Page 52 of Secrets and Ruin

“Nope. Not opening. Might be rust, but I should be strong enough.” Landon yanked, but nothing budged. Without needing to ask, he backed away, and I took his place.

It was tough. We’d heard the click of the internal mechanism. It should have released, but it wasn’t giving in to us. I snarled as I fought with it, hoping to rip it off by taking the door with it if I had to.

“Must be magically locked as well,” Landon said, growling deeply.

“Yeah, that shouldn’t give us this much of a fight,” I said, huffing as I stepped back. “We did the physical lock. What would be used to unlock it magically?”

“The key is the obvious answer,” Landon said. Before I could say anything, he lifted a fist and started knocking on the door roughly. “Dirk, can you hear me?”

Listening closely, my mouth dropped open when I heard a groan. I gestured for Landon to say more as I prepared to throw my entire weight into the door.

“Dirk, if you’re in there, we’re here for you… me and Jacky. We’re out here in this fucking forest to find you. Say something.” Landon stepped away, and I threw all my supernatural strength into knocking the door down, meeting a similarly supernatural barrier that didn’t even let the door rattle.

“Fuck,” I hissed as I went back to try again.

“Go away. I won’t fall for tricks,” Dirk said, clearly groggy. Even muffled by the building, his speech was a little slurred and thickly accented.

“Are you in there taking a fucking nap?” Landon snapped. “Get over here and open this fucking door.”

“Stop pretending to be him,” Dirk said, his words muffled. “You’re not him.”

I looked at Landon and shrugged. Even in this bad position, Dirk was smart. He couldn’t see us and thought we were fae trying to fuck with him. It served us right.

“There’s a solution,” I said simply, walking back to the door. “Dirk Brandt. This is Jacky. What can I say to make you feel comfortable?”

“You can’t be Jacky. She doesn’t know about this place. How are you pretending to be them? Did you shuffle through my dreams? That fucking asshole told me I was going to be safe here until he was done. I hope Niko rips his fucking head off and finishes this shit. I want to go home. No fucking fae forest in the backyard at home.”

Tears flooded my eyes. Home was in Texas, then. There was no fae forest in our backyard, and I was never going to let one pop up. He could trust me on that.

“Dirk, if you’re not going to listen to me and give me something, I’m just going to say stuff, and if Landon hears something new, then… oh well.” I was warning him. There was only one secret Dirk kept that only I knew, aside from the person who forced him to keep it.

“You don’t know—”

“When you were young, you snuck around Niko’s home to see a visitor. You’d never met the family he kept telling you about because he didn’t want to expose you to them yet. You knew one was there that day, though, and you really wanted to meet him. Niko couldn’t run interference because he had stepped out of the house to see to something.” I was telling the story to give Dirk time to stop me, to realize I was the Jacky he knew, not a fae using my voice. He didn’t stop me, though.

“You found Hasan, ruler of the werecats, and he was larger than life, the patriarch of our family. He has that impression on everyone when they meet him for the first time.” I paused, hoping he would stop me, but still, he said nothing. “It was that day when you learned you had a human’s chance of joining your father’s immortal family… low, heartbreakingly low. Hasan told you that you shouldn’t even try, or it would just break Niko’s heart even faster than if you grew old and died.”

Beside me, I could smell the sudden rise of Landon’s fury. It filled my nose, almost clouding my mind with its intensity, but I had to get Dirk to hear me.

“In a single conversation, he destroyed the relationship you had with your father,” I continued. “You started pushing Niko away by acting out and trying to find your own way because you didn’t want to hurt him. If you made him no longer want you, maybe it would be fine, and he could move on faster.”

I heard a thump on the other side.

“You were guessing during that last part,” Dirk said, clearly believing me now. The accent he had gone, he was now talking in that general American English I knew from him. Now, instead of the slur, I could hear the pain he was in through his words. “I don’t know how to open the door. I’m unconscious every time he locks me in here.”

“But you come out sometimes?”

“He lets me out to walk the trails, refreshing my scent and forcing Niko to keep fighting because I’m still alive. He keeps a weird silver rope, so I can’t run. There’s silver in my blood, too. Can’t Change in here to fight back when he comes by. Makes me feel really weak and tired.”

“You howled earlier.” Landon leaned on the door beside me. “What happened? What stopped you? You must have been out here because you sound so muffled in there. I would have noticed that in the howl.”

“Niko has probably been watching us for a while. He attacked while I was out on my fucking leash. I got knocked over but tried to slip the rope and run. In the end, I couldn’t get the rope off, but I could run. I made some distance, but I couldn’t find a path in time to know the way home. Niko had to have needed to retreat to figure outhisweakness...and I was caught. Right before that fucking bastard threw me back in here, I got his hand off my mouth to get that howl out. The last thing I remember is the stone coming toward my face too fast. Can’t imagine what that could have been.”

Dirk’s sarcasm in that last line told me he still had fight in him. That was what I needed to hear. What struck me as odd was how Dirk didn’t confirm who had taken him, and I didn’t want to ask. Names could be powerful, and in some tales, saying the name of the thing would summon it.

“He wants you alive, but he’s slamming your head on the wall? Isn’t he afraid the silver will stop you from properly healing? If you die accidentally, his entire sick plan is done for.” Landon snarled every word as if he was insulted by the stupidity he saw in the action.

“Wasn’t the first time. He’s an asshole. He’s so much fucking meaner than…” Dirk trailed off with a groan of pain. I couldn’t hear much for a moment. “Sorry. I was standing up, and it made me dizzy.”

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