Page 4 of Mud

“Anyhoo,” she said, throwing her long brown curls behind her shoulder before she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Since you’re here, I thought I’d use you. I’ve got a siren ready to be interrogated in Seven. What do you say, huh, Cupcake? Wanna help me out?” She batted her lashes at me innocently.

I flinched. “Asiren? Are you serious?” Those were rare—so rare I’d only ever seen one before—because they usually stuck to the sea.

“You know I do be being serious about stuff like this,” she said, making me want to smile. Cassie’s choice of words never failed to entertain me.

“You do be being,” I repeated, and she beamed.

“I do be. And I’ll owe you one, too. How about that? It’s just a little interrogation, that’s all. Nothing you haven’t done before.”

I shook my head and went to sit on the wooden bench near the front of the room. It was a big room—huge,with over four hundred lockers and five different entrances. If there was somebody else in here with us, we couldn’t tell.

“Somethingyou’vedone before, a lot more times than me,” I reminded her. She came to sit with me, waving meoff again, as if the fact that she’d been an agent for a decade longer than me was no big deal.

“That don’t mean shit when it comes to sirens and you know it. I’m Bluefire. I can’t lock her out as well as you,” she said. “And with that face, sweetie, it’s the opposite of possible to read you in any kind of way.”

Opposite of possible,she said, becauseimpossiblewas too mainstream for Cassie.

“You are perfectly capable of interrogating a siren.”

“I amn’t,” she insisted. “I really,reallydon’t want to, La Rouge. C’mon, do me this and I’ll do you one better. Anything you want.”

I laughed a bit—how could I not? With my eyes closed, I rested my back against the lockers.

“Seriously, though. You be looking really pale, now that I think about it—and it’s not just these awful lights. Everything okay?”

I straightened up instantly and my instinct was to deny and redirect her attention elsewhere. Or lie and just get the hell out, go somewhere she couldn’t see me.

But this was the IDD and Madeline wasn’t here. And now thatIthought about it, a siren interrogation sounded mighty fine at the moment.

Not only would it requireallof my attention and not let me think about anything else, it would also make it very easy for me to get more information about that text.

Because what if the guard had lied? What if he’d messed with me or something?

What if somebody had stolen his phone to prank me?

Highly unlikely, true, but I had to confirm it—and who better to do that than Cassandra Martins, Bluefire clairvoyant with access to the information room files andcomputers, regardless of whether she was still on The Shitlist or not?

“Not really, actually,” I said, wetting my lips as I turned to her with my whole body.

“Well, what is it? Spit it out already,” she demanded, her blue eyes wide and her lips parted as she waited.

“I’ll do the interrogation for you, if you find something out for me. Something about the Tomb,” I said slowly, trying to drink in her expression to see what her initial thoughts were. It was so easy to do with people—you could read their thoughts on their faces and in their eyes like words on the pages of a book. They showed you everything you needed to know, especially in that first second after information is revealed to them.

There were only three people I’d met in my whole life that Icouldn’tread with such ease, and one of them was my grandmother.

“The Tomb?” asked Cassie. “You mean, the Tomb Penitentiary?”

“Yep,” I said with a nod, and so far, she wasn’t so freaked out as to tell me to forget our little talk and leave the dressing room.

“Hmm,” Cassie muttered, looking down at her hands, her skin pale, a stark contrast to the indigo tattoos that covered her wrists and reached down to her knuckles in swirls. She traced the lines with her fingertips for a moment as she thought about it. “I don’t really have access to the Tomb, but I know someone who does.”

“And they owe you a favor?” I guessed—easy enough. Everybody owed her favors around here—Cassie was trustworthy, friendly, not afraid to do stupid shit in the name ofhelping out a friend.

“True, true,” she said, nodding her head. “But riddle me this—what does a golden Iridian sweetheart like yourself want with the Tomb? You know only the worst criminals in the world are locked up in there, right? The batshit crazy, dangerous kind.”

They’re not.

I bit my tongue. “I just need information about an inmate, that’s all. I don’twantanything from them.”

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