Spellbinder (Moonshadow #2)

Her hands prickled painfully as circulation increased. Giving up on her wrists, she rubbed her arms in an attempt to generate some warmth. Even though the day had turned sunny, the thick cover of trees kept the temperature mild, and the walls of the building were constructed of thick stone that emanated a damp chill.

She was glad she was still wearing the soft cashmere hoodie, jeans, and sneakers she had slipped into for the drive to the airport. Thanks to her kidnapper, the T-shirt under the dirt-streaked hoodie was ragged, and her jeans were smeared with grass stains and blood, but if she were still wearing the thin spandex outfit she had worn for the concert, she would be freezing her ass off.

Her kidnapper had said Vincent, Tony, and the driver would live, and she didn’t think he had lied to her. He had said scary, crazy stuff, but as far as she knew, no falsehoods.

“Buck up, Sid,” she whispered. “Vince and Tony will be looking for you.”

At least they would be looking as soon as they were able to. How badly had they been hurt in the crash? How long would it take for the news of her disappearance to hit the tabloids?

Some time ago she, Vince, and his wife, Terri, had talked through strategies for a variety of extreme scenarios.

In the event of her disappearance (how they had chuckled at the unlikelihood of that), the security company was authorized to offer a reward for any credible information on her whereabouts.

They were also authorized to conduct transactions, in case she had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom. After the first two stalkers, she had taken Vincent’s advice and now carried an insurance policy that would cover any ransom up to five million dollars.

So they had mechanisms in place to handle almost any situation, but none of it brought her any comfort, because what had actually happened was completely outside any scenario they had discussed.

They had no protocol in place for how to deal with crazy magical creatures bent on enacting an elaborate scheme of manipulation and revenge. No protocol to handle something like this.

Human trafficking was a crime that mostly involved victims who were too poor and vulnerable to protect themselves against it. Life had skidded so far off the path of anything that seemed remotely feasible she felt utterly adrift and more alone than she had in years.

Someday I’m going to look back at this, she told herself. And while I’m never going to laugh at what happened, I’m going to be grateful I made it through alive. Someday this experience is going to be in the past, and I will know what it feels like to seek revenge myself.

As foreign as the concepts were to her, nursing her anger was far better than sinking into depression or giving up. They gave her something to focus on, somewhere to direct her rage.

Desperate to take some kind of action, she started counting the strips of leather in the crosshatched cot. There were twelve strips in length and thirty-six strips across. Anxiety knotted her stomach. Had she counted right? She started over. Twelve and thirty-six.

Then again. Twelve and thirty-six.

Maybe she needed to touch them to be sure. Compelled forward, she moved her fingers along the crosshatching, whispering to herself as she counted. After going over the leather strips fifteen times, she pressed both clenched fists to her forehead and forced herself to step away from the cot.

If she thought going on tour was stressful, it was nothing compared to this. To try to distract herself from getting trapped in more OCD behavior, she studied the details of her surroundings more closely. Goose bumps rose along her arms.

Everything looked… historic. Was that the right word?

Walking over to the bars of her cell, she ran a finger experimentally down one. The slightly rough surface disturbed her more than anything. They were strong, well made, and sturdy, but they had not been generated by modern machinery.

There were fourteen bars.

Fourteen.

Fourteen. Agh!

She tore herself away from them, stepping back to turn in a circle. The lock on the cell door, the cot itself, the window—none of it looked sleek or mass-produced, or as if it had come from the industrial age.

She felt as if she had almost traveled back in time, or… or as if she wasn’t quite on the same Earth she knew anymore.

As if she wasn’t on Earth at all, anymore.

Her throat closed as panic threatened to set in.

What would it be like to travel through a crossover passageway? She had always wondered, but she didn’t know. She had read stories of how deadhead humans experienced crossovers, but she’d not yet visited an Other land herself. She had thought her hypothetical trip to Adriyel might be the first time.

Since she had no magic, she couldn’t make a crossover passage on her own. A deadhead had to be touching someone with magical ability in order to make a crossing, and she had always known she would have to rely on someone else with magic to walk her through the passage. The most common way was to hold hands.

The stories told of a strange, surreal experience as travelers watched everything around them change while they traversed a passageway. But would she have had that experience if she’d simply walked from the middle of one forest clearing to another?

The soldier had thrown her fireman-style over his shoulder, and her head had dangled upside down. It hadn’t exactly been a priority for her to study her surroundings closely as he’d carried her down the path. She had been too busy staring at his ass and wishing she either had the courage or the lack of sense to bite him.

If he’d carried her along a passageway to an Other land, they didn’t need to put her in a cell, because she didn’t have the ability to get back to Earth on her own. She couldn’t contact any of the Djinn who owed her favors—without telepathy, she could only reach her Djinn contacts by phone, and even if she still had her cell, phones didn’t work in Other lands.

Suddenly she could no longer fight back the rising panic. Rushing to the cell door, she shouted, “Hey! Hey! Do you realize how many crimes you’re committing by putting me in this cell against my will? You can’t keep me here—I’m a Canadian citizen!”

No one came. As she paused, a deafening silence pressed against her eardrums. As far as she could tell, she was the only one in this horrid little building. They didn’t care enough to respond, and that frightened and enraged her more than anything.

Hours passed. Finally her own body’s needs forced her into using the latrine. She did so quickly, in case someone came, and afterward she flung herself onto the cot. From there, she counted and recounted the bars in her cell door and watched the light from the high window shift and eventually dim.

Her violin had been in the trunk of the car. Was it all right?

That violin was her most treasured possession. Crafted by the famous French luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, it was nearly a hundred years old, and acquiring it with her own hard-earned money had been one of the biggest triumphs of her life.