Chapter 28 #3
To Eloise’s credit, she didn’t hesitate. “I felt this underpowered fraud”—another shake—“needed another reminder to stay away from Hugh.”
Josiah’s assessing stare only narrowed further. “As you noted, she won’t escape. Why bother issuing threats to someone with no future?”
“I, uh…” The demon faltered. “My outrage over her actions and their consequences for my entire family must have…must have overcome me.”
That halting explanation wouldn’t convince a toddler, much less Josiah.
“Such impulsivity isn’t like you, Marlee.” The statement was freighted with unspoken threat. “Explain to me—”
“I need to go,” Eloise blurted out, and abruptly teleported away.
Well, that certainly wasn’t suspicious, Gwen thought in half-hysterical panic.
For a moment, her arm tingled at the spot where Hugh’s sister had gripped her so tightly. Then she staggered toward the sink and sagged against the filthy porcelain, belatedly realizing that Eloise’s hold had been helping to keep her upright.
Josiah’s hand whipped out, and he snatched her braid in his merciless grip. She tried to cringe away from him, but as she’d told Matilda earlier: There was nowhere to go.
Before he could hurt her, one of the guards barged into the bathroom. Josiah turned immediately toward the masked male and began issuing orders.
“Track down the demon. Find out what the fuck is going on.” The fae spat out the words like soured milk. “If you find any evidence that she’s sabotaging our group’s efforts, kill her and her useless human husband.”
At that command, yet more guilt bowed Gwen’s shoulders, and tears of anxiety and terror slipped down her cheeks.
As far as she knew, absolutely no evidence of Marlee working against the conspirators should exist, and Hugh’s mother truly did seem like a terrible being.
Timothy, from all accounts, was equally awful.
But their loss would still gut Hugh, and Gwen didn’t want to be responsible for their deaths. Even indirectly.
When Josiah returned his attention to her, after the guard had left, he eyed her tears with disgust. After a single, neck-jarring yank, he unwound her braid from around his wrist and tossed it away from him like trash.
“I have no time to interrogate a sniveling, useless human too stupid and powerless to plot against me. I’ll deal with you tomorrow, failed oracle. ”
Without another word to her, he strode through the door and into the main room.
Overcome with relief, Gwen clutched the sink with both hands, chin against her chest, and only cried harder.
“The encampment will be moved elsewhere,” Josiah announced to the other oracles. “Immediately.”
As she slowly regained control of herself, he shouted further instructions.
He already had another location for his captives in mind, and he’d lead them there.
The oracles would carry whatever they intended to bring to their new prison.
The guards would accompany them and ensure no one slipped away in all the hubbub.
Gwen obediently tucked everyone’s toothbrushes and the communal toothpaste into her pajama pockets.
Then she scurried to her cubicle, wrapped her blanket around her thin cot, and gathered both in her arms, preparing to follow Josiah.
All the while, her brain had become an old-fashioned pinball machine, bouncing possibilities back and forth with dizzying speed, never letting any of them linger in one spot very long.
For everything to turn out well, Hugh had to agree to speak to Dottie, believe the elderly werewolf’s implausible tale, and defy both his nature and his upbringing to create and execute a plan to spring the oracles from their prison before the next sunrise.
But even if he did manage to teleport into the Realm Below in time, with enough demon backup to transport all the captives—very unlikely, according to Eloise—the oracles wouldn’t actually be in the spot where he’d been told to expect them.
So he might not actually find the encampment before getting caught and killed by Realm security.
Also, if he asked for help from either his mother or his mentor, both of whom he trusted, everyone was doomed.
If Hugh didn’t stage his own rescue attempt, Eloise would go to her supervisor instead. Which was unbelievably generous of her—but it might also bring her eternal suffering, and if she waited too long, Gwen and several others would almost certainly die in the meantime.
In short: Because of Eloise, Gwen did, in fact, have a new thread of hope, but that thread was both thin and worryingly frayed. There were so many ways a rescue attempt could go wrong and such a small chance of its success.
And that meant Gwen knew what she needed to do tonight. No matter what did or didn’t happen next, she wouldn’t sit by and let the captive oracles meet their unfortunate fates meekly. As a group, they’d have to form their own escape plan.
With that urgent thought in mind, she followed Josiah and her fellow prisoners out the door, toward an unknowable fate.