her blouse, like a larger version of my own. I snatched at it and wrenched it off her with a rasp of tearing fabric.
“Everything’s okay,” Ruse said to her in a ridiculously soothing voice. “You have so much work to do. You should get back to it. Nothing’s more important than that.”
She drew in a shaky voice, her eyes glued to him. “But—”
“Trust me. Nothing going on out here interests you at all. Think of how much you want to accomplish before it’s time to leave.”
He nudged her toward her office, and she meandered inside looking intent if slightly puzzled. As the three of us jogged the rest of the way down the hall, I tapped Ruse’s side with my elbow. “Very impressive. I haven’t really seen you in action before.”
He chuckled. “I don’t normally have to skip so much of the foreplay. Turning the dial up this high is giving me an ulcer. Let’s hope I don’t have to charm too many more.”
We didn’t run into anyone else in the hall or the stairwell, but as we reached the second-floor landing, both Ruse and Snap slowed. Ruse’s jaw tightened.
Snap gave a little shudder as I pushed open the door to the hall that held the shadowkind prisoners. “A lot of unkind metals in this place.”
My gut twisted. “Can you keep going?” We’d known there’d be silver and iron in the cell walls to contain the prisoners, but we’d hoped the effect wouldn’t seep into the space outside them. How could we get Omen and the other shadowkind prisoners out of their cells if Snap couldn’t reach the locks? Hell, if I got the opportunity, I’d wanted to not just free every being in this place but grab whatever files we could get our hands on quickly to find out what the sword-star bunch had been doing here.
Snap squared his shoulders and marched forward, but I could see the effort it took in the clenching of his hands. Ruse followed, showing similar signs of strain.
The blank walls and solid metal doors offered no glimpse of the creatures inside the cells. I scanned the numbers on the doors as quickly as I could. “Cell 11 was Omen’s, right?” He was our first priority. I didn’t want to think through the implications of Subject 27 being in only the eleventh cell—or what might have happened to at least sixteen of the subjects before him.
The incubus gave a curt nod. “Let’s find it fast. I’m definitely not digging the vibe of this place.”
There. I rushed over, Snap close behind me. Fighting a cringe, he bent close to the keypad by the lock. On his first attempt, his tongue flinched back into his mouth before he appeared to catch anything. An even more determined expression came over his face, and he tested the air again.
“4-9-7-2,” he spat out, hauling himself back from the noxious surface.
I tapped in the numbers, willing my hand not to shake. How long could Ruse’s ploy and Thorn’s shenanigans keep all the guards from noticing what we were up to in here?
How were we going to make it out of here if they came back too soon?
The lock whirred open. Hallelujah. As soon as we made sure this was Omen—and that he knew we were his people, coming to rescue him—I’d get Snap to move on to the next cell. If he could even tolerate testing the rest of the locks with all the toxic materials in this place, that was.
I tugged the door wide. The entire ceiling of the cell was one huge panel of light, which glared off the reflective walls and floor and nearly drowned out the twitching form like a streak of shadowy smoke in the middle of it.
“Omen?” I said. “Do you need help getting—”
Before I could finish the question, the blur of darkness flung itself at me with a guttural roar. Yellow-orange eyes blazed at me like twin flames; a clawed hand—or was that a paw?—smacked me aside with a scrape of pain through my arm that echoed into my injured shoulder. I stumbled into Snap, who caught me in a tight embrace.
“Omen!” he protested. “She’s with—"
The blare of an alarm drowned out anything else he might have said. My stomach flipped over. Sweet stinking cheese. There must have been some other device we’d needed to disable to remove a prisoner safely.
The overhead lights flared twice as bright—and down the hall by the stairwell, a barrier of silver-and-iron-twined bars dropped into place with a