Jennifer hesitated, then sneered and flipped me off as if it was my fault. I didn’t get this. Chris was clearly the power-hungry bitch, but what was the gutter-mouthed china doll doing here? She’d been freaky scary when we caught her, but fringe organizations promoting species eradication usually didn’t mesh with women named Jennifer who had rhinestones on their shoes.
“I got enough to run a sample,” Jennifer said, setting the syringe beside Chris. “When we need more, I’ll just dart her.”
Like an animal? Not good. Not good at all. This wasn’t the first time I’d been locked up: Alcatraz, demon jail, Trent’s ferret cage, a hospital bed. If I could escape that one twenty years ago, then this one was only a matter of time. But as I looked over the bleak surroundings, warm and damp, I wondered. This was bad. Really bad.
“I’m Rachel,” I said to the lump in the corner.
“Winona,” the woman said, lifting her head from her seated fetal position just enough to see me. Her brown eyes were terrified. “Don’t touch me. Please.”
She sounded frantic, and I stopped moving closer. Her tasteful pair of slacks and a blouse were wrinkled by several days’ use, but expensive. Her low heels were functional. She was an office professional by the looks of it. Someone who would be missed right away. Either they were confident no one would find us, or she had something they needed that was worth the risk.
My head hurt, and I felt it carefully and found three sore spots. I only remembered being kicked hard enough to hurt once. My gut hurt, too, and I lifted my shirt and saw an ugly bruise just shy of my kidneys. A little higher, and Chris would have cracked a rib. Bitch. I reached to push my hair out of my eyes, finding someone had tied a knot it in. My face screwed up in anger as I realized it was a HAPA knot. Real funny.
My band of charmed silver slipped down as I worked the knot free, and my anger grew. I supposed I could break my hand and slip it off—and fry my brain in the process. I was a day late and a dollar short in talking to Trent.
Winona was crying, her brown hair falling over her drawn-up knees, and after I got rid of the knot, I inched closer. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Why do they want us?” she quavered.
The answer wouldn’t make her feel any better. “I don’t know,” I lied.
In the corner outside our cage were five rolled-up sleeping bags and several bags from a chain grocery store. Two locked army green boxes were stacked near them. There was no kitchen, but a beaker of soup was warming up on a Bunsen burner on a makeshift counter. My stomach growled, and I took that as a good sign. It was obvious they hadn’t been here long, but it was equally obvious that much of it had been waiting for them.
Someone likes to plan, I thought, and I rubbed my head.
The tabletop machine made a clattering of noise and spit out a small strip of curling paper. Chris tore it off and looked at it. “Spectrometer is good to go,” she said, popping open the little drawer and tossing in the empty vial. “Where’s her sample?”
“Here.” Jennifer took the needle off and handed her the end of the syringe with my blood in it. “Be careful.”
Chris’s eyebrows were mockingly high. She looked from the blood to me before turning her back on me. “I don’t think she’s really a demon, charmed silver or not.”
Jennifer leaned back against the card-table counter, crossing her ankles and trying to look nonchalant. “Me neither,” she said, her flippant voice giving her lie away. “We caught her easy enough. She didn’t do one demonic thing.”
My eyes narrowed and I leaned forward, curving my fingers through the mesh. “Let me out, we’ll see how demonic I can be.”
Ignoring my threat, Chris popped another vial into the machine and hit the button. “I think it more likely that Captain America is wrong about her.”
“What about the coven?” Jennifer’s shoulders stiffened. “They called her one. They put that on her.”She was looking at my bracelet, and I sneered at her pretty little face, wanting to smash it.
“Propaganda,” Chris said simply, busy with the machine.
“Yes, but he was right about us needing to move.” Bending down with her hands on her knees, Jennifer looked at Winona as if she was an animal in a zoo, interesting but easily forgotten.
Chris grimaced. “I think he was the one who gave us away,” she muttered as she went back to her work.
Jennifer stood. “Maybe we shouldn’t have strung that guy up in the park. They weren’t looking so hard for us before that.”
“If we hadn’t, Morgan would never have become involved,” Chris said, preoccupied.
The man at the monitors, almost forgotten, made a noise of disagreement. “Eloy didn’t give us away,” he almost growled, his thick fingers manipulating one of the cameras. “Staying was a bad decision. Your bad decision, Chris. I’m not so convinced taking her was a good idea, either.” He glanced at me. “Even if she’s not a demon, she’s too violent and we’re not set up to hold two people.”
Chris never moved, focused on the machine. “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Gerald.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, deepening his few wrinkles as he scowled. “That putrid clot in the suit killed Kenny.”
Taking a deep breath, Chris turned, spinning smoothly on the metal chair. Her expression was mocking, and her hair was starting to float. She was tapping a line. Jennifer flicked her attention between them, clearly nervous. “Don’t you have more cameras to install?” the distasteful woman said harshly.
In a noisy motion, the man stood, his cameras tucked in the crook of his elbow as he stiffly walked toward the edge of the clutter. “You are a cold, unfeeling bitch.” I heard him hit something out of my sight with a grunt, and Chris smiled.
Looking smug, she spun back to the machine. “I don’t think Morgan’s blood is going to be any different from any other corrs we’ve taken,” she said, and I became more uneasy. They knew my name. They knew the coven had labeled me a demon. I’d thought that I could ride this wild horse, but it was running away with me and I couldn’t get the bit out from between its teeth.
The machine whined harshly and spit out another curling bit of paper. Jennifer grabbed for it, taking a step back out of Chris’s reach. Her eyes widened, and an awestruck “Dudes!” slipped past her lips.
“Give it to me,” Chris snapped, lurching to her feet to take it. Frowning, she dropped back into her chair, sitting sideways so that she only had to turn her head to see me. I could tell it was bad news for me by the way Jennifer was shifting from foot to foot.
“Look at her Rosewood levels,” the younger woman said, pointing down over Chris’s shoulder. “My God! She should be dead!”
Exhaling, Chris handed the strip to Jennifer. “I’ve never seen such a narrow spike. Hold off on pasting it in the data book. I’m going to run it again.”
But Jennifer had already pulled a worn theme book from a cardboard box and was leafing through it. I recognized it as one of the books Chris had saved from the industrial park, and I was wondering about their backgrounds when Jennifer taped the strip in, then signed and dated it.
Her brow furrowed, Jennifer studied the page. I could see about eight strips pasted in. Eight people, six of whom were probably dead. Her careful data taking was going to land her in jail for murder. “You should be dead,” Jennifer said when she looked up.
“That makes two of us,” I snarled, and Chris chuckled as she popped in a new vial and hit the go button.
“A Rosewood spike doesn’t mean she is a demon.” Chris stood and stretched, going to stir the soup with a glass rod. “It means she’s a freak of nature.”
“But it’s the increased level of the Rosewood enzyme that’s killing them,” Jennifer said, her finger on my printout. “Not necessarily the transformations themselves. She should be dead with what she has. Clearly she’s got something, maybe another antigen, that’s counteracting the first, allowing her to survive. If we can find out what it is, then we can keep them all alive—”
“Why?” Chris interrupted her. “We’re not a hotel.”
“No, you’re a butcher,” I said, ignored, and Winona trembled in the corner. “Oh, crap, I’m sorry,” I whispered, and she drew back from me.
“Keeping them alive isn’t the goal,” Chris said, making me angrier yet. “Getting closer to the ideal is. As far as I’m concerned, the shortened life expectancy is a boon. What would we do with them otherwise? Stack them up like wood?”
My God, this woman was unbelievable.
Jennifer dropped her eyes, looking uneasy as she leaned against the counter and hugged herself. Clearly she had some smarts if she was spouting off about antigens. Maybe I could work on her guilt and convince her to let us go.
The machine spit out another strip of paper, and after Chris read it, she set it on fire using the Bunsen burner. “I have a better way to find out if she’s a demon or not,” she said, watching the paper go up with a weird green flame from the ink.
“What?”
Jennifer’s voice sounded scared. Hell, I knew I was, and I scooted forward to the front of the cage, getting into the light. “Yeah, what?” I said boldly, but I wasn’t. They had at least three drops of my blood left in that syringe.