Bewitched and Betrothed by Juliet Blackwell

Author:Juliet Blackwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

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• • •

She was handcuffed to the cell’s ventilation grate, armed with a stick she had found who knows where. In the shadowy darkness illuminated only by my Hand of Glory, she didn’t seem to recognize us and lashed out, poking at Carlos as he approached, scratching him.

“Go away!” she screamed. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone. . . .” She dissolved into tears.

“Elena?” Carlos said in a fierce whisper. “It’s Carlos. I’m here with Lily. It’s Carlos, Elena. You’re okay. We’ll get you out.”

“Do you have a handcuff key on you?” I asked Carlos.

“Never leave home without it,” he replied. As the cuffs slid off Elena’s wrists, she collapsed against him. He quickly stripped off his shirt and wrapped her in it.

Elena coughed as the cell began to fill with smoke.

“Now what?” I asked Carlos in a low voice. “The smoke’s getting bad in the hallway. Even assuming the bad guys aren’t waiting for us out there, I’m not sure how far we would get.”

“I agree,” he said grimly. “That leaves one other way.”

I looked at the ventilation shaft. I really did not want to go back in there, but didn’t see how we had a choice. I nodded.

Carlos opened his Swiss army knife and once again pried the rusted old grate out and began enlarging the hole in the wall.

I closed my eyes and cast over it, mumbling. The concrete gave way.

“Why don’t I go first?” I said. “Elena can follow me and you follow her, help her along. This isn’t going to be easy.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he replied.

I squatted next to Elena, who sat huddled against the cell wall. Her hair was dirty and matted, streaked with what looked like blood and mud, though it was hard to tell in the dim light.

“Elena?” I said, hugging her and helping her to stand. “We have to go. You can do this. Carlos and I are here.” I slipped an amulet around her neck to lend her strength, tried to cast a comforting spell over her, and led her to the ventilation shaft.

“We’ve got you,” Carlos said, his voice low and fervent. “You’re okay. We’re okay. We’re going to get out of here.”

“Through there?” she asked, peering into the hole.

“Onward and upward!” I said with a cheer I didn’t feel. “It’ll be tight, but we’ll make it. Carlos and I are old pros at this.”

“You betcha,” Carlos said. “Lily will go first, then you follow her. I’ll be right behind you, okay?”

“What if we get trapped?’

“We won’t,” I said confidently, hoping it was true. The smoke from the hallway was intensifying. “Ready?”

Once again I crawled into the prison’s old ventilation shaft, this time intentionally smearing traces of my blood on the inside walls. The passageway opened wider. At Carlos’s urging, Elena climbed in behind me, and Carlos followed her.

I began crawling, heading up a sloped shaft, away from the cursed dungeon. It was slow going but we kept up a steady pace, hoping to outrun the smoke and fire.

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