Chapter 19 #3
You have until six o’clock this evening.
Then we start sending pieces of her every hour until you arrive.
Love and kisses,
Calista Anguish, née Quick
Black rage roiled from the pit of his soul.
The troth broken, Nigel very nearly summoned a storm of Dire Matter to transmatterport to the stated location right then, right there.
Who cared that even to attempt such a spellworking would thoroughly kill him at this juncture.
He wanted to get there, now, and lay waste to the lot of them.
How dare they? How dare they threaten his Luna?
They would pay for it. All of them. He would curse their innards, swelling every cell of their bodies with black force, until they bloated and burst in clouds of blood and anti-glitter.
He would set fire to their veins until they boiled alive, screaming as their own flesh bubbled and melted from their bones.
He would summon a horde of ravenous Dire Demons to devour them again and again and again, without ceasing, he would—
Hang on.
Nigel forced himself to read the words again, gleaning what information he could from those few lines.
His brow puckered in sudden perplexity. Did they think he was an idiot?
He knew perfectly well how they needed Luna just as much as they needed Garden to fulfill their mission for Jastira.
So why offer this exchange? Unless . . .
A slow breath eased from his lungs. It felt hot like sulfur, but as it expelled, he felt room in his chest for the faintest stirring of hope. Because, he realized, there was a chance. A bare, slim, almost-nothing of a chance. But not quite nothing.
Calista did not remember Luna. He had wiped her brain of those memories personally.
And while it was possible members of the Brotherhood had filled her in on Luna’s identity, it was just as possible they had not.
Dark Sorcerers didn’t like to share information, after all.
Knowledge was power, information was leverage, and every member of the Brotherhood looked upon every other member as an enemy to be thwarted.
Lancelot Mortimer was the only one Nigel knew for certain possessed the truth about Luna.
But he may indeed have been taken by the SSSD.
The man Nigel had watched them cart away two nights ago might in fact have been the real Mortimer.
In which case, he might not have had a chance to impart his knowledge about Luna to others.
So it was possible—not likely, but possible—that the Brotherhood had taken her only to use as leverage. That they knew about his feelings for her, but not about her own importance to their mad scheme.
“But what good does it do either way?” Nigel muttered. “I can’t turn over Garden. I can’t—”
The words never finished forming on his lips.
A sudden roaring burst of magic erupted behind him, so big, so profound, it knocked him to his knees.
Nigel caught himself before hitting his face, but the force of the wind sent him skidding across the tile floor until he struck one of the empty display shelves.
There he grabbed on, his mouth opened in an unheard yell of shock and fear, as the terrible roaring continued, assaulting his ears even as the wind battered at his flesh.
It all ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Nigel, clinging still to the shelving, breathed out several times.
He felt battered by profound, magical energy.
Using the shelf, he managed to pull himself to his feet and stood a little while, simply relearning balance.
Then, turning, he faced the back passage from which that blast had issued.
“Oh no,” he whispered. “Oh no, no, no, no!”
Staggering and tripping over his own unsteady feet, he rushed down the passage, making for the boiler room door.
The door which was not green and painted with flaking flowers and vines.
The door which was simply white and blank and nondescript and not at all as it should be.
Nigel grabbed for the latch, tried to open it. It was locked.
“Damn!” he shouted. Turning on heel, he rushed to the storage room, searching for the polka-dot pot and its hidden key. But it wasn’t there. No pot. No key. Both completely vanished. Had Garden grabbed them and brought them inside last night, at the same time it dragged Nigel to safety?
Cursing again, Nigel hauled his toolbox from a lower shelf, flung open the lid, rummaged around until he found his hammer.
Gripping this, he returned to the passage, marched straight to the boiler room door, and began to pound at the handle.
Again and again, he brought the heavy metal head down as hard as he could, exerting all his anger and frustration and fear until the handle broke off and fell with a thud to the floor.
The door swung creakingly open.
Nigel stared into the dark, stained-brick, windowless chamber. An ancient, squat metal boiler stood in front of him, popping and sizzling quietly to itself.
Garden was gone.