Chapter Twenty
I promised that I would see what I could do about reopening Broadlake’s case, and then Robbie and I left, slamming the cold metal door behind us.
Maktel and Ivan stood tense at the doors but gave no hint that they’d seen or heard anything unusual. Sprawled in reception, Bastion and Hanlon had swapped chairs but still looked relaxed.
Pritchard was there too and had resumed his bouncing. ‘I hope that interview helped you, Inspector Wise!’
God, had I ever been so eager? I didn’t think so.
‘Yes, thank you. I need to see Shaun Bolton next.’
Pritchard gaped at me. ‘Inspector! You requested to see one prisoner. I can’t bring Bolton to interview! He’s in isolation. For good reason.’
‘Well then, you can take me to isolation.’
His jaw dropped like I had suggested he snort cocaine off my shoes.
‘Quickly, Pritchard!’ I snapped. ‘I haven’t got all day!’
Used to orders, he straightened to attention. ‘I’ll speak to my father. One moment.’ He stalked off and returned five minutes later. ‘You’re cleared for ingress, Inspector. Follow me.’ He turned to another officer loitering by the reception area. ‘Freddie, return prisoner 3871 to his cell.’
Freddie looked grumpy at having to do some work, but he nodded and started towards Interview Room One while we followed Pritchard.
As the ogres and Bastion fell into step, Pritchard screeched to a halt. ‘Oh, you can’t come. I can get you and him in’—he jabbed a finger at Robbie—‘just about, but no way in hell can I get you lot in as well. You’ll have to wait here.’
‘You little puny—’
‘Ivan!’ Robbie’s voice cracked like a whip.
Ivan grimaced. ‘Your Excellence, I cannot protect you if I—’
‘You do not need to protect me here. I am in a high-security prison. What can go wrong?’
Hanlon let out a long groan. ‘Now he’s done it. We’re going to get attacked by a basilisk, or the phoenix, or a herd of unicorns, or—’
‘Hanlon!’ Maktel snapped. ‘That is enough. We will await you here, Your Excellence.’ He pulled the other two ogres forcefully to the waiting room.
Wincing, Bastion joined them.
I reached out to Loki. You stay here, buddy. I don’t want you to set off some detection in the prison. Security will be higher there.
But Loki—
I’m all right, I interrupted. Feel me. I’m steady. I’m okay. I’m doing the job. Stay with Hanlon. Please?
He didn’t reply, but his little claws left my shoulder and I felt him get further away.
Looking obnoxiously pleased with himself at getting the ogres to obey him, Pritchard led the way into the heart of the prison.
The corridor beyond the interview block was ominous in the way it swallowed sound. It felt as if you could scream here and no one would hear it. Or if they did hear it, they wouldn’t give a shit.
The hallways were dark with Victorian brickwork, damp, rigid and austere. The lights, by contrast, were modern LED strips bolted into the ceiling, but their presence only sharpened the shadows, throwing hard lines across the floor.
My boots echoed, the small heel clacking with every step. Next to me, Robbie’s footfalls were eerily silent. A predator prowling.
Pritchard led the way, the keycard on a lanyard around his neck bouncing wildly with every jaunty step he took.
Every ten metres, a camera dome watched us, and every twenty there was another metal door with a keypad and a biometric scanner.
No one moved through Wraithmore without leaving a trail, us included.
‘Identify,’ a voice crackled overhead.
Pritchard stopped under a speaker embedded in the ceiling and cleared his throat like he’d been rehearsing in his head. ‘Officer Pritchard escorting Inspector Stacy Wise of the Connection, plus security escort.’
I had to bite back a smile. Plus security escort. Pritchard had made it sound like my fiancé was a standard-issue prison guard, not the marauding king of the ogres.
A pause, then a soft beep.
‘Proceed.’
The first door hissed as it unlocked, and then it clanged open with a sound that vibrated through my teeth. Cold air rushed out from the next wing, smelling faintly of bleach and old stone and something metallic. Blood.
Now that we were in the prison proper, the walls vibrated with magic. It set my teeth on edge. Wraithmore had been built to hold monsters, and it took a whole lot of magic and effort to keep them here.
Jingo would hate it here, I thought – if Broadlake was to be believed, and from Robbie’s humming, he was.
I’ll see Jingo locked up here, I promised viciously.
We stepped through and the door slammed shut behind us with finality. Not a normal slam. A seal. Like a vault.
Pritchard glanced back, his smile strained. He was breaking the rules, and he knew it. Hated it. Something I would normally have appreciated. ‘Isolation is … this way.’
‘Lead on, Officer,’ I ordered.
We moved deeper. The corridor narrowed, the ceiling lowering uncomfortably, no doubt by design.
It was an old prison, repurposed and reinforced.
The bones of the Victorian building wore modern magical armour, but it still had an ancient, dangerous feel to it.
People died here, I was sure of it, and none of them had passed due to old age.
The second door demanded more than a keycard. Pritchard pressed his thumb to a scanner, then leaned forward into a black glass plate.
‘Wraithmore secure access,’ he enunciated. ‘Pritchard. Interview escort.’
A red light blinked.
‘Voice confirmed,’ the speaker said. ‘Now present escort identification.’
Pritchard looked at me nervously.
I rolled my eyes and stepped forward, presenting my palm.
A slim beam of light scanned the lines of my skin, crawling up my wrist too.
My palm print was on the Connection database, and it was time to see if Thackeray was as good as his word.
He hadn’t permitted me to go, but he hadn’t set up anything to stop me.
‘Inspector Wise,’ I said calmly. ‘Connection, Major Incidents Team.’
No alarms sounded. After a pause, the light shifted to green.
‘Access granted.’
Robbie moved last. ‘Robert Krieg,’ he said. ‘Consort to the Inspector.’
‘Consort,’ I murmured under my breath. ‘Who even says that?’
His mouth twitched.
The door opened, and light assaulted my eyeballs. It was like stepping into the sun. There wasn’t a shadow as far as I could see.
Wards compressed over me, adding a low hum under my skin and a pressure at the base of my skull, and I sensed invisible threads stretched tight across the walls.
‘Anti-faze net,’ Robbie murmured, eyes flicking up to the ceiling corners.
This was heavy vampyr-grade security. The kind you didn’t bother with unless you expected creatures that could melt into shadow and reappear behind your spine, ready to rip you into pieces. Who the hell did they hold here? Dracula?
‘Right,’ I whispered. ‘So they’re not taking chances.’
Pritchard nodded far too enthusiastically.
‘No chances, sir. We’re prepared for all supernaturals here.
Besides the runes on the walls, we’ve got’—he pointed at the ceiling from where the eye-watering light source beamed down at us—‘the anti-shadow lattice, and the saltline in the paint, and the silver mesh in the—’
‘Pritchard,’ I cut in, my head throbbing. ‘Enough.’
He snapped his mouth shut gratifyingly fast.
We passed a small glass booth on the right where two officers sat with monitors, hands hovering over buttons and switches so thoroughly labelled that it looked like someone with OCD had got hold of a label-maker.
A third officer stood behind them holding a shotgun loaded with something that definitely wasn’t ordinary ammunition.
We continued, the corridor stretching long ahead, doors branching off left and right, each one small and identical, each one hiding a life that had gone terribly wrong at some point.
And some lives that had been wrong to begin with.
The first familiar name hit me like a slap.
Cell 4B had a plaque bolted to the wall beside it, shiny and new.
QUINTOS.
My jaw tightened.
A faint rustle came from inside the cell.
‘You! You bitch. You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!’
I ignored his empty threats and kept walking, not deigning to respond.
He wanted attention. Quintos always wanted attention. Craved it. Money hadn’t been able to buy him decency, and now it couldn’t buy him fancy clothes and attention either.
A few doors down was another plaque.
CARNFORTH.
Ah. They’d kept them close. That was nice of them.
Louisa didn’t speak. Didn’t laugh. But something scraped softly inside the cell like a nail dragged along stone.
The sound made my skin prickle.
Another turn. Another corridor.
The air felt colder here, and the lights buzzed, like even electricity didn’t want to linger.
We passed a cell with no plaque. No name. Just a number. 4121.
No sounds came from inside, and somehow that was worse.
We reached the next checkpoint – a heavy door reinforced with horizontal bars like it belonged in a shipyard.
Two guards stood there, faces grim, weapons held across their chests.
One was a wizard. The other was a troll with a scar down his jaw that looked like something had tried to unzip his face.
The wizard guard held up a hand. ‘State your purpose.’
Pritchard puffed up. ‘Officer Pritchard escorting Inspector Wise to Isolation Wing D to see Shaun Bolton.’
The guard’s brows drew together. ‘Bolton?’
‘Yes,’ I said flatly. ‘Bolton.’
The wizard glanced at a clipboard, then at me. ‘We don’t allow physical contact with isolation inmates.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to hug him.’
He snickered. ‘He couldn’t hug you if he tried. Not anymore.’
That was ominous.
The troll pressed a button on the wall. A red light flashed above the door, and somewhere deep in the building a siren chirped once.
‘Isolation escort protocol activated,’ the speaker announced. ‘All inmates remain secured. Movement suspended.’
Jesus. They’d locked down a whole wing just because I wanted a chat.
Pritchard looked green, terrified that someone somewhere would realise that Connection or not, technically, I shouldn’t be here. Robbie’s bribes were holding though, and I wondered how many palms he’d had to grease to achieve this.
The door opened.
Beyond it, the corridor was narrower still, the bricks darker. There was less light down here; I supposed they didn’t have any vampyrs currently in isolation.
Pritchard’s bouncing had stopped. Even he had the sense to be cautious.
Every door we passed had two locks. One mechanical. One electronic. Etched around each frame were thin, pale lines that caught the light: ward-sigils carved into stone. Not paint. Not chalk. Permanent.
One door had scorch marks around the edges.
‘That one tried to burn through?’ I asked, automatically whispering in the crushing quiet.
Pritchard nodded rapidly. ‘Fire elemental. He didn’t get out, obviously. The doors are fireproof.’
‘Course they are,’ I muttered.
We kept going, and finally we reached the end of the corridor, where the last door was thicker than the rest, reinforced with dark plates.
Pritchard gulped, and his voice came out smaller, nerves showing. ‘Right. Well. That’s him. That’s Bolton.’
‘Open it,’ I said.
He swallowed again but obediently raised his card, put his thumb on the scanner, followed by his other thumb. Then he spoke into the voice plate. ‘Officer Pritchard. Isolation access. Escorting Inspector Wise.’
After a long pause, the speaker crackled.
‘Permission granted. You may open the slot.’
It turned out that the ‘slot’ was a metal shutter covering an opening big enough to see in, but not big enough that any man could get out.
Pritchard pulled it down and thumbed me forward.
Before I could move, Robbie edged in front of me, his huge body a wall, ready to rip someone’s arms off if they so much as breathed wrong in my direction. He peered in, assessed the situation, and stepped back for me to do my thing.
Pushing down the ripple of irritation that had arisen at his protection, I met his eyes and shook my head fractionally. We couldn’t afford for him to pipe Bolton, not with Pritchard here and any number of cameras fixed on us.
He dipped his chin, and I moved around him to focus on the second prisoner we were here to see. I peered into the small slot.
The prison cell was concrete-chic. A cot bolted to the floor. A toilet in the corner with no seat and no privacy. A camera in the ceiling, the red light blinking like a heartbeat.
In the centre of it all, Shaun Bolton sat cross-legged on the ground, head bowed like a penitent.
I understood why the guard had made the crack about him hugging me: he was in a straitjacket.