“Alive? No.” Sighing heavily, he sat down right where he was, legs crossed and head thumping gently into the bars. He looked tired, his heavily stubbled face reminding her of their late-night study sessions.
Tugging her blanket tighter around her shoulders, she stood and hobbled closer on her sock feet. Everything complained as she stoically sat down as close as she could get to him. The cold from the cement floor seeped into her like an ache. Her hand, still raw from a burn, rasped against the rough wool, and she hid it behind the fabric before he could see in the dim light the officers had left on for them. “I don’t know about you, but there’s usually copious amounts of alcohol and loud music before I wake up in jail,” she said wryly.
Quen’s head came up, and he showed her a smile before it vanished in worry. “I haven’t heard any movement in the front offices for hours. Not since someone threw up. I haven’t heard anyone leave, either. We might be in trouble.”
“You think they’re dead?” she asked, not sure what horrified her more: that the cops might be dead, or that if they were, no one would know the three of them were in here.
He didn’t answer as he looked toward the silent front offices. “We should probably start thinking about how we can get out.”
Trisk watched Daniel, his face to the wall as he slept. It would be easier to escape if they were free to do magic. “Do you think he remembers?” she said softly.
“That you can do magic?” Daniel said loudly, clearly not asleep as they had thought.
Trisk froze, her lips parting as Quen turned to stare at the man as he sat up on the bench, tugging his blanket up against the cold and putting his stocking feet on the floor.
“That you summoned a demon in your barn?” Daniel said, squinting. “That you wanted to kill me?” he added, scrubbing a hand over his face to feel the bristles. “Yeah. I remember.”
His hair was a mess, and his dress slacks and shirt wrinkled and dirty. But he was alive, and Trisk closed her eyes in heartache. “I’m so sorry,” she said, and his gaze shifted to hers.
Quen’s expression darkened, and Trisk’s pulse quickened. “Sit your butt down, Quen,” she barked out, angry at him, angry at the world, angry at being in jail. “You’re not killing him now. Besides, by the end of the year, I don’t think there are going to be any humans left.”
Quen didn’t look convinced as much as willing to wait. “You think it’s going to take that long?” he muttered as Daniel shuffled to the washbasin and splashed water on his face. “How is it moving, Trisk? If it was airborne, he’d be sick,” he said, gesturing at Daniel, who now had his face in the sink and was running water over his hair.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. But she was willing to bet Kal was responsible.
Finger-combing his wet hair, Daniel edged closer to Quen, his attention alternating between them. “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.
His expression stoic, Quen stood and turned his back on them as if by ignoring the question, he could pretend she wasn’t about to break the most important rule of all, the one that had kept all of Inderland safe for two thousand years.
Trisk bowed her head. “My family is from Europe,” she said as she tried to make him understand. “We lived on the same land for eight hundred years. Before that, I don’t know.”
Quen went to the far end of the cell. “Hey! Anyone alive out there?” he shouted, but only silence came back.
“Yeah, okay. But what are you?” Daniel asked, his hands going into his pockets.
She tried to smile. “There was a problem with a girl. It escalated, and my great-great-something grandfather fled to America in the 1820s.”
Anger crossed Daniel’s face, furrowing his brow. “You aren’t human,” he accused, his weight shifting to his other foot.
“He started a farm,” she tried again. “And then went back to get the woman he loved.” Her smile turned real. “He stole her away in the night. I’m named after her, actually. My family has lived here ever since. I grew up in Cincinnati. My dad still lives there.”
Daniel grasped the bars. “Trisk,” he prompted, and she stood, heart pounding.
“Before I say, you have to understand. We’ve been here all the time,” she pleaded, and Quen sighed, his wide shoulders moving as he fiddled with the lock. “All of us. Your society is our society. We helped make it as much as you. We’ve died in the same wars, fought the same battles, suffered the same economic depressions. There is no them and us, and we don’t want things to change.”
An angry light in his eye, Daniel waited, and she fidgeted, pulse hammering. “I’m, uh, an elf,” she said, feeling as if she had betrayed the entire world.
Quen’s shoulders hunched as he reached through the bars to lay his hands atop the metal lock. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes,” he whispered, trying to break it.