My stomach twists. It has to be him, right?
“Mr. Vandozer?” I ask quickly. I just need that momentary lapse, enough doubt to confirm my suspicions.
Her eyes flare for only a moment. If it weren’t him, she’d have scoffed, right? It would be a weird suggestion—unless it were true.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, looking down at her shuffling feet.
“Corrine, I’m your friend. Aren’t we friends?”
She bites her lips, expression softening. She shrugs.
“I thought we were,” I say. “We can be.”
“But then, why are you here telling me my boyfriend is some master villain or something? Like I don’t matter to him. You’re the one manipulating me.”
My heart aches for her. “Maybe he really does care for you,” I admit. “But if that’s the case, would he really put you at risk like this?”
“He didn’t—” she stutters. “I chose to.”
“Then, he wouldn’t care if you were to leave now, right? With me? We’ll leave together.” I hold out my right hand, the other still clinging to Jarron.
She blinks rapidly.
“It’s not a trick. I swear if you leave with me now, I won’t enter without you.”
She frowns, and then her bottom lip begins to tremble. “I—we can’t,” she whispers. “It’s too late. They won’t let us leave.”
I spin to find the way we came is darkened. “We can’t leave?” I ask uncertainly, voice thin.
“Rebecca tried. It tossed her back, and then—” she pauses, looking to the dark side of the room. “A voice started laughing at her. Called her a coward and said she’d be marked as the first to die.”
“Whose voice? From where?”
She shrugs. “It was a female voice I didn’t recognize. Bodiless, like magic.”
“So, what now, then?” I say, trying to keep the terror from my voice.
“We wait for our turn.” She stares again at the dark spot at the end of the room.
“For what?”
“You have to pass a test to enter. One at a time.”
I frown.“And then, when is the actual fight?”
She swallows. “I don’t know. It’s not here, though. They’ll take us somewhere else.”
“Okay, so we wait?”
Corrine nods and takes her place back against the wall. I sit too, a few feet from her. Jarron clings tightly to my hand. “This is good,” I whisper. “Forty-five minutes.”
“Huh?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Just thinking to myself.” I force a smile. If we can stall for forty-five minutes, Jarron’s magic will be back. Even if the people behind the competition remain hidden—which makes all the sense in the world, now that I think of it—we’ll at least stand a chance of fighting our way out.
The silence clings to everything, until all I can hear is the pounding of my own heart. Jarron is so quiet I sometimes forget he’s still here.
There’s a strange clicking sound, and the boy near the front of the room starts quaking. “Dominic is up next,” Corrine says.
