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too dark and went by too quickly for Lindsay to read. He wondered if that was Lourdes’s doing, or if it was simply the way the car was moving.

There weren’t any skyscrapers to help Lindsay guess where he was. Most of what he could see out the

window was too dark to make out, though a trick of the streetlights made a massive cemetery just barely

visible. The only damn thing he could see, and it had to be something that wouldn’t do him any good,

because he didn’t recognize it.

“Are you sure that what you’re seeing is real?” Lourdes had been reading something on a small device

she’d pulled from her purse, but she stopped to look over at Lindsay.

“I’m sure that you’re a bitch,” Lindsay muttered. “Does Moore have you trained to sit up and beg

too?”

“Spending time with that animal has taught you poor ma

Moore’s colleague, not her pet. You know, your education has been sorely neglected, Lindsay. You’re

remarkably lacking in deductive reasoning.”

“Just offering you the benefit of the doubt. I’d respect you more if you were her pet. At least then

you’d just be following orders.” Lindsay slid his gaze back to the window, not wanting to miss the changes

in his surroundings.

“You could be so powerful.” Lourdes’s expression shifted, softened. “I know you hate what they did

to you, but now that you’re free of it, you could negotiate, you know. You could be useful to them. To us.

We’re not puppets.” She gestured at Hesham and Mahesh to either side of him. “Ask your friends here.

We’re not fools, either. We have purpose of our own.”

“Why would I want to work for the people who tortured me?” Lindsay flicked his gaze back to

Lourdes incredulously. “For two years, they kept me strapped down and drugged up, poked and prodded

me and experimented on me. Why would I want to be a part of that?”

“Better to be a part of it on your own terms than on theirs.” Lourdes shrugged and smiled at him. “I

should know. It’s not so terrible, and they’re not necessarily wrong. There’s so much you don’t know,

Lindsay. So many things Cyrus and his pet and his woman didn’t tell you about us, about our people. Did

you ever stop to think about it, how little you know?”

Yes. Lindsay looked out the window again. He didn’t care what Lourdes said, he didn’t want to be a part of the organization that had tortured him like that, not on any terms.

One of the twins, Hesham, patted him on the knee. Lindsay flinched from the touch, pulling his legs

tighter together. The touch was soothing, and he hated it.

“There are many benefits to being agreeable,” Lourdes said. “Including never again having to be as

afraid as you are right now.” Lindsay glared at her and was met with a frightening wealth of understanding

and sympathy. She folded her hands in her lap and looked out the window. With her pale, pale skin, and her

pale gray-green eyes, she reminded him too much of the mirror.

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Lindsay didn’t answer Lourdes, didn’t speak at all for the rest of the drive. It was just as well that only a few minutes later, the car went dark as they drove underground into some kind of tu

building. The sign out front had said something about a battalion. Lindsay’s stomach twisted with fear, and he felt around for any scrap of his magic, any thread he could use to unravel Lourdes’s hold over him.

“It’ll hurt less if you don’t struggle.” Lourdes smiled at him just before the car dipped into the dark

and kept going along a slow curve. Lindsay realized that she meant it, that she cared. He would rather it have been an illusion, a trap. “Dr. Moore is going to be so pleased to see you,” Lourdes said. “You don’t

need to be afraid. One way or another, everything will be sorted out soon.”

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165

Chapter Fifteen

Lourdes, Hesham and Mahesh escorted Lindsay from the limousine and led him into the heart of the

complex. They passed men in uniform who stepped aside respectfully, nodding to Lindsay and the other

three as though he were a guest. There were colored lines painted on the walls and, after a while, it became obvious that they were following the green stripe. It led through one set of security doors, and another, and finally to a double set of doors marked with black and yellow warning bars.

“Home, sweet home,” Lourdes said cheerfully. She stepped into a yellow box painted on the floor and

a panel in the wall by the door slid open. A sca

ceiling whirred as they sca

The air here smelled of disinfectant and electricity. Lindsay was escorted to a hall that looked like it

had been transplanted from a hospital, or from the facility he’d been held in before. That had been in DC,

he reminded himself. This was New York. It wasn’t the same, but he promised himself that the end result

would be the same. He’d get out of this. He had to.

They passed door after door, all offset so that from the window of each, one could see nothing else but

the opposite wall.

“You’ll be safe in here.” A swipe of a key card Lourdes pulled from her purse opened a door like all

the rest, and she gestured for Lindsay to step in. He dug in his heels, but Hesham and Mahesh pushed him

forward—gently, like a parent urging a child into class on the first day of school—and he crossed the

threshold.

The first thing Lindsay recognized were the markings on the walls and floor and ceiling: one from the

floor of Ezqel’s study, and another from the white marble circle, one from the symbols Taniel had written

in a book that Lindsay had seen from the corner of his eye, another from the mirror’s frame.

“We don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Lourdes’s voice came from a distance, reaching where Lindsay was caught in his memories. A needle

slid into his arm and, before he could panic, warmth and pain spread out from the prick of it in his skin.

Lindsay could see, in his mind’s eye, Moore’s notes. He remembered watching, strapped upright in a cage,

his mind recording his surroundings long after his consciousness was gone. Why his mind was tormenting

him with that, he couldn’t tell.

“It’s for your own good.”

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Hesham and Mahesh were coaxing his faltering body into a straitjacket. Lindsay wanted to protest, to

scream, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move and it wasn’t just the drugs. What did you do to me?

“Just a little cocktail,” Lourdes answered. The twins were guiding him down to the floor in a corner of

the dim room, taking his shoes and socks and belt, everything he could use to hurt himself or someone else.

Lourdes crouched so that she could see his eyes, and Lindsay realized that she thought he was talking to

her. “The twins know what they’re doing.” She took his face in her hands so that he could see her in spite

of how heavy his head was on his limp neck. “No one wants to hurt you, Lindsay,” she said tenderly.

“Sometimes, to save everyone else, one of us has to suffer. I promise we’ll make it up to you when we’re

done.”