Walking alongside Carlos was relaxing, in a manner of speaking. Zoe could let her guard down around him. She found him to be the most normal resident of the prison; he wasn’t a demon or a diabolist and he wasn’t Genoa.
Ylva’s mess hall had every kind of food imaginable, and plenty Zoe never thought to imagine. It looked good and smelled great, but it was a bit too much. Normally, she stuck with something simple. Peanut butter and jelly had never steered her wrong so far.
Today, Zoe had an itch for something more. Hunger had a funny way of asserting itself when faced with food after not eating for a day.
Going around the table, Zoe loaded up potatoes, salad, some kind of purple meat–it tasted good, but she’d been afraid to ask what it was.
She started over towards the table covered in fountains pouring all sorts of drinks.
Carlos was behind her, gathering up food for himself.
Someone in a black suit stood against the table with a goblet in hand.
Zoe dropped her cane and her plate of food in the rush to draw her dagger only to freeze as the man turned to face her.
“What? You forget me already?”
The dagger fell to the floor with a loud clatter, joining the plate and cane.
Zoe put one foot in front of the other. And soon she was across the floor. Her arms snaked around him as she wrapped him in a hug.
There were a few gentle pats on Zoe’s back as he tried to squirm out of her arms.
Somewhere in the background, Carlos said, “forgot to mention, there was someone here asking after you.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate this,” Wayne said, “but my nerves are still itching.”
Zoe released him. “I’m sorry. It was–I was going to pick you up. I forgot about–There’s just been so much going on.”
“So I gather,” he said with a glance around the dining hall. “You’ve been eating all this fancy food while I’ve been gone?”
“More or less,” Zoe said with a genuine smile. “You’re looking… good. When Arachne described you as, what was it? Oh yes, ‘a charbroiled steak with emphasis on the char’, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Definitely not hair.”
Wayne ran a hand over his short, buzz cut hair with a slight frown.
His skin really wasn’t bad at all. There were some red scars covering almost the entire right side of his face, but they weren’t especially pronounced. His ear was gone on that side of his head. Merely a hole into his skull.
“What can I say,” he said after letting her look, “the elves know their medicine. I’ll have to send my doctor a bucket of flowers.”
Zoe laughed. A real, honest laugh.
She cut herself off with an awkward glance towards Carlos.
“Oh, don’t let me interrupt your reunion,” he said with a small smile. “In fact, I think I’ll go eat with the gargoyles. I think they like having someone around.”
Zoe and Wayne watched him wander out of the dining hall.
“Gargoyles?” Wayne asked.
“Later,” Zoe said. “I’ll show you around. Before that, when did you get back?”
“Stopped by Brakket this afternoon. Talked to the dean. Found out that you went and got a substitute and weren’t in your apartment.”
“I can’t teach right now. It’s hurting the kids for a failure on my part. I’m too… busy. Too worried about Eva, Juliana, and Shalise.”
“I caught a brief summary from Turner. Fill me in?”
“Let me just get some food and we’ll talk while I eat.”
Zoe turned and picked her dagger and cane off the floor. She left the plate and food, opting instead to get a clean plate and fresh food.
Messes had a habit of vanishing in Ylva’s domain. If the food wasn’t gone by the time she finished eating, she’d clean it up. The floor was probably clean enough to eat off of for that reason, but there was no reason to take the chance when new food just popped up on the table.
After finding a table, Zoe filled Wayne in on everything that had gone on since his hospitalization, going through the aftermath of the attack on her home, Ylva living in her apartment as a trap, the mass attack on both Brakket and the prison.
And on her missing and injured students.
“Sawyer? That’s the necromancer that originally kidnapped Spencer?”
“I didn’t see him, but that was the last word I saw Eva spell out.”
Wayne hummed as he drank from his goblet. “And the troublemaker has been unconscious since?”
“I’m working on fixing that, haven’t had much progress. The dagger that cursed her in the first place is a horrible thing. I’ll show you later on.
“Enough about me for the moment. You look good, but how is it really? Anything… problematic?”
“Nothing debilitating.” He flexed his hand on top of their table. “My hands, neck, and face are sensitive. It is supposed to subside eventually.”
“And your cane?”
“Just in case,” Wayne said. “I noticed you had one as well. None of your story explained why.”
“I don’t need it so much anymore. A nun got me in the chest and all down one leg with that lightning of theirs.”
“Nasty stuff. Got hit in both legs last year.”
“When–Oh, when Sister Cross attacked Eva.” Zoe leaned back in her chair as she thought back. “You never went around with a cane or anything. I might have needed a wheelchair for a few weeks had I been hit in both legs.”
“It was painful for a few days. I think she was going easy on me.” He muttered something under his breath about ‘being taken lightly.’ “Took a day or two before I could heal no matter what I tried.”
“A day or two? Ha. It’s been two weeks and my injuries are still breaking down healing attempts. Taken lightly indeed.”
“Breaking down?”
At Wayne’s perplexed look, Zoe started to explain. “The nuns’ lightning has a very interesting property in that–”
Wait.
Zoe slid her chair back and half stumbled to her feet.
“Zoe?” Wayne rose from his own seat and put his hand on her arm. “Are you–”
“Quiet for a moment. I need to think.”
Could it be that easy? How could she have missed it before.
“I need to find Ylva,” Zoe said as she ran from the room, foregoing her cane entirely.
“Zoe, wait!”
Wayne started hobbling after her, but she barely paid him any attention.
Outside the dining room, Zoe stopped and looked around. Ylva wasn’t sitting on her throne. She eyed the alcoves. What were the most likely room Ylva would be in? The torture chamber? The prison? The bath?
Zoe couldn’t recall her ever entering the bath, but that didn’t mean she never went.
She started off with the prison. It was the most important room at the moment, after all. Though, stopping to think about it, she wasn’t entirely certain that their guest had spent any time inside after the first day. At least, Zoe hadn’t seen her leave the torture chamber.
Still, no harm in checking.
Ylva’s prison was almost an exact replica of the other cell houses found outside. It might have even been the original space for cell house two that Ylva had decided to shove off to the side.
The barred windows let in what appeared to be real sunlight, though they did not look out into the real world. On the other side of the glass was a massive beach.
A very wrong beach.
All of the sand had a dark-gray hue to it. The sunlight, while normal looking inside the prison, did not warm the solid gray sand or the black water. It was just a white orb hanging in the sky like some featureless moon.
One of the other archways connected to the beach, but all of the mortals had been forbidden from entering without Ylva’s explicit permission.
But, Zoe wasn’t here for the view.
She ran up and down each of the three floors. No Ylva.
Worse, no prisoner.
Zoe turned to head back down the stairs.
Wayne was hobbling up those stairs with his cane, panting for breath. “You’re sure in a rush,” he said between breaths.