some plain black sedans, wondering which car we will be using for our little field trip today. Spencer stuns me by passing all of them up and walking straight to the only car in the garage that is beat up with peeling paint and ugly brown interior. It’s an old PT Cruiser, the kind with the fake wood paneling and all-around ugly design. I give him a curious look as he goes for the handle of the passenger door, opening it for me.
“Not the Bentley that you’re used to, is she, Princess?” Spencer smirks at me like the reaction is exactly what he would have expected from me, and he’s right. I am a bit taken aback but not because I have to ride in an ugly car, I’m more surprised that he would drive such a beast.
I recover my expression rapidly and fire back with, “Hey, the car suits its owner.” I stare directly at the hole that’s beginning to form over the left knee of his jeans. He throws his head back and laughs a deep throaty laugh that helps to thaw out some of the iciness I’ve layered over my heart towards him. A man that can laugh at himself— maybe he isn’t as bad as I originally thought.
He composes himself and puts both his hands out, pointing in both directions. “I wonder how well you think my other cars suit me.”
My mouth hangs open for a second when I realize what he is saying. All of the cars in the garage belong to him as well. There are about fifty of them here, all together worth at least a couple million dollars. “You own all of these?” I can’t help the awe that comes out of my voice with the question.
“Yep, and the building. Well, most of them,” he states, matter-of-factly with a shrug. “A couple of them are Jinx’s and one belongs to Cass.”
“And Reece?” I crane my neck around trying to guess which one could belong to him.
“He has a bike,” Spencer replies, and all of the humor has vanished from his voice. “Are you going to get in sometime today? I told you, we have somewhere to be.”
I roll my eyes—Cass must be rubbing off on me—and slide into the seat. Spencer closes my door, hurries around to the driver’s side and before I know it, we are pulling out of the underground garage and emerging onto the street level.
We drive at a leisurely pace and I start to realize where we are. We’re downtown, right in the heart of the business district. Something is bugging me. How does someone like Spencer run this operation without anyone finding out about it? The building isn’t exactly hidden.
“I don’t get how you’ve managed to keep your organization a secret. I mean, you’re running things from a building in the middle of downtown. Donovan should know exactly where you are…he always knows everything.”
“You give him too much credit,” Spencer replies. “First off, thanks to Jinx, I don’t technically exist. He erased any and every trail that could lead back to me. As far as the building, you need to start thinking like a Mage. The whole thing is completely covered in Binds. Anyone who is not meant to find it will see a securities and investment business on the ground floor with luxury condos on the top. Anyone who decides to venture too close will be compelled to turn away because they will have forgotten whatever business it is they think they may have there.”
“But, the whole building, the cars, everything… how do you pay for it?” I wonder aloud.
“I have a trust, from my parents,” he answers sarcastically.
I give him my best look of incredulity.
“A big trust?” he says it as a question and I let it go. It’s obvious that he won’t be offering that information anytime soon. The more we talk, the more human he is starting to seem to me. I don’t like it. I can’t forget that he was digging around in my mind just yesterday. We are not friends. We don’t talk for the remainder of the drive, with only the music playing from the car’s stereo to keep the silence at bay. It is an hour and a half drive. He keeps the same CD playing on repeat. It’s Willie Nelson. I officially hate Spencer.
We come up to a hill and he brings the car to a stop. Below, I can see a huge construction site. There are men milling about, doing numerous construction things. The building looks to be about halfway finished, and I can see some men through one of the windows putting up drywall and laughing at something one of them says.
“Oh good, right on time,” Spencer says as he checks his watch. ”Come on, let’s see if we can get a little closer for the show.”
He exits the car in one fluid motion and doesn’t wait for me to get out of my seat before striding down the hill. I hurry to follow, but the pathway he has chosen is steep and I can’t seem to manage the efficient strides he takes while descending to the bottom. He comes to the base of the hill and progresses past a heaping pile of pallets stacked with enormous bags of cement between them. He turns to watch me hustling after him with an expression of impatient disapproval. I give him back a look of my own but throw in a bit of aloof disregard with a condescending smile. It seems to work because he turns back around to face the job site without another look or word.
We stand staring at the men milling about. I can hear one of them shouting orders, clearly the foreman on the job, and watch as the men are quick to comply with whatever instructions he lays out. Just as I’m beginning to wonder what we're doing here, the foreman notices us and starts our way, calling out to us while shaking his head.
“Hey folks, this is a closed construction zone, hard hats are required to be anywhere near these premises. You’re going to need to…”
His words are cut off as Spencer turns to me with a glint of a smile and says, “I’d cover my ears if I were you.”
Confused by his undecipherable statement, I keep my hands at my sides and look again to the man heading our way. He’s about two dozen feet away from us when Spencer starts counting down, each number in sync with each step he takes.
“In five, four, three, two, shield.”
It starts with a minuscule ticking noise and is followed by a blast that steals all breath from my lungs. The sound is deafening. My arms come up instinctually to cover my head from the blast, but it’s like we are in a protective bubble and as I watch in stunned shock, burning bits of bric-a-brac fly by, launching themselves into the ground surrounding our position and scatter hither and thither everywhere.
There is another roaring boom as something inside the burning structure ignites, drawing my attention away from the smoldering wreckage near our feet. As I look up to scan the scene, I notice the body of the foreman lying unmoving and covered by a heaping pile of flaming debris. It’s clear the he is no longer of this earth by the gaping hole that was once his skull.
The resonances of work and men conversing have completely ceased. Not even a call for help can be heard. All that remains of the bustling scene are the sounds of sizzling flames and creaking beams before the fires completely engulf them followed by the crashing echoes of collapse.
All the while, I feel as if none of it is real. Even as I feel the burn of the fire warm against my cheeks, I fail to believe in the validity of the situation. It’s like the protective bubble that we are in, shielding us from the damage has extended to shield my mind, as well.
It’s impossible to describe the utter agony of bearing witness to the last seconds of an unsuspecting person’s life. It’s almost so foreign a concept that I would wager that most people’s minds wouldn’t be able to immediately comprehend what happened. At least, I hope that is true, because if not, there must be something horribly wrong with me. All I know is that the shock from the blast is nothing compared to the concept that men stood meters away from me in one second, laughing and joking, maybe thinking about what their wives were making for supper that evening, or looking forward to their kid’s little league game over the weekend. Planning the perfect way to propose to their girlfriend or maybe even something more benign like thinking about the indigestion that the
ir McBreakfast gave them earlier in the morning. And then, in a flash, all of it was gone. All those thoughts, all those dreams … wiped away, like crumbs on a kitchen counter, one swipe of the rag into nonexistence.
I turn to Spencer with a look of complete shock and disgust.
“Ahhh, I love the smell of brimstone in the morning,” he states with an unaffected smile and a joviality that continues to muddle my mind, not meshing with the situation at hand.
I’m aghast as he steers me away from the scene and the befuddlement continues as we traverse the hill to his PT Cruiser, and he helps to guide me back to the passenger seat. It’s the sound of the driver’s side door closing and the ignition catching as he starts the engine that stirs me from my shock.
The smoke from the blaze is still pouring from the scene below and I am out of my seat again, slamming the car door shut behind me, and running. It’s kind of hard to maneuver around all of the debris that was blasted up the hill from the explosion, but I have to get away from this maniac. I’m absolutely horrified of this man who just killed dozens of people with a smile on his face.
My feet are moving as fast as I can get them, but I can hear his heavy footfalls behind me and he isn’t too far back.
“Wait, let me explain!” Spencer calls out.
Like hell I will. I leap over a couple of singed two-by-fours heading towards the road we drove in on. If I can just make it to that road, I tell myself, I can flag someone down for help and get away.
Before I can even crest the berm where I would finally meet the pavement, I feel the tug. Spencer has a firm hold of the back of my jacket. I twist my shoulders and shrug out of it, only for him to lunge at me, successfully knocking me down with a cloud of dust. We both roll back down the hill and come to a halt with me on top of him. I go to jump up and get away, but he grabs ahold of my forearms and I am now straddling him, both of us covered in dirt with cuts and scrapes covering our faces and my arms.
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