I tune out his speech, the truth unfolding before my eyes. Bait—I can’t believe how obvious it is, how I could have missed it until now. “I’ll do it,” I blurt out.
“What?” Bishop turns and touches my shoulder. “Indie, you’re being stupid—”
“Don’t touch me.” I shake off his hand. “Never touch me again, do you hear me? I hate you.”
Bishop’s brows draw together, hurt and confusion muddying his dark eyes.
“Trouble in paradise?” Leo laughs at his own joke, and his minions hurry to follow suit.
I swallow my urge to kiss every part of Bishop’s face until the hurt disappears, and face Leo. “I’ll do it if you promise to kill him.” I cross my arms and jut my chin toward Bishop. “And if you let me and Jezebel go free.”
“I like the sound of this,” Jezebel pipes up.
“Indie, what are you talking about?” Bishop moves in front of me and bends low, trying to force me to look at him.
“Oh, please. Like you don’t know. You are so fake. Fake, fake, fake!” I give him a pointed look on the last “fake” and, finally, a glimmer of recognition crosses his eyes.
I move away from Bishop, toward Leo. “Bring me to the Bible.”
Leo’s eyes narrow, and he doesn’t say a word. An icy fear that he’s on to me grips my spine.
As if sensing the danger, Bishop grabs my arm and spins me around to face him. “Indie, please. Give me another chance.” He leans in to kiss me.
I draw my arm back, then lunge all my body weight into a punch that cracks across his cheek like a bat striking a fastball. Bishop stumbles back, hands up around his face.
“What the hell was that?” His voice is high and strained—no acting job there.
“Try it again and I’ll cut your balls off, you—you cheating jerk!” I face Leo again. “Take me to the Bible. You know my terms.”
Leo looks between the two of us, and for one horrible moment I think he hasn’t fallen for it. But then he gives a curt nod. “Take them all to the compound.”
Two of Leo’s goons surge forward, pulling something black out of their back pockets. He pulls the same item out of his own pocket, and I realize now that it’s a bag. “Can’t have you telling your little Family members where they can find us,” he explains, before snapping the bag over my head.
31
I’m certain of three things. One is that I’m in a car—this much I can tell from the sounds of doors slamming, an engine rumbling beneath me, and the ticking of turn signals. The second is that it takes roughly thirty minutes to get to our destination before the car jerks to a stop.
The stench of Marlboro cigarettes tips me off to the third thing, which is that Leo is in the car with me.
Doors slam, and then I’m pulled out into sticky, warm air and ushered inside a building, my shoes squeaking on tile flooring.
“You better not be lying,” Leo says.
I stiffen at the sound of his voice so close to my ear, recalling the day when Leo tried to attack me in the gym. Only this time, my hands are bound so tightly with thick rope that it’s impossible to escape. I focus on each breath—inhale through my nose, exhale through my mouth—so that I don’t panic.
Leo shoves me inside a room and pulls the bag off my head. My eyes burn from the sudden brightness, but when they adjust I find myself inside a small room tiled partly in seafoam green, with X-rays of bones lining the top half of the walls. A long, stainless steel table takes up the center of the space, glinting from the spotlight at the end of a mechanical arm coming from the ceiling. Steel surgical tools line small trays against one of the walls, and the scent of antiseptic and alcohol permeates the air.
“You like?” Leo asks.
Bile rises up my throat, and I feel the urge to puke. What have I gotten us into? My plan had seemed so clear earlier, but now that I’m here, what couldn’t be clearer is that I was wrong.
There are scuffling noises behind me. Two suit-clad men push Jezebel and Bishop into the room.
“Close the door, Armando,” Leo says.
The heavyset Latino man who had been pushing Bishop nods and shuts the door.
“Get this damn bag off.” Jezebel thrashes against her ropes and the grip of her handler—a tall, thin man with a hooked nose and a widow’s peak—but I know she could easily use her magic to escape if she wanted to. She knows we’re up to something, and she’s playing along. It’s just a mystery to me why the Priory hasn’t caught on to this fact yet.