“Okay, fine!” I shouted, staring up at the camera. “I get it. You’re scared of him. So let me take care of him. Please!”
Again, I got no answer, and the desperate ring of my appeal cost me some of my confidence; they would hear that as clearly as I’d heard it. Time for a new tactic.
I took a deep breath and prepared to make a sacrifice. “Tell Vandekamp I’ll give him what he wants!”
For a second, nothing happened. Then static crackled from a hidden speaker. “Step away from the door. You will not be warned again.”
It wasn’t the response I’d hoped for, but it was proof that a response could be provoked.
“And if I—”
Mirela pulled me away from the door. “We know what will happen if you don’t. And if we’re wrong about that, then it’ll be something worse.”
Before I could argue with her, a door squealed open from somewhere down the hall. Footsteps thumped toward us, and when Bowman and another handler appeared, I assumed they’d come to close the door.
Instead, Bowman pointed his remote at me and pressed a button. The red light over the door blinked, and though I couldn’t see my own collar, I knew its light had blinked, as well.
“Step into the hall,” he ordered.
I practically launched myself through the doorway, and I made no objection to the padded restraints he closed a little too tight. The handlers led me down the hall and out of the building without a word, and when we headed through the iron gate into the cryptid-themed topiary—now strung with soft white lights for some kind of event—I knew Vandekamp had gotten my message.
Minutes later, I stood in front of the boss in his inner office. The handlers closed the door on their way out, but did not uncuff me.
Vandekamp folded his hands on top of his desk blotter, and though he had to look up at me from his seat, I clearly held the position of least power, standing in front of two expensive guest chairs I wasn’t allowed to use. “I hear you have a request.”
“Yes.” And I was honestly a little surprised that he was going to entertain it, considering the precedent that could set for captives who might want to bargain in the future. “Gallagher’s hurt, and I want to help him.”
“Tell me about Gallagher.” The scar bisecting his lower lip stretched with each word.
“What about him?” I didn’t want to give him anything he could use against either of us, but he had me over a barrel, and he knew it.
Vandekamp shrugged and stood. “We know he’sfear dearg,” he said, and my surprise must have shown. “He’s the first I’ve seen in person, but I’ve studied the species.” Yet he obviously hadn’t recognized Gallagher’s species initially. “But I want to know what he is toyou.”
“He’s a friend.”
Vandekamp’s pale blue eyes narrowed as he rounded his desk. “That feels like an incomplete answer.”
“He’s a very good friend.”
He watched me, clearly waiting for more, and when no more came, he crossed his arms over a neatly pressed dark blue button-down shirt. “You want to help your ‘friend.’ I want to know what you are. What’s your species, Delilah?”
The answer was my only bargaining chip. “You’re asking the wrong question. The tests aren’t flawed. I truly am human. But I’m notonlyhuman.”
Vandekamp leaned back against his desk. “Not possible. Even hybrids’ blood tests have recognizable animal or cryptid hormones.”
“I’m not a hybrid. I’m fully human. Plus.”
“Plus what?”
“Plus an ideal. An abstraction.”
His eyes narrowed. “Stop speaking in riddles, or I will silence you for a week.”
“It isn’t a riddle. I don’t fully understand this myself.” I shrugged, and my restraints caught on the back of my shirt. “But based on the legend and what I’ve pieced together from personal experience, I am an embodiment of wrathful justice. The concept of vengeance given physical form.”
I left out the fact that Gallagher was the primary source of that information, because I didn’t want Vandekamp torturing him for more details about me.
“Legend?” Vandekamp scowled. “I’m asking you for scientific facts, not bedtime stories, and if you can’t provide them—”
