Page 44 of The Elementalist
She laughed. “You have no idea.”
“What else can you do?”
Crystal dashed across the house to the stairs in the front room. “Wings.”
“Okay, I know that one.”
“But you haven’t seen them.”
“I can’t say I have.”
“Then be prepared to be surprised... someday.”
“I’ll be as prepared as possible. Do you have a tail, too?”
“Nope.”
The redhead’s continuous screamed curses—mostly calling me an asshole among other things—reached my ears when I’d made it halfway to the second floor. When we reached the third, I shouted, “Hang on! Be right there.”
She stopped yelling, but did fire off a, “Hurry the hell up, dickwad!”
We stopped at the first room with the three prisoners in it. I nearly fell over in relief at seeing them back to normal, no longer halfway to undead. The effect of the change also knocked all three of them out cold. I did a quick pulse check, confirming that they all remained alive. None of them gave off a deathly smell, either.
“They’re good,” I reported.
“You’re sure?” asked Crystal, a note of suspicion in her eyes.
“Yeah. No stink like death and… look at them. They have their color back. Don’t suppose you have any idea how long they’ll stay unconscious?”
“Nope.”
She grasped one of the padlocks securing the woman’s wrist, and pulled it open like it hadn’t even been locked. A tiny spritz of what I could only call ‘fairy dust’ shot out of the keyhole. Wow, no wonder this girl is doing okay for herself. Her kind would make amazing thieves. Can turn invisible, open any lock they want… granted, she’d have to break into a place bare-assed and anything she carried out would still show up on camera, but… no one would be able to tellwhobroke in.
Hmm. I wonder if succubi leave fingerprints?
One by one, she opened all nine padlocks, four each for the guy and girl on the bed, one on the woman tethered to the radiator. We jogged down the hall to the other bedroom. Theredhead continued trying to either snap the chain or tear the radiator off its bolts.
“Hey, calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself,” I said.
She shot me a look that could’ve scorched the paint off a battleship. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her to calm down. “You left me here!”
“Had a vampire to destroy. If he got away, he would’ve done this to someone else.”
The woman huffed. “Did you at least get him?”
“Yep.”
Crystal breezed in and walked around behind her. “Found the key in the other ash pile. What’s your name?”
“Shiloh Morgan. Did someone send you to find me?”
“Not specifically,” I said. “Came here looking for vampires. How long have you been missing for?”
A magical spark flew off the handcuffs and they popped open.
“Only a few days.” Shiloh pulled her arms around in front and rubbed her chafed wrists. “They left me in here like this the whole time. I think they were biting the others. Or drinking, or whatever the hell it is that vampires do.”
“I can confirm that… but they’re okay now.” I fished out the BMW key and tossed it to her. “Here. He won’t be needing it anymore. Cops probably won’t let you keep it, but it’ll get you back home.”
