Page 65 of Invidia

“Are we?” I mumbled, trying to make my eyelids cooperate with my brain. “I don’t feel good.”

“You were drugged. We were drugged.”

We were? I blinked my scratchy, heavy eyes open, immediately blinded by the uncomfortably bright light filling the room. And it wasn’t the soft, silvery orb light of the shadow realm either. It was a harsh, fluorescent white, complete with the faint buzz of electricity that I hadn’t heard in months.

Fuck.

“How did we get here?” I rasped.

“I’m still trying to work that out. I’m guessing it has something to do with Lochan, though.”

Right. Right! Lochan had been there. He’d brought us tea. Everything after that was a blur.

My eyes came into focus slowly, and I took in our surroundings, trying to work out where we were. It looked to be some kind of cell, but not a permanent one. Like someone had shoved the contents of their basement to the outer walls and erected a temporary cage in the middle. As the feeling came back to my limbs, I realized that I was bound on a chair, my ankles tied to the chair legs and wrists tied behind my back. Austin was in the same position, judging by the impatient huffs and grunts of exertion as he struggled against them, but I couldn’t see him. We were back-to-back, not in touching distance.

“How are you feeling?” Austin asked worriedly. “Any, um, aches or pains?”

I swallowed thickly, trying not to think too hard about the baby or I was going to lose the tenuous grip on calm that I was maintaining.

“Nothing unusual,” I managed, my voice sticking in my throat. I definitely felt dehydrated, and my head was pounding, but I imagined Austin was going through that too.

“Stay positive, okay? We’re going to figure something out.”

I really wished I could share his optimism, but I wasn’t there yet. The bonds around my wrists and ankles were secured tightly, and as much as I struggled, all I seemed to succeed at doing was rubbing my skin raw.

We both fell silent and still for a long moment, and I fixed my gaze on a distant spot on the wood-paneled walls between the bars, waiting for the room to stop spinning.

The more I stared at it, the more I felt like I’d been here before. The seventies-style wood paneling was sparking something in my brain, and whatever memory I was scrambling to grab hold of didn’t feel unpleasant, either. Everything about the situation was terrifying now, but it still felt like it hadn’t always been this way somehow.

“Does this place look familiar to you?” I murmured, wondering if I was imagining things. Maybe it was just the drugs.

“Kind of,” Austin replied cautiously. “Though there definitely wasn’t a giant fucking cage in it, because I’d have remembered that.”

“If you recognize it, then maybe we’ve been here as kids,” I said slowly, looking around with fresh unease. Aunt Carol had a giant basement that we’d sometimes come down to when we were playing hide-and-seek. It had always been filled with assorted boxes and holiday decorations and abandoned exercise machines.

“Oh my god, is this Aunt Carol’s house?” Austin whispered loudly, coming to the same realization I had. “Did our own fucking family kidnap us? This is insane. They are insane. We should have a reality show or something.”

“We might end up on Dateline.”

Austin made a choked sound. “That was bleak, Tallulah.”

I winced. “Sorry. But also, you know… Maybe.”

I didn’t want to say it out loud and make Austin feel bad, but he was kind of public enemy number one, maybe number two, after Astrid. But Astrid wasn’t recognizable to the general human population, and Austin was a full-blown internet conspiracy.

It was chilling to think about, but I couldn’t imagine any scenario where Austin was allowed to walk free. And if they’d taken me as well… Presumably, Grandfather wished to dispose of both of the grandchildren who’d brought him shame.

“I’m sorry, Tallulah,” Austin whispered. “I think you might be here because of what I did. And I was fine with making that choice when I thought it was just me that I was endangering. You shouldn’t be suffering for it.”

My heart ached for him. For us. For the loved ones we’d left behind in the shadow realm, who were undoubtedly frantic with worry. For all of it.

“It’s not your fault, Austin. We should have seen this coming. Grandfather was never going to accept any of his family members defecting, publicly or otherwise.”

There was a sort of squirmy guilty feeling in my gut that the idea hadn’t occurred to me before. I’d been convinced that Iris, as a Nash, had a target on her back, yet it had never occurred to me that my family would do the same. I’d never considered that I might in any way be valuable enough to be worth getting back. And I wasn’t, not really. I was just a miscellaneous Thibaut descendent who’d already shamed the family name once before.

“Do you think he’ll come down and see us?” Austin asked.

“No.” I shook my head before remembering he couldn’t see me. “He won’t want to deal with this ugliness firsthand.”

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