LITMIR.BIZ

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down the hall, then leaned in closer. “And not for the better.”

      “Bud. I just—I have to get out of here.” Tears of desperation pooled in my eyes. “My boyfriend, he’s been kidnapped by faeries and I’m the only one who can help him. Please, Bud, they’re going to hurt him. Help me. Where’s Raquel?” I wasn’t trying to manipulate him by crying, really I wasn’t, but the second I wasn’t angry I was overwhelmed with fear and hopelessness.

      He looked torn, then shook his head. “I’ll tell them you’re awake. I wish there was something more I could do for you, I really do.” Frowning, he walked out of my vision.

      I cried harder. Then I straightened and wiped my eyes. I was not going to cry in front of anyone else here. Ever. They were screwing with the wrong girl.

      I paced my room—one-two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven.

      One. Get out of the bleeping Center.

      Two. Get to the Faerie Realms.

      Three. Kill the Dark Queen.

      Four. Save Lend.

      Five. Make IPCA pay.

      Six. Help the paranormals figure out another way home.

      Seven. Finish plans for the Winter Formal.

      Simple enough.

      One. Get out of the bleeping Center, assuming anyone ever came to talk to me.

      Two. Get to the Faerie Realms, assuming I could somehow get a faerie name and then control that faerie even though half the faeries wanted me dead and the other half wanted to use me.

      Three. Kill the Dark Queen, assuming I could get within twenty feet of her without falling under her thrall and also somehow drain her before she snuffed me out of existence.

      Four. Save Lend, assuming he was still …

      “Get me out of this freaking white cell! Come on!” I screamed. “Get. Me. Out. Now. If my boyfriend gets hurt because of this, I swear I will come back here and BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND!”

      “Now, now,” said Anne-Whatever Whatever, stepping in front of my doorway but just out of arm’s reach. “Calm down, Evelyn.”

      “Let me go. You have no right to do this, and you have no idea what you’re messing with.”

      “Actually, we have every right. You’ve violated enough sections of the charter to qualify for lifetime lockup.”

      “I’m not a member of IPCA anymore!”

      “No, but you’re not a person, either, not legally. You remain a Level Seven paranormal of unidentified origin. Which means that I have final say in any and all containment policy.”

      My insides turned to ice, and I stood straighter, glaring at her. “What do you know about being a person?”

      She sniffed primly. “We have a lot to discuss. This would all be much easier if you’d cooperate. Wouldn’t you rather be useful, make a difference to humanity, than be locked up in this cell for the rest of your life?”

      I laughed. “Don’t talk to me about humanity. I know a pair of freaking seals that have more humanity in their flippers than you do in your whole organization. You want to talk about protecting humanity? If you don’t let me out, the best person I have ever known will get hurt. If you have any shred of human decency in you, you’ll let me go right now so I can save him.”

      She raised an eyebrow, and I continued, desperate.

      “Let me go right now, and I swear I’ll come back. I’ll work for you however you want me to, whatever you want me to do. You want me to come back full-time to the Center, I’ll do it. You have my word. But please, please, please, let me go. Please.”

      She cocked her head. “What I think you fail to realize is that you’re not in any position to bargain here. You’ll do what I want you to because you have no other choice. Think about that, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

      She started to walk off and I felt like I was going to explode. “Stop! Stop! I want to talk to Raquel! She’s a Supervisor—you have to let me talk to her.”

      Anne-Whatever Whatever stopped and looked back at me with a small smile on her face. “Was a Supervisor. Have a good night, Evelyn.”

      

      You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, lying spread-eagled in the hall with only my ankle inside the room that kept me prisoner here. They really should have thought of that and tagged my neck or something. Judging by the looks the tall, annoyed werewolf guard was giving my ankle, he was thinking the same thing. And still staying out of reach, dang it all.

      “Please confirm.” His voice was low and terse. “Werewolf or not?”

      He had a woman by the elbow. Her shoulders were hunched inward, her face terrified, eyes darting every which way avoiding mine. Her corkscrew-curly brown hair was wild and unbrushed, but her clothes seemed nice.

      See, with werewolves, unless it’s a full moon there’s really no way to tell. Silver only affects them when they’ve wolfed out, and no one else can see their true nature like I can. And since the full moon had just passed, they had no way to confirm what she was until the next one. Somehow they thought I would do it for them.

      I looked up into her yellow wolf eyes and felt nothing but compassion and pity. “Actually, you’re way off.”

      “Oh?” the guard asked.

      “Yup. She’s not a werewolf, she’s a chupacabra. Have you noticed a lot of missing goats lately?”

      He growled his frustration. I bared my teeth back at him in a smile. “Tell Anne to come see me.” It had been at least six hours. Or twelve. Or a hundred, for all I could tell, and I was ready to rip my hair out.

      He turned, and the wolf woman finally made eye contact with me. “Hey,” I said, “it’s going to be okay. And if you see a faerie, any faerie, tell them IPCA has the Empty One.”

      “Ignore her,” the guard said, pulling on the woman’s elbow roughly.

      “What’s your deal? I mean, come on, why are you working with them?” I sat up, ankle still safely in the room. “Don’t you get it? I can help you! Get me out of here and I’ll take you with me.”

      His face turned a peculiar shade of red as he turned and loomed over me. “Help me? You’ve already helped me plenty. You know who bit me, who turned me into a monster? One of the werewolves that you set loose on the world, doing your little good deeds and ‘rescuing’ them from IPCA. I’m here because of you. Now get back in your room and rot, or so help me I will come back here with more than a Taser.”

      He stalked off down the hall and around the corner out of my sight, dragging the wolf woman in his wake.

      “Well, that’s just great,” I muttered. “I make friends everywhere.” While I had to admit that his situation did totally stink, and I could see why he would want someone to blame, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it. A) I didn’t have time, and B) freeing all the Center’s werewolves had freed Charlotte, my tutor, reuniting her with her family. I couldn’t hold myself responsible for the actions of every paranormal I’d ever come into contact with one way or another.

      Okay, maybe I could have done more to make sure they were all accounted for and had plans in place to control themselves at full moons. I banged my head back against my doorframe. Not my fault. Not my fault. Not my fault.

      A voice from one of the other cells I couldn’t see into drifted toward me. “Leibchen, are you still sad? I could help.”

      Yeah, because being trapped with no way to get

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