Stolen (Otherworld #2)(24)

"Perfect. Thank you, Leah."
The woman smiled and nodded. If she had any objection to being treated like a trained monkey, she gave no sign of it, just stood there awaiting further commands.
"I'll see you later, Leah," Bauer said.
"I'm not going anywhere. Say hi to Xavier for me. Tell him to stop by some time. Bring a deck of cards."
"I'll do that."
Bauer clicked off the intercom.
"Xavier is our other half-demon," she said to me. "You've met him."
"Houdini."
Bauer smiled. "Yes, I suppose so. No bonds will hold that one, as we soon discovered. Lucky for us he was happy to cooperate with our questions and experiments for the right financial incentive. Quite the mercenary, our Xavier. A valuable asset to the team, though."
"Like the sorcerer," I said.
Bauer shot me a studiously blank look.
"I heard you hired a sorcerer, too," I said.
Bauer hesitated, as if pondering whether to lie, then said, "Yes, we have a sorcerer. He helps us find our supernaturals. You're not likely to encounter Mr. Katzen though, if that puts your mind at ease."
"Should it?"
"Sorcerers have an… unsavory reputation among some supernatural races. Not entirely unwarranted."
Matasumi coughed discreetly, but Bauer ignored him and rapped her nails against the Vodoun priest's cell wall. He glanced up, maybe sensing someone there, and cast a baleful glare at the mirrored glass.
"Untrustworthy egomaniacs, most of them," Bauer went on. "Our Mr. Katzen, I'm afraid, is no exception. As I said, though, you don't need to worry about him. He doesn't associate with what he considers the 'lower' races. Now Xavier is much more sociable."
"He keeps Leah entertained, I see."
"Actually no. He's not likely to take her up on her offer. Sad, really. When Leah found out we had another half-demon here she was thrilled. I don't think she's ever met another of her kind. But Xavier won't have anything to do with her. He met her once and has since refused to go near her. We've even tried bribes. Keeping our guests happy is very important to us. Leah is a very gregarious young woman. She needs social stimulation. Fortunately we've found other ways to accommodate her. She's taken quite an interest in two of our other guests."
"Curtis and Savannah," Tess said.
Bauer nodded. "Who are also our two guests most in need of companionship, someone to cheer them up. I think Leah has a knack for that. An innate sense of altruism. Curtis and Savannah both enjoy her company immensely. Which only makes Xavier's animosity all the more unfathomable. He won't even talk to her. It's causing some concern for us. We'd like to bring Leah on the team, but we can't afford the tension it would cause.""Have a lot of cap-guests joined 'the team'?"
Bauer's eyes sparked as if I'd asked the million-dollar question. "Not many, but it's certainly possible. Particularly for our more honored guests, like yourself. Once we're assured of a guest's cooperation, we're quite happy to make an offer. It's something to strive for."
In other words, if I was a very, very good girl, I too could kidnap and torture my fellow supernatural beings. Oh, joy.
"Any idea why Xavier doesn't like Leah?" I asked.
"Jealousy," Matasumi said. "Within the half-demon hierarchy Leah has higher standing."
"Are they aware of this hierarchy?" I asked. "I thought half-demons didn't have much contact with one another. They don't have any central or ruling group, right? So how do they know who has what status?"
Silence.
After a moment Matasumi said, "At some level, I'm sure they're aware of their status."
"An Agito demon ranks over an Evanidus, Xavier's sire," Bauer said. "And an Exustio ranks over both. That's Adam Vasic's sire, right? An Exustio?"
"Never came up in conversation, surprisingly."
Disappointment flashed across her face, then vanished in another false-hearty smile. "We'll have Doctor Carmichael check those burns. I'm assuming Adam gave them to you."
She paused. I said nothing.
"An Exustio half-demon is very powerful," she continued. "Right at the top. He'd be a first-rate catch. Maybe you could help with that. I'm sure those burns don't tickle."
"They're healing," I said.
"Still, we'd be very grateful-"
Matasumi interrupted. "We don't even know if Adam Vasic's sire is an Exustio, Sondra. We only have one person's secondhand account on that."
"But it's a very good account." Bauer turned to me. "One of our early captives was a shaman who served on Ruth Winterbourne's council back when Adam's stepfather started bringing him to the meetings. He's a Tempestras half-demon. The stepfather, that is. He's also supposedly an expert on demonology, and he was convinced Adam's sire was an Exustio."
"Though he's never given any indication of having such an advanced degree of power," Matasumi said. "Skin burns are more likely the sign of an Igneus. An Exustio would have incinerated Ms. Michaels."
"Still, even an Igneus half-demon would be quite a coup. And I'd love to get his stepfather. There's very little data on Tempestras demons."
"I'd like to meet the mother," Tess said. "What's the chance that a woman is going to be chosen to bear a demon's offspring and end up marrying a half-demon? There must be something in her that attracts them. It could be very useful research. And interesting." 
This was creeping me out. How much did these people know about us? It was bad enough that they knew what we were, but to have delved into our personal lives like this was downright disturbing. Did they do this a lot, stand around discussing us like we were characters in some modern Dark Shadows soap opera?
"Why didn't you grab Adam instead of me?" I asked.
"Don't underestimate your own importance to us, Elena," Bauer said. "We're thrilled to have you with us."
"And we couldn't find Adam," Tess added.
Gee, thanks.
Bauer continued, "And, beside Leah, our last, but certainly not least guest."
I turned. In the cell behind me was a girl. No, I don't mean a young woman. I mean a child, no more than twelve or thirteen. I assumed her youthful appearance was the manifestation of some unknown supernatural race.
"What is she?" I asked.
"A witch," Bauer said.
"Does a spell do that? Make her look young? Handy trick, but if it were me, I sure wouldn't want to return to that age. Either long before or long after puberty for me, thank you very much."
Bauer laughed. "No, it's not a spell. Savannah's twelve."
I stopped. If I'd been shivering before, I was frozen now, a block of ice lodged in my gut.
"Twelve?" I repeated, hoping I'd heard wrong. "You captured a twelve-year-old witch?"
"The absolute best age," Matasumi said. "Witches come into their full powers with the onset of their first menses. Being on the brink of puberty, Savannah presents us with the perfect opportunity to study mental and physiological changes that might explain a witch's ability to cast spells. We had a remarkable stroke of luck finding her. An accident really. Savannah is the daughter of a former Coven witch we targeted several weeks ago. When our men picked up the mother, the daughter was unexpectedly home from school, so they were forced to bring her as well."
I scanned the cell. "You don't keep her with her mother?"
"We had some trouble with her mother," Bauer said. "Her powers were stronger than our sorcerer led us to believe. Dark magic, you might call it, which would likely explain her split with the Coven. Eve was… well, we had to-"
"We removed her from the program," Matasumi cut in. "The best thing, really. She proved much too difficult to be a useful subject, and her presence distracted the child."
The ice expanded to fill my stomach. These people were holding a child in an underground cell, congratulating themselves on having found her, and extolling the advantages of killing her mother? I watched the girl. She was tall for her age, whip-thin, with a face that was all planes and sharp angles. Waist-length jet-black hair fell so straight it seemed weighted down. Huge dark blue eyes overpowered her thin face. An odd-looking child with the promise of great beauty. She stared intently at a crossword puzzle book, pencil poised above the page. After a moment she nodded and scribbled something. She held the book at arm's length, studied the completed puzzle, then tossed it aside, got up from the table, paced a few times, and finally settled for surveying the contents of a bookshelf behind the television set.
"She must get bored," I said.
"Oh, no," Bauer said. "This isn't easy for Savannah. We know that. But we do our best to accommodate her. Anything she wants. Chocolate bars, magazines… we even picked up some video games last week. She's quite…" Bauer paused, seeming to roll a word on her tongue, then discarded it and said quietly, "She's comfortable."So she knew how bad it sounded. "Sorry we executed your mom, kid, but here's some [47] Tiger Beats and a Game Boy to make up for it." Bauer tapped her manicured nails against the wall, then forced a smile.
"Well, that's it," she said. "You're probably wondering what all this is for."
"Perhaps later," Matasumi murmured. "Doctor Carmichael is waiting and this isn't really the place…"
"We've shown Elena around. Now I think it's only fair we offer some explanation."