Refuge(155)

“I hear they’ve already sent a team to find him, and then they are going to send him to Argentina.”

I nodded wistfully. “You know, I think I’m actually going to miss him.”

“Sara,” Tristan called from the doorway, and I turned to look at him. His expression was serious and it spoke of the weight on his shoulders today. I was pretty sure he had slept very little since the attack, and he had no intention of resting until every detail of last night was uncovered. “Michael is awake. I am going to talk to him, but he’s asking to see you. You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to.”

I thought about the urgent email from David I’d read this morning, the email I’d received last night but not read because Michael had come to get me before I had the chance to open it. Do not trust this Michael kid. He’s been talking to vampires online for at least a month.

My chest constricted every time I replayed the words in my head. If I’d gotten the email one minute earlier, if Michael had shown up a minute later, we never would have been led into the trap. I would have gone to Tristan and Nikolas and told them about Michael, and the attack might have been averted. Olivia and Mark and the fallen warriors would still be alive.

Misunderstanding my hesitation, Tristan nodded and started to turn away. “No, I want to.” I knew Michael’s motive for betraying us, but I wanted to hear what he had to say to me. Maybe it could help me understand how I had been so deceived by someone I’d believed was my friend.

I told Sahir I’d see him later. Then I followed Tristan to a room with a guard standing outside. When we stepped inside, I saw Nikolas standing near the door and Celine sitting in a chair not far from him. Nikolas’s angry expression made it clear he was not happy about me talking to Michael, but he wasn’t going to try to stop me.

“You came?” said a small voice, drawing my attention to the pale blond boy huddled in the hospital bed. Michael had one arm folded over his chest and the other was chained to the bed railing. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I wasn’t sure I would come either.” I paused then walked over to stand next to the bed. Up close, he looked even paler than usual, and I could see dark shadows beneath his eyes. “How are you feeling?”

“O-okay.” His blue eyes brimmed with tears. “Sara, I-I’m sorry for what I did to you. I know you won’t forgive me, but I want you to know that I didn’t ever want to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt just me, Michael. Olivia and Mark are dead.” The words came out harsher than I’d intended, but the pain of watching Olivia die was still too raw. I didn’t know if that was something you ever got over.

Michael’s face drained of color, and I realized no one had told him about them. “Oh God,” he moaned and tears spilled down his face. “No one was supposed to die. They said if I gave them you, they would give me Matthew.”

“And you believed them?” What had he thought the Master planned to do to me once he had me? Or had that not mattered to him?

“I had to.” His eyes pleaded with me to understand. “I messed up everything else, and it was my last chance of getting Matthew back.”

Tristan stepped forward, looking a lot more composed than I felt. “What do you mean? What did you mess up?”

Michael stared down at the blanket, unable to face Tristan. “I-I was supposed to scare Sara and make her leave. I did things to make her want to go, but she never did.”

“What things?” My mind replayed every bad thing that had happened to me in the last month. “Did you have anything to do with us getting attacked in the movie theater?”

He darted a glance at me and looked down again. “I only told them what movie you were going to see. I didn’t know they would sic demons on all those people.”

I was right. There had been a vampire nearby when we left the movie theater. But what had they thought to gain by sending lamprey demons after us? “What about the vampires at the party we went to? Did you tell them we would be there?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t even know you were going to a party. I swear.”

“What else did you do?” Tristan asked sternly.

“I gave Sara some drex venom.” I gasped loudly, and Michael swung his gaze to me. “It was supposed to make you sad and depressed so you’d want to leave. It’s not supposed to make people sick. I didn’t know what to do when you got so sick.”

“You did that to me?” Drex demons disabled their victims by injecting them with their venom, which was like a powerful psychotropic drug. It should have, at the very most, caused me to have hallucinations. But I had been so sick I could barely move from my bed. I had a suspicion that drex venom and Fae blood did not mix well. No wonder it had taken troll bile to cure me. Trolls are immune to all toxins and poisons.