His voice whispered to nothing, and my breath caught when I realized Trent didn’t have the same value I did. My lip curled and I pulled the mystic energy together enough to make my hair begin to float. If he made one move to hurt Trent, it was going to start back up, and this time I wasn’t going to hold back.

Cormel’s lips were pressed tight as he looked from me to Trent and back again. “Put them both in a box,” he said. “Kill his horse, though.”

Trent didn’t move as two vampires literally lifted his feet from the floor.

“Which one is his?” one of them asked, and Cormel looked at me in disgust.

“I don’t know. Kill them all.”

“Cormel—” Trent said, his voice cutting off when one of the vampires hit him.

Cormel turned his spilled coffee cup upright. “I’ll get my soul, Morgan. One way or another.”

“Yeah?” I managed before we were pushed into the hallway, my boots and Trent’s dress shoes clinking among the shards of safety glass. We had two vampires each holding us, and though I could do magic, Trent would suffer if I did.

“Hey, Trent,” I said as we were shoved past the onlookers and to the elevators again. “Was this about what you wanted?”

“Apart from his killing my horses, yes. Cormel now realizes he needs me.”

We were at the elevators, and I looked at him, wondering how big this box was going to be. “Needs you? For what?”

His eye was beginning to swell, and he smiled as the doors opened and they muscled us in. “To keep you from killing him, of course.”

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

As cells went, it was one of the more spacious lockups that I’d been in. I didn’t think it was one of the usual I.S. cells, though I could be wrong—it would be a mistake to lock the undead in a standard bar-and-cot five-by-eight. The fifteen-by-fifteen room had a toilet behind an opaque screen and a pedestal sink. There was even a mirror over it, cemented into the flat gray walls. I hadn’t decided yet if it was a two-way or not, and by now, I didn’t care.

There was one cot, which Trent was stretched out on with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. One gray blanket and a thin, sad excuse for a pillow was all they had given us. I didn’t mind sharing such a tight space with Trent, but I was beginning to have issues with us being down here at all, even if it was nicer than that damp HAPA cell under the museum, or the soft gray nothing of the demon lockup, or even the rat cage Trent had kept me in for a few days.