Scarlet slicked her tongue over her lips. “Hello?” she started, tentatively. When there was no response—not even a distant howl—she tried again, louder. “Is anyone out there?”
She shut her eyes to listen. No footsteps.
“I’m hungry.”
No shuffling.
“I need to use the bathroom.”
No voices.
“I’m going to escape now.”
But no one cared. She was alone.
She squeezed the bar, wondering if it was a trap. Perhaps they were luring her into a false security, testing her to see what she would do. Perhaps they wanted her to try to escape so they could use it against her.
Or perhaps—just perhaps—Wolf really had meant to help her.
She snarled. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. If he’d told her the truth and explained to her what was going on, she would have come up with another plan to get her grandma out, rather than be led like a lamb to the feast.
The joints in her fingers started to burn from clenching the bars too tight.
Then, from the hollowness of the basement, she heard her name.
Weak and uncertain, posed as a delirious question. Scarlet?
Stomach clenching, Scarlet pushed her face into the bars, their coldness squeezing her cheekbones. “Hello?”
She started to shake as she waited.
Scar … Scarlet?
“Grand-mère? Grand-mère?”
The voice went silent, as if speaking had drained it.
Scarlet thrust herself away from the barred door and ran back to the bed, claiming the small chip she’d tucked beneath the mattress.
She returned to the door desperate, pleading, hoping. If Wolf had tricked her about this—
She reached through the bar and flicked the chip across the scanner. It chimed, the same sickeningly cheerful chime it had given when her guards brought her food, a sound she had despised until this moment.
The bars swung open without resistance.
Scarlet lingered in the open doorway, her pulse racing. Again she found herself straining to hear any sound of her guards, but the opera house seemed abandoned.
She stumbled away from the stairwell, into the blackness of the hallway. Her hands on the walls to either side were her only guides. When she came to another iron-barred door, she paused and leaned against the opening. “Grand-mère?”
Each cell was empty.
Three, four, five cells, all empty.
“Grand-mère?” she whispered.
At the sixth door, a whimper. “Scarlet?”
“Grand-mère!” She dropped the chip in her excitement and immediately fell to the floor in search of it. “Grand-mère, it’s all right, I’m here. I’m going to get you—” Her fingers found the chip and she whipped it up before the scanner. A wash of relief covered her when it chimed, although a pained, terrified sound came from her grandmother upon hearing it.