Mikhail nods once.
“And, Mikhail.” He pauses at the door. Anya’s fingers curl tighter around my collar, and I lower my voice to a register meant only for him. “When I find Dushku, he doesn’t go quickly.”
Mikhail departs without another word. The door closes behind him with a soft, definitive click.
I remain on my knee with my daughter folded against my chest, and I promise that she will sleep in my room tonight and that I will stay beside her until she falls asleep. She accepts both with a nod and a tighter grip on Mr. Whiskers.
At least one of those promises is already true.
The others I will make true even if it costs me everything I have left to give.
35
ELLIE
The first thing I register is the ceiling.
White. A water stain in the upper corner in the shape of a bird mid-flight. A light fixture with one bulb dead. It feels as if I’m surfacing from deep water — lungs burning, limbs foreign, the world arriving in fragments before the mind agrees to reassemble them.
A throbbing ache originates at the base of my skull, radiating in slow, nauseating waves.
Observations begin filing in, one by one, clinical and unwelcome.
The room is unfamiliar. Small but furnished with intention, a real bed beneath me, heavy curtains sealing a window, a wardrobe standing against the far wall. The atmosphere hovers somewhere between a mid-range hotel and a holding facility.
I’m fully clothed, in the same outfit I was wearing when?—
The gate.
Scattered memories hit.
My fingers curling around the iron latch. The night air cold against my throat, a needle piercing the side of my neck. Theworld dissolving into a black canvas before I could draw a second breath.
I sit up too fast. The room pitches sideways, and I press my palm against my forehead, forcing air through my teeth until the spinning subsides. My pulse hammers in my ears — rapid, erratic.
When the tilting finally settles, I lower my hand, and my gaze finds the armchair in the corner.
Landon.
He sits with one leg draped over the other, jacket pressed, shoulders arranged with ease. He’s watching me.
The fear arrives first. Cold and immediate, spreading from the center of my chest outward, flooding my fingertips with a tingling numbness that I recognize from years of standing in rooms with the men who held my fate in their hands. Then the confusion, thick and disorienting, tangling with the residual fog of whatever they injected into my bloodstream.
“Did you drug me?” My voice emerges rough, scraped raw, as if the words themselves had to claw their way out.
He tilts his head. The gesture is almost fond, the way someone might regard a pet that has performed an expected trick. “Not even agood morning? A littleI missed you?”
My stomach contracts. “What am I doing here, Landon?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and the mask of concern he arranges across his features is so practiced, so meticulously performed, that it sends bile climbing up my throat. “How are you feeling?”
“That’s none of your concern.” I shove myself toward the edge of the mattress. My feet find the floor. “I want to leave. Now. I’ve made my payment this month. You have no reason to?—”
“Things aren’t quite as simple as they were.” His voice maintains that infuriating pleasantness, never once slipping. “You got involved with the wrong person, Ellie. And by extension,with the wrong people.” He pauses, letting the silence do its work. “Your situation isn’t entirely in my hands anymore.”
The words settle over me with the weight of a verdict.
“What does that mean?”
