I had just finished changing when she approached me in the locker room.
“Paige, can I talk to you for a second?” she asked as I tossed the terrycloth wristband that I wore over my bracelet back into my locker.
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“It’s important,” she said, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she looked around the locker room. We were alone in this row, but I heard voices on the other side of my locker and the slamming of metal doors as my classmates headed out for their next class.
“Then talk to me as we walk to my next class,” I replied, not wanting to be left in an empty locker room while Aiden was on the loose—or be left alone with Pepper.
Really, which is worse?
“No, I have to talk to you alone!” She held her palm to her chest, frowning.
“If it’s so important you can suffer through being seen with me in public,” I snapped, resting my palms on either side of my locker as I took a deep breath.
“It’s not that,” she said, her voice small. “I screwed up. I screwed up so bad.”
She rubbed that giant ring on her hand and quickly shoved it underneath my nose. I slapped her hand away, but not before a heavy, bitter scent filled my senses. I instinctively held my breath as I tried to pull away, but my limbs immediately grew heavy, my shoulders dropping from the weight.
I started to collapse, and I felt Pepper catch me, shifting me so I collapsed onto the bench in between the row of lockers, my head in my lap.
“Hey, Pepper, you coming?” Footsteps, followed by Andie’s unmistakable voice, rang in my ears. “What’s up with Bellevue Kelly?”
I can’t move! Why can’t I move? Help me!
My thoughts screamed, echoing in my head, but my limbs wouldn’t budge. My muscles ached as if I were trying to move a brick wall, my body unresponsive, my lips still and parted slightly.
“She said she got dizzy. Go on, I’ll get her to the nurse,” Pepper said, her voice shaking and weak.
“Ew, don’t help her. Just leave her here and send the nurse in.”
Can’t she see I can’t move? Andie, don’t leave me with her!
“No, it’s okay. You should go,” Pepper urged.
“Yeah, I guess if you just left her there, you’d get into trouble.” I could picture the eye roll that accompanied Andie’s statement, lips curling into her signature snotty expression.
“Want me to stay with you?” Andie asked, sounding like she’d rather do anything else.
“No, it’s cool,” Pepper insisted, anxious. “Just go on ahead.”
I felt Pepper sit next to me, where my dead limbs rooted me to the bench. My breathing was slow and labored—but I was still alive. At least for now.
I heard Andie’s steps fade, the hiss of the air brake to the locker room door and then, the sound of metal on metal as the door closed. We were alone in the locker room—and I was a prisoner in my own immobile body.
Logan, please, please come find me!
“I’m sorry, Paige. I had no choice,” Pepper was saying, her voice thick with sobs. “Aiden made me do it.”
My stone body didn’t react, but inside I began to crumble at that name. I wanted to run and scream and shake Pepper until her teeth chattered, but I couldn’t move. My eyes were frozen open and starting to ache.
“He was so charming. I thought I’d dump Matt for him—really show Matt, you know? Do it in public, right in front of everyone, and embarrass him the way he’d embarrassed me,” she confided in me, as if we were friends—as if she hadn’t just guaranteed the end of my life. “But Aiden—he’s so horrible, you don’t even know what he’s done to me.”
Pepper, you fool. You don’t know anything.
She whimpered, her voice thin with the terror she felt. And I was forced to listen to it, bound by a lifeless body made useless by whatever potion he’d instructed her to use on me.
“He was so nice, until he gave me this ring.” She shoved it under my face again. The movement jostled me, throwing my dead body off balance. I slid to the floor, hitting the cold tile floor with a thud. I was dimly aware of a painful ache in my back, but I couldn’t feel much. It was like my entire body had been given a shot of Novocain, making me aware of my motions but feeling nothing.
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to knock you down!” Pepper dropped to her knees next to me. “The ring—I can’t take it off. And it hurts so much.” She sniffled, sounding like she was convulsing with sobs, but I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t see anything except the exposed steel pipes and the water-stained, pale green ceiling above my head.
I wished I could close my eyes and force some other image into my head, so the last thing I’d see wouldn’t be this grimy ceiling, which grew blurry as my eyelids remained open.
“He made me do it,” Pepper was whispering. “If I didn’t do this, he was going to kill me. I’m sorry. I’m just in so much pain—”
“Well, that was the point.”
Aiden was here. I tried to scream, but of course the only sounds were his footsteps echoing in the empty locker room, and his smug voice as he explained his invention.
“When you put the ring on, it pierces your skin with a microscopic metal wire. It finds a vein and shimmies through it, until it reaches your heart. Brilliant, isn’t it?” he gloated, and his footsteps stopped. Probably because he paused to admire his own ingenuity.
Pepper’s sobs grew louder, nearly drowning him out.
“I would calm down if I were you,” he snapped. “Your heart is wrapped nice and snug in wire. Think of your heart like a little baby, wrapped in a soft cuddly blanket. Only if that wire wraps any more tightly around your little heart, it’ll slice it into pieces.”
Pepper whimpered loudly, and then her cries were quickly muffled, as if she had clasped her hand over her mouth. I desperately tried to burn, searching for my fire demon power and feeling nothing, not even a spark.
“You screwed up, Pepper. You were supposed to wait until she was completely separated from her little protector, and he’s somewhere in this school,” he growled. “Now where exactly is he?”
“I did wait!” she cried. “Logan’s always with her. This is the one class he doesn’t have with her, and everywhere else has security cameras! Getting Paige alone in the locker room was the only option, and there’s an emergency exit you can use.”
“Where is he? How long do I have?”
“He waits for her outside of her next class. He’ll be here in a few minutes if she doesn’t show up. Logan’s always with her.”
The mention of Logan’s name made a sudden, but powerful, sense of calm surge through me.
He’ll find me. He always finds me.
But that calm quickly turned to terror when Aiden’s blurry face came into view, hovering over mine as my eyes remained fixed on the ceiling above me.
“Lights out, Paige,” he whispered, placing his hands on my forehead and shutting my parched eyes. Something was placed over my nose, and I heard Pepper scream before everything faded away.
Chapter 15
THE FIRST THING I noticed was the smell. It was musty and dank, like an abandoned building that spent more time wet than dry. The distinct scent of garbage hung heavily in the air—that same sharp, sour aroma that all trash had, a rancid heaviness that burned your nostrils and settled on your tongue. There were more smells, too—like the smell of exhaust, thick with acrid chemicals and smoke.
The sounds hit me next, the rapid grinding of metal on metal and the bleating of a loud horn as what sounded like a train roared by, stirring the air and pelting my cheeks with grit. I flinched and realized I could move again. I flexed my fingers, twisting my hands and feeling that my wrists were painfully bound in my lap.