Captive Spirit by Anna Windsor

Author:Anna Windsor [Windsor, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-345-51678-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-23T05:00:00+00:00

(19)

Bela was somewhere between pissed off and terrified, and she hated feeling that way. She’d been off balance since DUMBO, and she couldn’t seem to get her footing or find the right focus.

Duncan.

The demons.

Her quad.

There was so much competing for her mind and emotions, she felt like she had fault lines fracturing through everything that made her alive and female and a Sibyl.

“This isn’t the brownstone,” Duncan said as he got out, using the SUV’s door to hold himself up with his good arm. He didn’t seem like he was pounding on death’s door anymore, but his face was white at the eyes and mouth, and his neck was hectic red above his dark, blood-soaked T-shirt and cast. “Damn. It’s lit up like a circus on opening night.”

Dio came around the SUV, and the five of them stood in silence as Bela squinted in the blaze of the safety lights that made OCU headquarters a five-story glare-fest, complete with black, glittering metal safety fence separating it from the sidewalk. On the other side of the fence, unbearably white stairs wound upward on both sides of the entrance, leading to equally unbearably white columns and a way-too-white front door. Even the American eagle seal over the front door gleamed in the megawatt festival—which was sort of ridiculous, given that two-thirds of the people who came and went from the townhouse—and virtually any creature that might attack it—could see in the dark.

“It is bright, isn’t it?” Bela took Duncan’s hand and pulled him away from the SUV so Camille could shut the door behind him. The sidewalks were deserted for the moment, and there wasn’t much traffic. Unless they wanted to call for help, they’d need to get him through the front door under their own power. She thought they could handle it, and she knew that Duncan and her quad would rather not make a spectacle of themselves.

“Welcome to Headcase Quarters,” she said, leading him forward.

“Excuse me?” He hesitated, pulling back a little. “What—I mean, where are we, exactly?”

“We’re north on the Upper East Side, above the Reservoir.” Andy got hold of his casted arm above the elbow. “This is where the OCU and the Dark Crescent Sisterhood get it on—figuratively.”

“Literally, too.” Dio got behind Duncan and Camille, and her wind energy swept past Bela’s ears. “Way too literally, sometimes. Couple of years ago, a fire Sibyl torched the conference room getting frisky with her boyfriend.”

Camille let out a nervous laugh, but Bela didn’t. She was noticing Andy, who had gone pale enough to play the ghost of Lady Macbeth on Broadway. She was squeezing Duncan’s arm hard enough to leave marks, and worse yet, her hair and clothes were dry, and there was no sign of a drip of water.

Goody. It’s unanimous. Nobody wants to be here. Can we go home now?

“I hate this,” Andy said, and Bela knew what she meant.

Dio and Camille looked at the ground, but Bela made herself hold Andy’s increasingly sad and angry gaze even as she used both arms to steady Duncan.

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