House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)(78)

I sat in that same huddled position for what felt like hours, my mind racing with everything that had happened to me in the last little while. Everything I could blame Laous for, all the ways he had ruined my life.

An ear-ringing pop signaled that my cage was open again. An unknown Imperial entered. He had red tattoos all the way up his face and across his neck. He held a small device out to me. It had a screen on one side and I grabbed it, pressing my face closer to watch my guardians. They were in our house on Daelight Crescent. My breath caught again as one of my hands lifted to brush against the screen. They both looked perfect. Healthy, strong … alive.

“Prove to me that this is footage from right now,” I demanded, knowing it would be easy to manipulate me with old footage.

As if he’d been expecting it, red tattoo pressed a small black button on the side, and then we had audio.

“We need to get her back!” Sara’s voice sounded desperate as she paced across the tiny living room. “They’re going to kill her, just like they did Chelsea and Chris.”

Michael moved forward to comfort his wife, his normally jovial features tight and drawn. “There is no way for us to get back to Overworld. We can’t use that transport light thing. We did as she asked. For now we have to wait.”

I was relieved they were being circumspect about talking with the Darkens. Maybe they knew Laous would be watching the house. Michael’s paranoia was coming in handy.

“How could Chelsea and Chris hide this from us?” Sara sounded desperate. “Tell us just enough to hook us but never reveal that Emma was so important. Even though we were always going to be the ones to care for her if they couldn’t…”

I’d always wondered how a straight-laced teacher and accountant became such great friends with supernatural hunters, and now I knew. There was nothing normal about my parents, and whatever they had been involved in, it had influenced the Finnegans, causing them to jump into this crazy life of hunting down Daelighters. It got my family killed, and almost the Finnegans too.

Was I next?

“Are you satisfied?” His gruff, heavily-accented question was hard to understand, but I got the general idea.

I nodded. “Yes. I will help you in any way I can. But you need to tell Laous that I have been trying to think of a key my parents would have treated reverently and I’m drawing a blank.”

Red tats smirked, and I was immediately wary, stepping back while keeping my guard high. Thankfully, he didn’t move toward me. He just shut off the cameras and gave me a simple wink, which somehow felt as intrusive as if he’d touched me. “You better think harder, grubber. Laous does not take well to being denied what he wants.”

Then he was gone, walking out of the egg; the walls snapped into place with a twang, like a rubber band flinging back into place. Some of the relief at seeing Sara and Michael returned to good health – through some sort of alien magic obviously – faded away as I realized that I could no longer stall Laous. He wanted to know where this key was, and apparently I was the only one who could help him. It might have been a little easier if I had an idea what sort of object it was. Was it a literal key, or something less obvious?

I could not remember a single time my mom had mentioned a key or secret keeping, or anything like that to me. How could they do this? A burst of anger had curses flying from my mouth, one after the other.

Energy boosted me to my feet, and using my temporary rush of emotion, I kicked out at the walls again. Again they shifted away so I couldn’t touch them. “Come on!” I shouted. “You stupid piece of crap, open the hell up. Let me out!”

By this point I’d clearly lost all semblance of sanity, morphing into a screaming banshee. There was no real reason for it, I knew that, but it felt cathartic all the same. I’d had a really long, shitty in some ways – amazing in others – week, and I really needed a release.

When I got that out of my system, I decided to stand and glare at the walls for a good twenty or thirty minutes. Then I started to sing. I chose the most annoying, ear-piercing song I could think of, humming it at first, then breaking into a full-on ballad. High notes included.

The truth was, fear was eating me up inside. Fear. Worry. Pain. So I would just sing my songs and pretend I wasn’t being held prisoner in hell.

Literally Overworld hell.

My song died off as the walls burst open. Laous stood on the other side, beady eyes drilling a hole through my face.

“Yes, can I help you?” I asked, like he’d just popped in for a chat.

“Do you have the location of the key?”

Sucking some air through my nose, I shook my head. “I’m trying to figure it out, but I’m almost positive that there was nothing like that in our house. We didn’t collect things.”

His face was going red, the tattoos blending into his skin tone. I wondered briefly why his marks were red while Daniel’s were black. It didn’t really matter, it just struck me in that moment as odd.

He took a step toward me, so I quickly said, “Is it a literal key? Did you check the house before you burned the damn thing down … you probably destroyed it.” That would be a nice sort of karma.

“This object would not burn.” That was all he said, before he turned and flicked his head. A guard appeared at his side. Whatever joy I’d gathered from singing vanished in a puff of terror. The guard, again one I had never seen before, held chains in his hands. Before I could blink, or fight back, he was on me, trussing my hands behind my back.