Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
She’d felt Caleb out there somewhere, his energy coming across to her like the warm glow of a campfire seen against a distant hillside.
Every time she tried to contact him mentally, though, it felt almost like she was smashing up against a brick wall, as if someone had learned about the manner in which they’d been communicating and had found a way to block it.
A demon, she assumed. No one else would have the power to do something like that.
Since she hadn’t known what to do, she’d returned to the bed…which turned out to be a mistake, because the weird barrier seemed to have snapped back in place as soon as she climbed back on.
Now she sat cross-legged on the bed, feeling increasingly hungry and thirsty — and also as if she really needed to go to the bathroom.
Those physical urges seemed to be an indication that the spell holding her in place wasn’t quite as strong as it had once been, that maybe her little trip around the room had knocked something loose permanently, even if she was trapped again.
Or maybe her captor had decided to torture her a little by bringing her enough back into the world that she could experience sensations that had been previously blocked.
Once again, she tried to get off the bed, but the rubbery membrane seemed to be keeping her effectively trapped.
Well, this was just great.
Delia tried her best to explore her options, but she really didn’t have many. Only to sit there and wait…and hope she succumbed to thirst before she peed the bed.
Panic fluttered in her gut, although she knew freaking out wasn’t a very good game plan. Again, she tried to reassure herself that she must have some value to her captor, or he wouldn’t have gone to all these lengths to make her his prisoner.
Which sort of reinforced the notion that he was having some fun tormenting her, but would get down to brass tacks eventually.
A strange weariness came over her, and she found herself uncrossing her legs and lying flat against the mattress, her hands crossed on her chest. As soon as she closed her eyes, she was gone.
She awoke on a very different bed, one that looked as if it was located in some sort of luxury hotel room. The blackout drapes were drawn, so she couldn’t tell what time of day it was.
Carefully, she lifted one hand. That seemed to work just fine, so she sat up. Nothing appeared to have prevented her from doing that, either, and she figured she might as well go for broke.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed.
Shock coursed through her — but not enough that she didn’t realize she needed to get to the bathroom, stat.
All but running, she hurried over to the bathroom and took care of business. Once that was handled, she returned to the main part of the room. It was large but not a suite, as far as she could tell.
“Hello?” she ventured, feeling foolish. Then again, whoever had trapped her in this place obviously had supernatural resources at their disposal, so maybe it wasn’t so strange that they might be able to hear her.
No reply, though.
Fine. At least she was able to get up and walk around. Several bottles of water sat on the dresser, so she went over and popped one open and drank half of it in a single large gulp. Soon enough, she’d finished the rest of the bottle and unscrewed the cap on another one.
Thirst satisfied, she opened the mini-fridge and took a look inside. It seemed well-stocked, and she got out a can of macadamia nuts and opened the lid. Sure, the list of prices inside the fridge announced that the nuts were eight bucks, but she didn’t care much about that.
They can bill me, she thought.
There didn’t seem to be much else in the room, as far as she could tell. Whoever had brought her here, they hadn’t seen fit to bring her sandals and purse along, which irked her even though she knew she had plenty of other things to worry about.
Although she realized it would probably be an exercise in futility, she couldn’t help making her way over to the door and trying it. The thing was firmly locked, telling her she wouldn’t be going anywhere.
All the same, she wasn’t about to give up that easily.
“Help!” she shouted through the door, and pounded on it with her fists. “Someone kidnapped me and locked me in here!”
However, the sound of both her voice and her fists seemed strangely muffled, as if something was wrong with the acoustics in the room.
Or, more likely, whoever had put her in here had placed some kind of spell on the door to prevent her voice from carrying more than a few inches.
Delia knew it was weird to acknowledge spells and magic as if they were part of her everyday life, not much different from the cell phone she used and the car she drove, but she couldn’t really ignore them anymore, not after being trapped in that black void of a room…
not without knowing she herself possessed powers she would never have even imagined a couple of months ago.
For just the briefest second, she contemplated the windows hidden behind those heavy drapes, but she knew even if they weren’t enchanted, they’d been designed to never open — and probably were reinforced to ensure any hapless gambler who’d just lost his life savings wouldn’t decide the best way to fix his problems was to take a step out in midair.
Assuming she was still in Laughlin, of course, and this hotel wasn’t located in L.A. or New York…or Shanghai, she added with a grim mental grin, thinking that city’s history perfectly suited her current situation.
She went to the window and pushed the drapes aside, then looked down. Immediately below was a wide open space with some tennis courts and the flat roofs of what she guessed were a couple of restaurants, while off to her right was the wide, slow-moving blue of the Colorado River.
And right across from her was a tower she guessed was identical to the one in which she stood, with “Aquarius” spelled out near the top.
Well, now at least she knew where she was…and she couldn’t help being relieved that she hadn’t gone very far after all.
Since it didn’t look as if she was going to get out anytime soon, though, she had no idea how valuable that information even was.
Her situation had improved a lot, though. She had access to food and water — okay, not the best food in the world, but at least they weren’t starving her — and she could move around normally, wasn’t trapped on that funky daybed.
She popped another macadamia nut in her mouth and drank some more water, then headed over to the closet. Maybe they’d hidden her sandals and purse in there rather than leaving them out in the room.
What she found, though, wasn’t her favorite pair of Cole Haan wedges and her beloved brown leather Sak tote.
No, it was a full-length dress completely covered in sequins in shades of blue and green, something that shimmered like mermaid scales when she pulled it out of the closet.
What, was the demon planning to take her to dinner and a show or something?
No matching shoes or other footwear, though, which seemed to be a signal that the dress wasn’t going to get an outing at the lounge downstairs.
Weirder and weirder.
Delia crossed the room and picked up the phone on the desk. After her experience with the door, she was none too sanguine that the phone would be of any use, but she had to try.
As soon as she lifted it to her ear, though, she heard a fast busy signal, the kind of thing you might get when all the circuits were overloaded, like after a natural disaster or something.
Not that she thought Nevada was on fire or anything close to it. No, it seemed her captor wanted the space to retain all the normal trappings of one of the Aquarius’s higher-end rooms, but at the same time make sure she had no way to communicate with the outside world.
Which sort of begged the question as to why he hadn’t kept her trapped in that black hole with the daybed rather than bringing her here.
Since she doubted she was going to get any answers soon, she went back over to the fridge. The mini bottles of wine were tempting, but she knew she needed to stay sharp.
She got out a bottle of Perrier and a snack-size packet of Wheat Thins, then took her haul over to the bed and sat back down.
About all she could do now was wait to see what her captor had planned for her.
“Now what?” Caleb asked.
They’d left the hotel proper and taken up positions at the Outback Steakhouse on the Aquarius’s grounds, mostly because that felt like they were still close by while giving them a more neutral space to discuss strategy.
He and Ty and Pru had discussed whether to leave Aaron to his own devices or have him stay close so they could keep an eye on him, and Ty and Prudence had won that argument, mostly because they’d pointed out that they had no idea what Sellers might do to the guy if they just left him down there on the sublevel where Delia’s former prison was located.
“I know he’s kind of a tool,” Pru said, “but I know I wouldn’t forgive myself if it turned out we could have protected him and didn’t.”
That was why he sat at the far end of their booth now, munching on bits of a blooming onion and looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
As far as Caleb could tell, the sigil was still exerting just enough influence that Aaron wasn’t entirely himself yet, but in a way, that was kind of a good thing.
This lightly mind-controlled Aaron was a lot more good-natured.
Ty tapped his fingers against the side of his water glass. Smarting with the disappointment of not locating Delia, Caleb had gone ahead and ordered a Foster’s to soften the blow, but it seemed the half angel wasn’t going to lower himself to drink a beer with his lunch.