Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
It’s, like, the fourth time he’s passed out in forty-eight hours, and it’s starting to feel like a real problem. When he wakes up this time, the pain’s not as bad as that one time he broke his neck, but it’s quite a bit worse than that other time he lit himself on fire. His week’s been shit.
A groan slips out because something brutally reeks, like if strong cheese made of ass kicked him in the face.
At least he’s not on the floor anymore—he’s now seated—but his brain is a badly balanced load of laundry slopping around in his spinning skull and it takes real effort to lift his head.
Dry tongue against sandpaper lips as he takes in the dark room.
Cold. Exposed wood walls and bare concrete floors.
No windows. There’s the dank, vague feeling of being underground.
It takes his brain a long time to spit up unfinished basement.
Someone’s put minimal effort into nice-ing the place up with floor pillows. Gauzy curtains hang from the ceiling a few yards away, obscuring the depths of the room.
His vision is doing that drunk thing where the world is a movie playing at a strange frame rate, a little too slow so that his brain struggles to string the disparate images together coherently. With this sluggish thought comes the understanding that Ophelia’s nowhere in sight.
He looks around more pointedly, a firm tug of arms proves that the only give is that of his body. The chains—chains?—have his arms secured tightly behind the chair he’s seated on, and are wrapped around his lap, torso, thighs, and ankles.
Conclusion: He’s really fucking chained to a chair.
He’s having a hard time holding on to panic. The very pertinent thoughts: Where is Ophelia? and Oh my God I’m chained to a chair! feel like they’re dripping out of his ears.
He takes a deep breath to clear his swampy thoughts, but the smell assaults him again and he retches, eyes tearing up, and gets to spend a few moments trying not to vomit on himself.
The smell is definitely magic, but like every other moment of his life, being able to clock the obvious-magical-bad-thing doesn’t help.
Ophelia, Ophelia, Ophelia. It’s the thought of her that keeps dragging his attention away from abject misery and back to the room. He can’t sit tied to a chair nearly vomiting and reminiscing because he doesn’t know where she is. Topher too. He’s here to find Topher.
With momentary focus, he spots a brazier on the ground to his right, a lazy stream of yellow smoke twirling from little holes around the rim of its intricate metal lid. This is the thing hurting him and it’s only about four feet away, but it might as well be on the sun.
He strains against his bindings but it’s exactly as ineffective as it was the first time.
Whatever. Keep your head up and look around, asshole.
Don’t get hung up on the thing you can’t reach.
This is when he realizes the brazier is sitting just outside the edges of an intricate magical circle scrawled into the concrete in what looks like blood, salt, and ash.
Following the circumference of the ring like a lifeline, he tracks it to the left, to black shoes, up black-clad legs, to hips, then an arm, and to a masked face.
Mateo jolts—or tries to—the ability to control his body is a dicey thing, so he’s got no idea if he did it. Evil Wizard is right in front of him, and it’s hysterically disconcerting that they might have been standing there the whole time.
“Ophelia?” Mateo says because it’s situationally better than hello, but he’s surprised by the slurring of the name, like he’d barely gotten his mouth open to say it.
Evil Wizard cocks their head the smallest amount, like a dog catching the edge of a sound and trying to work it out, but not cute.
And they must work it out, because they step around the circle, careful not to touch it, and walk to one of the gauzy curtains a few yards away.
Having never been in a scary wizard’s murder basement before, Mateo’s concerned about what might be behind there.
The wizard draws it to the side, giving Mateo a clear line of sight.
Seeing Ophelia should calm the panic clawing for purchase in his sluggish brain, but it only heightens it.
She’s so small when not in motion, crumpled on her side on two of the floor pillows, hands bound in silver tape and hair a massive, obscuring mess around her face and upper body.
Normal for her hair but upsetting in this context.
“Topher?” Mateo slurs next.
The wizard releases the curtain, hiding Ophelia from view. Not seeing her tied up is worse than seeing her tied up, but the wizard is indicating the ground to the left of Mateo.
“Oh shit.” It’s out before Mateo’s syruped brain fully recognizes the form on the ground.
You’d think a second large magic circle with a whole guy in it would be hard to miss …
and yet. “Topher!” He’s not sure why he yells it.
Topher’s clearly not awake. More raw panic slices through the haze as he struggles like he’s developed bending-metal strength in the past minute.
Topher looks rough.
No. Correction. He looks like he’s been in a car accident.
There’s grime smeared down half of his face and his normally flawless gray outfit is still gray, but now it’s with road filth. Breathing, Mateo’s pretty sure. And bleeding.
While he strains against chains with zero success, the Evil Wizard must have walked back to their original position in front of Mateo. Or they’d moved magically. Who knows? Could have been teleporting all around the room because such feats as look beside oneself are difficult for Mateo right now.
He and the Evil Wizard stare at one another. Probably. The end-of-days warlock could be looking anywhere with that full-face obscuring ski mask on, but it seems to be at Mateo. Why did this perfect Cali-bodied suburbs rando do all of this? Why’s she after Topher and his mom?
Except Yoga Wife walks into the room from a door he hadn’t noticed and can’t keep track of once he looks away. Meaning, Yoga Wife isn’t the Evil Wizard. She’s an evil extra in workout spandex.
Smiling a plastic, dead-eyed smile, she moves to the smoking brazier and picks it up. Mateo cringes, expecting her to shove it at him and knock him unconscious again, but she backs up a few paces instead.
It’s like removing a rope from around his neck and a fist from around his brain, the sudden release of pressure so desired that an honest-to-God sob escapes Mateo’s lips.
The disorientation melts away, not totally, but enough for him to pull in the first full breath in years and have a coughing fit about it.
He looks at the Evil Wizard again, eyes hot and wet from strain and discomfort. “What’s happening?”
“That was going to be my question,” the wizard says.
Ethan says.
Even with the mask on, the voice is unmistakable. He’s waiting for Mateo to react, except Mateo doesn’t know how to react because he doesn’t know why a broker from the office of the dad of the guy that hired him is the Evil Wizard. “What the fuck is happening?” Mateo repeats with much more fervor.
Ethan rocks a little on the balls of his feet, like he’s considering this magic-kidnapping-murder-basement situation he’s completely to blame for, and pulls off his goth ski mask. Despite knowing it’s Ethan, it’s still shocking to see his face sticking out of the dystopian garb.
“Your outfit’s ugly,” Mateo spits.
“Be mature,” Ethan says, but fusses with his layers a bit, deciding to take off his gloves.
“You threw me out a window!” Mateo yells and sends himself into another coughing fit.
Ethan waits till it’s under control. “I was trying to throw him out a window, not you.”
“That’s not better, Ethan,” Mateo rasps.
Squinting and holding a thumb and index finger one inch apart, he says, “It’s a little better.
And a perfect example of my surprise.” Ethan stuffs the gloves in his pocket and squats outside the circle so they’re more at eye level.
“I think Linnéa’s finally back and I walk in on you three.
And whoever the hell that witch who threw me down the stairs is. Who was that?”
“What’s wrong with Ophelia?” Mateo asks instead and Ethan has the gall to look offended.
“Nothing. Just sleeping. Perfectly fine. I’m not going to hurt your little friend.”
“And Topher?”
“Less fine, but don’t worry about that. I can make sure you still get paid,” Ethan says, absolutely missing the point of his concern around Topher, taking on a distracted tone as he examines the circle Mateo’s at the center of.
Assured by whatever he sees, Ethan looks at Mateo again.
“Consider it from my angle. The hot guy who I thought was a bullshit con artist milking an asshole manager’s rich son out of some money, keeps getting in my way.
He shows up at my work and evades the ward my intern managed to get under the conference room table—something with nine wormlings from bones into flesh.
She was so proud of her work and so disappointed you spotted it.
She’s dead now, so whatever. Then, I’ve got the sweetest signal ward primed on Linnéa’s door for her return, and it goes off, but when I show up to grab her, it’s him again.
And yes, I threw him out a window, but he should have died, and he didn’t, and I was even really bummed about that, okay?
But then he texts me the next day about my jacket.
I thought I was being punked. While I’m trying to figure that one out, he decides to show me—” he gestures at his own face.
“Whatever that was. You’ve been running around messing up my whole week. What the hell are you?”
“Why should I explain anything to you?” Mateo snaps. Despite what should be a terrifying general dynamic, he’s deeply agitated by the tone Ethan’s taking. With the daze of the shitty smoke lessened, his temper is clawing to get free, wanting out but unable to grab a footing.