26 Checkmate
Checkmate
I have to stall Adele as I plan and prepare. As much as I hate it, the best idea comes from Adele herself and her insistence that I “get a collar and a leash on that beast.”
So I create a collar. The physical form is easy, a simple metal band. The spell work is trickier. Or so I tell Adele. But I manufacture problems. The material won’t hold the spell. I order supplies to test more, delaying me for a week.
The thing that scares me the most is that I’m pretty sure I know what I’d have to do to make the collar work.
An old spell book contains the arcane method.
I haven’t dared try it, not that I have any desire to.
I plan to hide the book so Adele never gets her hands on the idea, because the method requires no tether.
In fact, the spell depends on no tether.
Meanwhile, I quietly pack and hide the go bags again.
I don’t intend to tell my sisters until the last minute.
I’m too afraid something will go wrong. I need a moment of distraction, Adele’s attention elsewhere, perhaps one of her evenings when she’s sequestered with her weather experiments—she’s been busy with them as of late—and then Luca and I are going to take the girls and run.
I’m going to steal one of the cars and count on Luca’s experience once we’re out of Agency 51.
He is adamant that he can keep us safe. That if I can get us out of the mountain, he can help with the rest. All I need is the damn key to his cell.
I’m running out of time. There’s only a week left on my deadline when I approach Adele. My anxiety rises with every hour that passes, night ticking away to early morning, as I lurk inside her living quarters, waiting for her to return from her experiments.
Adele doesn’t notice me at first. Long enough for me to register that she moves stiffly. Long enough that she removes her mask and I see her face, pale and drawn, depleted from her experiment. She doesn’t acknowledge me when she does take notice.
“I need the key to the cell. I need to test the collar,” I say.
“This key?” She digs it out from her pocket and holds it up for me to see. Then closes her fist around it. “I’m not stupid, Regina.”
“Certainly not. If you were, my life would be easier.” I know Adele respects my cruelty more than any pandering. “I need to put the collar on him if it’s going to work.”
“And that’s all you want? You think your infatuation hasn’t been blindingly obvious?” She laughs, cutting right to my heart.
“I’m not stupid enough to think that he wants anything other than freedom.” I hand her this fear, this truth of mine so I can make my lie convincing. She pushes past me, opens the balcony curtains, and stares out at the sunrise, the world lightening by degrees.
“Good. Because whatever you think he feels, he doesn’t. How could he?” She wields my worst fear casually, throws it in my face.
“I know. But I’ve realized the collar is the way to get what I want anyway.”
“Ah, maybe you are mine after all,” Adele says absentmindedly. As if I ever needed reminding. But that’s exactly who I need to be at this moment, Adele’s daughter. I’m her mirror, and she will expect to see a monster.
“I’ll do whatever it is you ask me to. I’ll have him perform the tasks you require, and then why not let me have him?” I shrug as if I were asking for a new pet, not a person.
She stills, rips her gaze from the sky, and turns her full attention on me. Scrutinizes. Doesn’t answer for so long, I fear I’ve overplayed my hand.
“You’ll never finish the collar on your own,” I say. “You need me; I want access to him.”
“You want access to him? I’ll just throw you in the cell with him. I wouldn’t need to give you the key for that,” she says. Terror washes over me. She’s always a step ahead of me. If she locks me in, too, there’s no one else coming to save us.
I keep my voice steady. “That would also work adequately. I trust you would let me out when the collar is finished.”
She turns back. Sweat drips down my neck as I wait, heart in my throat, for her to call my bluff and thwart my latest plan.
“Fine then, make your own mistakes.” She hands over the key so suddenly, I nearly drop it. “Don’t expect my sympathy when he disappoints you. Take it from me: Humans never live up to expectations. Let’s go.”
“What?” I almost don’t hear her as I slide the key safely into my pocket, hope making me lightheaded.
“Show me what you’ve accomplished. If it works, then you can do with him what you’d like afterward.”
I have the key in hand, but I miscalculated. Adele means to go with me to see the first test of the collar. It isn’t ready. I haven’t even attempted to do anything that has a hope of working.
Luca is wearing his old T-shirt and jeans, the ones I keep washing and returning. He gets to his feet, his smile disappearing as he spots Adele behind me.
“It’s probably too much to hope for that you’ve come to let me out,” Luca says.
Adele ignores him and speaks to me instead. “Well,” she says, gesturing at the collar, “show me you’re telling the truth.”
It’s a thin metal band, silver plated, that locks seamlessly with an old spell I’ve added. It doesn’t work the way I’ve told Adele it will. She wants mind control. This is nothing but cold, inert metal.
“I’m not wearing that,” Luca says flatly, though he knows it’s nothing but a pretty piece of jewelry at this point.
I hesitate, heart beating fast. It doesn’t matter if he wears it or not when it doesn’t work.
If only there were some way to communicate with him to just pretend.
I wish we had come up with a plan for this scenario.
Adele gestures at the tranquilizer she’s brought along. “Do I need to do it for you?”
“I will kill you if you try to leash me with that,” Luca says to Adele.
“Kingsley,” Adele snaps at me. I’m only a daughter when it suits her. Otherwise, I’m an employee. “Stop wasting my time. I have other business to attend to.”
Swallowing hard, I shake my head. I can’t do this. “I need to make another modification. It’s not going to work—” I continue to flounder through excuses.
The disgust rolls off Adele in waves as I stand clutching the collar tightly. I haven’t fooled her. She knows I haven’t been trying.
“I’m running out of time and ideas,” Adele says. “This has to work.”
“What’s the deadline? Those dead bodies you have aren’t going to get any more dead. You’ve never explained what you want. An army of the dead?” I’m not sure if it’s courage or panic that makes me say it.
Adele laughs a sharp, brittle laugh.
That little voice inside my head is screaming at me. No, no, no, not dead—I can’t think of what to do.
“The deadline? How much life do you want, Regina? That is the deadline—if you appreciate your own life, you will work to find me a solution.”
In my head I see an image—my mother, letting me dangle over open air as I plead for her to hold on.
“Immortality? Is that what we’re inventing now?” My panic is tinged with a red hint of fury. I’m so tired of games and doublespeak.
“No,” she snaps. “I’m trying to give you a chance before I have no choice but to—”
“Stop with the death threats,” I snarl, letting my temper get the better of me. “I’m already willingly doing everything you ask of me. Do it yourself then if you’re unhappy with my progress.”
“I cannot,” she grits out. Her temper must be fraying as well if she’s letting something like an admission slip.
“Well, I won’t do this.” I toss the collar at her feet. “Whatever you want to drag out of the void can stay there for all I care.”
There’s a resounding crack and I stumble, falling to my knees, against the front of the cage.
Luca is growling, huge in his wolf form, towering above me through the barrier of the cell wall.
Adele hit me; it finally occurs to me. She backhanded me so hard across the face that I’ve fallen.
Though my mask has blocked most of the blow, I am taken by surprise.
Adele has never hit me before, despite everything. She stares down at me, chest heaving.
Luca snarls, clawing great gouges into the glass in his fury.
I hear more of Adele’s sharp laughter as she eyes Luca. “That is interesting,” she says, and bends to pick up the collar from where it’s fallen. She holds it up, inspects it, gently turning it in her hands.
“Twenty-four hours,” she says coldly, placing the collar on the table and turning her back to walk away.
“Get that collar on him and working, Regina, or I’ll finish it myself, put it on you instead, and be done with this whole mess.
I’ve tried to be patient with you, but maybe it’s time.
Maybe I should have done it the original way years ago.
Perhaps I made a mistake allowing myself to get attached to you at all. I should know better by now.”
I huddle on the floor, afraid to budge until she’s left.
I have no idea what she’s talking about.
It isn’t worth puzzling. She turns back to us before she goes.
“Oh, and, Regina, if you make me put that collar on you, your first job will be to dispose of the failed test subject. Then maybe you might understand me.”
A high-pitched ringing fills my ears. As soon as she’s gone, Luca is his human self again. He sits with me, inches away but unable to touch me as I hyperventilate on the floor. He talks me through each breath, calming me the only way he can.
If she gets the collar on me, figures out how to get it to work, she’ll never let me leave.
She hit me, humiliated me, and called me by my given name in front of Luca.
I told her what he’s worth to me, handed her the means to break my will.
He’s as good as dead unless I get him out of here tonight.
I reach for my pocket, the key. I still have the key.
When she calms down, when she realizes she left this with me, we won’t get another chance.
There isn’t any more time left to panic. So I force myself to stop. I have things to do.