They listened in rapt fascination to how they’d eliminated each of the henchmen, then Nestor, then Isabel, and Kayla had claimed the gold cuff. They grrred rather adorable growls, more high-pitched than a dog, over Phrixos escaping, but were pleased by Arctos’ promise that he would be found.
“Now we’re scrambling to stabilize everything again,” Theo said, as Alison slowed to a walk. “So that everyone’s safe and has what they need while we try to find solutions.”
“Hmm.” Crimson regarded Theo with her head tilted. “That’s a lot of details for a made-up story. I suppose it might be. But you don’t smell to Vester like you’re lying, and he’s really good at that.”
“Well, here’s some proof,” Alison said. “We’re at the lake.”
“Nice timing,” Suzi giggled.
Alison glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Nothing to do with my knowing the distance and judging my speed or anything.” She twisted to fumble with the snaps that attached the wagon to her harness; Suzi scrambled out easily to help her. Theo found getting out slightly more complicated, with three now-moving foxes in the wagon as well, but eventually escaped.
She walked over to the edge of the water and waded in. “Back in a few minutes. Suze? Ali? You’ll be ready, right? You sure you’ll be okay spreading your wings even halfway?”
“I can’t open them all the way,” Suzi assured her, “but I can get them far enough that it’ll still have some effect. If worst comes to worst, it’ll distract him until you can sing and we can tie him up. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much since Callie helped, and Des helped me put more of her ointment on just before we came.”
“Look after yourself first, Theo,” Alison said. “If he kicks up too much of a fuss, it’s his own fault if he ends up halfway drowned or something. Or more than halfway, even. Your safety comes first.”
“I should be okay.” The water was deep enough here. She swam out further and dove under. The instinct to take a deep breath no longer kicked in, and the transition was effortless. The cool comforting water banished the increasing dryness, and here, she could move far more swiftly than she could on land.
She plunged deeper and into the short tunnel, wondering what she’d find when she surfaced. He would probably not be in a very good mood, having been trapped in the cave for something like nine hours with no idea what was going on or when she’d be back.
She came up as far from the ledge as she could, slowly and carefully to avoid drawing attention right away, even keeping nose and mouth under the surface so he wouldn’t hear her coughing the water up from her lungs.
It might have worked, had he not been sitting on the edge of the stony ledge, feet in the water, most of his clothes in a heap beside him, his hair wet and dishevelled. He saw her immediately.
He yelled something Theo couldn’t make out, which was probably only partly due to the echoing resonance of the cave, and threw something at her. Theo ducked, and watched one of his shoes drift down past her.
Well, she’d been right about his mood. She’d hoped she could start singing and pacify him before taking him in the water. She wasn’t going to have long enough to do that, unless he ran out of things to throw.
Had he seriously been trying to swim out by himself? It was more than twice Theo’s height from the surface to the mouth of the tunnel, possibly as much as three times, and Gord wasn’t exactly an athlete. It was unlikely that he had free-diving skills to let him hold his breath and orient himself.
Theo considered that. She could go back and ask Suzi for rope, climb up and wrestle Gord into some kind of restraint... or she could take the lazy approach and see if she could use a combination of logic and intimidation.
She surfaced again, in a different spot, and cleared her lungs so she could talk—keeping a wary eye out for thrown objects.
“Put it down,” she said, when she saw him heft the other shoe. “Throw it and I’ll leave you here alone for a week with no food. You might be more cooperative then.”
“Won’t take that long for Isabel to start asking,” Gord spat.
“Isabel doesn’t care, asshole. You and the others were bait. Those charms she gave you never worked, trust me. She and the wizards wanted to see what we’d do to you.”
“Trying to turn me against them isn’t going to work!”
“Then explain to me why my voice worked on you. Repeatedly. Doesn’t matter anyway. The rest of your psycho crew are all tied up and isolated in the same cells you put us in the first night we were here, and we have friends who are going to help fix as much damage as possible. Not all of it—those sweet fox girls might never know where they came from, and we have other friends who’ve had their pasts ripped away from them by your bosses in the name of their research.” She could feel the hot anger rising, heard it in her own voice. Everyone felt angry sometimes, but she’d never in her life experienced it so deeply or with as much bitter resentment as she had since they’d been kidnapped. It was unsettling.
“I don’t believe you!”
“I don’t care whether you do or not. It’s your choice. You can let me take you out of here, and you can go join them, or you can sit here in this cave until you grow mildew and you’re thinking about eating your own arm. Maybe I’ll bring you some bread with Isabel’s drugs in it, and watch how long it takes you to decide between sacrificing your own mind or starving.” She felt a disturbingly savage pleasure in watching him pale. “For the record, tearing away someone’s entire past isn’t a big improvement on outright murder. So, your call. You hop in here and I drag your sorry ass back outside, or you stay.”
It occurred to her belatedly that she could have charmed him, made a show of contrition and promised to set him free, begged him not to tell Isabel, and then let him find out otherwise once they were outside.
The thought made her gag. She’d spent too long going along with him and the others. She was done with it. If this way was rougher all around, so be it.
“I get in there, and you drown me, how’s that better?” Gord demanded.
“If I wanted to drown you, I could have and still could. I’m offering you an escape from this cave. Take it or leave it. I’m not waiting all day. We have a lot to do.”
Gord didn’t move for a moment. “Fuck,” he spat finally. “It’s not like I have much choice. Even if you’re lying, it could take Isabel a while to notice and then she’d have to either teach you a lesson about getting uppity and get you back to behaving yourself, or get Phrixos to actually help.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Poor abused baby. When I hit zero, I’m diving and not coming back up. If you’re in the water, you come along. If you aren’t, well, I won’t be back for a while. And if you think I’m bluffing on that, just try me. Five... four...”
“Wait! I need my clothes!”
“Three... two...”
Cursing, he slid off the edge into the water.
“One... zero.” She went under, grabbed him by both ankles, and dragged him down with her. She really didn’t care whether he’d taken a breath or not. She’d told him exactly when to expect it.
Whether his kick in her direction was a deliberate attack or not, it annoyed her. She didn’t really want any closer contact with him, but she wasn’t thrilled by those flailing legs either. She let go and moved around to wrap an arm across his chest, pinning him against her.
She pulled him only as far as she had to, down to and through the short tunnel. On the other side she released him, watching his scramble towards the surface. He got disoriented twice, not much surprise—the sky was nearly dark and with human senses it would be hard to tell which way was up. Each time she seized him by the back of the neck and pulled upwards until he was aligned in the right direction; both times, he quickly lost his way again. Since his motions looked increasingly frantic and uncontrolled, she figured that wasn’t going to improve, so she dragged him by the neck all the way to the surface.
He burst into the air with a lot of noisy gasping and wheezing and splashing. Theo quickly moved out of his reach, but floated there on her back, watching him.
“You okay, Theo?” Alison called. Suzi was a bright beacon in the shadows, but Theo’s fae eyes were good enough in the dark that she could see the foxes sitting on the ground near the wagon and Alison standing next to Suzi, the latter two watching for her at the edge of the water.
“All good,” Theo called back. “Gord wants to register a complaint about how he’s been treated.”
“Yeah, sure, we’ll get right on that.”
Gord fumbled his way inefficiently towards the shore. He made it to the shallows and waded out clumsily with his head hanging, panting so dramatically that Theo rolled her eyes at the poor acting job. Was he expecting to elicit sympathy?
The foxes, each munching happily on another cookie, watched the theatrics with interest. One of them giggled.
Suzi spread her wings halfway, a bit jerkily, and the light in the area brightened significantly.
“What happened to your wings?” one fox asked in concern. They sounded too alike and from here Theo couldn’t see who had spoken. “That looks like it hurts.”
“Nestor’s last attack was a couple of fireballs,” Suzi said. “Callie helped. I’ll be okay. But it does hurt.”
“Callie’s the greatest. Sorry you got hurt, though.”
“Worth it,” Suzi said.
Theo frowned. She’d expected Gord to head straight for Suzi, and he was, but something didn’t look quite right. She headed towards dry land quickly.
Alison waited, ready to grab him, but allowing him to leave the water entirely.
With the water still around his ankles, Gord spun the better part of ninety degrees and sprinted away, curving rapidly up onto land.
Theo, just wading out, paused to stare, speechless. In nothing but his jockey shorts, barefoot, at night, how far was he really expecting to get?
The three foxes lunged to their feet instantly.
“We’ll catch him!” one sang out, and the other, her voice briefly overlapping her sister’s, added, “Are you in a hurry?”
“As long as he doesn’t get killed or hurt anyone,” Alison said, “go to it and have fun.”
The three foxes ran after Gord, spreading out in a loose triangle.
It was immediately obvious that they weren’t running at anywhere near their top speed, nor were they getting out of breath. Gord was another matter.
All four disappeared from view into the trees, but they were still audible, Gord crashing around and the foxes making high-pitched staccato chattering noises that sounded weirdly like excited laughter.
“Do we trust them?” Theo asked, joining Alison and Suzi.
Suzi shrugged. “How so? Three to one and they’re stronger and faster anyway. They can see, he can’t. I can’t see them letting him go, and I don’t know what that would accomplish anyway. From what Jace picked up, the goons have no idea how to use the Gate—except maybe Lloyd. He’s not going to find any friends on the island. And they probably won’t kill him.”
“Eh, good points, all of those. And they sound like they’re enjoying themselves.”
“You okay?” Alison asked. “You sound a bit flat.”
Theo sighed and leaned against the wagon’s side. “I’m not sure I’m very happy with who I’m becoming. Being the siren, fine. But I’m the one who always tries to see things from the other side. I’m the one who’s all about helping people understand different perspectives and needs and identities. I built my whole damned radio show around that—sure, lots of music, but people can find music anywhere, even indie artists. I had other options for exactly how to get him out of there. I took the most direct one, just straight-up threats. I don’t like feeling so angry. I don’t like actually hating with this kind of... it’s so deep it feels like I could drown in it.”
Alison took a couple of steps closer and wrapped both arms around her; Theo snuggled into the hug.
“Gotta tell you something you won’t like, but it might help with perspective.”
“Ouch. Okay. Lay it on me.”
“I know you’ve been running into homophobic assholes since you came out in high school. I know you and Max encounter the same thing with racism thrown into the mix. But all in all, you’ve had a pretty safe and sheltered life. Your parents are nice people, even if they’re a bit bewildered by the life you’re so happy with. You didn’t get bullied. You’ve never, to the best of my knowledge, been attacked physically or sexually, or abused by a partner. I imagine you’ve had some bad moments as far as money or government bureaucracy, everyone has, but you’ve never had to deal with real profound poverty or institutional barriers. I really wish that none of those things ever happened to anyone, ever. They shouldn’t, but they do, all the time. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, because you’ve got no reason to. You’ve just been lucky. But that rage at people who not only hurt you but hurt people who matter to you and people who are like you... that’s a feeling that a lot of people that you try your best to understand live with all the time. Maybe you can use that as a way to get a grip on it—it’s going to help you understand on a very personal level. I mean, you understand anyway, you’re probably the most empathetic person I’ve ever met, and I’m not saying that anyone has to go through something themselves to get it. But I think it’s a different kind of understanding. Y’know?”
It wasn’t a hundred percent accurate, but it was sufficiently close that it made no difference.
“Ali kinda has a point,” Suzi said softly. “Peer support and peer counselling and that kind of thing exist for a reason. I kinda get how you feel. It’s really hard to hold onto forgiveness and kindness when you’re dealing with all this. How am I supposed to sincerely pray for the souls of monsters when all I find myself thinking is how badly I want them to experience every bit of the pain they’ve caused faelings and our families? I don’t like those thoughts either. I’m sort of hoping that once they’ve faced that tribunal and we know that we’ve done all we can to fix it and...” She faltered. “And once we’re home, maybe a bit of distance will help.”
Alison freed a hand to draw Suzi into the hug too, careful of her folded wings.
“We’ll get through this,” Alison said firmly. “And then we can work on the emotional healing. Bad stuff leaves scars, but that doesn’t have to taint everything you ever do or feel for the rest of your life. Trust me on that one, all right? You feel whatever you feel—you guys know that. Just don’t dwell on it. ‘Kay?” She loosened her hold on them. “Sounds like the foxes are covering more ground with Gord than I’d have expected. Shall we go follow them, so we can scoop him up and toss him in the wagon when they get tired of their game?”
“We’d better,” Theo said. “I’m not sure what their attention span is, even when they’re having fun, and even if he’s not going to be much danger, I’d rather keep track of where he is.”
“Give me a hand with the wagon straps and off we go. That’s the weirdest sound ever, but at least it’ll make it easy to track them.”