He shook his head again.
“Are the enchantments turned off?”
A short nod.
“You’d better not be lying.” The threat in my voice wasn’t entirely feigned for his benefit. He was feeling awfully heavy by then, and I was short on patience.
I walked through the door. There was no puzzle.
Serena’s room was just as we’d left it. Her rocking chair was still against the wall. I could tie the boy to that, but I still needed to find something to tie him with.
There were three doors, apart from the one I’d come in. I remembered Cooper trying one or two of them before he found the way out last time. They hadn’t been locked.
I chose one at random and went through into the next room. It wasn’t easy feeling around for light switches and holding Harry at the same time, but eventually I found one on the wall and flipped it with my shoulder.
Then wished I hadn’t. The room contained nothing but a bloodstained wooden chair, positioned over a drain in the equally discolored stone floor.
But even as I recoiled in disgust, my mind was working. The chair was equipped with heavy leather straps.
I bit my lip. Could I really strap this poor kid down and leave him in this awful room? Was that not going too far? It would be terrifying for him, surely. And I already knew that Harry hated the basement.
But he had been about to betray me, after all.
Betray me? He’s a feeder. The real betrayal was in helping me before.
And why had he done that? Helping us get rid of the witch who terrified him was one thing, but why had he helped us escape the last time, after Cooper? Especially when he seemed to want me to get caught and killed this time?
The boy with the red glasses is nice.
Not anymore, it seemed. I wished he would talk to me and explain this sudden change of heart.
“Harry, were you punished the last time? After we left?”
No answer.
“Why are you so angry?”
Silence.
“Okay, then. I’m going to have to strap you to this chair. Like I said before, it’s only temporary.”
Don’t hurt him.
Guilt turned my stomach. I’d promised Max.
Don’t hurt him.
I wouldn’t. I wasn’t, really. And besides, I didn’t have a lot of options.
Harry struggled when I put him in the chair, and yelled a few times, including some words that an eight-year-old kid had no business knowing. I guessed I would get a definitive answer on whether anyone could hear him down there. There seemed to be no point in gagging him anymore.
He managed to slap my face once, and bit me twice, but eventually I got him buckled in. At least I wasn’t carrying him anymore. I was breathing heavily by then, and my arms and shoulders burned.
“I won’t be long,” I said. “And I’ll call your father as soon as I’m out of here safely.”
He gave me a look of pure hatred, then looked resolutely away. I pretended not to see that his eyes were filling with tears.
It will have a price. I wonder whether you’ll be willing to pay it.
Serena’s words to me, in this very basement. Apparently the price would be my kindness, and the unquestioned assumption that I would never hurt a child.
And then of course there’s Cooper.
His memory shored up my resolve. Harry would have a hard hour or so, but that was nothing compared to what my side had lost. “You’ll be fine, kid,” I said, and left him there.
But I hesitated in Serena’s room, a sudden thought occurring to me.
“What was he doing in the basement?” I asked out loud.
My heartbeat quickened. What if he was lying?
What if they did have a prisoner?
It’s not like I went off course on purpose. I’m down here already. I have to look. I have to see.
I tried one of the other doors, but it was only a closet—containing mainly weapons. I helped myself to a small but lethal-looking knife to go with the gun (borrowed from Arabella) that I already carried.
There was one more door in Serena’s room that I hadn’t tried yet. I found it led to a hallway, with four more doors off that. None of these ones were locked.
A voice in my head scolded me about the mission, and giving Lydia my word. I ignored it, and began to methodically search the basement.
It was a dungeon and a madhouse rolled into one, a warren of interconnected rooms full of various horrors. Several times I came through a door to find I’d gone in a circle and was back where I started. I was lucky I didn’t get hopelessly lost.
There were laboratories and storage closets, rooms set up for magical rituals and rooms set up for torture. I found terrariums that housed tarantulas and snakes, medical equipment, weapons, books, jars and pots and tools.
What I did not find was another living soul.
By the time I’d gone into every room I could, I was fighting not only tears but an invisible vice that threatened to squeeze my chest until my ribs cracked and my heart burst.
Cooper isn’t here.
Cooper is really dead.
But that didn’t have to be true. There were still rooms I hadn’t been in. Maybe I could find a way to pick the locks, or if I searched long enough, maybe I would find some keys, or even a hatchet, hadn’t I seen a hatchet…
A hatchet? Listen to yourself.
And that was when I finally listened to that scolding voice in my head, and realized just how far off course I’d gone.
What am I doing down here?
I’d assured Lydia that I was coming here for the seeds, and only the seeds. Not for Cooper. Not to chase a ghost, as she’d put it.
Was that true? Had it ever been true?
I’d lied to her, because I’d been lying to myself. Some part of me had been sure I would find him here. Find him and rescue him—the way he had come here to rescue me—and bring him home. And then, finally, everything would be okay again.
Except it wasn’t okay.
Cooper is really dead. That wasn’t an illusion in the maze. That was really his body, and he’s really dead.
I didn’t know whether that was true or not. Maybe I would never know. Maybe I would always doubt it, no matter how much evidence I was presented with.
But for the moment, none of that mattered.
I’m not here for Cooper.
That hopeful part of me, the part that was there for Cooper, needed to be shut down once and for all. I had a mission. I’d given my word.
I couldn’t waste my one chance wandering this basement endlessly, until someone finally came and found me trying to break through a door with a hatchet.
I’m not here to chase a ghost.
In the end, Cooper wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life for the seeds. But he would have readily sacrificed his own. Did I have the strength to let him?
Did I have the strength to let this go?
I have to.
I left hope behind, and went to get what I came for.
All was quiet when I emerged from the basement. There were two other doors in the entry room, and Cooper had never said which one led to Wick’s office. I eased open the one closest to me—thankfully the house was well maintained, and the door didn’t creak—and peered through the crack.
I saw a stretch of hallway, but couldn’t make out what was at the end of it.
There was nothing for it but to try. I’d chosen soft-soled shoes that morning, and only hoped they would serve me well as I crept along the wall, pausing every so often to listen.
The hall ended in a corner. I stopped and inched my face closer and closer to the edge, until I could see the room beyond.
Two steps led down to a vast kitchen.
I’d chosen the wrong door, then. I couldn’t imagine that the way to Cillian’s private office would take him through what tended to be one of the busiest rooms in any house.
I started to go back the way I came, until a most unwelcome sound froze me in my tracks.
>
“…the miller and his merry old wife, she cut off their tails and then licked the knife.”
Jeeves. Of course it was.
Balls, balls, balls.
Should I keep going and hope I get to the door before he happens to glance into this hallway?
Or should I stay still, in case he hears even the quietest shuffle of my feet?
I went with the first option, but paused again when Jeeves stopped singing. I heard something peculiar coming from the kitchen.
Is that sniffing?
It seemed so. It sounded like Jeeves was walking around the room, sniffing furiously, as if trying to find the source of a smell.
I stayed still, and waited.
What will I do if he comes into this hallway? I hardly think I can carry him down to the basement.
I was suddenly conscious of the weight of the pistol in the inside pocket of my coat. I was a lousy shot; there was absolutely no reason to think I would even have the skill to kill Jeeves, if I got the opportunity.
And it was an opportunity I was supposed to be avoiding at all costs. No encounters, no confrontations, that was the goal. In and out before anyone ever realized I was there. I’d already failed once on that score; Harry knew.
But Harry had been easily neutralized. The man who had supposedly killed the nearly invincible Cooper Blackwood would be an entirely different matter.
He has long teeth. And they’re sharp.
No, Jeeves was a challenge I very much wanted to avoid, if I wanted to get the seeds and get back home safely.
So why did I feel such a curious thrill at the thought of him coming around that corner?
If he just happened upon me, if the challenge proved unavoidable, well…
Then I’d just have to kill him, wouldn’t I?
Luckily, I was not to be confronted with that temptation. The sniffing stopped. The singing began anew, and then faded away.
My stomach was in knots, but on the bright side, at least now I knew which part of the house Jeeves was in. I made my way back to the entry room, then went through the one door I’d not yet tried.
A shorter hall this time, a set of stairs going up, and then a door. This had to be it.
Cooper hadn’t mentioned an alarm on this door, but I looked around for a sensor anyway, just to be sure. Then I turned the knob, half expecting it to be locked and wondering what I would do if it was.
Go back for that hatchet, maybe?
But it wasn’t locked. I walked right into Cillian Wick’s office, and closed the door quietly behind me.
For a few seconds I just stood there, listening. There was no sound of footsteps. No sniffing or singing. No sign of the long-toothed butler, or anyone else.
Only when I felt relatively safe—as safe as I could be in that place—did I turn to examine the room. And the room was, in a word, boring. There was a computer on a desk facing the door, a nice chair, two bookshelves that held, predictably, books, and a smaller table with a printer and a neat stack of paper. I looked at the ceiling for cameras, but found none. It was an ordinary office.
Except for the single, narrow door on the opposite side of the room from where I’d come in. A small sensor was nestled above it, a soft dove gray to blend in with the paint on the walls. A single red light the size of a pinhead was the only thing I saw on the smooth plastic surface. It was so unobtrusive, I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking for it.
Okay, Cillian, I know you love a secret panel. So where is it?
The walls were bare, without a single picture hung anywhere. I checked the baseboards and the hardwood floorboards around the door. I found no grooves I could work a thumb into, nothing out of the ordinary.
I moved on to the molding around the door, sliding my fingers over it carefully, not knowing what might trigger that alarm. I kept glancing at the sensor; the light stayed a steady red.
Finally I found it, behind a rosette at the top of the molding. The wood popped out, and behind it was a small keypad.
It was almost too high for me to reach. Accidentally hitting the wrong key would be all too easy here.
And which keys were the right ones? Which birthday for this door?
I’ve come so far now. I’m so close.
It sure would be a shame to set off this alarm and have to run out of here empty-handed.
But as with the outer door, there was nothing to do but give it my best guess. My instinct had been right the first time. I had to trust it now.
Talon, the fiercest of the Wick children. Surely he was the best choice for guarding one’s most valuable treasure.
Holding my breath, I tapped in Talon’s date of birth.
The light on the sensor changed from red to green.
I opened the door to what appeared to be a normal closet, filled with neatly organized office supplies. I reached in and touched one of the shelves. It was solid. I picked up a pen and put it in my pocket. It seemed real enough.
There was just enough room for me to step inside and, barely, close myself in. For a second there was only darkness, and I felt silly.
Did I go through all this just to steal a pen?
Then my head swam, and the shelf I was leaning against was suddenly gone. I fell on something cold and soft.
There was hazy light, just enough to see a few feet in front of me. I was sitting in snow. When I turned to look, the door was gone. I was facing dim, dead air.
Okay, what’ll it be this time? Snakes? Spiders? Scorpions?
I stood, chose a direction at random, and took a few steps, ready to meet whatever the puzzle wanted to throw my way.
But it wasn’t anything so innocuous as critters, this time. That illusion had been a simple one, unleashing things most people were afraid of on anyone who encountered it.
This one was, apparently, a bit more complex. This one could read minds.
It could show you the one thing it knew would stop you dead. Or the one person.
As I stepped forward, sunlight seemed to rise around me. It got brighter and brighter—too bright, so bright that the light reflecting off the snow was almost blinding—until I saw that I was in the hedge maze again.
And there, straight ahead of me with his back to a dead end in the hedge, was Cooper.
It’s an illusion. He’s not real.
I knew that, of course. But my steps quickened anyway. My arms were widening of their own accord, ready to be thrown around him.
I stopped short when I noticed a few things. One was the bullet wound in his forehead, just above his left eye. Another was the cruel-looking, serrated hunting knife in his right hand.
And the last thing was the look of deepest loathing on his face.
“Cooper!” I gasped his name without meaning to.
He’s not real. None of this is real.
Make him go away, and go find the seeds.
The trouble with that was, I didn’t really want him to go away. At least, not badly enough for my will to be stronger than the illusion.
Some treacherous part of me was convinced that even a Cooper who was snarling with rage and about to attack me at any moment was better than no Cooper at all.
But he’s not real.
Maybe an illusory Cooper was better than no Cooper at all, too.
He sprang forward with that unnatural speed he often seemed to have when fighting an enemy.
I am his enemy.
And then I ducked to avoid the knife as he attacked.
It goes without saying that I was no match for Cooper Blackwood in a fight. I’m not even sure how hard I really tried to defend myself. He remained silent the entire time, but I saw the accusation in his face, and it matched the accusation in my heart.
He died for me.
It’s my fault.
I knew I deserved whatever I got.
I didn’t try to count how many times he stabbed me, how many times I wailed in pain. I kept trying to tell myself that the injuries weren’t real, but the agony felt real enou
gh. Within seconds I was covered in blood, the knife ripping in and out of my flesh, Cooper’s eyes somehow flat and dead and yet full of hatred all at the same time.
My only comfort was that at the rate he was going, surely it couldn’t last long. I would be dead soon.
But a small voice in my head, whatever shred of survival instinct remained to me, kept insisting this was not acceptable. That I should keep fighting off the illusion, that I should throw it off entirely.
It’s just a trick.
It’s just a trick—
The thought brought me up short, crouched in the snow with my arms over my head, gasping. Cooper was still on me, his breath hot in my ear, his knife slicing into the back of my neck.
“No, it isn’t!” I rasped.
Cooper, his anger, the conflict, the emotion. This wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t an illusion. Or at least, it wasn’t only those things.
I was suddenly furious with myself for not coming to this conclusion sooner. Not just today, but weeks ago, in the basement, the first time we’d been here. Or maybe months ago, the first time I’d come in contact with a Wick illusion, at the vineyard at Cayuga Lake.
This was a story.
How many times had I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t direct my powers the way the Wicks seemed to be able to, that I had no talent for telekinesis? But here was a talent we might very well share: we were all storytellers.
After all, what was a story, but an illusion spun by the will of its creator? One kind of magic was very similar to the other.
And with that realization, I snapped into focus at last.
I took a moment to gather my will. As before, I felt the blank emptiness of the compound, giving me nothing, trying to dampen the energy I sent outward.
Oh no you don’t. You can’t play dead with me this time. You will yield this puzzle to me.
Then I stood. I had no wounds, no pain. Cooper dropped his knife and put his hands around my throat. I ignored the pressure on my windpipe, and deliberately, slowly, took a deep breath, even as he squeezed.
He’s not hurting me. He loves me.
As my lungs filled with air, the bullet wound in Cooper’s forehead began to close, just the way I’d seen so many wounds in the real Cooper’s body close. His face began to lose its deathly pallor.
Witch Bound (Devilborn Book 3) Page 19