A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(68)
Author: Kim Harrison

"They’ll find us," I said, as much for myself as for Winona, and I mentally marked where Jennifer slid the lab book away. I wanted it when I got out of this cage. The floor was cold, and I shifted uncomfortably.

"Doubt it," Eloy said to the ceiling. "You really don’t have any contact with the lines, do you?"

My brow furrowed, and I was silent for a moment. "Why?"

Getting up, Eloy went to talk to Gerald.

"Why?" I shouted, and Winona winced. Fear slid through me, and I turned to her. "Winona, you’re a witch. Can you see ley lines with your second sight?"

She nodded, catching her head before it snapped forward this time. "We’re underground," she said, looking scared.

I totally understood – you never knew what you’d see when you used your second sight underground – but I gave her hand a squeeze and she finally nodded. Closing her eyes, she seemed to relax as she brought up her second sight. Then she tensed. "Dere are two lines crossing not twenty feet from ‘ere," she said, her eyes opening.

I exhaled slowly, hopelessness soaking into me. Eloy had picked this place well. Two lines crossing so close would make it difficult for charms to find us. The searcher would have to be almost on top of us. Add to that the fact that they probably wouldn’t widen the search outside of Cincy’s city limits for a few days. We were on our own.

Eloy looked back at me, cocky and satisfied. He didn’t have to say a word.

Winona was looking at her hooves, unaware of how deep in the crapper we were, and I wasn’t going to tell her. "I always thought my feet were too big," she said, her voice raspy but her diction clearer. A heavy tear brimmed and fell, making a shiny line on her dark, almost leathery face.

I leaned over to give her a hug, feeling her changed bone structure. "It’s going to be all right," I lied. "I will do everything I can to get us out of here." That had been the truth, but it was just as true that we were in big, big trouble. We were on our own and pretty much helpless unless I could get the bracelet off safely.

I was starting to wonder why I had put it on in the first place.

Chapter Fifteen

The last of the peanut butter was sticking to my teeth, as it always did, and I took a swallow of the tepid water. It was hard with minerals; we were on a well. He wasn’t lying when he said that we were out of the city, I thought as I set the plastic glass down and pulled my knees to my chin. I’d been stuck in this cage for almost twenty-four hours, but there was a feeling in the air that I didn’t trust. I’d been watching Eloy to try to figure out what was up. He’d come in early this morning, grumpy and stiff, making me think he had spent the night outside on sentry detail.

Jennifer had left an hour ago wearing a pair of nursing scrubs and a doppelganger curse invoked with my blood. Chris had spent the morning getting twenty years of dust out of the workings of one of the older-looking machines, now glinting a dull silver. Gerald was on a bathroom break with Winona, serving as both her balance and jailer.

Winona was a good girl. She could use the bathroom any time she asked. They let me go only when both Eloy and Gerald were around, and Eloy was gone more often than not. Right now, he was fiddling with Gerald’s security cameras, trying to get them to pan. He was somewhere in the basement, visible through one of the monitors as he stretched and sweated. A light flashed on the panel, and Eloy grimaced, reaching around to try again.

Sucking on my teeth, I leaned back against the wall as I sat on the cold floor, a stinky sleeping bag the only thing between me and the cement, watching the subtle flow of emotions and feeling of expectancy. Everything had changed earlier this morning after a hushed, intense argument between Eloy and Chris. It had taken place out of my hearing and almost out of my sight, at the edges of the light. Eloy got his way in the end, though, whatever it was.

The snap of Chris carefully closing the box of her vials drew my attention, and I sighed. She had been counting them again. God, she was worse than Ivy.

Ivy, I thought, feeling my chest clench. By now she must be worried to the point of tearing someone’s throat out, but she and Jenks would find me – and get me out of this cage. I fingered my band of silver, thinking I’d been more than stupid about this. No wonder Trent thought I was brainless. He’d been trying to tell me, and I hadn’t listened. I guess I hadn’t watched the right movies to know that with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. My blood was power, and I had a responsibility to keep it safe – even if that meant I had to hurt someone in the short term.

I didn’t like it. But it was a moot point if I couldn’t get out of here and fix things, and my jaw clenched as I watched Eloy through one of the monitors, squinting as the camera panned back and forth. Nodding in satisfaction, the man walked out of the camera’s range. He flashed up on a second monitor before vanishing behind the new camera in turn.

"Hey, how about a bathroom break?" I said loudly. Chris had left a screwdriver on the counter after replacing the back of the machine, and I wanted it.

"Use the bucket," Chris said, not bothering to turn around.

"Winona didn’t have to use the bucket," I said, then looked at the monitor and the gray shape coming down the stairwell, one hand on the railing, one hand holding a shopping bag.

"Shut up, you stupid little chubi," Chris said, pushing back from her chair as if she’d been killing time up until now. Sure enough, she went to her cot and grabbed her thick, army-green coat, shrugging into it as she muttered under her breath.

"Bathroom?" I prompted, ignoring the slur.

Chris searched her pockets until she found a tissue and wiped her nose. "Hold it," she said as she threw it away. Not looking up, she yelled, "Gerald! Jenn’s back! Let’s get this over with!" Rolling her eyes, she turned to the monitors, now showing Eloy and Jennifer. He’d taken her shopping bag for her all polite like. The woman didn’t look like herself, being about twenty pounds heavier and just as many years older. It had to be her, though, seeing that Eloy was talking to her and the matronly seeming woman looked right up at the camera and waved.

I fidgeted, balling up my napkin and throwing it at the bucket. My blood had made the doppelganger curse work, and it bothered me, even though voluntarily giving them ten cc’s of blood had gotten me a much-needed trip to the bathroom last night. I was an unwilling demon, doling out wishes to an insane practitioner. At least Al could say no. I suppose I could say no, too, and pee in a corner. Maybe I should have. But then they just would have darted me.

"You think you’re part of this, but HAPA is going to kill you when they don’t need you anymore," I said, and Chris stiffened. "Why do you think Eloy is here? To keep you safe? They’re using you, and as soon as they don’t need you, you’re dead."