“No,” I say quickly. “We can’t change our overall mass by that much. And we’re a nonviolent community.”
He snaps his gum. “I think you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
He opens his drawer and withdraws a set of blue-iron cuffs. “Tell me what could have made that footprint. Or don’t tell me, and we’ll play the torture game again.” He jingles the blue cuffs. When I instinctively jerk away, he leans toward me and whispers, “Oh, and for the record, honey, I wouldn’t change a single thing about your appearance except to see you in chains.”
My throat constricts and my blood runs cold. He reaches for my wrist.
That’s when the fire alarm goes off.
ChapterThree
A pair of balls beats everything. — T-shirt
In seconds, Donovan’s office fills with thick smoke, and I use the distraction to put space between me and the blue cuffs. The chair rattles as I slip out of it, but Donovan ignores me. He’s squinting at the lights blinking steadily above us as the alarm repeats a deafening blare. I cough into my hand.
He sneers and points a finger at me. “Stay right there.”
The door to the hall pops open, and a panicked man appears. “Donovan, we need your help. The whole bloody place is on fire! The override system is opening cell doors.”
“Fuck!” Donovan runs after him muttering something about why the sprinkler system isn’t working. I hear him lock me in the office. Panicked, I search the room but there’s no other exit.
The smoke thickens. My lungs sting and I cough repeatedly into my hand, hunching to keep myself low. Does he expect me to burn alive in this room? Fuck, he probably does. I try to sense my luck. I have a little, but I’m not sure it’s enough. Maybe enough to get out of this room?
I snatch Kiko off Donovan’s desk and rush for the door. When I twist the knob, it’s clear immediately that I don’t need luck. It swings open easily. The lock is engaged, but Donovan must not have fully closed the door. It never latched. Bully for me.
The smoke is a dense cloud that blankets the ceiling as I stick my head into the hall and look both ways. Empty. At the end of the hall, an emergency exit hangs open. What a break! The override system must have popped that door too. I dash for the exit, holding my breath and crouched low.
Every part of me expects to meet Donovan outside. Where else would he go but out? But as I spill into the night, my assumptions prove incorrect. Gunshots ring out to my left, and I turn to see the rehabilitation center from the outside. I’m in the yard of a building that looks like a prison, sirens blaring behind a wall topped with barbed wire. On the far side of the yard from me, dozens of fae are flooding out of two double doors and agents are trying their best to round them up. Of course, that’s what Donovan’s counterpart had said—the fire caused their cell doors to open. Every agent in the vicinity is engaged in keeping the mob of fae under control.
I’m alone on my side of the yard… until suddenly I’m not. A helicopter appears above me, the thump-thump of its blades growing louder as it lands, blowing back my hair and forcing me to block my face with my arm. My mouth drops open as a familiar face leans out the side.
“Mom! Hurry!” My sixteen-year-old daughter, Arden—my heart, my reason for breathing—extends her hand from the door. I sprint toward her and dive into the helicopter’s belly, scrambling into the seat beside her and strapping myself in.
“Go, go, go!” I scream to the human pilot. He nods, and we lift off. As the chopper banks left, I see Agent Donovan running into the space where I was just standing, his face a mask of rage. He draws the gun from his holster. I turn and pull Arden into my arms, shielding her with my body, my back to Donovan. Six shots fire in rapid succession. I hold my breath but none of the bullets hit us. We’re moving too fast. Too far away.
Only when the rehabilitation center is completely out of sight do I back off and look Arden in the eye. She’s a beautiful, intelligent spark plug of a young woman. She’s adaptable and clever as a fox. But she’s human, the product of a one-night stand with a human man sixteen years ago. The fire, the door, the distraction, the helicopter, the fact that she was in exactly the right place at the right time means she had help. This is too much for a teenager to pull off on her own. Deep down I understand that some serious luck was involved in my rescue, which could mean only one thing.
“How, Arden?”
She tucks a strand of caramel-colored hair behind her ear and blinks wide green eyes at me. “When I found out what happened to you, I called Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Noooo!” I direct my anger toward the heavens and punch the seat beside my leg. “Damn it, Arden! I gave that number to you to use only in case of emergency!”
She grimaces. “This is an emergency, Mom! FIRE had you!”
“Me, yes, but you were still safe. Why didn’t you follow the protocol we talked about?”
The sigh she heaves toward me tells me exactly how she feels about my emergency plan. “No way was I going to empty your bank account and go on the run while you rotted in a rehabilitation center, Mom! It’s stupid.”
“You’re human. You could have gone anywhere. You might have been free of this.” I thump my chest.You might have been free of me, I think. It’s too much to say it, but I’m sure she can read it in my eyes because she winces.
“I’m half fae. Just because the fae part is dormant doesn’t mean FIRE wouldn’t have caught up to me. There are pictures on the internet of us together. I wouldn’t just have to run. I’d have to keep running. I don’t want to live like that.”
My brain sends me a disturbing vision of Arden strapped to a metal table, and I hold my head. I blow out a deep breath. She’s right. After so many years establishing ourselves as human and living in a suburb of Las Vegas, her identity wouldn’t have remained secret for long. That wasn’t the life I’d wanted for her.
I nod and hug her again. It’s done. The call has been made. There’s nothing to do but to face the consequences. “I’m sorry,” I yell over the blades. “You did the right thing.”
