“Hello, Chad,” I said, sinking power into my voice.
“Hi.” He waved at me.
“Come stand by me.”
Chad moved over on trembling legs. “I’m very scared right now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
An explosion burst above our heads. The building shook. Chad cringed.
“Do you know where they’re holding Halle Etterson?” I asked. “She’s my friend. I want to find her. It would make me very happy.”
He nodded. “She’s on the seventh floor. Room 713. Can we go? We shouldn’t be here. It’s very dangerous.”
Runa ran to the elevator and mashed the call button. Stairs would be safer, but I wasn’t sure I could make it. My magic was replenishing, but my body was still exhausted and getting more so by the minute.
“What about the prisoner they teleported in this morning? Where is he?”
Chad blinked. “I don’t know about a prisoner.”
Leon nudged me. “Ask him where Benedict is.”
“Is Benedict De Lacy here?”
Chad nodded. “He’s on the top floor.”
Of course he was. Benedict would never pass up a chance for a penthouse. If Alessandro was here, Benedict would keep him close. They hated each other, and Alessandro made a valuable hostage.
“Tell me about the top floor where Benedict stays.”
“I don’t go up there. I don’t know what’s up there, except that you can’t bring any weapons up there. He’s got an automated turret pointed at the elevator. The elevator opens in this little room that scans you and he won’t let you exit it with a gun.”
Fuck.
“You can go,” I told Chad.
He started toward the hole where the doors used to be, then turned. “But what about you?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I think I should stay with you. Just in case.”
Leon sighed and reached for his gun. I put my hand over his. “Chad, do me a favor. Go outside and check to see if it’s safe for me to escape.”
“I’ll do that. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
He took off for the door and the three of us ducked into the elevator. Runa had pressed the button for the seventh floor. I reached over and pushed the top button.
“What are you doing?” Runa asked.
“Leon will go with you. He’ll get you and Halle out.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” Runa growled. “You can’t go up against Benedict by yourself.”
“That was always the deal,” Leon said. “You’re the client. We’re here to save your sister.”
The elevator doors opened. Leon thrust his arm out to keep them open.
“We get Halle and we go after Benedict together,” Runa said.
“No,” I told her. “That would put you and her into additional danger. Save your sister, Runa. Please.”
“Come on,” Leon said. “Halle is waiting.”
He took Runa’s arm and pulled her out of the elevator. The doors shut and the cabin sped upward. The elevator climbed through what I had thought to be the ceiling and kept going, the shaft no longer transparent, but dark.
Linus’ priority was the research and retrieving the serum. Runa’s priority was her sister. In the grand scheme of things both Alessandro and Benedict mattered very little. But Alessandro meant everything to me.
I took out my Beretta and placed it on the floor of the elevator. I would never get through that room with it.
The doors whispered open. A small room waited for me, complete with an X-ray arch. A security camera stared at me from the ceiling just above a turret facing me.
I pulled out my gladius and jammed it in the elevator door.
“Entertaining but futile,” Benedict’s voice said.
I stepped out of the elevator. The door behind me tried to close but my sword kept it open. I stepped into the X-ray, letting the beam of the scanner dance over me.
There was a pause, then the door in front of me opened. A big room lay past the doorway, the entirety of it taken up by an arcane circle of dizzying complexity, its lines glowing with pale light. In the center of the circle Alessandro paced, nude, his face furious.
“Welcome to my parlor,” Benedict said.
I took the chalk out of my pocket, palmed it, and walked through the doorway.
Time slowed and I saw everything at once, as if my mind was a camera flashing to capture the details: Alessandro, his magic flaring around him; Benedict to the side standing in a separate circle connected to the larger one; a windowless round room, a cupola above us; a large screen on the wall showing the elevator still trying to close; the body of a woman, crumpled at the far wall; and the bigger circle itself, a seemingly