Darker Days (The Darker Agency #1)(77)

“Lukas?” I called. From somewhere behind me, he groaned. Good. Alive. That was all I needed for the moment. “Mom?”

Still no answer. The quiet was wrong. She should be answering me.

The ringing continued. It seemed to be coming from somewhere below. The office, maybe. When I got to the stairs, I crouched down. I didn’t trust myself to get down them without tripping, so I inched one step at a time on my butt like I had when I was a kid. Even then, I managed to slip once and slide a few extra steps, bruising my tailbone. It was official. Now everything ached.

When I hit the bottom, things snapped back into focus again—this time for a few seconds longer. I was able to see the source of the noise. The phone on Mom’s desk.

“Ma?” I called as everything phased back to blurry again. The lamiae venom. It had to be. After a few spills and not-so-near misses with the furniture on the way across the room, then several swipes of nothing but air, I managed to grab the phone. Several more attempts and I actually got it to my ear.

“Look who has finally decided to grace us with her presence,” an annoying, sing-song voice said on the other end.

“Who the—” The venom might’ve been making me slower, but at the sound of her voice, it all clicked. That knot in my stomach exploded and the air got caught in my throat. “Where are they?”

Laughter.

Gripping the edge of the desk, I let myself sink to the floor. Things were still a blurry mesh of shapeless blobs of color, and it was starting to make me nauseous. If I hadn’t sat down, I probably would have fallen down.

“You have—” My mind went blank. I had to concentrate. The venom was making it nearly impossible to focus. Mom. Dad. Trouble. The chill in my spine spread throughout my body. This couldn’t be happening—the venom was making me hallucinate. “If you hurt them—”

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” she said, all business now. “You bring your spunky self to a location of my choosing—along with Lukas, the box, and the three Sins you’ve got—and Mommy and Daddy go free.”

“I wanna talk—”

More laughter. “I don’t care what you want, sister. This is all about what I want now.”

“You said this wasn’t about the Sins. Why do you want the box?”

“One more question and one of your parents doesn’t see tomorrow,” she warned.

I pinched the bridge of my nose hard. Meredith’s elevator didn’t go all the way to the top. Arguing with crazy never got you anywhere good. Thinking about Mom and Dad, I bit my tongue. If I pushed her, she might really hurt them. “Where?”

“Some place festive. Give me a bit. I’ll call you back.”

“How—”

The line went dead.

…

Lukas squirmed a little in his seat. “You’re quiet. Are you okay?”

“Well, I’m not feelin’ the double rainbow, but I’ll live.”

“She said nothing else?”

I poured thick pink liquid onto the towel and blotted Lukas’ neck. Made from demon blood—which ironically had healing properties—and an obscure herb in the wilds of Australia, the Lupkee elixir was given to Mom by an Aborigine woman we’d helped once. We used it sparingly—worst cases only. Most Otherworlders, if they got enough salvia into a human’s bloodstream, caused serious infection. The Lupkee elixir was sort of supernaturally charged penicillin. We’d never had any serious after-effects from a bite, so I guessed it worked.

The lamiae bite foamed and sizzled, and Lukas took it like a trooper. The crap stung—I knew because I’d complained like a baby when he’d cleaned mine.

“She was vague,” I said, slapping white medical tape across the gauze. “Wouldn’t give me any info. Said she’d call back.” And in the meantime, I had to sit on my thumb and hope her particular brand of nuts didn’t explode all over my parents. Freaking awesome.

It was after midnight—we must have been out for hours after the attack. Stepping back, I fished into my back pocket for my cell, but what I pulled out wasn’t a phone. It was a key.

“What’s that?” Lukas took the small key ring from me. “Guardian Self Storage,” he read aloud.

I took the key back, examining it closer. “I found this under the couch the other day. Totally forgot about it.”

“What does it go to?”

I shrugged and pocketed the key. “No clue. It’s not mine, and it’s not Mom’s, which means it had to belong to Grandpa. He must’ve had a unit at the place a few blocks over.”

“A unit?”

“It’s like a locked room you keep stuff stashed inside.”

“And it’s not here?”

“No.”

“Why would someone keep their belongings someplace else?”

“A lot of reasons. Maybe they ran out of space, or maybe they wanted to keep something hidden.”

“Hidden?”

I nodded. “Yep. And knowing us Darkers, I’ll bet that’s exactly what it is.”

“You think Joseph had something to hide?”

I smiled. “Everyone has something to hide.” Grabbing my hoodie, I pulled it over my head. There was no way I could sit here in the dark waiting for Meredith to call back. My mind would come up with too many scenarios. Mom’s sharp tongue and Meredith’s random temper flares.