you’re a true hero, then.” He sounded almost amused. “Scandalized by the mere mention of an exchange—”
“I didn’t choose to come here!” she said. “And if I could get myself home, I would be gone already.”
But it didn’t seem like he heard her. He jerked his head to the side, like he was listening to something in the distance. Then he wheeled around and stormed out of the room. The door slammed shut behind him.
Sloane was still for a while after he left. Her fear had settled to a low flame. She knew the Dark One. She knew the gritty feeling of being near him, the twist of her gut when his focus found her. Didn’t she?
Enough, she thought, and she turned to the boarded window behind her. It was her best chance at escape. Wood broke. Boards burned. Windows opened up to ledges and streets and the cold night air.
She started pulling out drawers and opening cabinets. They were made of flimsy plywood, and time had made them brittle. Good kindling, maybe, but that didn’t help her unless she wanted to burn the room down around her. Still, she pulled the drawers free of their tracks and stacked them on top of the table. They were assets.
Blunt force was the first thing to try. She picked up one of the larger drawers and swung it hard at the window boards.
The drawer shattered, leaving Sloane holding only the drawer pull and half the front panel. She tossed it aside.
There were gaps between the boards in the window that were wide enough for her fingers. She grabbed one of the boards and put her feet up on the wall to give herself leverage. Sloane pushed with her feet as she pulled with both hands at the wood, straining with all her strength to break it, or even loosen it. But . . . nothing. Her hands ached, and she swallowed a frustrated scream.
She was not going to die here. Not in a rotten room in a parallel dimension.
What she needed, she thought, was more pressure than her body could apply. Which she could accomplish with either more force—something she couldn’t get her hands on right now—or a smaller surface area.
Sloane stared at the boards for a few seconds, praising whatever had set the laws of the universe and also empowered her to remember them. Then she stood next to the drainpipe sticking out of the wall. The slip nut that held the drain extension to the U-shaped trap was old, simple to loosen with her hand. She held on to the drain flange and pulled hard. The piece—inlet, flange, and trap—separated from the extension and the escutcheon plate against the wall. The pipe was solid, heavy. She put it on the table.
She wriggled out of her coat and unbuttoned her shirt, ignoring the sudden chill. Once the shirt was off, she put the coat back on and buttoned it up to her throat. She twisted the shirt into a rope and shoved the tail of it through the gap between the boards.
It was annoying work, like threading a needle when you couldn’t keep your hands steady. Even with her fingers stuck through the gap on either side of the board, she couldn’t maneuver the makeshift rope to pull it through the other gap. She tried again and again, missing the fabric each time. Sweat was starting to bead on the back of her neck. The longer she spent doing this, she thought, the more likely it was that someone was going to interrupt her.
Finally she caught the rope on the other side of the board. Then she had to do it again. She needed to use two boards against each other, like the bars of an old-fashioned prison cell. It was easier the second time to maneuver the rope; she brought the end out on the other side of the second board and tied the two shirt ends together in a tight knot. She then grabbed the pipe, worked it through the center of the knot, and started turning it.
At first, she didn’t notice a change. But the more she turned the pipe, the tighter the shirt fabric became around the boards, and soon it was difficult to turn the pipe at all. Sloane had to climb up, bracing herself on the window ledge, and force the pipe down as hard as she could. Her hand throbbed. But the boards were starting to creak.