Chapter 10
Ididn’t bolt out of the room straight away.
No, I took my time.
I changed into black sweats and a black shirt that would allow me to slink about in the shadows better, and I tucked the copy of the layout Amelia had printed for me into my pocket.
While I wasn’t sure exactly what witchy measures Amelia had placed on me, I was certain they were only to keep me on the premises, not ward me out of the West Wing.
My heart thudded harder. Was I actually doing this? What if Cillian found out?
However, no one was here at the moment, so this was the one chance I’d get. Dad was trying to help me from the outside, in whatever way he could, and snooping around the West Wing might be the key to unlocking my escape.
If Dad had help, he probably planned on leaving the area as well. Because once I was gone, the deal would fall through and Cillian would come for him again.
Complacency had already started to seep through my veins after spending only a few months here, which now sent my alarm bells ringing.
The sooner I started to sympathize with the people holding me captive, the more I’d give them allowances and the less I’d fight back and try to find a way out.
And yes, I’d agreed to stay here in my father’s stead, but I didn’t care what debts he’d incurred at the Spires.
Nothing justified sending him to the Pits.
I shut off the laptop and slipped my phone into my pocket. I had what money remained in my wallet, which wasn’t much, not for a grand relocation, but if the West Wing held the secret to my way out, I wouldn’t waste the chance.
I paused at the doorway and stared back into my room.
The laptop was closed on the desk, and my bedsheets were rumpled from this morning.
The latest mystery book lay on my nightstand, and the wardrobe full of clothes sat open.
While this was where I’d been living for the past few months, none of it felt like mine.
No mugs of coffee and tea were scattered throughout, no stacks of teetering books or heaps of papers I sorted through like at my old apartment.
Leaving all this behind would be like waking up from an odd dream, not like reality.
That was if I ended up finding anything of use. This could be a big risk with no reward. But I’d never know if I didn’t try.
I stepped out of the room, my senses on high alert.
Quiet echoed through the hallway, an odious and devouring thing, but today the emptiness was in my favor.
Despite it being midday, a midnight quality existed in this section of the Spires, so different than the rest of the place, as if I were wading through an eternal night.
My footsteps were too loud for my liking, and I slowed my pace to a deliberate one, making sure each step grew softer and softer until they were unnoticeable.
The dim lighting lured me down the corridor, toward the shadows crawling at the end where it was intersected.
The left would lead me past the normal areas I’d already explored before curving around to the area that had been marked as “do not enter” territory.
This could be a terrible idea. If Cillian discovered me here, guaranteed he’d send me to the Pits. The tentative freedoms I had would be stripped away to nothing, and I’d be struggling like the rest who were shunted down there.
Yet, if I didn’t try, I’d lose my mind wondering.
The unknown of what the West Wing hid had burned inside me from the moment Amelia decreed it forbidden.
I turned to the left, glancing behind me to make sure no one approached from the opposite side of the corridor.
Empty. A light spilled out from one of the rooms up ahead, so I crept forward carefully.
I hadn’t run into Sofia again, or the werewolf who had been in the room that one night, but occasionally when I wandered by, lights were on in the rooms and the doors were shut.
I’d like to think the woman who ran Haven wouldn’t be involved in human or monster trafficking, but I couldn’t come up with an explanation for why these rooms were sometimes occupied.
All the mysteries settled uneasily beneath my skin.
Voices sounded from the corridor I’d just come from—including the familiar one of Amelia’s.
Panic rushed through me, and I sped up to the nearest open door and slipped inside. It was dark in here and smelled like lemon cleaner and chalk, but I pressed myself behind the door against the cool wall.
My heart thumped so hard I could swear the sound was audible from the halls, but I forced my breathing to regulate so I didn’t give myself away.
Footsteps grew louder, and so did Amelia’s voice. If she had some kind of tracking on me, she might discover me now and this whole endeavor would be over.
I held as still as possible, trying to make myself invisible.
Too fast, the situation brought me back to grade school where I’d done the same, hiding away in a classroom in the hopes Ken and Jake—two of the guys who’d decided to make my life hell—wouldn’t find me.
My stomach roiled. For as far as I’d come, I was still cowering, still hiding away.
The footsteps started to fade, so she must’ve headed in the opposite direction with whoever she’d brought up here. My heart thumped at a wild pace, my legs begging me to move even as I remained still. If I stepped into the corridor now, I’d risk detection.
But now I knew where Amelia was, which worked in my favor.
When silence descended again through the area, until all I could hear were my own shaky breaths, I peeked out past the doorframe.
The halls were empty once more.
I resumed my trek down the corridor, past a couple of closed doors that were clearly occupied if the light and slight shuffling coming from behind them was anything to go by.
Whoever was in there didn’t want to be identified any more than I didn’t, though, since this area was handled with the utmost secrecy.
I followed the curve of the corridor, which led me to more rooms along another stretch stained by shadows where I stopped and pulled the layout from my pocket.
Up ahead, a short set of steps led to an elevated area, more closed doors and corridors branching from there. It was elegantly roped off with a clear “Do Not Enter” sign.
I slowed down, my heart thumping so hard it reverberated through the room.
Cillian was such a drama queen, his personal area barred, as if a sign would deter anyone.
And besides, the only ones who resided up here were his staff, me, and whoever the rotating people in the spare rooms were.
Though he could house a large portion of Peregrine City with the sheer volume of empty rooms in the Spires.
I sucked in a sharp breath and slipped under the velvet rope.
Into the West Wing.
What I searched for was beyond me. I didn’t want to dive into his personal life or endeavors. I simply wanted to uncover anything that would signal a way out. A way to escape.
Unlike the rest of the corridors, where some of the doors remained open, everything here was shut.
I walked up to the nearest one and turned the knob. Locked. Right. That should be expected. Dust coated areas around here, as if Charles wasn’t allowed to come clean, which again felt a bit ridiculous. What was Cillian hiding here that he had to keep from those closest to him?
A slight scuff was clear on the floor from the lack of cleaning, and I followed the trail, which led deeper down the corridor.
One trail stopped in front of a door to my right, and the other went to the end of the hall, where a massive black door loomed.
It looked forbidding and all-consuming, as if it held every secret trapped inside this place.
When I tried the door to the right, it opened.
The room before me was an ornate bedroom, featuring more of the twisted black branch décor Cillian seemed to love.
Mirrors on the ceiling and along the walls reflected scraps of light from the windows.
The contrast of his white pillows and black silken sheets stood out, intimate in a way that made me shiver, and the bed was far larger than a king size, but demons had their own businesses that catered to them.
This room wasn’t what I searched for, but I was mesmerized nonetheless.
On his nightstand stood an odd sculpture of a rose, metal and flattened, and his shelves held books and oddities, glass cases that gleamed and snagged my curiosity, some with demonic runes imprinted on them, but I couldn’t be deterred.
I pulled myself away from the room and shut the door behind me. My goal had to be behind the hulking door at the end of the corridor. The tension grew the closer I neared, as if the secrets and power inside it grew so immense they could barely be contained.
I stopped in front of it, a chill settling inside my bones. I was at the point of no return.
I tugged, but of course it was locked.
Disappointment fluttered through me. Had this all been for nothing? I traced the carvings across the front of the doorway, ornate and detailed.
One was deeper than the others, right beneath the doorknob.
I crouched and squinted at it, trying to discern its shape in the dim lighting. I traced my fingers along it again, trying to commit the shape to memory—a bulbous top, a long line beneath it.
Like a rose.
My heart thudded hard, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
Should I try it? My whole body felt jittery, as if I’d downed too much coffee on an empty stomach.
I stood and pulled away from the door, my footsteps careful and quiet as I headed back toward his room.
When I stepped inside, a sense of the forbidden washed over me.
This was intrusive and invasive and wrong.
Yet so was holding me captive in the upper Spires.
I picked up the flattened metal rose on his nightstand, its weight hefty.
Yet the shape of it reminded me of what I’d just traced with my fingertips.
It was worth a try. I strode back down the corridor, my senses on hyperalert.
Each creak or whisper of a breeze from outside made me stiffen as I slowly approached the massive door.
Cillian wasn’t here. He was at a business meeting.
Yet I couldn’t shake the sense I was being watched. The thickness in the air, as if I stepped through fog. I swallowed, but my mouth became dry as I reached the door. This time, I placed the metal rose where those deeper divots were. It sank into the space, fitting there perfectly.
A click resounded throughout the corridor.
My heart in my throat, I turned the knob.
The door creaked open.
An enormous room spread before me. It was filled with computer servers, wires, and screens—a large one hung on the right side of the room.
The bookshelves were filled with a tightly packed mixture of files and hardbacks, all neatly coordinated.
This must be the heart of his operation.
My pulse sped as I stepped inside. The air in here was crisp, as if this area was better maintained than the rest, and the hum of electronics was ever-present.
On the other side of the room lay a darkened doorway, which piqued my interest. I took out the printed layout—which didn’t extend past here. I wasn’t sure where it headed, but it wasn’t listed in the information I’d been given.
The main screen held a set of numbers on it: 52 days, 12 hours, 45 minutes, 32 seconds.
What the hell did that mean? I stared at it, watching the seconds count down until the minutes changed to forty-four.
Something seemed vital about it, and I wandered over to scrutinize it closer.
The screen was navy blue, the numbers in bright white font that glared against the gloom through the rest of the room, just barely lit by the electronic screens that were still running.
“The Rose Protocol” was written at the base, but what the countdown was leading to mystified me.
I wandered over to the files—they were company files for the Spires, which wasn’t of any interest to me.
When I neared the largest computer tower by the black desk overtaking the left corner of the room, it was clear from the blinking blue light that it was on and connected to the major screen hanging on the far wall.
My skin prickled as I walked through the room, step by careful step.
Dust clung to the corners, yet the desk was clear of it, clean in a way that implied frequent use.
A few black orbs looked like paperweights, but when I glanced closer, electricity flickered in their depths.
Magic? In a place like this, I could believe it.
The hum of the electronics filtered underneath my skin.
How was this supposed to help me escape? Why would Cillian keep this room under such fierce protection? It only seemed to multiply the secrets rather than offer any clarifications. The tick of the numbers made my bones hum, as if something significant lay on the screen, a truth in plain sight.
“What the HELL are you doing in here?”
Cillian’s voice boomed through the room, with a deep and feral fury I’d never heard before.
I whipped in the direction of the door. He stood there, shoulders heaving, his golden eyes half crazed and his fangs on full display, sharp and deadly.
Oh, fuck.
Fear rushed through me in a dizzying sweep. I’d been discovered.
There was no explaining this. He’d kill me.
The crazed look in his eyes, the ragged breaths, the growl pouring from his lips confirmed that. If I stayed, I was dead.
My gaze snagged on the blackened doorway. He blocked the other one, so the only shot was this one—in the dark.
Cillian took the first booming footstep forward.
I ran.