Page 17 of Caged Kitten

Time to let them go. Now.

“Cellblock C is pretty quiet from what I hear,” Willow remarked, back to pushing her eggs around. “Deimos, that demon, apparently collected souls too early on the deals he made… It’s a crime in Hell too, so I bet he’s happier to be here than down there again. He smuggles cigarettes in through one of the guards, both the magic and human kind, and rumor has it he’s trying to get into harder stuff.”

Perfect—just what we needed. High shifters and supers, snorting wolfsbane and hotboxing the already stuffy cellblocks. Although Willow merely glanced his way, I turned fully around to scope out Deimos. Surrounded by his Cellblock C posse, he appeared to be engaged in a salacious conversation with some dark-haired beauty I’d never seen before—vampire, given her jumpsuit, her straight black hair thick and glossy as it spilled over her shoulder. She leaned over him, murmuring in his ear, and the second his black gaze started to slip my way, I gave him my back.

“And the vampire he’s talking to?”

Willow scoffed. “She’s queen bee of my cellblock—Anne.”

“Ah.”

“She thinks she’s the Anne Boleyn—and the one they executed was a fraud.”

Well. My eyebrows shot up. That was… unexpected. Willow smirked and nodded.

“Yeah, total psycho. Steer clear if you can.”

I risked a more subtle peek over my shoulder and found both Deimos and Anne staring back. Anne’s red mouth stretched into a predatory smile, like a great white scenting a drop of blood in the ocean, and Deimos blew me a kiss. I shuddered, hating to turn my back on the heavily tattooed demon, scenes of torture and gore inked along his arms and all the way up his neck, but I refused to make eye contact for longer than necessary.

“I don’t know why she’s got everyone under her thumb,” Willow carried on. She’d dropped her voice and leaned in closer, as if worried our conversation had carried, but she didn’t sound all that concerned about being overheard. I mean, she certainly looked calmer than I felt, my insides a jumbled mess, but maybe that kind of confidence would come with time. The rabbit shifter shrugged. “But all I know is that she screws one of our guards regularly and has an actual mattress in her cell, not just the cot cover we all have, so there’s that.”

“Right.” No surprise sex was a currency in a co-ed prison. “And the…” Elijah and Rafe. I downed the rest of my juice, then set the empty carton on my tray. “And the rest of my block?”

“The maenad in the grey is also nuts… Terrible temper,” Willow told me. “Gets put in solitary all the time for her tantrums. The shifters who trail after Deimos like puppies seem like nonstarters. Just a bunch of followers, you know? That warlock in your block tried to feel me up during work duty a few months back and I broke his nose, so naturally they put me in solitary.”

Fire sparked in my gut, infuriated for her. “What?”

“Prison politics blow, girl… Get used to it.” Done with her breakfast, she also nudged her tray aside, most of the food untouched. “Your other two aren’t bad—the dragon and the vampire. Elijah’s an alpha. We can all feel it, but he keeps to himself, which I guess isn’t surprising.”

I forced an air of nonchalance, even when my heart soared at the thought of finally getting some details on him. “Why not?”

“Dragons usually aren’t that big on clans or packs or anything. Pretty territorial, too, from what I’ve heard through the shifter grapevine.”

“Oh, yeah, duh.” I scratched at the back of my neck, hoping to detract from the warmth blossoming in my cheeks. What the hell, body? Get it together. “I should have guessed as much.”

“His vampire friend was in our cellblock for like an hour when he first arrived, then Queen Anne pitched a fit—wouldn’t share her space with another vampire.” Gazing over my shoulder, Willow’s eyes tracked someone on the go, slowly drifting toward the side of the huge, noisy dining hall. “I don’t know much about him either, to be honest. Those two are pretty quiet. Stay out of the shit. Don’t leer. Seem decent… Probably both innocent too. You’ll start to notice the difference the more you get to know the, uh, players in this game.”

“What even is this place?” I muttered, more to myself than anything, but Willow’s heightened hearing must have kicked in, because she snorted and leaned back with a shake of her head.

“If you ever figure it out, feel free to share, because I’ve never heard of a prison for supers, and this place runs like they took a page out of some TV drama, you know?”

At least I wasn’t the only one totally thrown by the idea of not only a supernatural prison, but a prison that held all kinds of shifters and supernatural beings in one place. I might not have blinked twice if all the American covens got together and decided to open an institute to deal with the really shitty witches out there, but this? This was unorthodox—and, frankly, unheard of.

And the fact that innocent people like me—and Willow, potentially—were just thrown in here to rot, clueless and afraid, made me want to explode.

Only I couldn’t.

Because for the first time in my life, I had no magic. A whole arsenal of spells locked in my brain, from the good to the bad to the you-never-use-this, and I was just… stuck.

Tears burned my eyes, but I blinked them back and looked up, focusing on the fake lighting, on the aggressive fluorescent glow, so I could stop thinking about anything else—just for a few minutes.

At least there were potential allies in my corner. If Willow was telling the truth, then maybe I could count on Elijah and Rafe for something more than being cellblock eye candy. Silver lining, I suppose.

That, and I now had a cafeteria buddy if Willow wasn’t a secret sociopath just searching for ways to manipulate me.

Unfortunately, as the alarms tolled and guards started barking for their cellblocks to get up and ship out, I was hit with a change of heart, indecision chipping away at me. No allies. No friends. They were all liabilities in here, right? Nor could I take anything anyone said at face value. As I joined the line for Cellblock C at the door we entered from, loitering behind maenad Constance and her bright pink hair as she heckled one of the cafeteria guards, I absorbed everything Willow had told me with a grain of salt. I’d judge Rafe and Elijah for myself, and if they were good guys, then great. Two less jerks to worry about in the place where I had to sleep.

I just preferred to escape this hellhole by myself—if only to ensure I didn’t owe anyone a damn thing.

Because in Xargi Penitentiary, I had a feeling any deal struck came with a price you could never, ever pay.

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