A disturbing look crossed her face. “Um, it’s where Severn keeps his prisoners. I had to ask him twice that this wasreallywhere he wanted me to bring you.”
“Prisoners?”
“I’m sureyou’renot in trouble, Willow,” she quickly added. “He’s been spending a lot of time down here recently. I think he just, um, didn’t want to pause his work for too long.”
I didn’t like the sound of any of that. I liked it even less when the doors opened to a floor with no windows, stark bluish lighting, and stone walls like I’d suddenly stepped into the fifteenth century instead of being in a New York City skyscraper. A row of cells ran along one wall. I approached them hesitantly, peering into each one. They were all empty.
Suddenly, a door opened at the end of the hall. Locke came out, wiping blood off his hands with a towel. It was far too dark to be human blood, nearly black. At first, I’d thought it was tar.
“Ah. Willow. Come here, Severn wants to speak with you.” He pulled out my phone. “And take this. I suppose you can be trusted with it again.”
I took my phone and followed him hesitantly, trying to ignore the reek of sulfur. Locke had some kind of dust in his dark hair that, when I got closer, I realized was ash. Goose bumps raised the skin on my arms.
I stepped into a windowless room with sleek metal walls and an iron hook attached to the ceiling. Hanging from the hook by shackles on his wrists was a man. At first, he looked human. He was thin but muscular, his street clothes streaked with black blood, dusted in ash just like Locke. But when he moaned and opened his eyes, they glowed yellow.
A werewolf.
Severn stood in front of him, his shirt rolled up to his elbows and unbuttoned at his neck, covered in sweat and dusted with ash. In his hand, he held some sort of iron bar with a sinister blunt end that matched the bruises on the werewolf’s face.
I gaped, wide-eyed. This was some kind of torture session! Severn wanted to mehere?
Looking grave, Severn handed Locke the iron bar. “You take over for a while. Willow, come with me.”
He led me back into the hallway. I wrung my hands, pacing slightly. “Who is that? What did he do?”
“He was part of the attack on the tower last month.”
“I thought you said it was demons.”
A muscle shifted in his jaw. “We thought so at the time. The attack mimicked previous attempts Black Ember’s horde has made against us, but after an investigation, that was a ruse. Black Ember doesn’t appear to be behind the attack. It was a werewolf pack.”
“What do the werewolves have against you? A lot of them work for you.”
“Each pack has its own loyalties. Some are only loyal to their own members. We are fortunate to have an alliance with the New York pack, but our ties with other werewolves don’t extend beyond that. So I’m questioning this pack member to find out why.”
“Questioning?” I asked in a hard voice.
Severn took a menacing step forward. Sweaty, spotted in a werewolf’s blood, he wasn’t a regal prince now; he was a butcher. “If you think I spend my days taking children for picnics, you are wrong.”
A chill settled over me. I started to suspect that hewantedme to see this. Twice now, we had kissed, under real pretenses or not, and I’d lost count of the number of times he’d warned me to keep my distance from the fae realm. Maybe this was another warning—one meant to frighten me off. I hadn’t forgotten his face when he’d told me about how Marco had died while working for him. Hewantedme to know how dangerous he was.
“You’ve made your point,” I said tightly.
“I’m not sure I have.” His voice took on a low, predatory growl. He took a step forward, and I shied back on instinct. “What happened at Locke’s cannot happen again, Willow.” He motioned to the torture chamber. “I don’t know who you think I am, but you’re wrong.Thisis who I am. I torture people. I bleed them dry. Ienjoyit.” That cruelty was back, his face a snarl.
I looked away sharply, my heart pounding. Finally, I whispered, “Okay.”
For a second, we were silent as I listened to Locke making the werewolf scream inside the torture chamber. I swallowed. “Can I go now?”
“No. I want you to pack your bags and bags for the children. Tomorrow, we are going to a private island for an important gathering.”
The Innovators Retreat.
Severn hadn’t said anything about it, so I had forgotten about it entirely. I sputtered, “That work retreat? That’s just some sales thing to get rich people to invest in businesses. Surely you don’t really have to go.”
Two weeks ago, I would have loved to have gone on a private jet to a private island, but right now, listening to the werewolf’s screams, I’d lost my enthusiasm.
“That is merely a cover,” Severn explained. “It isn’t a work retreat; it’s a gathering of East Coast Gifted Ones. We’ll be discussing the Decree of Prague.”
