Once

Fifty Four

Elle woke not knowing how long she'd been asleep. The minute she began to regain consciousness, two words stamped themselves urgently on her brain: Mr Luzlic.

It was all him. She saw that now. She'd been so stupid from the start. It had always been Mr Luzlic and she hadn't suspected a thing.

And David had seen that he couldn't be trusted right from the beginning. God, if she got out of this she owed David an apology...

Slowly, groggily, she opened her eyes and lifted her head. A few things occurred to her all at once. She was sitting up, for one thing, in a very hard, high-backed chair. The sounds of the storm, now fully raging overhead, were distant and muffled. She was inside.

She was also bound to the chair she was sitting in, tied tightly with rope by her wrists and ankles, and with her head held against the back of the chair by a thick length of rope around her neck.

She gave a quick tug at her wrists, tried wiggling her ankles, but they didn't budge an inch. She hadn't really expected them to. He was too clever to let her get away by just wiggling out of her restraints.

Her eyes were bleary with sleep, and her head felt as if it were packed with cotton wool. But beneath all that she was remaining oddly calm, trying to make sense of the situation. A week ago she would have been panicking. Hell, a few hours ago she might have been panicking. But right now she was curiously serene. It was all about to end. One way or another, it was ending.

She let her eyes steadily readjust themselves, the room swinging dimly into a blurry focus. After a few seconds she could look round at the scene in front of her.

She was sitting on the stage in the theatre. The room was almost deserted. She could tell that it was late. Prom had probably finished an hour ago or more and everyone had gone home - either that or some insidious magic had sent them all wandering home early, all conveniently forgetting that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Either way almost everyone was gone now, leaving nothing behind but the silvery balloons glinting in the half-light.

On the stage stood a circle of high wooden chairs facing inward. No, not chairs - thrones. Ten tall wooden thrones, each with a person sitting in it. To Elle's left were Marigold Loxley, Letty Gardener, then Jax, then David. To her right were Bianca Eirwen, Maggie, Sellan and Russell. They were all bound to their chairs, too, only they had their mouths covered with tight fabric gags, which she did not.

Her friends were all staring at her with wild, panic-stricken eyes. Several of them were clawing at the arms of their thrones and there were shrill mumbled noises coming from behind their gags. Elle just quietly shook her head at them; there was no use struggling. She noticed that Bianca, Letty and Marigold were all fast asleep. She wondered whether they had fallen unconscious or had been purposely put to sleep. If that were true she couldn't help but wonder why the others hadn't been. A sadistic touch, maybe. They'd been witnesses to most of the gruesome events that had happened this week - why not let them see how it would all end, too?

And last but not least, in the chair opposite her, she locked eyes with Mr Luzlic.

"Ah, you're awake," he said. He checked his watch, grinning to himself. "And just in time."

He was sitting back in his throne, one leg crossed over the other and his fingers laced together below his chin. He was studying Elle as though he were trying to pull something right out of the depths of her mind. Maybe he was.

He wants a reaction, she thought to herself. He wants you to be confused, to start babbling something incoherent, maybe even to burst into tears.

She shot a cool look back at him, and said steadily: