Beautiful Chaos(76)

10.18





Hostage


What the hell?” I heard his voice before I saw him. Because he probably wasn’t expecting to see me in Ridley’s room any more than I was expecting to find him here.

John Breed was sprawled out on Ridley’s pink shag carpet, with a video-game controller in one hand and a bag of Doritos in the other.

“John?” Lena was as surprised as I was. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“John Breed? Here? It’s not possible.” Liv was shocked.

John dropped the bag and jumped to his feet. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

I stepped in front of Lena and Liv protectively. “I know I’m disappointed.”

Lena didn’t need protecting. She pushed past me. “How dare you come into my house after everything you did? You pretended to be my friend, when all you wanted to do was take me to Abraham.” Thunder rumbled outside. “Every word you said to me was a lie!”

“That’s not true. I didn’t know what they were gonna do. Bring me the Bible. The Book of Moons, whatever you want. I’ll swear on it.”

“We can’t do that. Since Abraham has it.” I was pissed off, and I didn’t want to listen to John play dumb. It was a new tactic, and I was still trying to adjust to the fact that he was hanging out in Ridley’s bedroom eating Doritos.

Lena wasn’t finished. “If that wasn’t bad enough, you turned Link into—you.” Lena’s hair was curling, and I hoped the room wasn’t about to catch fire.

“I couldn’t help it. Abraham can make me do things.” John was pacing. “I—I can’t even remember most of what happened that night.”

I crossed the room, until I was standing right in front of him. I didn’t care if he could kill me. “Do you remember dragging Lena up to that altar and tying her down? Do you remember that part?”

John stopped pacing and stared at me, his green eyes searching mine. When he spoke, I could barely hear him. “No.”

I hated him. The memory of his hands on Lena—of almost losing her that night. But he looked like he was telling the truth.

John dropped down on the bed. “I black out sometimes. It’s been that way since I was a kid. Abraham says it’s because I’m different, but I don’t believe him.”

“Are you saying you think he has something to do with it?” Liv pulled out her red notebook.

John shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Lena looked at me.

What if he’s telling the truth?

What if he’s not?

“None of that explains why you’re in Ridley’s bedroom,” Lena said. “Or how you got into Ravenwood.”

John stood up and walked over to the window. “Why don’t you ask that manipulative cousin of yours?” He sounded pissed off for a guy who had just been caught breaking and entering.

Lena’s expression darkened. “What does Ridley have to do with this?”

John shook his head, kicking a pile of dirty clothes. “I don’t know. How about everything? She’s the one who trapped me here.”

I don’t know if it was the way he said it, or because we were talking about Ridley, but part of me believed him. “Back up. What do you mean, she trapped you?”

He shook his head. “Technically, she trapped me twice. First in the Arclight, and then in here, when she let me out.”

“Let you out?” Lena looked stunned. “But we buried the Arclight—”

“And your cousin dug it up and brought it here. She released me, and I’ve been stuck in this house ever since. This place is Bound so tight, I can’t get any farther than the kitchen.”

The Bindings. It wasn’t keeping something out of Ravenwood; it was keeping someone in. Just like I thought.

“When did she let you out?”

“Sometime in August, I guess.”

I remembered the day Lena and I came in here to go down into the Tunnels—the rip I thought I’d heard.

“August? You’ve been in here for two months?” Lena was losing it. “You’re the one who’s been helping Ridley. That’s how she’s Casting!”

John laughed, but it sounded like bitterness more than anything. “Helping her? Thanks to your uncle’s library, she’s been using me as her own personal genie. Consider this dump my bottle.”

“But how did she keep Macon from finding you?” Liv was writing down every word.

“An Occultatio, a Concealment Cast. Of course, she made me do it.” He banged the wall with his fist, revealing the black tattoo that snaked its way around his upper arm. Another reminder that he was Dark, no matter what color his eyes were. “Lena’s uncle has a book about almost everything—except how to get out of this place.”

I didn’t want to listen to him complain about the way he’d been treated. I’d hated John since the first time I saw him last spring, and now he had shown up to ruin our lives again. I looked over at Lena, whose face was unreadable, her thoughts closed off.

Was this the way she felt about Liv?

Except Liv hadn’t tried to kidnap my girlfriend and lead most of my friends to their deaths. “That’s funny, because I’ve got a few bottles hanging on a tree in my front yard, and I’d love to stuff you into one of them,” I said.