At once, she dismissed that idea. This couldn’t be a normal bedroom because it didn’t have any windows — or a closet, she realized. On the far side of the space was a single door.
If she were somehow able to get up from the daybed and walk over there, would it open?
No, she told herself. It had two deadbolts in addition to the lock in the doorknob. Even if she somehow made it over there, she’d never get past all those locks.
Or…would she?
It was a novel concept, realizing that she truly had no idea what she could or couldn’t do. Someone she doubted she’d be able to Hulk out and smash right through the thing, and yet maybe there was something she could do with her mind to get the door unlocked.
Could the same powers that allowed her to talk to Caleb using only the force of her thoughts be enough to somehow slip inside those locks and move the tumblers so the door would open on its own?
A tempting idea. She just didn’t know whether it would work.
Probably better to start with baby steps…literally.
She shifted again and knew she was getting close to the edge of the bed. When she tried to swing her feet over so she could stand up, however, it was as if they’d hit some kind of weird rubbery barrier.
“Ouch!”
Yes, that was her voice. She’d heard it, and she knew she’d uttered the syllable out loud because whatever spell was holding her here on the daybed had — up until now, anyway — kept her silent.
Not being able to get off the bed was something of a setback. But knowing she hadn’t been utterly silenced helped a little to remove the sting from that failure.
“I’m here,” she said aloud.
Just two words, but they were enough to tell her that one “ouch” hadn’t been a fluke.
She sat cross-legged on the daybed and did a little more deep-breathing. Oddly, she experienced just the faintest twinge of hunger.
That would have been a relief, except she knew if she was starting to feel hungry, then she’d probably soon be thirsty as well. And if her body woke up much more, then she was going to be seriously bemoaning the lack of a bathroom around here.
Still, it was another crack in the spell, and that had to count for something.
Then she closed her eyes for a few seconds and caught a flash of an image.
She knew she’d never seen the man before. He was tall and thin, with pale hair and a face that was attractive in a bony, beaky sort of way. His dark gray suit was obviously expensive, but it still hung on him, although she couldn’t say for sure whether that was because he’d recently lost weight or because he couldn’t be bothered to get the thing properly tailored.
He stood behind a desk in what appeared to be a fancy office, with a spectacular view of the Colorado River hundreds of feet below. However, the big, expensive desk of burled walnut didn’t hold a computer or a phone or anything else that you might have expected in such a setting.
No, a black cloth covered the surface, and on that cloth a series of small crystals, all red and black, had been placed in a pattern Delia didn’t recognize but somehow still felt wrong, as if its proportions were just enough off that they managed to hurt her eyes. A bowl about a hands-breadth across held some kind of dark liquid.
The man reached into the bowl with one finger and withdrew it, then smeared the reddish liquid…blood, she was sure…across the surface of a hunk of what she thought was either onyx or obsidian.
Almost at once, her temple twinged, and she reached up and pressed a hand against her head.
Great, was she getting a migraine now on top of everything else?
Again, the man dipped his finger into the bowl of blood, and this time he smeared it on a reddish crystal that she didn’t recognize. Garnet, maybe?
Now it felt as if something had pinched her forehead, and she winced. At the same time, a strange dizziness descended, and she was suddenly very glad that she hadn’t been able to get up from the daybed and start exploring her prison. If she’d been standing when that wave of vertigo hit, she might very well have fallen right over.
Would anyone have come to her rescue if she’d cried out?
Doubtful.
The vertigo disappeared as suddenly as it had come. In her mind, the man reached for a black cloth and wiped the traces of blood from his fingertips.
Realization flared, bright and painful as that twinge in her forehead had been.
