Chapter 32

Chapter Thirty-Two

PIPER

Lost in a tangle of conflicting thoughts and emotions, Piper followed her mother back into the large room with the table of papers and all the other Gaians. Her head was bursting, her heart aching. Ash’s betrayal with the Sahar hardly seemed like anything in light of the revelation that her mother was alive.

The room was busier than when Piper had arrived. Haemons hurried in every direction, some packing the last of the papers on the table, others carrying boxes. Their level of haste had noticeably increased while Piper and Mona had been having their little heart-to-heart.

“Travis!” Mona intercepted a haemon only a little older than Piper with sandy blond hair. “I have a task for you.”

She drew him several steps away from Piper to deliver rapid instructions in a low voice. He nodded along, his gaze sweeping curiously over Piper. Mona pulled a set of keys from her pocket and handed them to him.

“Remember,” she told Piper. “Be quick. We’ll be moving Quinn and the other one soon.”

The other one?

“Come on.” Travis waved for Piper to follow him. “This way.”

With a last searching look at her mother, Piper followed Travis out into the entryway. They passed two rooms with broken doors and no furniture before he led her to a narrow staircase. The wooden steps creaked alarmingly, and the temperature dropped as they descended.

At the bottom, a flickering lightbulb illuminated a dirty concrete floor with a few rotting pieces of carpet thrown across it. A mess of walls and storage shelves that looked like they’d been poorly constructed before being left to rot for a few decades created a maze of clutter. The dank smell of mold hung in the air.

“Who’s ‘the other one’ my mom mentioned?” Piper asked.

Travis shrugged. “A daemon.”

“One of the daemons I arrived with?”

“No.”

“Why do you have a daemon prisoner?”

With another unhelpful shrug, Travis turned a sharp corner. Two rough wooden doors interrupted a water-stained wall, both featuring shiny metal padlocks that were a lot newer than anything else in this house.

Piper clenched her hands. “Where are the other two daemons?”

Ignoring her question, Travis passed the first door and fit a key from Mona’s keychain into the padlock on the second door. It clicked open. He pulled the lock off and swung the door open.

“Stay where you are,” he told the room’s occupant while waving at Piper to go in.

She rushed forward, her heart hammering. The room was a barren square with a small, grimy window high on one wall. Two wooden pallets, covered by a flimsy cushion and a single thin blanket, took up half the floor space.

On the makeshift bed was her father. His skin had a grayish pallor, and several days’ growth of unkempt facial hair roughened his cheeks. Stains covered his rumpled clothes.

At the sight of her in the doorway, his eyes widened. Surprise, alarm, and apprehension flashed across his face—and shock rippled through Piper.

It was Uncle Calder. She was absolutely certain.

In the span of a heartbeat, her mind flew back through everything that had happened since the explosion at the Consulate. If this was Uncle Calder, then it had been Quinn lying injured in the rubble, his face too burned for her to identify him. The Gaians had abducted the wrong twin.

She crossed the room in three strides and knelt beside his makeshift bed, reaching for his hands.

He grasped her fingers tightly, a film of tears in his eyes. “You’re alive. I had no idea what had happened to you.”

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”

His eyes flicked to the door, and Piper glanced over her shoulder. Travis was leaning against the doorframe, pretending to stare at the wall but obviously listening to their every word. Did Mona think Piper and her “father” might give up a clue about the Sahar while they talked?

Uncle Calder pressed his fingers into her palm, pulling her attention back to him. “Is Calder alive?”

He put a slight emphasis on the name, scarcely noticeable.

She nodded. “He was hurt, but he’s at a medical center now. What about you?”

“My leg is broken, but that’s the worst of it.”

Biting her lip, she glanced at his legs stretched out on the ratty blanket. He’d tied strips of fabric around his left shin, but that wouldn’t help much with walking. And if he couldn’t walk on his own, escaping would be a lot more difficult.

Before she could plan her next move, a blast of sound like a thunder crack shook the building. Dust swirled through the air, dislodged from the ceiling, and voices upstairs started shouting.

“What the hell?” Travis yelped, stumbling into the room as he gawked at the ceiling.

The unmistakable sound of gunfire erupted.

Travis whipped toward Piper. “Time to go. You can catch up with your dad later.”

She rose to her feet as he came toward her, his hand outstretched to grab her arm. Seizing his wrist, she bent his arm the wrong way, forcing a cry of pain from him. She yanked the keychain from his other hand, then slammed a side kick into his stomach.

He flew backward, landing on his ass in the doorway.

“Get lost,” she barked. “Or I’ll bash your face into the wall a few times first, and then you can get lost.”

Another explosion rattled the walls. Travis scrambled to his feet, wheezing and pale. “There’s only one way out. You won’t get far.”

“If you don’t get far in the next three seconds, I’ll make you regret it.”

Spitting a curse, he fled out the door, no doubt planning to run straight to Mona and report Piper’s bad behavior. Hopefully whatever was making the house rattle and guns go off would keep them too distracted to worry about Piper and their prisoners.

The moment he was gone, she turned back to Calder. He was already struggling to rise, and she helped him up. He leaned on her shoulder, panting with pain. No way could he sneak past—or fight his way through—all the Gaians upstairs.

Her gaze darted desperately around the room before jerking to a halt on the window. It was large enough for an adult man to fit through—barely—but she wasn’t strong enough to boost Calder up to it.

Should she go find Lyre and Ash? But leaving Calder alone and unprotected when Travis and any number of Gaians could appear at any moment wasn’t a good idea either.

Her hand clenched around her stolen keys.

“We’re going to escape through there,” she told her uncle, pointing at the window. “Wait here while I get some help.”

She dashed out of the room and into the dim, flickering light from the bulb at the base of the stairs. Between the chaos of collapsing storage shelves and rickety walls, she couldn’t see an obvious spot where the Gaians could have left Ash and Lyre. Which left her with one option.

Shaking out the keychain, she stepped up to the door beside Calder’s and started stuffing keys in the lock. Another wall-shaking boom was followed by a muffled barrage of gunfire as she tried a second key, then a third. The lock clicked. She flipped the panel out of the way and flung the door open.

The room was smaller than Calder’s and had no makeshift bed or window. The daemon prisoner sat on the floor, his back propped against the wall and his forearm resting on his knee.

His impossibly bright yellow-green eyes locked on Piper with disquieting intensity.

Recognition jolted through her. She’d seen this daemon before—in her Consulate’s foyer a few nights ago, dressed in red and talking to Calder. He’d been one of the daemon delegates.

He was even more handsome up close, with sharp cheekbones, a defined jaw, and short blond hair that had been neatly brushed back when she’d seen him at the Consulate. It wasn’t as neat now. A magic-dampening collar glinted around his throat, and his wrists were chained together with thick manacles—much stronger than the handcuffs Ash had broken—that sported their own shiny padlock.

Knowing he was a delegate and not a common thug didn’t comfort Piper. She swallowed hard, strapped some steel to her spine, and smiled.

“Hi,” she said, sounding only a little breathless with nerves and urgency. She held up the keychain with a dramatic flourish. “How would you like to escape your imprisonment right now?”

His eyebrows rose, but his stare was calculating. He didn’t blink nearly as much as she thought he should.

“What’s the catch?” he asked, his smooth, melodic voice surprising her. He could give an incubus a run for his money in the hypnotizing voice category.

Another minor explosion caused dust to shower down on Piper’s head.

“Well.” She swung the keys on one finger. “Were you to, hypothetically, be granted your freedom, would you say you’re the ‘escape quietly while helping a fellow captive’ type? Or the ‘bloody killing spree of revenge’ type?”

“A quiet escape is acceptable. I can always come back for the killing spree later.”

It didn’t sound like he was joking.

“Would the other captive be Consul Calder?” he added, by all appearances completely unbothered by neither his imprisonment nor the violent battle raging somewhere above them.

“Yes,” she admitted, narrowing her eyes. “So will you help?”

“Of course.”

His agreement made her more suspicious, but she couldn’t waste any more time trying to suss out his real intentions. He offered his chained wrists as she warily approached him. She found the right key on her second try, discarded the padlock, and pried the first manacle open.

He popped off the second one—then stood, towering over her. He was almost as tall as Ash, with broad shoulders and strong muscles beneath his red garments. Up close, his unfamiliar daemon-style clothing had a stiff, martial vibe, though burn marks and bloodstains had ruined the fabric.

He tapped the collar around his neck. “What about this?”

She didn’t need to check the keychain to know it had no keys small enough to unlock the collar. “None of these keys will fit. You’ll have to deal with that later. Come on.”

She led the daemon back to Calder’s room. Her uncle hadn’t been idle. The window was now broken—she’d missed the sound of shattering glass with all the gunfire and magic-fueled bangs—and he’d awkwardly stuffed his ratty blanket around the frame as a buffer against sharp bits of glass. The effort had cost him, though. His face was even more pale, his breathing was heavy, and he was leaning against the wall like he could barely stay upright.

When the daemon delegate stepped into the room behind her, her uncle’s posture stiffened with instant wariness. Not a great sign.

Before he could say anything, three rapid-fire bangs that sounded like cannonballs hitting concrete triggered another shower of dust.

The daemon looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Who’s attacking the building?”

“No idea,” Piper said. “Can you?—”

“Are they after the Sahar?” he interrupted.

“The Gaians don’t have it,” she snapped impatiently—and instantly regretted it when his green eyes fixed on her with unnerving intensity.

“Let’s worry about the details later,” Calder said. “We need to get out of here.”

“Yes, exactly,” Piper said to the daemon. “Can you boost him up to the window?”

Nodding, the daemon approached Calder. Piper moved to her uncle’s other side to brace him, and the daemon lifted Calder by the waist like he weighed nothing. Calder got his arms through the window and, with another boost from the daemon, pulled himself through.

The daemon gestured to Piper. “I’ll lift you next.”

“No, I need to find two other captives first. You get out of here and take my uncle somewhere safe.”

With a scuffing sound, Calder leaned toward the window, his face a vague shadow in the dim light. “Piper?—”

“I’ll catch up to you. Go!”

With a final anxious glance at her uncle, she sped from the room, explosions of magic and gunfire drowning out every other sound.