Jesse looked around quickly and crawled to the nearest candle on the pentagram, a thick four-inch-tall votive in a simple glass jar. He slid it to the side very carefully and slowly, inch by inch, so that he could slide his upper body forward in the pentagram. He was holding his breath, not daring to look up at the women in front of him. Scarlett was talking again, so hopefully the other two still had their backs to him. He leaned farther and farther until his fingers touched the edges of the large spellbook. Jesse wanted both the amulet and the book, but when he lifted the book to slide it toward him the Transruah rolled soundlessly off the page and onto the carpet. He hesitated, but it was too much of a risk. The book would have to do.
He slid backward again and scooped up the candle he’d moved earlier, shielding it behind his body. He crawled back into the hallway, where he set it on top of a cheap fake-wood desk that had been abandoned against a wall. As quickly and quietly as he could, Jesse climbed up onto the table, lifted up one of the ceiling tiles, and shoved the Book of Mirrors on top of neighboring tiles. He replaced the tile he’d lifted, hopped down so fast he almost landed on his ass, and sneaked back into the room, crouching next to the generator. Jesse waited by the generator, tense, until the witch disconnected the old bag from the IV, and then he flipped the switch.
The lamps on their side of the room snapped out, as did a couple of floor fans and an alarm clock. The room went silent for a heartbeat, and then Olivia and Mallory began asking questions. Jesse scooted back into the hallway as fast as he could, climbed onto the desk in his sock feet, and lifted the candle above his head, toward the little sprinkler spigot.
Jesse knew sprinklers didn’t work like in the movies—you didn’t automatically get a building full of active sprinklers just because heat registered under one of them. Usually the only sprinkler that went off was the one that had detected heat. This was a medical clinic, though, and on the building map Jesse had seen the little symbols that indicated this was a zone-sprinkler building—if you set off one sprinkler, all the sprinklers in a designated zone would follow. He was just praying the hall spigot was part of the same zone as the nurse’s area. And that the emergency system was still working, period.
Ten, fifteen, twenty seconds ticked by, and even the spigot he was under remained dry. Jesse began to worry that the system was too old, or perhaps it had been turned off, if that was possible—and then the water began. And a moment later, the screams.
Chapter 31
When the sprinklers went off, I knew immediately that it was Jesse, despite my not-unpleasant drug haze. He had found me. I felt a great swell of joy that he was there, but a simultaneous panic too. My chances of getting through this had probably increased, but this was also exactly what I didn’t want: risking someone else I cared about. I needed to wake up. I tilted my head back to let the rancid-smelling water splatter on my face, hoping it would clear my head a little. It wasn’t coming down like rain so much as misting all around us, and my arms were immediately as wet as my face. Which gave me an idea.
Olivia and Mallory had both shrieked when the water began—for a second I entertained a brief hope that Mallory, anyway, would start melting into a puddle, but no dice—and then started screeching at each other. I ignored them and focused on my wrists. They were definitely bruised where the golem had been clutching them, but he wasn’t tightening his grip any. I wiggled my arms experimentally. There. If I could just get them a little wetter, I might be able to slip out of its grip.
“You’re the vampire, go do something!” Mallory was screaming at Olivia. The sprinkler system was loud. I felt the massive buzz of her magic swell and spark with her frustration. “Kill him!”
But Olivia had seen me wiggling my arms. “I’m not leaving her, not while your little pet is getting soaked!” she shouted back.
“He’ll stay on task,” Mallory began, but Olivia shook her head stubbornly. She had her prize and wasn’t going to walk away from it. Mallory threw up her hands and stalked away into the dark drizzle toward the opposite end of the room, where the generator was. I heard her stumble and swear before she left my radius, and I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Then she let out an anguished cry, and Olivia called a question at her.
“The book!” she screamed. “He’s taken the Book of Mirrors!” There was a rustling of feet and water as she ran in Jesse’s direction, and then Olivia and I didn’t hear anything else.
I could only see about two feet in any direction, but Olivia pivoted to face me, her eyes inches from mine. “This is your doing, I suppose?” she said coolly.
“Actually, I had—” I began, but she was coming at me now, leaning forward to pinch the skin on my upper arm, hard, and twist it. I cried out in pain.
“What is wrong with you?” she exploded. “I gave you a home, a job, beautiful things, and then you betrayed me. Despite all of that, I came back to give you this gift”—she released me and gestured openly with her arms—“and you spit it back in my face. All the planning, all the work I put into you! You ungrateful little brat.” She hit me again, a backhand. It slid off my wet cheek, but I still felt a spurt of blood in my mouth.
I laughed in her face. Couldn’t help it, didn’t want to. Olivia stared at me, shocked, like I’d just peed on her rug.
“Let me make something clear, Liv,” I snarled. “And I want you to listen, because this is critical. You. Are. Not. My. Mother.” I spat the blood in her face, and even though the water washed it right off she took a step back, shocked. “You aren’t anyone’s mother, and you never will be, thank God, because you are so incredibly unhinged that it’s a little funny. You’re a psychotic parasite, and I am not your goddamned Barbie doll.”