“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “I haven’t liked anything I’ve seen so far.”
Felix pulled me through an empty, echoing lobby toward a staircase that spiraled down into an ominous darkness. “So then why did you come?” he asked, pushing me ahead of him onto the first slick-looking marble step.
“You haven’t figured that out yet?” I glanced at Dione, who’d waited at the top of the stairs. “I’m only here to killKastor.”
The “stables” turned out to be the courthouse basement, which had clearly been retrofitted as a prison after the war. Felix put me in a cell of my own, empty except for a filthy bucket against the back wall. The bars were roughly welded steel, and my cell shared one wall with the pen on my left and one with the pen on my right.
The only source of light in the long, narrow basement was a series of wall sconces—torches, burning with actual fire—mounted well out of reach on the brick walls. The light wasn’t bright enough to reach the farthest corners, but the flames made the entire huge room seem to flicker. The effect was like being in the castle dungeon from one of the scary stories Melanie had loved as a child.
Had Maddock been locked up here, waiting for Kastor to take him as a host? Had Finn sat here with him, unseen, his only friend throughout an ordeal that might otherwise have psychologically obliterated a boy taken from everything and everyone he’d ever known?
How long had they been captives? Maddy had said Finn got him out. But how? Could I possibly effect my own escape without Finn’s body-hopping ability? Had it even helped him, if everyone with a key to the cell was already possessed, thus off-limits to him?
Grayson wasn’t among the prisoners, and I couldn’t decide whether or not to be happy about that. I couldn’t imagine Kastor selling an exorcist on the auction block, so I was pretty sure that wherever she was, her conditions were better than mine.
Unless he’d already given her to someone.
For several minutes after Felix left the stables, I sat at the back of my cell and concentrated on bringing heat into my left hand. That was difficult, with no demons present to trigger the flames, but I finally managed by mentally reliving the moment I’d discovered Meshara in my sister’s body.
Slowly, carefully, I angled the flames toward my right hand, blistering my palm in the process, and managed to soften the plastic zip tie holding my hands together, so that I could pull it apart.
The blisters were worth it.
A quick head count of my fellow prisoners told me there were at least forty of us, and based on the grime that had accumulated on about half of the population, I was guessing prisoner hygiene wasn’t a big priority for our captors. Normally, that would have disgusted and outraged me, but considering that I’d come to spread germs, I considered it a good sign.
ForhoursI sat in my cell, ignored by my captors and prevented from distributing the contagion I carried. Kastor was obviously in no hurry to meet with me, and making me wait felt like an obvious display of power.
I tried to introduce myself to the people in the adjoining cells, but they were too traumatized to tell me more than their names, and after several attempts at further communication, I understood why.
The human hosts I’d seen up on the auction block had all been young and healthy. Most had been attractive, and they were all relatively clean. They’d obviously recently arrived in Pandemonia, but the prisoners all around me had clearly been in their cells for quite a while. They were grimy and thin. Many were pale and pasty from lack of sunlight. And they were all at least thirty years old.
These were the hosts who hadn’t sold during previous auctions. They were leftovers—the bodies that the poorest and least powerful demons in Pandemonia would have to choose from when their current hosts started to degenerate.
My suspicion was confirmed when Felix finally came down the stairs again, this time with a customer—a pale, thin woman in a short skirt and what appeared to be an athletic bra. Her knees and elbows had started to stand out from her flesh, and her hair had begun to thin—both signs of early degeneration I recognized in retrospect from seeing the process in my own mother before I’d known she was possessed.
“The ones on the left are fifty.” Felix gestured to the row of cells across from mine with one outstretched arm. “The ones on the right are between seventy and eighty.” His next gesture encompassed my half of the basement.
“Not one is worth half that,” the woman spat, as her gaze traveled over the men and women caged across from me. Most of them were in their forties, and they were all filthy and half-starved. “Does fifty cover a shower?”
Felix shrugged. “You pick one out, and we’ll hose him down for you. Five more will get him deloused.”
“Outrageous…,” the woman mumbled as she turned to my side of the basement. Her eyes widened when her gaze fell on me.
I stood and wrapped my hands around the bars at the front of my cage. The woman limped closer and stopped just feet away. Her greedy gaze roamed my body, and I had to stifle a shiver of disgust when she seemed to see right through my clothes to assess what lay beneath. “Can I get this one for eighty?”
“Hell, no, Tullia. She’s not for—”
“She’s skinny,” the woman insisted, but I could see the bluff in her face. “I don’t think she’s worth more than seventy-five.”
“That’s Nina Kane,” Felix snapped, and Tullia’s eyes widened. Then they narrowed as she stepped closer to study my face.
“Nina Kane the exorcist? From the Church broadcasts?”
“The very one. She’s not for sale. Kastor’s just keeping her here until he gets around to dealing with her.”
“He’ll never get around to it,” I said, and they both glanced at me in surprise. Evidently the other prisoners didn’t talk much. “He knows I’ve come to kill him, and he’s afraid.” I stuck my left hand through the bars.
Felix frowned at my unbound hands. “How did you…?” But the woman was bolder. She stared into my cupped palm as if it might hold the secret to eternal youth, and I let loose the flames waiting just beneath my skin.
