Midnight's Kiss (Elder Races #8)(9)

Melly’s stomach clenched. Justine had slipped some kind of leash, and if she felt she needed leverage against Julian, something terrible had happened in the Nightkind demesne. “You’re going to be sadly disappointed,” she said bitterly. “What Julian and I shared ended a long time ago.”

“We’ll see. Sometimes old feelings refuse to die.” Justine told Vampyre Guy, “Strip those pins out of her hair, and pat her down to make sure she doesn’t have anything in her pockets. When you’re done, untie her.”

Obediently, Vampyre Guy yanked his hands through Melly’s long curls, pulling out hairpins. He was none too gentle about it, and tears sprang to her eyes at the pain in her scalp. When he was finished, he ran his hands down every inch of her body, untied her wrists and legs, straightened and stepped out of the cell.

Justine reached inside to set a jug of water and a package on the floor. “Here’s enough food and water for a day, along with a small LED flashlight. The batteries aren’t going to last you a full twenty-four hours, so I would use it sparingly, if I were you. Someone will bring you more food and water tomorrow, most likely. Hang tight – we’ll know soon enough what Julian will do.”

Most likely.

Most likely bring more food and water.

Melly’s breath shook in her throat. Which meant Justine was fully prepared to cut ties and abandon her if things didn’t go her way.

Taking her lantern, Justine shut the door of the cell and locked it with a key. “ ’Bye, darling.”

Fuck you. Darling.

Melly didn’t have a very aggressive personality, but she was pretty sure she could murder Justine’s ass if she got half the chance.

The light faded gradually as Justine and Vampyre Guy left. Before it disappeared completely, she lunged for the packet Justine had left on the floor, located the flashlight and turned it on and off several times to test it.

It worked. The beam of light was small and thin, but it was infinitely better than the intense, complete darkness.

She forced herself to turn it off. Then, in the darkness, she wrapped her arms around herself, shaking.

After a while, stirring, she whispered, “Poodles are smart.”

Twisting, she groped down the back of her neck until her fingers connected with what she was searching for. Snagging it, she pulled out the hairpins that had slipped down her top earlier.

Poodles could also bite when someone least expected it.

Gripping the pins tightly between thumb and forefinger and navigating from memory, she made her way across the cell until her outstretched hands collided with cold steel bars. Then she felt her way to the cell door and ran her fingers along the heavy, square metal that contained the lock. Most likely, it was a pin and tumbler lock, which was the most common type of lock in the world.

If so, she needed two pieces of metal in order to pick it. Luckily, she had hairpins and she knew how to use them. Using her teeth, she stripped off the little pieces of rubber on the ends of the pins. After she tucked one hairpin into her pocket, she bent the other one back and forth until it broke into two pieces.

Taking the first piece, she bent one end just enough so that it could be used as a pick. When she was satisfied with the result, she bent the other end to use as a handle. The last modification she made was to take the second piece and bend it into the correct shape so that she could use it as the lever.

The sensitive tips of her fingers found the keyhole. After she inserted her makeshift lever, she slipped in her pick. As she worked on the lock, her mind darted frantically from thought to thought.

Cold emanated from the rough rock that surrounded her. It penetrated the soles of her stylish ballet flats and ankle-length linen slacks, and raised goose bumps on the skin of her arms that were left bare by a matching sleeveless shirt. She had dressed for warm weather on the beach, not spelunking.

The chill suggested she was pretty deeply underground, but underground where? If she were being held on Justine’s estate, why would Justine bother to stash her underground in a cell?

It would have made much more sense if Justine had hedged her bets and kept Melly in a more or less comfortable state, perhaps locked up somewhere in Justine’s mansion and close at hand, so that Justine could get to her quickly and easily if she needed to change her course of action.

But whatever had happened to turn Justine rogue, Julian was somehow involved, so maybe Justine couldn’t go back to her home. That had a ring of truth to it. Melly was willing to bet she wasn’t anywhere near Justine’s estate.

No, she was somewhere else, somewhere secret enough that Justine believed neither Julian nor any of his people would locate her. And since Melly had been knocked unconscious, she had no memory of the kind of journey it had taken to bring her to this place. She could literally be almost anywhere.

She ran a mental check on herself. Her hands were shaking, but that was from nerves and shock more than anything else. As a Light Fae, Melly healed fast, but her leg and hip still ached fiercely from the downhill tumble she took when she had been on her weekend ski trip. She was hungry and thirsty, but not so much that it had become urgent. Rather, she felt more or less like she did whenever she’d had such a busy day, she forgot to eat.

Also, there was the flashlight. It meant she wasn’t in an Other land, where magic was enhanced and modern technology didn’t work.

Logically that would mean she was no more than a day’s journey away from Malibu, but the trick was, how had they traveled? If Justine had put her on a plane, a day’s journey could mean that she was on the other side of the continent, somewhere on the East Coast.