Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,125
head on the ground. I couldn’t dare owe Lilith a second year. Not after her most recent dream visit. A second death caused by magic would mean that I’d have to fight her for two years, and I doubted my resourcefulness when it came to such a task.
For a moment I wasn’t sure if it was sadder that those men had died because of what I did or because Fox had done nothing to save them. I banged my head against the springs beneath me in frustration and winced as fresh pain bloomed behind my eyes. Fox had hit me on the back of the head, cracking my skull and giving me a serious concussion. Asshole.
It could have been worse, but I was sure that it was only a matter of time before Fox came back to put me in some real pain, in the name of extracting information. Fantastic. Considering the comment from the witch, I figured he either suspected that I had released the locations of the Towers or he was going to torture me until I confessed to doing it so he could have an excuse to kill me. I had to get out of here. Even if I handed over Reave’s name, it wouldn’t save me. I needed to strike a bargain with the Towers if I was going to get them to back off.
Looking up at where my right wrist was tied to the bedpost, I twisted my arm, testing the strength of the knot. It was tight, but as long as I didn’t mind a little rope burn and blood, I was pretty sure I could work it loose. I knew a spell to unravel the knot, but I didn’t want to use it. If there was a single brain in the building that held me, they would have set a spell to alert them if I used magic. I had to sneak out of here the old-fashioned way.
With my teeth clenched, I pulled and jerked, twisting the rope and stretching it as much as possible so that it slid over my hand. Blood was streaking down my arm and it hurt like hell, but this was nothing if I didn’t get moving. Carefully turning to my left so that I didn’t make any noise, I untied the knot and freed my hand before bending down to free my ankles.
It took me nearly a full minute to sit up and put my feet on the floor. As I shifted my weight on the springs, they screeched loudly. My breath caught in my chest as I waited for my guard to charge into the room before I was ready, but he never did. I moved each hand and ankle, one at a time, making sure that circulation was flowing back into my extremities and everything was working properly.
Standing, I paused to wipe my blood from the bed with my shirt and pocket the ropes that had absorbed my blood. If I escaped, I didn’t want anyone using it to find me again . . . or worse. There was an old belief that if you knew a person’s real name, you had power over them. It was bullshit. Blood, on the other hand, was a great way to get at a person.
I crossed the bare wood floor slowly, rolling my feet with each step to try to reduce any creaks and groans. Stopping a couple feet from the door, I got down on my hands and knees to gaze under the opening beneath the door while praying that I didn’t cast a shadow. At an angle, I could see a pair of shoes. It looked as if someone with big feet was seated outside the door. A man, or rather, a warlock.
Pushing to my knees, I inched a little closer to the door but was careful not to touch it. The spell was a simple one designed to keep me from using magic to pick the lock, which was also quite simple and old. By the age of the wood beneath me, the style of the door, and the old-fashioned iron doorknob with lock, I could easily guess that this was not a newly constructed house, which meant that the floors would creak and groan when I moved. Doorknobs would jiggle and rattle. Doors would moan when opened. In short, this was going to be a noisy fucking house for me to sneak out of.