Hotbloods 5: Traitors

“He’s never here anymore, and he definitely wouldn’t want to talk with you two about my mother’s sickness. All he cares about is—” He stopped mid-sentence, his cheeks reddening. I guessed he’d said more than he meant to.

His words made me frown. If Jareth wasn’t home, and Kaido was still happily ensconced in his laboratory, then the only other person who could have been outside the main door to Jareth’s alchemy lab was Sarrask. I had no idea where that other door was, but I imagined it was hidden away somewhere. In which case, what had Sarrask been doing wandering around so close to it? Had he been looking for a way in, too? Had he found the main entrance to his father’s lab—boldly going where no Idrax child had gone before?

“Are you sure Jareth isn’t home?” I asked again.

Sarrask glared at me, although he quickly looked away. “Yes, I’m sure. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see my mother.” With that, he turned in the opposite direction from the one he’d been headed and mounted the staircase up to Lorela’s bedchamber.

Maybe he couldn’t get in through that entrance, I mused, watching him go. Maybe that’s why he came this way, to try and find a different route. After all, why else would he have been heading for the basement?

“You as hungry as I am?” Ronad asked, interrupting my train of thought.

“Ravenous,” I replied. We made our way toward the kitchen. “Do you think it was Sarrask, creeping around outside Jareth’s lab?” I asked, wanting to share my theory.

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, who else could it have been?” I reasoned. “Kaido was busy, Jareth was out, Lorela was in bed… It had to have been him. Do you know where that other doorway leads?”

Ronad shook his head. “We could never find the main entrance, even as kids. Jareth always kept it secret. I doubt even Lorela knows,” he said. “To find out where it leads, we’d have to go the long way again.”

“Do you think we should?”

He gave a tight laugh. “I think we got lucky today, but I’m not leaving this house without Naya’s journal. I don’t know when we’ll do it, but rest assured, we’ll go back there one day soon,” he promised. “As for Sarrask, I’ve got no idea what he was doing creeping around, if it was him. Maybe he was looking for something, too.”

“Like what?” I pressed, prompting another laugh from Ronad.

“You ask a lot of questions, kiddo, but I only know as much as you.”

White stools circled the central island of the kitchen. I perched on the edge of one and watched Ronad flit around the room, gathering a bowl of food for me to eat. I’d offered to put it together, but he’d waved me away, demanding I sit. Kaido had been keeping my fruit and vegetable stocks replenished, and it seemed like creating a meal for me had become something of a novelty task for the younger inhabitants of the Idrax house—not that I was complaining.

“What are all those machines for?” I asked, gesturing toward the unusual objects that stood on the workbenches, which bordered the kitchen walls.

Ronad looked up. “They’re used for distilling, mixing, and infusing blood cocktails and other blood recipes,” he said with a grin. “I think there’s even a centrifuge in there somewhere. Used to be, anyway. Lojak was always super picky and hated the taste of plasma; he always had to have it separated out of his meals.”

I almost laughed at the idea of a coldblood child wanting to have his meals altered, the way a human child might refuse to eat peas or broccoli. No matter how much I thought I knew about Vysantheans, I was constantly being surprised.

“Okay, so what are we going to do about the device under Lorela’s bed?” I wondered, as Ronad put a plate of fanned-out fruit in front of me. “Whoa, impressive knife skills!” I glanced down at the rainbow of shapes, then up at Ronad, who wore an expression of pride, his grin widening.

“I thought I’d try something different today,” he said.

“Well, it’s definitely fancy.” I chuckled, digging in.

“With Lorela, I was thinking I could give her a vial of sleeping tonic. It should put her in a deep sleep for a couple of hours, though I’ll have to be careful with the dosage.” He downed a vial of blood. “I think I’ve still got an old bottle of it tucked away, from when I used to drug Bashrik so I could sneak out to see Naya.”

I burst out laughing. “You used to drug Bashrik?”

“He’d have tried to stop me from seeing her if I hadn’t!” Ronad replied defensively. “Besides, it never did any permanent damage.”

“Well, not that you know of,” I teased, biting into a slice of a large blue fruit. “Anyway, why do you think there’s a pay device down there?”

Ronad shrugged. “If Jareth built those tunnels as an escape route, then it makes sense that he’d hide some pay devices, forged papers, food, clothes—that kind of thing—in case they need to make a quick getaway,” he said. “Plus, he wouldn’t be able to take his own pay device with him. It would have to be an unregistered, temporary one, loaded with a certain amount of money. That way, the system couldn’t trace any payments back to Jareth.”

I nodded, intrigued. “Do you think that’s what’s under the bed?”

“We have to hope it is. Now, you stay here while I go and get my little bottle of sleepy-time goodness,” he insisted with a grin, throwing his blood vial in the recycling container before leaving the room.

I stared out the window, watching clouds drift across a lavender sky as I worked my way through the colorful plate of fruit. My mind turned toward Navan and the others, wondering how they were doing. It seemed that was all I ever thought about, these days. We had a gargantuan task to get through the following day, and I was barely fazed by it—my own safety didn’t matter, as long as my friends and boyfriend were okay.

Besides, we still had the money to get before we could focus on anything else. And, with Sarrask up in Lorela’s room, there was nothing we could do about that until he left.



Just under an hour later, I was starting to think Sarrask was never going to leave. Ronad had already gotten the bottle of sleeping tonic from wherever he’d been hiding it all these years, and the pair of us had been playing a fierce game of I Spy. However, he’d just stepped out of the room to search in the cold-store, which branched off from the main kitchen, his stomach apparently still rumbling.

I was playing my own game, in the solitude of my mind, when Sarrask reappeared at the threshold to the kitchen. He glanced around cautiously, before turning his gaze to me. He looked like he was going to say something, his mouth opening and closing like he was a beached fish, when Ronad emerged again. Immediately, the expression on Sarrask’s face changed to one of surprise, his mouth closing shut in a tight line of silence.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, wondering what was going on. Was it Lorela? Had something happened to her?

Sarrask nodded. “I just thought I’d come to let you know that I was leaving,” he replied, his tone cold. “I suggest you stay away from my mother. She needs to rest. She doesn’t need the two of you agitating her.”

“Understood,” Ronad said, forcing a pleasant smile onto his face.

“Okay, well… I’ll be going, then,” Sarrask said, turning on his heel. A few minutes later, I heard the front door open and close with a slam.

“Now I feel bad,” I murmured, getting down off the stool.

Ronad sighed. “It can’t be helped, Riley. I don’t want to aggravate her condition any more than you do, but we need to get that device without her knowing what we’re up to. Besides, maybe the deep sleep will do her good.”

I flashed him a doubtful look. “I hope so.”

With both of us in reluctant agreement, we headed upstairs to carry out our mission. Ronad had decanted the sleeping tonic into a smaller vial, which he’d slipped into his back pocket.

“Did you get the dosage right?” I whispered, dreading what might happen if he hadn’t.

He nodded. “If anything, it’ll be too weak. Let’s just hope it buys us the short time we need.”

“Let’s just hope it buys us the cab ride we need,” I countered.

After all, retrieving the payment device would probably be the easy part.





Chapter Six