Now You See Me

Fifty-Four: Oranges and Lemons

When Rella tossed me inside the room that had been Feila's office, everything went still. I landed on my bad arm and groaned, and then looked up, teeth gritted.

It took me a long moment to work out what was happening.

Marilyn was here, unexpectedly, laid out over the table. She wasn't unconscious, but her eyes, open and staring at the floor, were glazed over and bloodshot. Her finger was moving back and forth almost hypnotically, disturbing the shards of ceramic from a broken bowl on the ground. She picked up one shard, crushed it into dust, and then opened her hand out again and continued. If she hadn't seemed so bruised and damaged, she would have been the picture of total boredom. Nell crouched over her like she was guarding a chew toy.

"Hell's teeth," someone said weakly from the corner. I turned. Leia was crouched to one side of the office, slumped against the radiator. She was white as a sheet, shaky and dishevelled, and the blood coming from her nose seemed alarmingly bright against her skin. Her gaze moved briefly over me, before going to Vashde on the other side of the room, and I saw why Leia had given up; the witch had a gun to Feila's head. The fae was out of it; she looked as though she had been drugged. Whatever it was she'd been given, I guessed it was why Leia looked so helpless. I refused to believe she couldn't get the gun from Vashde if she was really determined to do so.

Vashde, however, looked dead on her feet, too. She had a black eye, and her nose was also bleeding. One of her eyes had burst a blood vessel, and the sclera was vividly crimson. She looked deranged.

Lorien landed beside me, limp as a ragdoll and just as responsive. Rella walked around us into the office, and I didn't dare move in case I triggered anything. Once her back was turned, I did angle the elf's head so that his injury wasn't pressed into the floor; I didn't know how deep it was, and if it got infected...

Bile rose in my throat and I pushed the thought down. This was a terrible point to start making myself want to vomit. The pain from my arm was doing a grand job on its own.

"If we sit still long enough, the other Merboy will come up here to play hero. Then we'll have what we want and we'll leave peacefully. Just shut up and don't struggle too much," Rella said, perching herself on the sill above where Leia was slumped. The sorceress's face contorted with anger, and for a moment it looked like she was going to stand and start again, until a click announced that Vashde had taken off the safety catch on the gun. Leia fell back down, expression torn between fury and despair.

My head was hurting, and I felt incredibly weak from the length of time I'd spent out of water. I put my head down on the ground and closed my eyes in an attempt to stop the room from spinning, but it only made it worse. Then again, staring at Lorien's slack expression and the blood on his face and in his hair wasn't a better option. I kept my eyes open, then, and focused on my own hand beside me, and prayed that Chris didn't do exactly what Rella expected him to.

At the same time, I knew that he probably would.

"You still conscious, Damien?" Leia said weakly. I didn't see what Rella did, but this was shortly followed by an acidic, "I can talk to him, can't I? I think I'd find it difficult to make any kind of escape plan with you practically sitting on my head, you paranoid old bitch."

"I'm fine," I said, when a long silence followed. I guessed from that that Rella had given in for the time being. "Dehydrated."

"Can't you at least get the guy a bath?" Leia asked. "He'll start smoking in a minute."

"He's going to die whatever," Rella said sharply. "It makes no difference to me when he does it."

"It'll make a difference to you when you open his chest and find he's got trail mix for internal organs."