Outfoxed (The Fox Witch #1) - R.J. Blain Page 0,44

rich family? Noah’s explanations of my situation didn’t help me much.

A prison crafted of satin and silk remained a prison, but it would make me one of the lucky prisoners.

I’d never realized how far society had fallen until I’d joined the line to become one of the many slaves, mostly women.

People sucked.

Unable to return to sleep, I got up, made use of one of the overhead lights, and searched the supplies for something to eat, discovering a heat plate I could plug into an outlet not far from the ventilation shaft. I even found dishes and utensils, but I struck gold after moving things around.

Carl’s promised pipes to the sewer, in actuality, included a toilet. I peeked into the tank, discovering it had a tank full of clear water. Expecting disaster, I moved everything away from the toilet to discover a faucet in the wall above a drain.

I flushed.

The toilet worked.

A test of the faucet resulted in a wet floor but confirmation that the drain also worked.

How the hell had Carl managed to build the equivalent of an entire home underneath the outskirts of Asylum? Who had he been? Why would he choose to live where nature could kill him when he could have survived in his cellar? The cellar wouldn’t have been as comfortable, but he would have lived.

Why had he viewed my life as more valuable than his?

Doubting I would ever understand Carl’s choices, I resumed rummaging through the supplies until I discovered a stash of beef stew, something I hadn’t had in so long I put some serious thought into crying. The novelty of making a hot meal helped me ignore the storm’s fury overhead.

For the first time since coming to Tulsa, I truly missed home. While my mother would never win any real prizes for being a parent, she’d loved to cook, and she’d tolerated me underfoot, teaching me her mysterious ways in the kitchen. Once upon a time, I’d been able to make beef stew from scratch, far better than what came in a can. I’d loved the challenge of turning the chaos of ingredients into something delicious.

My mother hadn’t tried any satin or silk in the prison she’d wanted for me. Had she, had she presented a man worth writing home about—if she’d given me options, I probably would have grown up to be the woman she wanted rather than a runaway who witnessed death daily.

Hot food helped even more than sleep, and thrilled I had dishes to clean at all, I rinsed everything and put out my next can of stew for the morning, disgusted over how something as simple as having a warm breakfast could make me happy.

Happiness should have been more than just having something to eat.

Determined to keep from wallowing over my circumstances, I braced for the work I’d dodged earlier, approaching the crate as though it might contain rattlers rather than swords. The possibilities would drive me mad if I let them.

If the crate contained weapons, I would be able to get out of the Alley and head somewhere else. If I hid in the East, I’d be at the highest risk, but few would expect me to actually return to my home quadrant. With a little luck, I could slink around without anyone realizing who or what I was. With a little work and the right type of hat and clothes, I could hide my ears and tail.

A little discomfort was worth my freedom.

It bothered me I struggled with the decision between a life not truly my own and death.

Everyone seemed to believe they’d choose death when faced with losing their freedom, but I hesitated. Could I really throw everything away to remain free?

Death ended everything.

The crate represented everything I feared coupled with every last one of my damned hopes and dreams. Most of my childhood hopes and dreams I’d lost sight of, no longer possible under the heavy weight of reality. Had I wanted to be the President of the disjointed United States? In reality, the President presided over the East, and he made strong recommendations for everywhere else, with a scattering of government officials handling the majority of affairs. Mayors of cities held a startling amount of power. I wondered how long it would be until cities declared themselves to be individual states. Technically, states still existed within the shattered ruins of the United States, although they’d ganged together to survive in the quadrants Mother Nature had formed without a care of the humans in her