25 A Little Bit of Necromancy #2
“Well, make it take less time, or I’ll find someone else to do the job.
Or perhaps a new test subject would be helpful if this one isn’t satisfactory.
The specimen can be disposed of, if it isn’t working for you.
Say the word, Regina, and I’ll do it. Anything for my eldest,” she says sweetly, and reaches up a hand to stroke where the side of my face would be if I weren’t wearing a mask.
An icy chill creeps down the back of my spine as her meaning sinks in.
“I’m nearing a breakthrough.” I shrug nonchalantly. “A new test subject would be detrimental at this point. I’m used to this one’s magic, and I’ve done all the background work that would take weeks to re-create.”
“Hmm,” Adele says, eyeing me. “Are you sure you’re committed to making the werewolf project work? Or are you planning on trying to run out on me again?”
“No, I want to finish the project you assigned,” I say stubbornly.
“You misunderstand me. I’m asking if you’re invested. Or if you’re checking out because you don’t want to be part of this family and all that entails. Are you willing to make necessary sacrifices?”
“My entire life is here; I’m nothing but invested. My work, my family, my life are here.” It comes out too woodenly to be quite believable.
She eyes me critically. “There are things I’m not sure if I should tell you, Regina. If hearing them would motivate you.”
Tell you, listen, hear.
I stand stiffly, refusing to rise to her bait. Refusing to listen to the quiet little voice in my head that desperately wants me to know what she has to say. She won’t make me beg for her approval, her attention.
“We have one thing in common, you and I, our devotion to family. You won’t leave. I will kill your sisters before I let you take them with you.”
A sharp gasp and click of a door latch. Zara was spying, listening. I’m used to veiled threats disguised as warnings, but it’s rare Adele’s so explicit with her threats around Zara. I find I can only nod in reply, my throat as dry as the desert outside.
“You have one more month. That should be more than enough time.” She doesn’t wait for me to respond before turning on her heel and stalking off.
I crawl into bed with Zara rather than return to my own empty one. Meredith is already asleep there.
“Stay, Reggie. Please” is all Zara says as she curls close.
“What’s wrong with you?” Luca asks within five minutes of my arrival the next day. I cannot understand how he reads me so well when he’s never seen my face.
“I haven’t made progress in my research assignment,” I say stiffly.
“But I thought you said you’d already made a new variant and figured out a vaccine. And I’ve done all the magic tricks and blood tests. I’ve done everything you want; you’ve done everything she’s asked.”
“But I haven’t,” I say, and admit the truth I’ve held in for weeks: “She never wanted a vaccine. Even the new variant isn’t good enough. She asked me to figure out a way to control you. To find a way to use you.”
“And are you going to do it?” Luca asks.
“She says she’ll take the project away from me . . .” I stumble over admitting the threat she made to kill him.
Luca draws back sharply. Pulling away, backing toward the center of the cage where I can’t follow. I sit on the floor, slide as close as I can to the glass, as close as I can get to Luca.
“Well, you’d better get to work, then,” Luca says nastily. “I’d hate to see Mommy get mad at you.”
“Luca, she said she’d ‘dispose’ of you if I didn’t. She gave me a month.”
“I’d rather die than let her control me, so that makes that easy,” Luca says brusquely.
“I don’t know what to do. Or even understand what she wants. Sometimes I think she’s actually running an experiment on me, like this is all some grand plan of hers. That she’s keeping me busy because she needs me for something she hasn’t told me about yet.”
“Then do something besides play into her little games, Reggie,” Luca snaps.
“How?” I say desperately. “It’s all I know how to do. I don’t know what else to do.”
This time when Luca looks at me again, I see pity mixed with exasperation.
“Tell me exactly what she asked you to do. Everything you know. We’ll work from there, come up with something.” He scrubs at his face with a hand, pinches the bridge of his nose, and sighs.
“She said she wants to use the permanent pathway to magic that you have access to as a werewolf. She said werewolves were a conduit. A way to ‘bring back what’s been lost to the void.’”
Luca has had no formal training in magic, has not even looked into any of the old folklore or anecdotes. He’s figured out a remarkable amount on his own, working on intuition alone. Trial and error. I’ve given him a crash course of all I know.
“‘What’s been lost to the void’ . . . Is she talking about people?”
“People?”
“You said that sometimes people go too far, get lost in the void or whatever. Is she talking about resurrecting the dead?” Luca asks.
I gasp. “The delivery. I snuck a look at a refrigerator truck that came in the middle of the night. It was filled with dead bodies.”
Luca stares at me for a long moment. “Is your mother seriously trying to get me to create an army of the dead for her?”
It sounds so ridiculous. I want to laugh. Or throw up.
“What does she need an army for? Especially an undead one?”
“I don’t know, but you just told me about a refrigerator truck filled with dead bodies and said your mother’s goal is to control a magical gateway in my mind.”
“I won’t let her find a way to control minds, especially not yours.” The very idea makes me ill, not just envisioning what she’d make Luca do, but me too. My sisters.
“I will not be made into a weapon,” Luca says. “I will die before I let her control my mind.”
He turns away from me, and I face my options clearly for the first time. If Luca stays here, I will lose him. Either my mother will kill him, or she’ll find a way to control him, and he won’t be Luca anymore. If I get him out, he might still leave me behind, but maybe there’s a chance he wouldn’t.
“I’m going to get you out, Luca.”
“What if you can’t? Will you promise to kill me yourself before she figures out a way to use me?” He walks back over, sinks to the ground in front of me. We are separated by only an inch.
He asks this so casually, as if it were as easy, as inconsequential as lending him a pair of socks.
“I’d rather promise to kill her,” I say. Though my traitorous heart whispers that I’m too much of a coward to go through with it.
“Reggie, please. I’m serious. I don’t want to be turned into a weapon to be wielded. I don’t want to be used like that. That fate would be unbearable.”
It sits between us, unspoken. That this is already a fate I live out every day.
“Promise me, promise me you’ll kill me yourself before you let her do that to me,” he begs. He’d be resting his forehead against mine if it weren’t for the walls, the mask.
I don’t trust my voice, but I nod my acquiescence and stand to go. I can’t be here anymore.
“Come with me,” Luca says urgently. “If I make it out. Come with me.”
“Do you mean that? Do you really mean it?” I ask, trying to read his face.
“I do,” Luca says fiercely. “Come with me.”
I would break my promise to him in a heartbeat, but Luca isn’t a liar; he means it. I nod once, then again, resolution straightening my spine.
“Okay, okay. I’ll get you out of this cage, and then we’ll run.” I have no idea where to start, but in this moment, I mean it.
For the first time in a while, I start, yet again, to plan my escape.