Tears burned Annabella’s eyes; she didn’t want to go. Terror gripped her, white and cold. A part of her wanted to hide behind Custo or her mother, like a child. But it was her turn to take care of them. To do what was necessary.
The wolf’s growl grew louder, rolling toward the strike of his bark.
Hot, wet drops ran down Annabella’s cheeks. There was no need to dance; a medium of transport was right there. All that was required was a shift of perception, a mental blurring of reality and fantasy, and the trees took on depth, heady scent, texture. Shadow was always that close.
For Mom. Custo. And everyone else.
Annabella laid her shaking hand gently on the canvas, and yearned for passage. The gift for magic opened inside her, thrilling in her blood as it raced over her body.
An impulse glimmered bright in her chest, and she allowed it to propel her forward. The wolf was panting at her side. One moment she was at Segue, the next she was…
Custo leaned back in his chair and shook his head at Dr. Powell. “Gillian, you’re not telling the truth, not the whole truth. We have proof that you contacted someone outside of Segue.”
He wasn’t interested in her verbal answers; his concentration was fixed on the mental scramble of the doctor’s mind, which like her allegiance to the wraiths was confusing and backward.
He can’t know about…I was so careful…
He was not letting her go until he’d wrenched every last morsel from her mind. But damn, it felt good to sit in the same room with this woman and know her for what she was. The informant, the elusive insider. For her, he’d come back to mortality.
Custo leaned forward again, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped so as not to shake the answers out of the woman. “Look, Adam trusts you with Talia. He’ll understand if you were manipulated or coerced into relaying information.” That was a lie. Custo was pretty sure Adam intended to see Dr. Gillian Powell locked up for the rest of her miserable life. He might even be tempted to throw one of those stinking wraiths a doctor bone. Give ‘em both what they want.
Dr. Powell’s lips pressed together, holding her secrets inside.
“How did you contact the wraiths?”
Talia’s phone. “I just said I have never been in contact with the wraiths.”
Adam would have to search Talia’s phone records. “What do you stand to gain?”
The last cup of wraith immortality. Don’t want to die. Came too close once. “I’ve answered that already. I refuse to answer again. I want a lawyer.”
Immortality? Was that still possible?
Adam had told him about the demon bile that granted living death in the guise of perpetually renewing life, a perversion of the Holy Grail. Seemed like there was still some left, scraped off the floor of the ship the Styx. Anyone would be tempted; who wouldn’t want to be young, to live forever? Apparently, Spencer had gotten to her at Segue, charmed her. Her brush with death had done the rest. She seemed to have overlooked how ugly the reality of the wraith alternative was.
“We’re almost done here,” Custo said. “I know this is difficult, but these are all questions I must ask. Standard. I interrogated a unit of soldiers just this morning.”
She squirmed in her seat.
“What do the wraiths want?”
Dr. Powell examined her nails—Talia’s babies. The wraiths want Talia’s babies—then brought her gaze up with an innocent little no-idea shrug.
Custo turned his head to the side to hide his revulsion. The woman was a menace, worse than the wraiths, because as a person she should still have a shred of humanity. Talia’s babies were bound to be special, like Talia was, but to prey on infants was beyond obscene. To facilitate their capture was no less reprehensible. At least now the threat to Talia and her unborn children was revealed.
Custo gave the doctor a half smile. “When was the last time you contacted the wraiths?”
Yesterday. Tower location. Had to tell wraiths. But she said, “I have never initiated any kind of contact with the wraiths.”
Custo went very still, a mercury-cold fear creeping up his spine. “And why did you inform them about the tower?”
Dr. Powell set her jaw and folded her arms, locking herself down. Her eyes were full of suspicion.
Right. She hadn’t spoken that last part. He’d just screwed up. Shit.
Custo scrubbed his scalp to get the blood flowing. He needed to think, find a way to recoup. Probably have to double back to other topics and approach from…
An alarm sounded, deafening and painful as it echoed off the concrete.
Custo’s concentration broke. His gaze flew to the observation window, though he couldn’t see through that way. Then he sought Adam’s mind to find out what had happened.
But Adam wasn’t in the observation booth. He was outside of the holding area, thinking hard, Annabella. Gone. Annabella. Gone.
Custo lurched off his chair, pitching himself toward the open door. He scrambled around the corner, and when he hit the main corridor, ran.
How could he have missed Annabella leaving? There’d been no shouts of alarm, no sounds of a fight. Those would’ve attracted his attention. Had she been overpowered? He’d been too distracted by the interrogation, the only thing, the only person, that could have absorbed him to the degree that he might disregard the rest of the world for a moment. One lousy moment.
He passed a soldier and shouted, “Dr. Powell. Hold her,” and kept running.
Each footfall sounded, anna, anna, anna, anna, in time with his laboring heart.
Custo reached ahead to Adam’s mind so he would be prepared to face the situation. Adam was near unintelligible, reminding himself that a man did not hit a woman.
Custo understood why when he entered the great cavern and found Adam arguing with Zoe. The yellow lift was lowering, a unit of armed soldiers responding to the alarm.
“You say the wolf was with her?” Adam asked, voice harsh.
Zoe twirled her hair around a finger. “Yep.”
“But you won’t say where they went?”
“Nope.”
Adam’s voice rose, sharp with anger. “Why? Annabella’s life is in danger.”
“Ya know, I don’t think I like your tone,” Zoe said while she closely examined the ends of her hair.
Custo wanted to strike her, too, but he clenched his hands and forced himself to gentleness. “Please. Annabella is everything to me. Tell me where she went.”
Zoe heaved a sigh. “What time is it?”
Adam answered a precise, “Seven fourteen.”
“I guess that’s close enough,” Zoe said. She looked at Custo, but pointed to a gray door. “She’s in there.”
Of course it was coded. Custo fought frustration while Adam tapped in a number.
The door opened. The light was on, the room packed with crates and miscellaneous storage, but empty of Annabella and the wolf.
In front of him, Kathleen’s paintings were alive, the Shadowlands vibrant, potent in every exposed canvas. The largest one depicted the dark forest, a hollow of undiluted danger throbbing with power. Like Shadow, the trees were shifting, changeable, the place where every uncertain traveler lost his north and disappeared.
At least she was with the wolf and not lost alone in the forest. Bitter, though, to hold on to him for hope of her safety.
Custo turned quickly to Adam. “The wraiths want Talia’s babies, but I wasn’t able to find out why. I do know that Dr. Powell told the wraiths about the tower. You have to warn Luca.”
Adam’s eyes cooled, his jaw flexed, but he gave a short nod. “Go get your girl.”