Allegiance (Causal Enchantment #3)(27)
Sharp, tingly pins and needles coursed through my body to my fingertips. I was in that same dark, dank room that smelled of dirty water. I was chilled to the bone. This time, though, instead of lying against the cold, concrete ground, I was sitting on it. A steady drip echoed in the room, drilling into my eardrum. Drip, drip, drip. As I hunched in closer to myself to fight off the chill, I noticed how badly my back throbbed. It felt like my skin had been badly burned by the sun. I knew that couldn’t be the case and yet I longed to peel my shirt off, to eliminate all contact. Reaching down, I rubbed the light, gauzy material of my dress with my fingers. Too light to irritate skin, one would think.
Drip, drip, drip ...
The same crack of light stared at me from beneath that same door. Just like the other night. My Veronique dream. Would a crazed, whip-wielding witch come flying through the door at any second?
A shadow passed in front of the crack of light. Inside the room. It was small and moved haltingly. Scurried was more like it. My focus glued to the crack, I waited to see it pass again. A moment later, a softness brush up against my forearm. My arm shot out reflexively to launch it across the room. It let out a squeak of displeasure. “Ahhh! I hate rats!” I cried out, shuddering.
“What?”
I froze with the single word. Not because there was another person in my dark, dank cell. The question had come from my lips, but it wasn’t me who’d spoken. The thought wasn’t mine—I knew that much—but my mouth had moved.
“What?” I echoed, testing for a difference. This time it was clearly my thought, my brain controlling my mouth’s movements.
Silence. My eyes shifted in the darkness, warily, waiting for it to happen again. After a long moment, I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m all kinds of messed up,” I muttered.
My lips moved in a gasp. “How are you doing this?” Another foreign thought asked the question.
My stomach knotted. What the hell was going on? I was used to Max’s intruding voice inside my head. But this was different. This was like I was sharing my body with another person. With trepidation, I answered. What’s the worst that could happen?
“How am I doing what?”
“Who is this?” the voice asked, her tone pleading. Before I could answer, she asked, “Do you know Sofie?”
I paused, my curiosity overshadowing sheer terror. This strange back and forth where I controlled my mouth and then I didn’t control it and then I did control it—like what I imagined a person with multiple personalities would need to manage—took some coordination.
“Evangeline,” I answered cautiously. “And yes, I know Sofie.” Then I dared ask the next question, the one I was fairly certain I knew the answer to. “Are you Veronique?”
Another gasp. “Yes! How is this happening?”
And there it was. I knew then and there that this was no dream. Somehow I was still connected to Veronique. Even though the Tribe released me from the curse, we were still bound. Of course! It made perfect sense. When I sat atop that platform with the Tribe circling and chanting below, when I saw that vision of Fiona dead in the atrium, I was witnessing it all through Veronique’s eyes the moment she was released. Now I was somehow connecting with her in my dreams.
“Evangeline?” She pulled me back from my thoughts.
“I don’t know how it’s happening. When I fall asleep, I find myself here. I thought I was dreaming at first,” I explained. Here we go again.
Veronique’s voice turned low and fearful, almost a whimper. “This is no dream. It’s a nightmare, Evangeline. Please, help me!” she pleaded. “They’re torturing me! They told me they will kill me soon!” My cheeks burned with her tears. “I don’t understand. Why has Sofie left me like this?”
I awoke with a wheezing gasp and Veronique’s question playing over and over in my head. Why has Sofie left me like this? Because she doesn’t know, Veronique. Because I’m keeping you a secret. My heart pounded against my rib cage as panic seized, as I began rationalizing the situation in my head. I’m sure it’ll be fine, once she does find out … that you’re being tortured and threatened while we sip eggnog and hang seventeenth-century nutcrackers on Christmas trees. It won’t bother her at all. She’ll pat me on the back and say, “You’re so brave and smart, Evangeline.”
I sat up in bed. I was alone in my room, Max nowhere to be found. Absently, I remembered being carried up here and realized it must’ve been Caden whispering softly to me, tucking me into bed, and not violin-strumming angels in the clouds. I silently wished he were here so I could bury my face in his chest and forget everything else for just a moment.
But he wasn’t here to soothe my guilty conscience, I acknowledged bitterly. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Veronique was being tortured and begging for help and I was the only one who could help her. I was denying her that by not telling Sofie. I was single-handedly risking Veronique’s life because I was worried. Because of a possibility. Nothing more. I assumed Sofie couldn’t be pragmatic. Was that fair? Didn’t Sofie have a right to know? Didn’t Mortimer? Viggo … I didn’t care for his rights. He could shrivel and starve for the next million years in a silent, lonely hell.
But the others … and Veronique! I pulled my knees to my chest as the pieces clicked together. My back, blazing, skin raw, bothered by the lightest of materials. Lash marks would do that to a person. They were whipping her. Recalling the words of the witch last time, Veronique was immune to magic. Like me. Because I got up on that platform to rid myself of the pendant, she was now in the hands of the enemy, being tortured because they couldn’t use good old magic to do it.