His face softened. “That’s rough.”
A laugh bubbled out of me, a manic giggle that grew and burst into out-of-control guffaws. I threw back my head and laughed at his massive understatement. It was ridiculous—how could I be grinning and laughing in a cage as I waited for my execution? But it felt good, too. The laughter dispelled some of the tension that had been riding on my shoulders, pushing back the panic just under the surface in my mind.
Hernandez watched me with a half smile, clearly not getting the joke.
“Thanks for making me laugh,” I said, still grinning. “I needed that.”
“Sure. I always try to help a lady in need.”
“Really?” I stood up and moved toward him. He didn’t seem so nervous anymore. Maybe I could use that to my advantage. “Do you want to get out of here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you propositioning me, chica? Because we just met, and you may or may not be a murderer.”
My jaw dropped. Did he seriously think that’s what I meant?
“Then again, you are smoking hot so I’m totally okay with helping you release some tension before your date with the electric chair.” Hernandez stepped forward, hands reaching for my hips.
I slapped him across the face, hard enough he stumbled to the side.
“I do not need to release tension,” I hissed. “I need to get out of here before I actually commit the crime I’m in here for.”
He looked at me with a hand on his cheek and his eyes wide. I needed to dial it back a bit; I wanted to channel his energy, not scare him into yelling for the guards.
I took a deep breath. “So will you please help me find a way out of here and we can both get an early release?”
Hernandez considered me for a moment, still rubbing his jaw. Then he dropped his hand and nodded. “Yeah, okay, chica. But only cuz you said please.”
“Good,” I said, grinning. “I’ve already searched the window, toilet, and that bunk for weaknesses. Help me examine this one.”
I returned to the second set of bunk beds and pulled up the thin mattress. After a moment of patting it down, I glanced back to see Hernandez still standing across the room. I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“I don’t think you’re going to find anything,” he said, joining me at the bunk and grabbing the pillow.
“Why not?” It was my fear too, but I had to keep hoping, keep fighting.
“Because this cell clearly isn’t used much, so no one has worked at weakening anything to leave behind for us.”
I dropped the mattress and started running my hands over the frame and supports. “We still have to look. We have to be sure.”
Hernandez finished squeezing every inch of the pillow. He dropped it on the mattress and followed my example on the other side. “Whatever you say, chica.”
After a few minutes of searching, Hernandez turned out to be right. The materials in the cell were in excellent condition, the supports smooth and every screw and spring perfectly tightened. I might have been able to work at a screw, try to loosen it with a fingernail, but that would be long, arduous, bloody work. I sat on the bed and sighed. I didn’t have that kind of time.
“Mmm.” Hernandez straightened and looked around the cell. “I don’t suppose there’s a secret tunnel carved through the wall somewhere. Nothing to cover it up so the cops wouldn’t see.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re the one who said no one’s been here before us to work at escaping and leave something behind.”
“True,” he nodded. “Have you tried the bars?”
I glanced at the alternating copper and iron bars of the magic-nullifying enchantment that even now was pulling at me, like pinpricks all over my skin. Surely the police would keep the bars reinforced. And I wasn’t sure the enchantment would let me cross the threshold even if the bars were weak.
Hernandez moved to examine the bars. After a moment he looked back at me. “Come on. Don’t give up on me now, chica.”
I swallowed my doubts and joined him. Together we ran our hands up and down each bar, giving them a good shake. None of them so much as jiggled except for the door. Those bars weren’t cemented into the floor, so the door moved slightly under pressure.
“Maybe we can loosen the hinges,” I said.
We looked at the hinges on the other side other side of the door, my back against the cinderblock wall and Hernandez facing me. He shook his head. “They’re covered. We can’t get through welded metal.”
A rumbling noise made us pause. A bit of dust fell from the ceiling. The faint roaring filled the night air for a moment and then was gone.
“Must have been a little earthquake,” Hernandez said. “Probably knocked a few things over in Whittier. No big deal.”
I wasn’t sure about that. The rumbling hadn’t sounded the same as the last earthquake I’d experienced a few years ago. But I held tightly to one of the bars just in case a tremor hit us.
“What about the lock?” I said. “Can you pick it?”
He took two steps back to peer at it. “If it was old school I definitely could. I got skills, chica. With the right tools I could even put this digital swipe-a-card nonsense out of our misery. But without them…”
He shrugged.
The rumbling returned, louder and more insistent. Shouts echoed down the hall from the rest of the building. The roaring increased until it was all I could hear. I held onto the bars with both hands as the building shook. A loud crack shot through the roaring, and more dust fell from the ceiling. I looked up and saw a great jagged cut racing toward me across the ceiling. Hernandez saw my face and turned to look.
The crack crossed the bars into the hall, and the shaking and roaring began to subside. I started to breathe a sigh of relief.
That’s when the ceiling caved in.
6
I woke up coughing, my nose and throat gritty and burning. I sat up, rubble from the cracked ceiling sliding off me. Dust hung in the air like a dispersed cloud, while the lights in the hall flickered. Something warm and wet trickled down my temple. When I touched it, my fingers came away red. Pieces of the collapsed ceiling must have knocked me out.
Debris lay everywhere. Huge chunks of cement and plaster, broken lengths of pipe, and stuff too small to be identified littered the cell floor. The ceiling had completely collapsed, providing a strange perspective to the floor above. The bars of my cell still stood, a testament to their strength. We never would have escaped that way. But a large crack ran down the back wall, wide enough I could see outside from where I sat on the floor catching my breath.
A grin stretched across my face, exposing my teeth to the grit still raining down, but I didn’t care. A streetlight glared through the dust, so it was still nighttime. And now we had an opening to the outside world, a decent chance of escaping.
“Hernandez,” I rasped.
He didn’t reply. He must have been buried under one of the mountains of rubble, probably still unconscious. I hauled myself to my feet and stumbled to the largest mound, pushing debris away. Lifting some of the heavy pieces made my head swim, and I had to pause to steady myself. I knelt and scooped smaller bits away, mechanically leveling the mound until a flash of red caught my eye—his red t-shirt. I started digging at that spot. Dust coated my hands and grainy pieces of debris dug under my fingernails as I worked. Finally, his head and shoulders emerged from the pile of rubble.
This would be a lot easier if he were awake. I shook his shoulder. “Hernandez!”
He didn’t respond. I pressed my fingers to the side of his neck and felt his pulse. For a moment I couldn’t feel anything. If he was dead, no investigation would convince the council of my innocence, earthquake or not.
Then his pulse jumped under my fingers, slow but steady. I sighed, my shoulders slumping in relief. I gave his shoulder another shake, and when he didn’t respond, I started digging again. Noise filtered in from outside, peals that changed in tone. I didn’t pay attention until they got louder as they appr
oached.
Sirens.
My heart skipped a beat. Sirens meant more police were coming. It was a miracle none of the officers here had come to check on us yet. Our window of opportunity was quickly closing.
I sat back on my heels, intending to push to my feet. I needed to get out of here before anyone came to move me to a more secure location. The thought of being slapped in chains and hauled to an early execution made me tremble. But Hernandez had tried to help me, even when he wasn’t sure if I was a murderer or not. Who knew what kind of trouble he’d be in if they thought he let me go? Or worse, they might think I had attacked him for a chance to escape. I couldn’t leave him behind.
I had cleared the rubble to his waist, but I didn’t have time to keep digging. I slid one hand under his neck to support his head, and with the other gave him a hard slap. I winced as the clap of the blow echoed off the walls. It was the same cheek I’d slapped earlier. Guilt flooded through me as I called his name and hit him again. Poor guy was going to have a terrible bruise.
He stirred as I raised my hand to hit him again. “Abuela, stop,” he groaned.
“Hernandez, wake up. We have to get out here.”
I shook his shoulders again, and his eyes fluttered open. They were unfocused, like he wasn’t really awake. I helped him sit up, and he groaned again. The sirens grew louder, and voices echoed down the hall. We were out of time.
“I can’t carry you, Hernandez. You have to get up.”
The rubble shifted as he moved his legs. I put his arm around my shoulders and helped him stand, the rest of the debris falling away from him. He leaned heavily on me as we crossed the cell to the crack in the wall. We’d make it through, but it would be a tight fit. And we could only pass one at a time.
“Slide through the crack and we’ll be outside,” I said, positioning Hernandez to slide sideways through the opening. He started to go through, then bumped his head and stopped with another groan. I put a hand on his arm and pushed. “Keep going, Hernandez. I’m right behind you.”
He shuffled sideways, then disappeared as he exited the crack. I followed, ducking my head under the protrusion he’d bumped, rough cement grating my back and breasts as I squeezed through the broken wall. When I popped out the other side, a fresh, cool breeze caressed my skin and toyed with my hair. I breathed deeply, tasting a salty hint of the ocean.
And smoke.
I looked around for the source of the acrid tang. To my right, Hernandez had slumped against the wall, his eyes barely open. To my left, several police cars, fire engines and ambulances crowded near the main door of the police station, where large flames licked the walls and dark smoke poured into the sky. Humans in various uniforms were everywhere: police setting up barricades, paramedics tending to the injured, firefighters battling the flames and pulling out survivors, some of them in handcuffs. It was only a matter of time before someone remembered us and came looking. We had to get away, far away. But how would we escape undetected among dozens of law enforcement and emergency personnel?
I dropped to my knees as another ambulance passed the commotion and stopped near us. Another group of paramedics jumped out and ran to join the others, leaving their vehicle unattended. I couldn’t drive it—that would be too obvious, and I didn’t know how anyway. But it would be full of supplies. No one was looking this way. This might be our only chance.
Turning to Hernandez, I put his arm over my shoulder again and helped him up. He was barely conscious. I took most of his weight as we stumbled toward the ambulance. Instead of going directly to the open back doors, I directed us around the front, where the angle of the vehicle would shield us from unwanted attention. At the back tire, I dropped Hernandez against the ambulance as gently as I could, then peeked around the back. I could see the fire much more clearly from here. The column of smoke had tripled in size as great flames raged around the main doors, like a monster trying to claw its way through a too-small opening. The fire had spread across half the building despite the streams of water the firefighters launched at it.
I told myself that was a good thing. The more the fire raged, the less attention anyone would spare for us.
I slipped around the door and quickly inventoried the supplies of the ambulance. Or I tried to—the back bay of the vehicle was packed with all kinds of medical paraphernalia. I climbed in and looked around, painfully aware of how exposed I was against the interior lights if anyone glanced this way. Toward the front I finally found what I was looking for: a bright yellow paramedic jacket. I slipped it on and zipped it halfway. The color was horribly eye-catching, and the reflective bands would make me visible even in relative darkness. But the long sleeves ended in elastic hems that hid my slave cuffs, and that’s what I needed most. I stuffed the pockets with a few other handfuls of supplies and grabbed a blanket, then jumped out. A glance at the crowd made me freeze.
There among the police and paramedics stood Nick Morgan. It was hard to make out the details between the orange flames and the red and blue flashers, but I thought I saw debris on his clothes and ash on his face. He must have been inside when the earthquake hit and the fire broke out. How much time had passed since he’d come to see me in the cell? An hour, maybe two, I guessed. He must have stayed to make sure he got a front-row seat to my execution.
As I watched, he scanned the building. I knew the moment he noticed the gap we’d escaped through. His eyes widened, then he pointed and shouted for a pair of officers to investigate. I slipped around the back door of the ambulance before Nick could turn his head a few more degrees and notice me.
Time to go.
I helped Hernandez up again and started limping up the street, away from the fire and the police and my dead master’s nephew. I glanced back a few times to keep the ambulance between us and the crowd. My muscles strained with the effort of hauling a barely conscious Hernandez. The tight spot between my shoulders where I imagined being shot at eased when we went around the first corner, but I didn’t let up. We had to put as much distance behind us as possible.
I pushed us for several blocks, streetlights illuminating most of the way. There were no deep cracks in the road or any buildings I glanced at, which seemed odd considering the damage to the police station from the earthquake. I half expected emergency responders to appear out of nowhere on their way to another damaged site, but no vehicles passed us. We were in the deepest hour of night, when even those who lived in the dark finally slept. It made our journey very quiet except for our own stumbling footsteps.
But I didn’t let the lack of noise lessen my vigilance, because the city was well-lit. Video billboards, street lamps, and security lighting ensured I could see our path—and anyone looking outside could see us. Especially in my bright yellow paramedic jacket with the reflective band across the front and back. I crossed streets and turned corners randomly, Hernandez shuffling alongside me as I tried to find a way out of the constant light. Escaping the holding cell and the crowd of law enforcement would be in vain if the wrong person saw us.
Finally, I turned us down an unlit alley between two tall buildings. We shuffled deeper, past the dumpster where light from the street lamps did not reach. I leaned Hernandez against the brick wall and lifted his arm from around my neck, my muscles sore and screaming. He slid to the ground before I could catch him. I pulled out the folded blanked and spread it over him, then slowly sat next to him, leaning my head back on the wall and closing my eyes.
I had never been so thoroughly exhausted in my life, not even when Morgan had harvested my magic at regular capacity five days in a row. I’d already been tired from delivering the flash drive on foot and the fight with the killer. Any rejuvenation I’d gotten from the bit of dozing in the cell had been wiped out between the magic-nullifying enchantment, the earthquake, and hauling Hernandez across downtown.
But I couldn’t afford to let myself sleep now. Hiding in a dark, quiet alley didn’t mean we were safe. I had to figure out what to do next.
The smartest
thing to do was leave Hernandez and disappear. I should go far, far away where I could eke out a life on the edges of human civilization, somewhere no one would care what I was or what the council thought I had done. It wouldn’t be easy. I had no documents to prove my identity, so basic things like travel or even finding work would always be risky. I’d spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder to see if I’d been followed, forced to wear long sleeves to hide my slave cuffs. But at least I’d be alive and free.
Would I be free, though? As long as I wore the slave cuffs, I was property. The council and the police would never stop looking for me. And once Morgan’s estate was settled and Nick received his inheritance, he would own me. What if he could summon me the way Morgan had, force me to use my own power to come back?
Something scuffed in the alley. My eyes snapped open and I sat forward, instantly alert. I held my breath, trying to listen for the sound again as I scanned what little of the alley I could see. Silence reigned, but my instincts said someone was watching. The darkness that moments ago seemed like protection now made me feel vulnerable.
“Who’s there?” I said. Even a soft voice sounded too loud in the pre-dawn stillness. “I know someone’s there.”
I glanced at Hernandez. I’d feel really foolish if the noise had been him adjusting position, grinning at me as I trembled in the dark. But his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.
The sound came again, like the rustle of clothing as someone moved. It seemed to come from my right, deeper into the alley. As I watched, the darkness moved, until a shape came close enough that some of the light from the street made it visible. It was a man, older I thought, with dirty hair and a full but unkempt beard. From what I could see, his clothes looked stained, disheveled, and well-worn, like he hadn’t changed clothes in a while. His eyes glittered under a hard brow as he stared at me.
“You’re not a paramedic,” he said, his voice low and gravelly.
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