Gordon eyed her for a moment and then reached over and grabbed hold of her toiletry bag. Emma knew exactly what was in it. Mascara, eyeliner, lipstick, and a box of tampons. And inside the box of tampons was the GPS tracker.
Sweat dripped down her back as she forced herself not to fidget. Not to hold her locket or bite her lip or do anything that might give her away.
Gordon unzipped the small pink and gold bag and turned it upside down, emptying everything onto the bed. Emma breathed in, counted to three, then breathed out slowly. Gordon was a misogynist and a xenophobic arsehole. He wouldn’t touch a box of tampons. Would he?
Her hands shook, but she didn’t dare shove them in her pockets or do anything to draw attention to how terrified she was. She had to think of something else.
She stared at the wall, concentrating on her favorite recipe.One and a 1/4 teaspoons dried active baking yeast, 3 tablespoons warm water, 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar….She repeated the croissant recipe in her head, letting the familiar ingredients soothe her. Pastry was safe and predictable.
Gordon gave her lonely pile of rifled-through belongings one last look and grunted. “Stay here. Don’t wander around. I’ll fetch you if I need you.”
Emma cleared her throat and forced herself to ask, “What if I’m hungry?”
“I’ll bring you something in the morning before I go out,” Gordon muttered irritably.
That wasn’t any good. She needed to see what he was doing. Where he was going. “I thought I was going to help you.”
Gordon picked a tiny strand of lint off his cuff. “Your blood will help.Youcan stay in your room.”
Emma almost swayed. She should have known. Should have realized that was what he had been saying all along. The only interest her father had in her was in her blood.
If Gordon noticed her stunned horror, he didn’t react. He simply let himself out of her room and closed the door, locking it behind him.
Emma sagged onto the bed. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly—in through her nose, out through her mouth—as she ran through all the exercises Kay had given her. She needed to be calm. She had to remember that she had already learned a lot just by making it as far as she had. Even if nothing else, now David knew where Gordon was.
The thought helped, and after a moment she stood back up and walked around the room, looking for weaknesses. She couldn’t make any more progress if she was kept locked in her room as an unwilling blood donor.
The first thing she did was try the door. It was firmly locked from the outside. Working slowly and carefully, she pulled her Shadows together into the shape of a key and tried it in the lock.
The idea was good. She could feel the pressure of the tumblers and sense their rigid shapes inside the lock, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t make them move. Her Shadows were too soft, too amorphous, to get a solid pressure.
She tried again and again, but she didn’t have enough control over her Shadows. Or maybe they were too unformed. No matter what she did, she couldn’t open the lock.
She tried a screwdriver next, hoping to unscrew the lock, but she had exactly the same problem. She could see the head of the screwdriver fitting into the screw, but she just couldn’t make it turn, no matter how hard she tried.
Frustration mingled with fear. Being locked in brought back all her childhood terrors. She couldn’t get out. She couldn’t get to a phone. She couldn’t even see what Gordon was doing.
Panic tried to rise, thick and suffocating in her chest. Maybe Zach was right all along. She wasn’t part of this world and she should never have tried to fight that fact.
Had she sacrificed her relationship with him for nothing?
Emma stumbled across to the window and shoved it open a crack, keeping her fingers curled tightly to avoid touching the wards. Shivers of dread scrabbled along her spine, but she forced them away as she took deep breaths of the cool night air.
Long minutes passed and Gordon didn’t come rushing in. Her breathing eased and she slowly let go of her death grip on the window frame.
She trudged back to sink down onto the side of the bed. God, she was tired. Maybe that was why she was struggling. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her thighs, and let her head drop.
She missed Zach with a steady ache. She missed the peace of her bakery and the open sky over the sea. But it wasn’t the first time she’d been exhausted and lonely and miserable. She hadn’t given up then, and she wasn’t giving up now.
She couldn’t get out—but she wasin. David knew where she was, which meant they finally had a lead on Gordon. The Guardians would be safe. And that was the most important thing.
Emma pulled off her shoes and climbed into the bed in her jeans and shirt, pulling the covers up to her chin. She needed to rest, recover some of her energy and simply try again in the morning.
The open window let in cool air and the mattress was comfortable, but she was too unsettled and overwhelmed to sleep. Instead, she drifted, staring at the ceiling and remembering her time with Zach.
Whenever she felt like crying, she drew on her Shadows instead, forming tiny hummingbirds to flitter in drunken circles around her head, and wide-winged butterflies that danced across the ceiling. If Zach had been there, he could have added dolphins and turtles to swim among the gently weaving Shadows.
Slowly, surrounded by Shadows and memories, she drifted into a strange kind of half-sleep. The butterflies seemed to swirl in tighter and tighter clusters, their wings shimmering in onyx and opal, with glittering strands of ruby and mulberry red glinting as they undulated over the ceiling.
