Chapter 5
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
It hadn’t been this hard for me to hide what I was feeling since the night I was chosen by the IDD’s director in Madeline’s office at the mansion for a secret undercover mission out of the blue. I’d been a mess of nerves then, and I was a mess of nerves now, and I barely contained all of it under my skin and behind my face.
There were people in the Monitoring room, a lot of them. Most Iridians, some orcs and elves, and they all turned to look at me walking in with Cassie—but that’s not why I was so nervous that my hands were shaking.
I was nervous because after a year and eight months and eleven days, I was going to see Taland Tivoux’s face again.
“Nothing to see here, peeps. Just working on an investigation with Agent La Rouge. Carry on,” Cassie said to her colleagues, and they all eventually turned to their screens again.
The Monitoring room was huge, and it was made of two levels. The stairs that led to the upper floor were right in the middle of the oval-shaped space, and they had much bigger screens up there compared to the agents down here. Five rows on wide tables filled up every inch of space, and there were no windows here, no light other than that from the screens, and the smaller lamps mounted on the white walls. The IDD liked to keep it simple. This office was only for monitoring and gathering visual information. We were connected to the human police departments and had access to any camera in the city (including private ones, without their knowledge or consent), and we had our own devices planted all over as well. Iridians were nothing if not thorough. After all, we’d taken on the noble responsibility of protecting the world from magical wrongdoers, so anything went as long as it was labeled For the Greater Good.
“Please try not to breathe down my neck too hard. It creeps me out,” said Cassie when she sat in front of a computer close to the end of the room opposite the second level.
“Sure thing,” I muttered, leaning away a bit. She typed in the password to unlock the system, then took a nervous look around before she grabbed the monitor and pulled it slightly to the side so it faced the wall. People would have a hard time seeing the screen without coming all the way to her table.
“Confidential,” said Cassie to one of her colleagues on her other side, who continued to stare our way. I didn’t even care to look—I was hyperventilating by then. So, so close …
“Okay, ready? And please don’t make a sound,” Cassie said under her breath, then double-clicked on the only file she’d left on the blue desktop of her screen. The video player filled every inch of it, completely black with only the Play icon in the middle.
Cassie looked up at me for a second, and it was easy to see that she was concerned. Whatever I was about to see in this video, I wasn’t going to like it. Not even a little bit.
“Go ahead,” I said anyway, my voice thick. My mouth was so dry I was surprised my tongue hadn’t cracked yet.
“Here goes nothing,” Cassie muttered, then pressed the space bar on her keyboard.
Colors came to life on the screen. My heart stood still as I watched them paint the picture all at once. It showed a large place, chaotic, full of benches on one side, and chairs and tables in one corner, gym equipment in another, even piles of books scattered around here and there with no rhyme or reason.
“This is the lounge area. Pretty much all there is to the Tomb,” Cassie said under her breath, waving her finger around the screen. “The confinement rooms are underground. The cells are built in levels to better reinforce the wards.”
It was the first time I was seeing the Tomb, though I’d heard plenty about it, and my team and I had put a lot of bad people in there.
I had put one person in there, too, before I ever became an agent.
A job well done, Miss La Rouge. A seasoned veteran wouldn’t have pulled it off quite so spectacularly. Bravo.
The reminder of those words brought bile up my throat—or maybe it was the many people who were moving and talking in what was called the lounge area but was actually just a big cage.
“This is minutes before midnight, when all cells are closed for the night,” Cassie continued, pointing at the digital clock on the ribbon at the bottom of the screen, which showed the time as well as the number of inmates, the number of guards on duty, and the condition of the wards— 214, 52, Green.
Cassie pressed a key on her keyboard, and the image zoomed in a bit. So many people—all two hundred of them seemed to be out in the lounge area, some hanging out together, some on their own.
“Where—”
My whisper got caught in my throat when I noticed the shape of him, the head full of dark hair.
The world could have stopped existing, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Cassie zoomed in again without a word. I saw more—saw him sprawled on a bench, back against the edge of the table it was attached to, a plastic cup in his hand, while another man was hunched over his chest. His naked chest.
He was getting a tattoo right there on his pecs.
“What the…” I whispered again, unable to stop myself, and I leaned closer and closer, eyes so focused on his face that I didn’t even blink—until he moved, lightning fast, and his magic, black flames coming to life in an instant, exploded out of him.
Fast, too fast. So fast I was ready to believe that I’d made it all up, that no way did that really happen.
But it did. Because the guy who’d been hunched over him, tattooing something on his chest, fell back and slipped from his chair, landing on the floor on his ass .
Everybody around them laughed. They all laughed as he tried to get back on that chair—and most of all… him .
Taland was laughing his heart out as he watched the man he’d scared to death trying to sit up as quickly as he could. He laughed and sipped his drink and waved for the man to come close again, his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear a thing.
“Can we turn that up?” I asked Cassie, but she shook her head.
“We need special permission for audio.”
And the image was too grainy, and Taland too far away from the camera for me to be able to read his lips.
Because there was no way he was laughing . No way he’d scared that man like that and was laughing about it. He’s not a bully, damn it!
But then again, what the hell did I really know about Taland Tivoux?
“He used magic,” I whispered, as if that made any difference when I could see him. The man continued to work on the tattoo, and Taland continued to look down at him with a smile on his face, and though I couldn’t see it with clarity, I saw it just fine in my mind’s eye.
He’d changed, Taland. His hair was longer, just as dark as always. And I couldn’t see his face, nor any part of him with clarity, but I could tell just by the way he sat half naked against that table, the ease with which he brought that cup to his lips and drank…
I could tell he was a different man altogether.
“Yes, well, they do that sometimes,” was Cassie’s reply.
“But how? They’re not allowed anchors in there.” That much I knew for a fact.
We as mages expel magic from everywhere in our bodies at once, and that’s dangerous, to say the least. Not only do we open ourselves up to any kind of foreign magic, but it drains us completely of our energy, too. That’s why all Iridians use anchors, which help us concentrate our magic, release one stream of it at a time, and never use an ounce more than necessary. Without our anchors, magic could kill us easily—either because we released it all at once and our physical bodies collapsed, or because we accidentally attacked ourselves when we meant to attack another.
Taland knew all of this perfectly, which meant he had an anchor with him—a reincarnated raven’s feather. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to use his magic to scare that man like that.
“Oh, please,” Cassie said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “He’s tied to the Devil. He probably has plenty of feathers to use. Not big or strong enough for the sensors to catch, but plenty.”
The Devil. I’d heard of him, too. Some thought he controlled the entire Tomb from the inside, that he chose to stay locked up where he was in control, that he could walk out of there any time he wanted. I had no clue what species he was, but he had to be a very powerful Iridian.
And the thought of Taland being involved with a guy like that in any way freaked me the hell out.
Another bigger guy came from behind him a little while later, put his hand on his shoulder, and whispered something in his ear.
Taland didn’t react. He didn’t stop smiling, either, though the picture was grainy enough to make me half-certain I was imagining it.
Fuck, I wanted to know what that guy said so badly.
Then Taland stood up.
The man who’d tattooed him moved back and kept his head lowered as Taland looked down at his body. He’d tattooed the middle of his chest, but I had no clue what it was—it just looked like a big black stain on his ivory skin. He had a few tattoos on his back and two identical ones on his ankles before, but they were all small. This one was big, bigger than the palm of my hand, and I was dying to know what the hell it was.
“Can we zoom in?” I asked Cassie, and she did, but the quality of the image only became grainier, so I didn’t see shit before Taland grabbed a black shirt from the bench—his uniform—and he started for one of the stairways at the edge of the room.
The way he walked…
It was all wrong. He walked differently. His hair was too long, and his limbs looked too long, too, and he’d lost weight. Maybe it was all in my head because I really couldn’t see anything well enough on that screen, but I was willing to bet an arm that he’d lost weight since I last saw him.
And then he reached the second floor and he disappeared from my sight.
I put my hand on Cassie’s shoulder, which was strange because I never really touched people, and I never let people touch me. Definitely not someone who’d squeeze someone else the way I was doing right now, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Where did he?—”
Cassie switched the footage before I could finish my question. Now, we were looking at the second floor from the hallways that had cells on one side, and railings on the other, which looked out at the lounge area. No windows, no balconies, no nothing—just the cells and that open area. That was their whole world.
And did it even matter that the likes of Taland Tivoux, no matter how he was acting right now, did not belong in there at all?
But there he was, stopped by the cell door of another inmate. The camera showed his back, the way he was carrying that shirt over his shoulder, his other hand in his pocket. His audience was growing. More and more inmates were climbing up and down stairs to get closer.
“Who’s in there?” I asked, digging my fingers harder into Cassie’s shoulder, but if she noticed, she didn’t complain.
“That’s the newest inmate. Transferred to the Tomb yesterday morning for killing his classmate in front of his entire class,” Cassie said. “He’s seventeen.”
“What the…”
Magic, black as the dread that had taken over me right now, burst out of Taland’s raised hand, straight into the cell.
“What is he doing?!”
“He attacked him,” Cassie whispered. “He attacked the kid. Left him half dead.”
And I saw that. I saw the amount of magic going into that cell as guards rushed to the group, and Taland laughed.
He fucking laughed together with all the other inmates until the guards came, and even then, he didn’t stop smiling.
No, no, no, no…
“The kid drew something for him, apparently, something he tattooed on his chest. Then he went to say thanks and he almost killed him,” Cassie continued. “That’s what some of the inmates told the investigators so far.”
“No.” That was not Taland. He would never hurt anyone, let alone a little kid, no matter how he got to the Tomb.
He would never …
“This is the last footage of him we have,” Cassie said, then typed on her keyboard again to change the image.
This one was a shot of at least ten cells, one next to the other, some with people in them, some empty. In the very last one was a man sitting on a bed, perfectly motionless.
“This is about two hours before he disappeared,” Cassie said. “He came to his cell after he almost killed that boy, activated a couple of anchors without even hiding, and sat on the bed. He didn’t move again.”
I leaned in, nose almost touching the screen. I saw his profile, his naked torso, the way he sat so perfectly straight and motionless on the bed, staring at…
“What the hell is he looking at?” I wondered. His hands were over his knees and he was so still it should have been impossible. It didn’t look like he was even breathing.
“No clue. All the guards found were some scratches on the wall. And…” She pressed another key on the keyboard, and the footage moved, but only slightly. I could tell it was in fast forward only because of the guards that made rounds every fifteen minutes—and then it stopped again.
“There.” Cassie pointed at the screen as Taland stood up all of the sudden, having not moved for almost two whole hours. He stood up and just walked ahead, right into what should have been the wall of his cell.
“That’s the last we saw of him.”
“He just…disappeared?” I asked in half a voice.
Cassie nodded. “Walked into the wall with no sign of any transportation magic, and no sign of the anchors he activated before he left. They’re just…gone. ”
My eyes closed again, and I drew in a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. It was impossible, though, and for once in my life I couldn’t care less about what my face was showing or what these people could see when they looked at me.
To hell with all of them. I had much bigger problems to deal with.
Taland Tivoux was really coming for me. I could feel it in my bones.
That same feeling insisted that he was going to find me even if I hid at the edge of the world, and he was going to make me pay.
“Breathe for me, okay? And drink this. All of it,” said Cassie when we made it out of the Monitoring room. I remembered her guiding me out because my mind was elsewhere, but now I was sitting down and Cassie was shoving a plastic cup in my hand.
Plastic cup — just like the one he was drinking from in the footage.
I drank the water and my stomach revolted. If I didn’t bite my tongue until the metallic taste of blood distracted me, I’d have thrown up all over Cassie.
“Do we know where he is?” I didn’t bother to keep my voice down, even though we were sitting in the hallway somewhere.
The hallway where anybody could see or hear us. Where my grandmother’s spies could see and hear me, but that was okay. I wasn’t hiding from her here. She wanted me within these walls as much as possible. And Poppy would cover for me, hopefully, if she even noticed I didn’t come home to sleep .
I’m fine, I told myself. Madeline Rogan was the least of my worries right now.
“Nope. His tracker is destroyed, and his magical signature is nonexistent in any of our systems,” Cassie said, which was to be expected. Easy enough to pull out and smash the physical trackers that they put in the inmates’ shoulder, and easier still to keep their magical signature shielded with a simple spell or charm. All of these things were helpful only while the person was inside the Tomb. Outside, anybody could disappear if they knew what they were doing.
Taland definitely looked like he did.
A seventeen-year-old. He attacked and almost killed a seventeen-year-old boy—and then laughed about it.
Fuck.
“Keep breathing. Just keep breathing—and remember that you’re safe here,” Cassie said. “Nothing to worry about. Nobody can cross that fence without us knowing about it.”
I nodded. “I know.” Which was why I’d come here the moment I’d gotten the text.
“So, cheer up. They’ll catch him in no time, you’ll see,” Cassie said, squatting in front of me.
“Who’s on the hunt?” I knew all the teams that worked in the IDD—my colleagues.
“Wayne and his crew,” said Cassie, and I nodded, swallowing hard. Wayne O’Bryan was the best agent here. Whitefire, extremely powerful, very smart. Always hungry for blood, which was why he’d been around for as long as he had. Almost twenty years as an agent, and he didn’t plan to retire anytime soon. Said there was more blood to spill out there, and his soul wouldn’t rest until he’d seen the very last drop that belonged to him.
He and his team were also some of the best trackers in Maryland. They said they could find a round-eared goblin in a sea of humans with a single look or a sniff of the air. The stories about them at the office were very legendary, and I was sure some were made up, but some had to be true.
If anybody was going to find Taland, it would be them.
The thing was, if they did find Taland, and Taland fought back—which he would—then Wayne and his team would kill him. He wouldn’t hesitate—he’d cut off his head to watch his blood spilling out just like he liked.
And that was a very, very disturbing idea for me, one that made my stomach lurch once more. Violently. I had to bring both hands to my mouth to keep it closed.
“Hey, hey, hey—look at me,” Cassie said, her cold hands on my sweaty cheeks. I was sweating all over, and it wasn’t from the heat. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. He can’t get to you, Rosabel. He can’t get to you.”
Unfortunately for me, Taland getting to me wasn’t what made me want to break the world in half.
“I have to finish interrogating the siren,” I said, and I somehow managed to get up from the chair. My legs somehow held me, even though the wide dark hallway swam before my eyes when I tried to focus.
“It’s fine—don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it,” said Cassie, but I shook my head, then regretted it the next second.
“No. I said I was going to do it and I will. I’ll have a location for you by breakfast,” I said because if there was one thing I hated more than my grandmother, it was not keeping my word.
“Rosabel, really, it’s fi?—”
“Cassie, I need the distraction, okay? Just…please. Let me do this. Get out of my way.” If she didn’t, I simply didn’t ha ve the strength to push her or push through if she tried to stop me.
But whatever Cassie saw in my face in those moments, she nodded and finally stepped to the side. I didn’t say anything else—couldn’t if I tried. I just held my head up and prayed that my legs didn’t give up on me all the way to the interrogation room.