Chapter 10

Bail would be my first major hurdle. In the plus column was the fact that I had no priors, not even a parking ticket, with a business based in the community. That should qualify me, but the big minus was that they might decide my mother's resources made me a flight risk. I laughed bitterly.

Levi finally returned along with Miles Berenbaum, his Chief of Security. Unlike the Nefesh police chief who reported to both Levi and the Chief Constable, who also oversaw the Mundane forces, Miles worked directly for Levi and was exceedingly loyal.

And wasn't it just perfect that two of the most powerful people in this city were the same popular best friends that my grandparents had sent me to Jewish summer camp with every year in my teens, just wielding influence on a different level?

The cell door clattered open.

I held my hand out to Miles. "I want my phone call."

"You'll get it," he said. At six-foot-four, he was a couple of inches taller than Levi. Dude must have had his customary uniform of black pants and black long-sleeved shirt specially made for him, because that bodybuilder frame of his decimated any puny off-the-rack clothing. Even though it was the middle of the night, his dark brown eyes were clear and his blond hair was as meticulously buzz cut as ever.

If anyone had hospital corners on their bed, it was Miles. He was as reserved as Levi was charismatic - to people other than me - and while I'd never seen him catting around with anyone, it wasn't for lack of offers.

He moved into my personal space and jerked his thumb to the ceiling. "Up."

I grabbed hold of my dress fabric so I wouldn't step on it, though the hem was filthy and I'd managed to rip a side seam when I'd grappled with Levi at the aquarium. Rest in peace, dress.

"About time." I grimaced, the stench of rotting flesh and feces assaulting me. Geez dude, fix your diet.

A smudgy, oily shadow flowed out from Miles at a slightly faster speed than it had with the Green Thumb Employee, bobbing from side-to-side as if assessing Levi and myself for its new accommodations.

My heart stuttered a beat. Miles wasn't my favorite person but I didn't want him dead once that smudge broke free. I also didn't want to find out whether Levi or I would be the new recipient of that abomination, but damn, using my magic would only cement my Rogue status.

Fuck it.

Ripping the scab off my palm, I squeezed my fist to call up a drop of blood, then working on instinct and adrenaline, I magically teased it into a silky thin red stream. I fired the ribbon over Miles' shoulder and into the shadow, where it forked into red branches, anchoring the smudge in place.

That was crazy cool, but the feeling that a million wriggling maggots had surged from the smudge to infest my soul, not so much.

I shrieked.

Charlotte Rose's admonition that the House was experimenting on people replayed in my head. Was this it?

But then Levi shouted, "What the fuck?"

Miles glanced back and jumped about three feet.

"Don't move!" I yelled.

Straining against my branchy grip, the smudge arced over Miles' head like a wave, stretching out for its new victim. It was still connected to Miles, which was a good thing, because the second it disengaged fully he would drop dead. I didn't know if he could accidentally tear himself free and I was determined not to find out.

Spearing the wave with more branches, I stopped it in its tracks, the smudge thrashing against its restraints.

Levi stepped toward it, stepped back, and balled his fists. "Get it out of him."

"What do you think I'm trying to do? Give it a facial?" I said.

"It's in me?!" Miles hurled fireballs over his shoulder. "Where?"

The fireballs passed harmlessly through the smudge to scorch the walls and ceiling of the cell, thin tongues of flame lapping along the seams.

Cursing with the inventiveness of a man whose reality was unravelling, Levi grabbed a small fire extinguisher off a mounted bracket outside the cell and doused the fires, yelling at his righthand man to calm down. Personally, Levi yelling at me would be the least calming thing I could think of, but Miles was vibrating in place from the force of keeping himself in check.

Dark clouds swam through my vision, arms shaking and eyes watering from the atrocious stench. Terror pierced my soul as I stared directly into the heart of this mass that was sheer wrongness. I fell into its endless night, a puny speck against a devouring fiend, my only shield this newfound magic I didn't understand.

The smudge still flowed out of Miles becoming more entangled into my magic branches, but it had slowed to a trickle and would soon be free of him.

Time was running out.

I swayed, dangerously close to passing out from blood loss. Once I did, the smudge would kill us all.

Levi caught the underside of my arms to bolster my grip. "How do we stop it?"

I was about to give off some snarky retort to the effect that I didn't know. Except I did.

Scraping deep for the last vestiges of my energy, I poured more magic into it, shuddering and convinced that writhing maggots swarmed me, but pushing through for one last assault.

In an act that was both beautiful and totally unnerving, white clusters bloomed all over the branches and devoured the smudge.

Just ate it right up, yum yum.

The smudge was gone, leaving only a shocked silence and a decimated jail cell.

Spent, I sank to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, my head down, willing away that creepy maggoty sensation still crawling over and inside me because otherwise I was going to tear my skin off.

"It's gone?" Miles finally said in a hoarse voice.

I glanced up. His expression was pinched and he was rubbing a trembling hand over his sleeve. "Totally gone," I said.

He caught himself on the next pass of his sleeve and dropped his hand to his side. "Thank you."

"Can you walk?" Levi crouched down beside me, and when I shook my head, scooped me up in his arms.

"Where are we going?" My voice was a scratchy rasp.

"To talk." His voice was soft, but I had no doubt that if he didn't like my answers, I'd be right back in that cell.