“And yet you people lost track of us for two generations. That sounds like a pretty good chance to me.”
“It was always borrowed time.” He leaned in and grasped my chin, turning my head so that he could study my profile. “You’ve got the Price blood in you, too. Oh, won’t those stuffed shirts be horrified to realize that their little disappearing scion really did marry the American Healy girl? You get to disappoint both sides of your heritage before you die, love. There’s people who’d love the chance to horrify their families like that.”
He was standing close to watch me squirm. My left leg was free. And I’m a trained salsa dancer.
My leg swept upward at a speed that would have seemed superhuman to anyone who’d never watched competition ballroom dance, catching the man from the Covenant squarely between the legs. The squishing feeling of his scrotum compressing against my knee was more satisfying than it probably should have been, but I didn’t worry about it much. When someone chains me up and tries bargain bin intimidation tactics on me, I figure I’m allowed to take a little pleasure in their pain.
“Ack,” said the man from the Covenant, his eyes going wide and glassy. His mouth dropped open as his hand fell away from my chin, letting me pull my head out of his grasp.
“Is that so?” I asked, dropping my leg slightly before ramming it back up into his balls.
His answer this time was much less coherent, and substantially higher in pitch.
“Huh. Think that’s something I can discuss with my long-lost family?” I dropped my leg, preparing for a third hit. You know what they say—third time’s the charm.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a male voice.
I froze, leg still held straight out between the Irishman’s legs, and looked toward the door. The older of the two men from the Covenant was standing there, regarding me contemplatively. There was something that looked almost like sympathy in his eyes.
“It’s just that Peter doesn’t care for having pretty girls smash his testicles, and while two hits you might be able to write off as having been scared and disoriented, three sort of implies premeditation.” The man—Robert, by process of elimination—had a Welsh accent, and was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, hiding the color of his eyes. His hair was a nondescript shade of sandy blond, slowly fading into gray. I could easily have lost sight of him in a crowd. That just made him more unnerving. Covenant representatives should be easy to spot, and easier to avoid.
I let my foot drop to the floor.
“Thank you.” Robert walked over to Peter, putting his hands on the other man’s shoulders and pulling him backward. Peter went willingly, dropping his hands to cup his crotch as he moved.
“Ack,” he said.
“I think that’s the right response, mate, but you shouldn’t have been harassing the lady. You know she’s Maggie’s kin, and Maggie requested quite properly and deferentially that I not allow you to mess about with her. She understands chain of command.” Robert led Peter to the wall, where he let him go. Peter promptly leaned against it, folding forward as he continued to clutch his wounded genitals. “Sorry about all this, miss . . . ?”
It was a leading question, designed to give him my name. I had to admire that, even as I had to question the wisdom of a good cop/bad cop routine that put the bad cop in a position where he needed to take a nut-shot. “Nice try,” I said. “I appreciate you stopping me from making an enemy out of an enemy. But I’m not going to tell you my name.”
“Your last name is ‘Price,’ like your paternal grandfather; your first name starts with the letter ‘V,’ which rather limits the possibilities, since there aren’t that many names for women that start at that end of the alphabet.” I must have stiffened. Robert smiled a little. “We all have our training. You give yourself away every time you open your mouth, every time you move. I’ll sort you out from top to bottom while you still think you’re restricting yourself to noncommittal answers and sassing back. I’m sorry about that.”
“If you’re sorry, don’t do it,” I said. “Unlock these chains and let me the hell out of here.”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do that. The Covenant has a need for your services, Miss Price, and your family took an oath many generations ago to answer when they were called upon. You may not uphold your oath willingly, but you will uphold it. Now please. This would be so much easier if you worked with us, rather than against us.”
“I’m going to kill her,” said Peter. He still sounded strained, but at least he was managing words now, and sentences. I probably hadn’t done any permanent damage. He turned a glare on me. “I’m going to kill you.”
“I heard you the first time,” I said dismissively, and looked back to Robert. “You’re not going to win. You can intimidate me as much as you want, but you’re not going to win.”
“I’m sorry,” said Robert. “We already have.”
He supported Peter with one arm as he led the other man out of the room, and closed the door behind them. Once again, the sound of the lock engaging came from the wrong wall, like they had some sort of speaker set up just to disorient me. I waited for the click, and then forced myself to mentally replay the first verse and chorus of Lady Gaga’s “Lovegame”—roughly thirty seconds of music. When that was done, I allowed myself to glance up, and smile.
The lights were still on.
Don’t get me wrong: I can get a lot done in total darkness. Blind fighting is a part of the standard training package where I come from, and there was a whole summer where I wasn’t allowed to eat any meal I couldn’t prepare blindfolded. (Lessons from that summer included “never let Verity make spaghetti with a blindfold on” and “never eat anything Antimony prepares with a blindfold on.” How she got the blessed cedar ash into the oatmeal is something the world may never know.) But at the end of the day, I prefer working in the light, and it’s hard to case a room that you can’t see.
Robert Bullard said that I was giving myself away with every word I said—or didn’t say. Fine. This room was doing the same thing, and I didn’t even need to ask it questions. All I needed was the luxury to look around.
For one thing, the walls were matte white, with no staining or discoloration of any sort. My chains weren’t bolted to anything that I could see; they passed through holes cut into the wood. That, combined with how little leverage I had, told me I was in a false room, probably constructed in the middle of something much larger. Each wall was about five feet long, giving my captors room to move, but not giving me much opportunity to get away.
I hadn’t been able to see much through the open door when Peter and Robert arrived, but what I’d been able to see gave me the impression of industrial gray. Either my false room was in a shipping container, or we were in some sort of unused factory or warehouse. I’d never actually been shipped anywhere—that was one exciting life opportunity I’d worked hard to avoid—but I was reasonably sure that I would have been able to feel the pull-and-roll of the tides moving the ship if we’d been at sea. So no matter which option turned out to be the right one, we were staying in one place.
For now. If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that complacency is a killer. I had to assume that they’d be moving me at any moment, and putting me in a false room opened the potential for moving my surroundings with me. I needed to get these chains undone. But how? Most of the common cons wouldn’t work on these people; they were the ones who taught them to my family in the first place. If I faked a stomach ache, they’d force charcoal and Pepto-Bismol down my throat until I stopped. If I faked demonic possession, they’d just dump holy water over my head. And so on, and so on. Getting them to untie me was going to take something totally new and original, something they’d never seen before.