The luck of the Siren.
Footsteps echoed through the passageway. “Wake her up. She’s been asleep long enough.” Harsh voices. Men’s voices. The kind that didn’t care who heard them.
Ridley scrambled back to the bed, her vision blurry. A shadow moved in the hallway outside her cell.
A moment later, a hulking figure appeared on the other side of the bars.
“Sweet dreams, Siren? Hope you had a nice nap,” an enormous guy said. Ridley recognized his Southern accent. He unlocked the cell and stepped inside, slamming the door behind him.
Ridley fought to keep her eyes fixed on him and summoned her Power of Persuasion.
You don’t want to be here.
You want to turn around and leave.
Don’t bother to close the door.
The guy pocketed the keys, moving closer. When he noticed Ridley staring at him intently, he laughed. “Don’t strain yourself, Siren. Darkborns are immune to the Power of Persuasion.”
Ridley let her vision blur again and slumped against the headboard. If she couldn’t use her powers against her captor, how was she going to get out of there?
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.
“Right now, I’m going to give you another shot of the good stuff.” He slid a syringe from his pocket and uncapped it, tapping it with his finger. “On the house.”
“Leave her alone. If you turn her brain to mush, your boss will be angry,” Drew said from somewhere beyond the bars.
“Shut your mouth,” the Darkborn wielding the needle snapped. “Or you’ll be next up, Oatmeal Brain.”
Ridley shrank away. “You don’t have to do that. I’m not gonna scream or anything.”
“Scream all you want, Siren. No one will hear you down here.” He grinned, his teeth flashing in the darkness. “And I love screaming. I live for that crap. Ask your new friends.” He raised his voice. “Am I right? You got anything to add now, Oatmeal?”
Ridley shivered, and no one said another word.
He reached for Ridley’s wrist. She tried to fight him off, but the huge Darkborn was even bigger than Sampson.
This is one fight I’m not gonna win.
The needle slid into her arm, a thin, gray worm beneath her skin, and she winced, then involuntarily relaxed as a cold wave of chemical sleep rolled through her. She struggled to resist it, but her body floated away.
“Nice rock,” the guy said, looking at her hand. “What’s that, a present from your boyfriend?” He laughed, and she wanted to tell him where he could stick his stupid needle, but suddenly she couldn’t even remember why.
No.
Fight.
If you lose control now, you’ll lose everything.
Stay awake and find a way out.
Link will find you.
“What is this place?” she mumbled as the room pitched in and out of darkness. She had to know. She had to stay awake. She had to tell Link….
She heard heavy footsteps; then the cell door closed.
“Welcome to the Menagerie.”
CHAPTER 5: LINK
London Calling
Link and Floyd hurtled through the darkness, finally crashing into a heap. It hit Link right away: the familiar dizziness of Traveling—defying space, time, and the laws of physics as only an Incubus could.
It was exhilarating. And freeing. And—
“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Floyd said from somewhere beneath him.
Nauseating.
Link rolled to the side and untangled his legs from hers. “Just stick your head between your knees. It works. Or you can hurl. That works, too.”
Floyd took his advice, her long hair brushing the grass. “You really need to practice if you’re gonna keep Traveling. You gotta stick the landing.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” Link looked around. “On our way back.”
“Promises, promises.”
Link sat up, holding his hand high, and took a good look at his Binding Ring. It was glowing as red as fire. Knowing it still worked was bittersweet. It wasn’t totally busted, only broken when it came to finding Rid.
“They gotta be here somewhere,” he said. “John and Liv. My Caster mood ring is goin’ nuts.” He jammed his hand back into his pocket.
“You sure this is the right place?” Floyd sat up, rubbing the grass out of her hair.
Truthfully, Link wasn’t exactly sure if he’d Ripped them to Oxford University or some other place with weird-looking buildings that reminded him of churches. Aside from a trip to Barbados through the Tunnels, he’d never been outside the United States—or outside the South—until this summer, when he and Rid had taken off to New York City.
And the day Rid and me spent in the South of France. She was wearin’ her red bikini. But that was France, the place where the french fries sucked (go figure), and he’d wasted all day searching for the Colosseum (until Rid explained it was in Italy). How was he supposed to know what the UK looked like? Link racked his brain, trying to remember as much as he could from the Harry Potter movies. “Big red buses and phone booths, right? And guys in bow ties, and supersized beers?”
“What are you babbling about?” Floyd lifted her head up.
“The Unified Kingdom,” Link said.
Floyd looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Yeah? Is that what it’s called now?”
Link shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I hope we’re in London.”
She pulled her long hair out of her face and into a ponytail. “So let me get this straight? John’s girlfriend, Liv, is a student at Oxford, so you took us to London?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Yeah, genius. Because Oxford University is in Oxford. That’s probably how they came up with the clever name.”
Link looked around. They had landed in an open courtyard surrounded by gray stone buildings. He headed toward one of at least a dozen identical archways around them and hopped over some bushes and onto a covered walkway.
“Slow down,” Floyd called from behind him.
“Sorry.” He grabbed her and hoisted her over the bushes.
They followed the walkway through one of the buildings and onto a cobbled street right out of the movies. Students and grouchy-looking old men wearing tweed vests rushed past them.
Link glanced around. “How are we supposed to know if we’re in the right place? Maybe we should ask someone.” He stopped a scrawny guy with glasses in a Trinity College T-shirt. “Hey, dude, is this Oxford University? In the Unified Kingdom?”
The guy backed away and gave him a strange look. “Yes, I suppose it is. More or less.” He started to turn aw
ay.
“Where’s the library?” Link asked.
“Which one?”
Now it was Link’s turn to give him a strange look. “There’s more than one?”
Why?
The guy pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose and glanced at Floyd, which didn’t seem to make him feel any better. “Of course. Which one are you looking for?”
Link frowned. There was only one logical place, considering it was Liv. “The biggest one.”
Link stared at the enormous building, which looked about the size of a New York City block. It made Gatlin County Library back home look like an outhouse. He turned to Floyd.
“You really think that whole place is fulla books? Like the paper kind?”
She shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
They fell into line behind a group of girls who were probably students. They all had British accents, and Link wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Even if it did seem like a scene right out of a movie or a TV show.
Link had spent enough time watching Batman to know the building was Gothic.
Like, Gotham City gothic. This place could be Wayne Manor.
With spires lining the roof that looked like serrated swords, it reminded him of a fancy church from the cover of one of those history textbooks he’d never bothered to open. But the building had the same intimidating and creepy presence as Ravenwood Manor, Ridley’s uncle’s plantation house in Gatlin.
They followed the students through the courtyard and into the main building. One by one, the students swiped what looked like ID cards to open the electronic turnstile. Link stopped when he reached it. “Crap. You need some kind of card thingy to get in. Never saw that at Hogwarts.”
“Just hop over,” Floyd said. “New York–style.”
The turnstile was only waist-high, but there were lots of people around, and he and Floyd weren’t exactly inconspicuous.
Someone cleared their throat behind them. “Excuse me,” a guy said with an English accent, holding an ID card in his hand.
“Sorry,” Link said, backing up. “We were just tryin’ to get in.”