I need to stop thinking.
She put the wool down and leaned forward to guide her hair and as much of her head as she could into the bucket, then held her breath as she let the warmth of the water soak loose the caked blood. If only it would also soften her equally caked thoughts.
When the oxygen in her lungs ran low, memories of Dean’s hands around her throat pushed at the edges of her mind. She held her breath until her heartbeat quickened. When her lungs started to hurt, she gripped the edge of the bucket more tightly but stayed submerged. It wasn’t the same as being choked, but a flutter of fear sprang to life. This time she would harness it.
One, two, three… She counted to fifteen, struggling against the memories and the urge to pull her head free. Next time someone choked her, she wouldn’t panic.
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…
Her nails dug into the wood. She whimpered and bubbles escaped. Next time, she wouldn’t be reduced to crawling away like a pathetic bug, out of her mind with terror, barely grasping what was happening to her.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
She yanked her head out with a gasp. Water streamed down her face, and she coughed. Another gasp of air. She forced herself to look into the mirror. Her hair stuck to her skull in odd angles, and streams of water ran down her chest. Her eyes were intense again, hard and angry. Good. Anger was fuel. She would need it to make her escape—and she would have to escape, if not tonight, then as soon as she could ditch Dani somewhere.
The pain and hardness in her reflection’s smile chilled her.
“I hope you like to run, Reaper,” she told her reflection. “Because I’m going to dash.”
“Took your sweet time.” Of course it was Cody they’d gotten to wait for her.
Lynn made sure the candle balanced securely in her hand before she adjusted her grip on the wad of bloody clothes. “Bite me.” She felt recovered enough to stare him square in the eye. It was good to be clean, to wear clothes that were relatively clean. She could run her hand through her hair again without getting stuck in the tangles. Some of her sanity had returned with a good meal, a proper wash, and a revealing conversation with her own reflection.
He laughed, but his eyes remained cold. Since her confrontation with Kate, the thin layer of civility between them had been stripped away, leaving only mistrust. “Such a delicate flower.”
“Bite me.” She accentuated each word. I won’t have to deal with you much longer anyway.
He looked down at her with a mocking smirk and pushed away from the wall. “Come on, flower girl. Time for a nap.”
She bit her tongue and followed him.
When he stopped at a door, she stopped. “Mine?”
“Yeah. Sorry the view isn’t great.”
She squared her shoulders and pushed past him with as much bravery as she could muster. The view was, indeed, rather disappointing: it was a windowless room. Room was also somewhat of an overstatement. In ye olden days, it had probably been a supply closet. A rickety shelving unit lined the back wall, and she could identify some brooms, mops, and buckets in the light of her candle.
“I’ll need your knife now.”
She tried not to tense. “I’ll be needing it again in the morning anyway.” She made sure her expression was neutral and turned around.
“Yeah, I don’t really care. Either you give it up now, or I get it off your person.” He stood in the doorway, blocking her.
A little shiver coursed down her spine. She was suddenly very aware the room had only one exit and he controlled it.
She had options—tossing the candle at his face and making a run for it was the best one that came to mind—but that would give her absolutely no time to find Skeever or even find the exit before they would be upon her. She wasn’t sure where she was on the floor, and if she permanently burned someone, she’d better be damn sure she could get away. And she wasn’t.
Slowly, she reached down, slid the blade from her boot, and turned it around so she could hand him the hilt.
He took it. “Is that it?”
She nodded.
“Traveling light?”
“The bare minimum.”
He forced her to hold his gaze. He probably didn’t believe her, but it was true. She used to have more and even better weapons, but shit happened.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Sleep tight, flower girl.” He stepped back and pulled the door shut before Lynn could even move.
The lock clicked shut. “Get some sleep. Bright and early tomorrow.” He chuckled dryly.
Dread spread like burning wildfire, but she fought it. Of course they were going to lock her in. She picked up the candle and turned to the shelves. I don’t like not having a weapon, though. Maybe there was something on there that would help her. There were brooms and mops, a few buckets, some bottles, the contents of which had long evaporated, a few bars of now-dry and cracked soap, boxes of something powdery she didn’t bother to decipher the name of, and a bunch of other little knickknacks.
An idea for an improvised weapon formed slowly in her mind’s eye. A crude dagger, a dangerous one even to herself, but it was something. She picked up one of the bottles and turned it over in her hands as she waited for Cody’s footsteps to disappear down the hall. After wrapping the glass vessel in her bloody shirt, she mashed it. She waited with bated breath to see if anyone came for her, but after a minute or so, she dared to take a breath and uncovered the shards.
After careful inspection, she picked one that was about half an inch thick, the shape of a curved triangle. She wrapped the rest of the evidence of her activities in her shirt and stuffed the package behind some boxes on the lowest shelf.
Lynn used the shard to cut off a few strands of the mop head. They were coarse, and she could knot them together easily, even with slightly trembling hands. She ran the resulting string through the animal fat that had melted in the candle bowl and worked it into the fibers to make them more supple, less liable to break or tear once she began to work with them. Before the excess fat could harden up, she squeezed it out of the string and wiped her glistening hands on her pants.
Now came the tricky part. While the string dried, Lynn took the glass shard to the only metal thing in the room: the frame of the shelving unit. She turned the glass in her hands until she could decide on the cutting edge, then she began the tedious and sometimes painful work of dulling the other tips by grinding them over the sharpest edge of the unit’s leg. She worked low, right by the floor, to minimize the noise, but she jumped at each little sound. Every time the metal sang when she tried to go too fast or when something on the shelves rattled because of the force she put on the leg, she stopped and checked the door, waiting for Cody to barge in.
He never did.
It had to be past midnight when she was finally satisfied with her work. By the time she sat up, her back was stiff, one of her legs fast asleep, and she’d cut herself more times than she could count. At least all the cuts were shallow.
She gently stroked the glass dust off her hands and suppressed a groan as she straightened. Her fingers tingled because she’d gripped the glass so hard and so long. They refused to close around the shard. Come on already. Every second without some kind of weapon felt like an eternity. She sat up on her knees near the small flame and stretched and clenched her fingers to bring life back into them.