I scrambled out of bed to throw some pants on. I wasn’t sure who was bothering us, but I wanted them to go away.
“What’s going on?” I demanded when I opened the door.
“Gods above, Charlie, put a shirt on,” Kallie sneered, and I heard Marcus laugh beside her. “I found a clue.”
I frowned. Ava and I had been sharing amoment.
Your moment’s over, Oberi said snidely.Come look what we found!
I sighed. “It’s almost curfew. If we leave, we’ll be locked out of our rooms overnight.”
“Then I guess we’re pulling an all-nighter,” Kallie said. “You guys aren’t going to want to wait to see this.”
CHAPTERTWELVE
AVA-MARIE
Excitement rushed through me as Kallie and Oberi led the way to what she’d described as a hidden cell block. My mind and body were still rushing with the delightful, delicious sensations of my rendezvous with Charlie moments before, but we had to put that aside for now, because we could be that much closer to the merfolk key, and that was thrilling all in itself.
It was past curfew, so we had to be quick. The darkened Institute halls loomed, and with every inch closer to our destination, they felt taller, as if the very walls were going to come crashing in on us. The wind howled outside, battering at the windows as a heavy rain began to fall. I glimpsed through the glass and saw that a gloomy mist was starting to spread over the island.
“Wait,” Marcus whispered ahead of us, and Charlie brought my chair to a halt. He peered around the corner, then flattened himself to the stone wall as footsteps approached and light loomed from magic in the corridor beyond.
Guards. They were coming this way. Kallie let out an aggravated noise, but Rishi darted between her legs and ran forward. He turned the corner, padding down to where a couple of classrooms lay in waiting.
I heard a loud crashing noise as what sounded like a shelf of alchemy pots toppled to the floor. The guards immediately started running the opposite way to investigate the noise. Marcus checked again, then waved us forward as Rishi came scampering back.
We returned to the hallway we’d been investigating earlier. We seemed to walk forever, and the further we went, the darker it got. Eventually, the entire area turned cold. My hands tightened on the handles of my wheelchair as the blackness seemed to swallow us up. In this part of the prison, I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears. We had Marcus’ witchlight to illuminate the area, but the small light it gave off felt like dropping a pin into the ocean.
“I never realized just how big this place is.” Charlie’s words echoed off the walls, and I shivered.
“The Institute is massive,” Kallie replied.
We came to a stone wall. Kallie tapped on it and said, “Solid as a rock… or so you think. There’s an illusion here.”
“How’d you find this, Oberi?” I asked, patting his head.
Illusions smell funny. They’re not quite right, Oberi explained.Once I pointed out the smell to Kallie, she caught on right away.
“Oberi kept pawing at this one spot, so I changed into a wolf and started sniffing around. Once I did, I realized the Warden must’ve had someone put an illusion up,” Kallie said. “It was strong enough it didn’t leave any signatures behind, so my fae magic didn’t recognize it. But now that I know it’s there, I can bring it down.”
Kallie ran her fingers over the stone, and as she did so, a rippling effect took place, and the wall wavered like water. I watched as the bricks dissolved, leaving a plain metal door in our way.
Marcus reached for the doorknob, and it opened easily. “It’s unlocked.”
We took a small, narrow passageway that was shaped like a U, one that was difficult for me to navigate. Once we’d shoved my chair through, Marcus opened another door. As I rolled through, an entirely new area of the prison opened up.
The room was large and square, with a variety of wooden benches attached firmly to long tables. The tables were chained to the floor, and a few feet away from the walls was a line of chain-link fencing, with the same fencing running above us about twelve feet from the ground in order to prevent inmates from reaching the low ceiling. Above the area were guard boxes with bulletproof glass, and broken windows along the double bars. It was a miniature cafeteria.
This definitely had more security than any part of the prison that I’d seen. I got the creepiest feeling… like we were being watched. And not just by one being, but a whole entourage, who were just waiting on the sidelines for an opportunity to strike.
Beyond the cafeteria was another door. We went through it and came to a massive cell block that was unlike any of the others I’d seen at the Institute. The area was four stories tall, and hundreds of cells lined each row. These cells weren’t like our rooms— they had nothing but bars for doors, and two tiny metal bunks attached to the wall for people to sleep on. The cells were insanely small, only five-by-seven feet, and weren’t humane to hold one prisoner, let alone multiple.
It was easy to hide this cell block within the interior of the Institute, because it was so narrow. The paint on the walls was peeling away, and I read obscene things the prisoners here had written on the walls. Some were pleas to escape; others, prayers for death, or promises of revenge once the author escaped. I rolled over a puddle on the floor that had accumulated from moisture dripping through the cracked ceiling, and I spotted blood stains mixed in with the fading concrete. I knew it wasn’t that cold out today, but even so, I could see my breath in here.
“Kallie… where are we?” I asked.
“This is where they kept the worst of the inmates, when the Institute was still an adult penitentiary,” she explained. “The people who came here never got out.”
