Page 65 of A Door in the Dark
A bolt of magic struck her neck. It ran down her spine until she couldn’t move at all. Ren felt that same panic heaving back to life in her mind. She was going to die out here.
“Set her on the table.”
The Mackie brothers laid her down and flipped her over, like they would to prepare any other animal for slaughter. The spell locking Ren in place unraveled a second too late. Her wrists were already bound to the table. The lantern swayed somewhere behind her.
Please, Cora. Please help me. Please.
She heard the sound of a knife sharpening against a whetstone. Her eyes were drawn in that direction. It was the old man from dinner. The one with the smashed nose. He sat in a chair, toothpick rolling along his lips as he worked. “Welcome to my humble dwelling.”
The place was just short of decay. Roots shot through cracks in the walls. There was an abandoned cot in one corner with the book she’d seen him reading earlier. The binding and cover had all but unraveled. Della waited in the doorway as the Mackie brothers ghosted back outside. The old man tapped his knife on something metal. The sound echoed.
“Did you hear me? I welcomed you. Are you a rude guest? I’ve no patience for rude guests.”
“I’m not a guest,” Ren snapped. “Why are you doing this?”
Please, Cora. Please, please, please.
“You are my guest,” the man replied. “Until we get the answers we want. Which means that so long as you’re on this table in my cabin, I am your host. You can call me that. Call me Host.”
He looked over at Della. She was leaning casually against the doorframe.
“We will start the interrogation with easy questions,” Della said. “Who sent you?”
Ren licked her lips. “We got lost. I’m telling you. We took a portal.…”
Della shook her head. Host put down his whetstone and started across the room. He pulled a chair over that Ren hadn’t seen, dragging it across the stone floor so that he could sit comfortably at her side. A small smile played across his face as he started flattening her immobilized left hand, stretching the fingers out. A part of Ren’s mind fractured from the rest. She was nothing but the panic. Her words sputtered out.
“I’m telling you the truth. We’re students at Balmerick. We were taking the waxways.…”
Host glanced to Della. The woman asked again, “Who sent you?”
“No one sent us! It was an accident!”
She signaled. Host brought his knife down with a flash. The blade caught the extended tip of Ren’s middle finger, searing through flesh and spurting out blood. Ren clenched her teeth to stop from crying out. Breath pushed angrily through her nostrils.
“Our guest will answer the questions,” Host said, examining his work. “Every time one of us finds your responses are lacking, the fingers get shorter.”
Della tried again. “Tell me. Where do you think you are?”
Ren answered through gritted teeth. “A farm.”
The knife slashed down. Ren gasped at the pain that shot up her entire right side. Della clicked her tongue. “Specific answers. I know you’re smart. Clearly the leader of the group. Where are we?”
“A drug farm.”
Della nodded. “Yeah? How’d you know? If you weren’t sent here looking for us.”
Ren saw a chance to prove her side of the story. The words came rushing out. “Holt steered us away from your eastern field. He had a story about every other crop and building. But not that one? Felt strange. Then there was the scent in the kitchen. Like dying flowers. My friend used the breath at school. The final product didn’t smell exactly like that, but it was close.”
Della looked impressed. Ren was doing everything she could to ignore the blood.
“What else?”
“Lev’s burns. On his neck and knuckles. You were wearing gloves when we first met, but I spotted a burn on your wrist at dinner. Chemical reactions. That kind of thing happens when you’re working with noxious fumes. I also saw the exhaust smoke when I used the outhouse. Smoke doesn’t usually take on color. Unless it’s rising from the corpse of a dragon.”
Della signaled. The knife slashed again. This time her entire world briefly reeled. Spots of black. Something sharp and pungent was shoved in her face before she could slip away. Ren’s eyes whipped back open as the world, the little details of the room, grew vivid again.
“Can’t have our guest passing out,” Host said. “Too easy, that. Off into the world of unfeeling. No, no, no. We’ve far too much to discuss.”
