arms, against the feral’s big chest. Suddenly, even Jonas seemed better than whatever these men could do
to him. And Dr. Moore. Her name was laced through all his worst memories.
Jonas shoved him away. The twins caught Lindsay gently and righted him, each taking one of his
arms. “I need my hands free,” Jonas said roughly. “Come on, girl, enough socializing. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Lourdes was sauntering down the stairs behind them, her arm looped through Dane’s. Her mind slid
away from Lindsay’s as soon as the twins had hold of him, but Lindsay’s magic was still locked out of
reach. Now, he was terrified. His magic was gone.
“You think you have a grip on him, but it might not last.” Jonas snarled as he spoke. “It doesn’t last
on me, not forever.”
Lindsay struggled against the two men who held him, hoping that Jonas was right, that Dane would
break free of Lourdes’s hold on him. Whatever she was doing, Dane had to get free. Lindsay had to get
free. He didn’t want to go back to Dr. Moore, not again. Not ever.
“Come, sir.” One of his two keepers spoke, and the man’s accent was British. They were gentle with
him, smoothing his clothes and hair as Dane would have done, always keeping an iron grip on him, and
they guided him down the stairs. Under other circumstances, they would have been comforting, and that
thought made Lindsay ill.
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Together, they all went into the lower levels, through winding tunnels, and came out in a service bay
where a van and a limousine stood waiting. The driver of the van, a broad, flat-faced man in coveralls, got out and swung the back open to reveal the cage inside.
“Say goodbye, Lindsay.” Lourdes let go of Dane and he stood still. “He’s going with Jonas and
McKay, in the van. We have other things to do.” Hesham and Mahesh turned Lindsay so that he could see
Dane, each with a gentle hand on one of his arms, as though they were supporting him instead of holding
him prisoner.
It was Dane’s body, but was Dane really in there? Lindsay wouldn’t say goodbye to him, either way.
It felt wrong. He wished he could see into Dane’s mind, to bring him back to himself.
He stepped forward, and they let him, their hands still on his arms so he couldn’t run. When he was
close enough to touch Dane, he leaned up and brushed a kiss over Dane’s lips. Wake up. Lindsay kissed harder, desperation and fear building up inside him and seeping out from between his lips. His magic was
gone, but he still had his body. Lindsay swallowed a scream and pushed his tongue into Dane’s mouth,
trying to elicit some response, anything.
Nothing.
Dane stood there, as still as a corpse. Lindsay’s stomach twisted and he barely kept from retching on
the asphalt.
Jonas snorted, and he grabbed a handful of Dane’s hair and shoved him toward the van. “All that
effort and no show.” McKay, standing by the door, laughed and helped him throw Dane’s unresisting form
in the back.
The limo driver, a slight, gray woman, was holding the door. “Come along, Lindsay,” Lourdes said.
“We can’t keep Dr. Moore waiting.”
Lourdes patted Lindsay on the cheek as she breezed past. He flinched at her touch, but he couldn’t get
far enough to avoid the warm brush of her fingers. Dr. Moore could wait until hell froze over. He was
going to find a way out of this, one way or another.
His new guards guided him toward the limousine, helped him in, and settled beside him on the seat
facing the back. Lourdes sat across from him, phone in hand. “Would you tell Dr. Moore that I’ve got what
she wants?” she was saying to whomever was on the end of the line. She gave Lindsay a sweet smile once
he was settled. “Yes. We’re looking forward to seeing her too.”
Lourdes’s mind—it must have been hers—was still clenched around Lindsay’s magic, keeping him
from it without any sign of effort on her part. He had thought she was gone from his mind, but he had no
other explanation for it. Unless…he glanced at the twins, and one of them, he thought it was Mahesh,
smiled at him. Lindsay stomped on his panic at the idea that he had to deal with three mind mages at once,
and sorted the information he could get.
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Guests. So Dane was going to the same place Lindsay was. That made him feel a little better. With the way Lourdes held his magic in check, he couldn’t imagine what he’d be able to do with that, but knowing
that Dane’s mindless husk wasn’t being taken somewhere so that Jonas could kill it while Dane couldn’t
fight back was a relief. It would make it easier for Lindsay to find Dane when he got out. He pushed for his magic again. That he couldn’t feel or hear Lourdes in his head was no reason to think the grip on him
wasn’t hers. All Lindsay could do was wait for a break in her attention.
Lourdes tucked the phone away in the purse that sat on the seat beside her and folded her hands in her
lap. “We’re so glad you’re back,” she said pleasantly. To his dismay, Lindsay had the distinct impression
that she was sincere. That made things so much worse, that these people might care about him as though he
were one of their own, as though he were a wayward little brother. “Everyone’s just dying to see you
again.”
Dane knew exactly what was happening the moment the world slowed. He tried to say something,
managed to get Lindsay’s name out, but that was all. He even knew who was doing this to him. How had
Cyrus missed this? How had he?
As he stood there, frozen, fighting to keep his awareness connected to his body, he could see Jonas
stepping out of a service hallway. He could see the widening terror in Lindsay’s eyes as Jonas laid hands on him. As he was falling away from himself, he saw Lourdes.
Not for some days. Ezqel’s voice and Cyrus’s sounded the same in the fading echo along the hallways of his mind.
She looked much as she had when he’d seen her last, though the childish roundness was gone from
her face and her body. Now, she was slim and willowy, her fine red hair pulled back tightly in a twist at the nape of her neck that reminded him of Moore. Lourdes’s pale, pale eyes were the last thing in his vision
before he was gone.
Dane woke with a collar around his neck and his hands trapped behind his back in iron gauntlets. He
was in a moving vehicle, his back pressed up against bars. He’d been here before. Maybe not this exact
van, but one like it, more than once. He didn’t have to open his eyes or do anything beyond inhale to know
that Jonas was there with him.
“So, do you ever get tired of failing?”
Yes. Yes, he did. “Fuck you, Jonas.” Dane got very tired of failing. In fact, he was exhausted from it.
Failing all by himself was one thing, but this new twist of failing Lindsay was something else altogether.
“So, the elf fixed you did he?”
When Dane opened one eye, he saw Jonas sitting across from him, back to the bars on the other side
of the van, trapped in here with him. “Looks that way.”
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“I’d forgotten what you looked like.” Jonas sounded almost thoughtful. He stretched his legs out in
front of him and crossed his arms over his chest. He was ugly, brutal-looking like a club or an axe, but he was still human on the outside. “Pity you got so pretty just in time to die.”