Ramshackle (Raegan of Ruin #3)

31. Raegan

Chapter thirty-one

Raegan

Royce stands there, his dark eyes on me and a frown on thin lips.

“What is this?” He whips the door open, and it slams against the wall.

I launch at him. My gift is already active, and I don’t know if I can hurt him just enough without killing him, but it’s better than standing and doing nothing.

He snaps his fingers.

Invisible hooks pierce my limbs, my chest, my neck. My body pauses mid-attack, then pulls back to stand still in front of him. I try to move. My head. My hand. A fucking finger .

Nothing.

My heart pounds rapidly as it realizes the cage it’s now in.

I knew he would be tough if he was higher up in GE, but I also thought he was limited to controlling dead people. What had Thorne told me?

He controls souls .

Fuck.

“None of that,” he chides, waving a hand at mine glowing red with my gift. It flickers, then dissipates. My other hand with the gun drops to my side. “That’s better.” Royce steps back, so he has both Vera and I in his view. “The question is, did you know she was there?” he directs to her. “Either you willfully allowed her to spy on you or you were too dumb to realize you were being watched.”

Neither Vera nor I say anything.

We can’t.

This man could do anything he wanted with us right now.

I struggle against his hold, trying to move something. Trying to call my gift back out. Maybe my gift can trip whatever control he has over me. But nothing works.

I fight back the terror that’s clawing up my chest.

Royce sighs, and his attention flicks back to me. “You can’t fight it. Or, you can try and waste your energy in the process, I suppose.” He shrugs. “It does not matter to me.”

He turns his back on Vera to move closer to me, his brows pinched as he studies me. “Oh, I see.” His face relaxes. “This is the girl Gordon’s making a fuss over. I don’t see the appeal but to each his own. Should I return you to him?”

I want to scream at him. Shoot him. Anything to get him away from me. I’m not going back.

The portal shimmers mockingly in the air a few paces back from him.

It would only take a few forced steps, and I would disappear again.

Vera makes a noise. Royce looks over his shoulder at her. “What’s that? You disagree?” There’s a long pause, and then he’s focused back on me. “Oh, right. Gordon’s teaching his pet a lesson first. I’ll leave you be, then.” His smile is dark and threatening. “If you don’t fall in line with Gordon after this, I’ll dispose of you myself.”

He walks to the portal. “Come now, Vera. We have some things to discuss, you and I.” Her legs jerk forward on his command, and they both disappear in the portal.

The moment he’s gone, I can feel it. My body becomes heavier again, the weight of its control falling back to me where before I’d felt like a hollow doll on strings.

I move my arm to make sure, then close my hand in a fist.

Now that I’ve seen his gift in action, we need a plan on how to fight him. If he can control anyone with the snap of his fingers, then throwing more people at him isn’t going to help us.

Which reminds me that I was supposed to be keeping an eye on Evie and Tinsley. A quick glance through the one-way mirror shows that they’re already finished. All the beds are gone, leaving a large empty room and the two of them.

I still jog back to the room. They both look up when I enter.

“Where were you?” Tinsley asks, hopping forward on one foot.

There’s no sign that either of them heard what was happening on the other side of the wall. Was it soundproof? “Looking at the room next door,” I answer casually. “Everything okay in here?”

Evie nods. “We’re all set here. Just waiting on the others to get back.”

Should I see if the others need help?

You’re supposed to be keeping these two safe. I already slacked on that responsibility and I’m lucky nothing happened.

Jackson returns first.

I smile at him when he enters and strides directly toward me. His cool blue eyes sweep over me. He stops just in front of me, so I’m forced to angle my head back to see his face. A smirk catches the corner of his mouth. “Couldn’t sit still?”

“Who? Me?” I ask innocently.

He leans forward, the side of his face nearly brushing against mine. “I know you went next door,” he whispers.

My mouth falls open, but I know better than to lie to him. How does he know that?

Jack chuckles and pulls me into his arms. His hands move down my back as he props his face on my head and inhales deeply. Something clinks behind me, and he draws back, dangling something in one hand.

“What—” I gasp when I see what it is.

The cuffs that block gifts.

“Where did you get those?”

“They were on you.”

On me? Wait. Are these what Vera told me to hide? But…why? Why steal them and then give them back?

He holds them out to me, and I take them.

“You have some explaining to do, little one.”

Aiden’s giving orders as soon as we return to the bunker. Evie, Tinsley, and Reid are tasked with getting the people we rescued to Claudia and Cassandra for their next steps. I know I won’t get answers anytime soon even if my father is part of the group, so instead of sticking around, I walk behind the other Guild members so I can return to my room for sleep.

Jackson steps in front of me. I halt before I crash into him.

He angles his head to the side, and a small smirk twitches the corner of his lips. “Where are you going?”

“To sleep.”

His gaze flicks over my head, and when I turn to follow it, I see Aiden, Kellan, and Dane approaching us to listen in. “You were going to share what happened back there,” he reminds me.

Ah. Right. Leave it to Jack to hold me accountable. It’s my default to keep things to myself and work through them. But I told him I wanted us all to work together now, which means filling them in on what I learned about Royce and on the cuffs.

“Something happened?” Dane asks, concern lacing his voice.

“Vera was there,” I answer, stepping to the side so I can see him and the others. My eyes pause on Dane.

Was she lying about what she told him?

He would have said something about it if she had, right?

“Did she see you?” Aiden asks, his eyes raking over me.

Dane runs his hand through his hair, halting partway through to grip it. It’s a sign that he’s stressed, even though he tries to play it off like it’s nothing. “Did she attack you?”

Kellan pushes past Dane. “Are you hurt? Aiden, call Cassandra. The others can wait.”

I hold my hands up before he grabs me to look me over himself. “I’m fine. Yes, she saw me, but…” My gaze slides to Dane. A few months ago, I would have kept this to myself. I don’t want to give him hope about Vera. Even though she gave me the cuffs and hid me in the closet from Royce, she also almost shot me in the head and told me how much she hates me.

But the way Royce was treating her…

Is she fighting back in her own way? Was it against GE or just him?

I don’t know enough yet, and I’m too worried Dane will take any positive interaction as a sign that he’ll get his sixteen-year-old sister he remembers back.

“We were interrupted by Royce,” I finish.

Dane tenses, his jaw sharpening. “The guy who brought Thorne and Vera back?”

“Yeah. I can confirm his ability to control souls—or bodies, at least. He snapped his fingers, and he had complete control of my body. Like I was trapped inside a puppet.” I rub subconsciously at my arms, remembering the feeling of hooks sinking in. “He only let me go because he recognized me and knows what Gordon is up to. He left through a portal with Vera.”

Kellan curses, and I nod. “I don’t know what his limitations are or if he has any, but he’s going to be hard to fight. He was controlling Vera and I at the same time, and it didn’t seem like it bothered him at all. Who knows how many people he can do that to at once.”

Aiden watches Dane, waiting to see if he’ll say something, before he asks, “He controlled Vera’s body like yours?”

“Yeah. He…made her stop gathering her things there. Threatened to have her hurt herself for not leaving already and then made her follow him through the portal.”

Silence fills the training room.

I think we’re all waiting for Dane to jump on that to try to defend Vera.

He doesn’t.

Aiden rips a Velcro strap on his vest, breaking the quiet, then re-secures the metal there. “They’re up to something. If Royce is as powerful as you say, then it doesn’t make sense that they would abandon the island rather than fight for it. Or else he has a limitation based on quantity, or perhaps a particular gift on the island that put him at a disadvantage.”

I shrug because that’s all I have.

“We’ll have Thorne soon,” Jackson calmly adds. His gaze switches to Kellan. “I need you to make a call to set it up.”

“We can go in two nights,” Aiden speaks directly to Jack. “As long as we have a way to hold him once we have him.”

“Oh.” I reach under my vest and pull the cuffs out. “And I got these back.”

Kellan throws his head back in laughter. “Good work, beautiful. That’ll make this a breeze .”

I roll my eyes at the dumb pun but smile anyway.

Aiden holds his hand out expectantly to see them.

Ha. Ha.

“You’re joking,” I say, holding the cuffs close to my chest.

He frowns. “No. I’ll keep them safe until we go after Thorne.”

This asshole really is serious.

“Do you not remember what you did with these the last time you had them?” His frown deepens, but he doesn’t respond. “You locked me up with them. So, no. I think I’ll hold on to them so you don’t try to use them against me again.”

Aiden’s eyes narrow. “You’re leaving out some important details.”

“Am I?” I demand, my voice rising.

Dane steps between us, hands raised. “It’s fine. Raegan’s not going to lose them. We aren’t even leaving the bunker again until we capture Thorne.”

Aiden concedes with a terse nod. “All right. Everyone, get some sleep.” He strides from the room without looking back, and I stare broodingly at his back.

A kiss on my temple startles me. Jackson smirks knowingly at me.

“I’m going to check on Thorne,” he murmurs.

“Okay.” I’m looking forward to catching the zombie. Then, Jackson won’t be out most nights keeping an eye on him.

Kellan stretches his arms and groans loud enough to echo. “Gaaaargh! Ahhh! Nothing like sleeping after a successful mission of kicking ass.”

We start walking to the door, him on one side and Dane on the other.

“You should go see Aiden,” Dane says, knocking my mood back to where it had been with the cuffs.

“Why?”

“He hardly eats. He’s not sleeping. He told all of us to get some rest, but I can guarantee he went straight to his office and will be up all night.”

My chest tightens. I’ve been noticing small signs of it, but I haven’t wanted to acknowledge it. It’s not my problem. He’s not my problem.

“He’s a big boy. He knows how to take care of himself,” I answer, trying to keep my voice calm.

“He’s become obsessed with doing whatever it takes to make things up to you. Even if that means skipping sleep and forgetting to eat. He found Gabe for your knee, now possibly your father; what do you think he’s going to do next? It’s not going to stop. He’s not going to stop.”

“What are you asking of me, Dane? To tell him that everything’s all better? It’s not my responsibility to make him feel better over what he did,” I snap, heat gathering in my chest.

Dane takes my arm, and we stop walking. Kellan does the same, crossing his arms but staying quiet. “He made some mistakes, Rae. Haven’t you ever made those before? What matters is that he’s trying to fix it now.”

What else is he trying to do? How far is he planning to take this?

Why do I care?

Because I still care about him.

I press my lips together, and Dane sighs. “Just…think about it. Okay? I’ve already tried to talk sense into him, and I don’t think anything will change unless it’s coming from you.”