Dietrich looked pointedly at Isana, and I prepared to cover my ears again. It proved unnecessary, however, as she just shrugged. “She is resilient, Dietrich. I did not expect that she would recover so suddenly. It may be better to simply explain, at least in part.”
Dietrich sighed, then turned to me with a longsuffering air. “Very well. We are on a journey, of sorts. We believe you could be of some use to us and to our companions.”
I swallowed. There were more of these people? “Useful how?” I managed.
He gave a cold, ironic smile. “Apologies, Samantha, but the details will be revealed later. You may cooperate of your own will, or Isana can compel you. It is your ch—”
He didn’t get to finish; at that point, my self-control, badly strained by fear, shattered. I bolted.
I didn’t get far. Dietrich made a startled noise, and then he was after me. About ten paces into the chase his hand clasped around my wrist. I had just enough time to notice that he’d removed his glove before blackness swam across my vision. I staggered, then fell, unconscious.
Chapter Three
I woke up lying on a patchwork quilt laid over a mattress that had to be decades old, if the springs digging into my back were anything to go by. My wrist was shackled to the bedframe, but it wasn’t a normal handcuff—the metal extended midway up my forearm, like something you’d expect to see in a medieval dungeon. I sat up slowly, trying to think past a pounding headache. Every muscle was trembling, as if I had just worked them to the brink of exhaustion. I looked around. It was a small room, painted white, although the paint was beginning to peel off around the corners and the dusty baseboards. A landscape painting of purple mountains hung on the wall behind me, and there was a decorative arrangement of dried lavender on the bedside cabinet, also dusty. There was a narrow door which looked like it adjoined a bathroom, from what I could see. The window, which looked like it hadn’t seen a squeegee in years, was cracked open, admitting a flow of fresh, rain-dampened air. Though a tree directly in front of the window blocked a good deal of the diffused sunlight, I guessed it was midafternoon. I looked out the window, wondering if I could attract the attention of a passerby, but the view that met me was one of isolated, rolling green Irish countryside. Not another house in sight. I wondered with an edge of panic how I was going to figure out where I was when I realized that the door to the bedroom was also open, and through it, I could make out voices.
“…and so she refused,” Isana was saying, in German. I strained to listen. My German is good enough for most normal conversations, but I have to pay close attention, and oddly enough, my listening comprehension tests in school had not included eavesdropping on kidnappers like my life depended on it. “She said that she cares nothing for our squabbles with Aerenia, and that this would all come to nothing, as it has before. Beyond her gift of the tithe, she refused to help. As did the others.”
Silence. Then a voice I didn’t recognize said, also in German, “Then we are forced to the original plan after all.” It was difficult to tell for certain, but it sounded as if the speaker—an older man, maybe in his fifties or sixties—had a British accent.
“So it would seem,” Dietrich agreed. “We would not win an open struggle without support. You know this.” There was little concern in his voice. I wondered if he liked the ‘original plan’ better, whatever it was.
“Yes… I had hoped though…” He sighed. “This is risky. If you can’t win this…”
“There is no reason I should fail,” said Dietrich sharply. “Isana, however… she had unusual difficulty enthralling the girl. Perhaps we should rethink our arrangement?” There was a hint of a threat in his voice.
“You knew my abilities would be weakened,” Isana shot back. “You caused it to happen, after all.” There was a tense silence, and I imagined them glaring at each other. A chair shifted against the floor as someone either sat or stood up. “This task is not beyond me. I will regain my strength when we return to Alfheim. But perhaps next time you should consider someone’s value to you before you sentence them to a slow and lingering death.”
“My decision is the only reason you still live,” said Dietrich coldly. “And you would do well to remember it.” I leaned forward, as if that would help me catch more of the context behind this conversation. Who were these people?
The older man cleared his throat. “It will be difficult to drag an enthralled girl after us, in any case,” he said, with the weary tone of someone curtailing a familiar argument.
“It would be better to persuade her to accompany us in the normal way,” agreed Isana, resentment still in her voice. I closed my eyes to better focus on listening, since the volume of the conversation had dropped. “She appears to have some natural resilience, but I can enthrall her if ordered to do so.” She said ‘ordered’ with a scathing tone. I frowned. This conversation was making less and less sense to me, but one thing was certain; my kidnappers were not presenting a united front here.
“And if she runs?” asked the older man sharply. “This is a poorly thought-out solution.”
Isana laughed. “Herr Mitchell, do you truly not think that you would be able to recapture a frightened girl running through a strange country? Perhaps you are not as suitable for this task as you indicated.”
There was a pause. “It won’t be an issue,” said the man—Mitchell. He sounded miffed.
“Good.” I waited, but the conversation then turned to travel arrangements. I tugged experimentally on my handcuff. Nothing, of course. I turned my attention to the bedframe, wondering if I could get a bolt loose on one of the joints and slide the cuff off the end. I shifted my weight to get a better look at the joint, but the whole thing creaked loudly in protest. I cringed.
Silence fell downstairs. “Thomas, would you go check on the girl, please?” asked Mitchell, switching to English. I heard a chair scoot back, then footsteps approaching up a flight of stairs. Should I fake unconsciousness? It probably wasn’t going to fool anyone. I sat straight up, watching the door.
A moment later a boy about my age appeared in the doorway. “Oh,” he said awkwardly, looking me over. “You’re awake.”
I sized him up as he entered, then sat on the edge of a padded rocking chair that stood near the door. He wasn’t very imposing; although he looked physically fit, he was around my height, with reddish brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. The overall impression he gave was one of a dedicated student. Hardly criminal.
“How do you feel?” he asked. Conversation had resumed downstairs. He had an odd accent, mainly British, but with the hint of an Irish lilt. “I’ve heard that Dietrich can be a little rough sometimes.”
Rough? I felt like an elephant had stepped on my head. “What did he do to me?” I asked, my voice strained.
He hesitated. “Nothing with lasting consequences. I’ll get you some water—it’ll help. You should be fine. I’m Thomas, by the way.” He extended a hand. I just looked at him until he let it drop. He cleared his throat. “Do you prefer to be called Samantha, or Sam?”
I glanced down. Sure enough, my nametag from work was still clipped to my lapel. Suddenly furious, I tore it off and threw it across the room. It bounced off the wall and landed on the floor with a clatter.
“Calm down,” said Thomas, looking worried. “There’s nothing to be upset about.”
This was such an egregiously false statement that I couldn’t even summon up words to counter it with. I just stared at him for a second, trying to decide if this was some variation on the whole ‘good cop, bad cop’ thing. Well, if I was supposed to form some sort of rapport with this kid, I wasn’t having it. I turned away, my cuff dragging against the bedframe. Thomas’ brow furrowed.
“Is that—Just a minute,” he said. He stood, leaving the room. I heard more muffled conversation from downstairs, and a moment later, he was back.
“Here,” he said, stepping close to me. Despite my best efforts, I flinched.
“Sorry—I didn’t mean to startle you
. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. He inserted a key into the cuffs’ keyhole, and the cuff fell away from my wrist. “Totally unnecessary,” he said, sounding annoyed. He returned to his chair. “Cuffing you. It’s not as if you’d get far even if you did try to run.” There wasn’t any threat in his voice, just a statement of fact, but I felt a chill, regardless. He winced. “Sorry, that probably sounded really ominous, the way I said it. I wasn’t trying to frighten you. I just meant… you’re really far from home.”
That really wasn’t any better, given the circumstances. I swallowed, rubbing my wrist where the metal had chafed against the skin. “What do you people want with me?” I asked. A troubled look crossed his face.
“I’m not certain why those two brought you here,” he said. “I think that was what they were discussing earlier, but I don’t know any German. Mitchell was livid when he first saw you—he said it was too late to be adding variations to the plan at this stage, and that involving a bystander was beyond unacceptable. There was a lot of shouting,” he said ruefully. “That’s when they switched languages, so I’m not sure what the conclusion is yet. But Mitchell won’t let either of them harm you.”
“What plan?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing you need to worry about. Though it probably doesn’t matter if you know—Either Isana or Mitchell can wipe your memory before they send you home.”
I didn’t like the sound of ‘wipe your memory’ so I focused on the last bit. “You’re letting me go home?”
“Yes. They should never have brought you here. That’s what happens when you leave people like them unsupervised, though. Sometimes they behave themselves, but other times…” He sent me an apologetic look. “Sorry. But like I said, we’ll get you back home. You won’t even know you were gone.” I wanted to say that I didn’t believe that was possible, but I had just dealt with two people, one of whom could probably talk me into walking off a bridge if she wanted to, and the other who’d knocked me unconscious with a touch. Maybe memory alteration wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility. Thomas continued, with the air of someone greatly impressed, “So Isana mentioned that you broke her hold on you? That’s unusual, you know.”
Her hypnosis thing? I swallowed. “No, I didn’t know. In fact, I don’t even know how she did—whatever she did.” A slight hysteria had entered my voice, so I clamped my jaw shut before I started babbling. I tend to do that when I’m stressed, so I usually try to just keep my mouth shut altogether when I feel it coming on. Keeping calm is not my strong suit.
“Oh, that,” said Thomas, oblivious to my fledgling panic. “Well, the theory behind it is fairly complex, but what she did is simple enough. She enthralled you. It just means that she played off your own thoughts and emotions to bring them in line with her own.” He sat back with the air of a student who’d just delivered the solution to a complex math problem.
I looked at him, nonplussed. “So… hypnosis.”
“Oh, no,” he said, surprised. “Hypnosis is a psychological trick. Enthralling someone requires magic.”
There was a silence, which I broke with an eminently profound comment. “I don’t believe you.”
“You should,” he said earnestly. “It’ll make it easier to understand what happened to you. Though like I said, we can just wipe your memory anyway. If you get a choice between having Isana do it or Mitchell, pick Mitchell,” he advised. “He’s a great sorcerer,” he continued with note of pride in his voice. “I’m his apprentice.”
I sent him a skeptical look, trying to reconcile his appearance with a sudden mental image of pointy hats and rune-bedecked robes. “Uh huh.”
“Here, come outside,” he said, standing up. “I’ll show you.”
Outside? I fought to keep my composure, such as it was, as I stood up to follow him down the stairs. If it was just me and boy-wizard here, I might have a chance to bolt while he was busy with whatever smoke-and-mirrors trick he was about to pull. He’d said they planned to let me go, but I wasn’t convinced. The conversation I’d overheard before meeting him hadn’t sounded like releasing me was even being considered.
We rounded the corner at the stairs’ base to enter a small kitchen, where Isana, Dietrich, and a man who I presumed to be Mitchell stood around a small table, poring over a map so large it hung over the edges. As I’d guessed, Mitchell was an older man, his hair streaked with grey, but he had a lean, fit build, reminding me of a marathon runner. Isana glanced up.
“How is your health, Samantha?” she asked, her tone very polite.
I froze, not having any idea how to answer this question from someone who had not only kidnapped me, but taken me to a completely different continent. I was saved the difficulty of formulating a response, however, by Dietrich.
“She is fine,” he said in brusque German, his gaze not leaving the map. Mitchell was looking me over with an almost clinical, assessing expression. I looked away, uncomfortable under the intensity of it. “Do not concern yourself with her.”
It would have given me great satisfaction to answer in the same language, but I refrained—it couldn’t hurt for these people to assume that I couldn’t understand. Isana frowned at Dietrich before turning back to Thomas. “Watch her, please. She has already tried to run once.”
“Can you blame her?” Thomas muttered, but so quietly that I was the only one who heard him. He led me out a glass-paned door into a garden, one enclosed by tall, dense hedges. There was a gate on the east side, tall with peeling white paint, but even from where I stood I could see that it was shut with a rusted padlock. My shoes’ heels sunk slightly in the damp earth. The entire yard was covered in overgrown grass except for the flowerbeds, which were nearly empty, though they still had some desiccated remains of flowers which had probably died over the winter.
“I’ve been meaning to replant those,” said Thomas, following my gaze to the flowerbeds. For some reason, he looked a little sad. “It’s just hard—I’m not often here these days. I spent the past year in London.”
I turned around, scanning the yard. The hedges looked pretty solid, I noted, disappointed. Trying to make it less obvious that I was searching for an escape route, I said, “This is your house?”
“It was my mother’s, yes.” He seemed lost in thought for a second, then brought himself back to the present with a quick shake of the head. “Don’t trust them, by the way. Isana and Dietrich.” I sent him a funny look. Did he honestly think there was any danger of that? “I don’t think they mean you any direct harm, but you should be very careful of making them angry. Especially Isana.”
Why was he telling me this? “I thought she was a bit… less intimidating than Dietrich,” I said cautiously.
“Oh, he’s frightening,” Thomas agreed, sending a look over his shoulder toward the house. “He’s at least predictable, though. Isana… she’d be a terror if he weren’t keeping her in line. I wish I knew how he does it… The Septagonal has been trying to get a handle on her for years.”
“Hmm.” I didn’t bother with asking for clarification on any of that, since I’d just noticed a shadowy gap in the hedge. It was small and low to the ground, but if I darted for it…
“Oh—I’ve been meaning to fix that, too,” said Thomas. Suddenly the air took on a charged quality, like how it feels moments before a lightning strike. I looked sharply at Thomas, but he motioned toward the gap in the hedge. My jaw dropped. The branches were moving, knitting together like shoelaces being pulled into a knot. Within seconds the gap was entirely obscured.
I stumbled back a step, opening and closing my eyes rapidly. “I… how…?”
“I told you,” he said with a crooked smile, though his voice was a bit hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Magic.”
“No,” I muttered to myself. “No, no, no, no.” I turned around in a tight circle while Thomas looked at me, concerned. It had finally happened. Work had driven me crazy and I’d cracked. “Wake up, wake up. Come on.” I clamped my eyes shut and then opened t
hem again. No change in scenery. Meanwhile, the events of the entire day previous were taking on an entirely different light. “Wake up!” I ordered myself.
“You’re not dreaming,” said Thomas. “I know it’s a bit of a shock, but…”
“A bit,” I repeated, the edge of hysteria returning to my voice. “Then—what Dietrich and Isana did to me earlier, that was—”
“Magic also. A different variety, but magic all the same.” He looked at me sideways. “Are you all right? If this is too upsetting I can ask Mitchell to help you forget it—”
“Oh, that makes me feel better,” I said, my voice rising in pitch. “You can just get Dumbledore over there to mop up my inconvenient memories. What a great offer!”
He started to laugh, but stopped upon seeing my ashen face. “You maybe should sit down…”
There was a wrought iron set of garden furniture a few paces away, but my knees were shaking so badly that I almost didn’t dare try to walk that far. The thought drifted through my head that the earth was so damp, though, that if I just plopped down I’d probably ruin my thrift-store office clothes. Then I realized that I now had far, far bigger problems. Still, I forced myself to migrate over to one of the chairs, where I sat down, burying my head in my hands.
“Thomas,” said someone sharply, and I looked up to see Mitchell emerging from the house. “What are you doing?”
Thomas feigned innocence. “Fixing the hedge, sir.”
“Thomas.”
“What?” I asked, feeling lightheaded. “You don’t want your apprentice practicing? Or is it the yardwork part you’re upset about?”
Mitchell looked disapprovingly at Thomas. “It would have been kinder not to tell her.”
Thomas blinked. “It’s protocol, isn’t it? Explain the event, offer memory alteration, ensure all harm possible is remedied…” He trailed off. Mitchell was shaking his head. “What is it?”
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