“With Remy?” Flint asks.

The officers exchange a long look—which Hudson definitely notices.

His eyes grow watchful even as he kicks his legs out in front of him and leans back in the chair. “I want to bunk with Remy, too. It’s more my style, don’t you think?”

I shoot Flint a confused look, but he just shrugs—which seems strange considering he’s the one who brought up remies, whatever they are, to begin with.

“Oh, and since you’re in the middle of assigning a cell, we were hoping we could get one by the sea?” Hudson jokes. “That’s how Remy likes it, right?”

“You better watch your mouth,” the officer doing my paperwork whispers, his long nails making a screeching noise as they scrape against the desk. “Remy’s got a quick temper.”

Hudson’s brows go up at the confirmation that Remy exists. And obviously this is a scary person if the guards feel the need to warn us against him.

“He’s been expecting her,” a huge voice from the shadows at the back of the room booms.

I jump, even before he steps into the light, because I had no idea anyone was even back there. Once he does step forward, though, everything inside me freezes. Because this creature makes everyone who’s come before him seem like a fuzzy monster from a child’s Halloween show.

He is seriously and completely terrifying. It’s not just the weird-ass antlers on his head, because I have nothing against moose normally. But his face is also filled with all kinds of sharp angles that aren’t human and aren’t moose but something in between that is vaguely demonic-looking.

More, his gray skin is almost completely translucent, his veins and arteries much more visible than they are on a normal person—or even the rest of the creatures in this room. When he sees me looking, he gives me a grim facsimile of a smile—one that reveals double rows of razor-sharp teeth.

He takes a couple of steps toward me, and I yank my gaze away, back to Hudson, who looks like he’s about one second from jumping in between us. And while I am firmly aware that Hudson is the biggest badass around even without his powers, I’m also pretty sure that this guy would give him some stiff competition.

So I force a smile I am far from feeling and mouth I’m okay, even though I feel anything but.

Hudson watches me for several seconds, but eventually he sinks back against his chair and starts that silent tapping of his thumb and finger again.

A few minutes later, they finish our intake paperwork. Then they scan our bracelets and run a scanner over us one more time to check to make sure all our personal items have been removed. Then the giant guard from the back of the room lumbers forward and orders us to follow him.

He leads us out the door and back down the shadowy hallway until we get to a high-tech portcullis. The metal door is crisscrossed, just like the gates in old castles, but from what I can tell, each strip of metal is lined with motion-and heat-detecting sensors.

The portcullis reminds me of Katmere, and not for the first time, I wonder how my friends are doing. I hope Uncle Finn didn’t get into too much trouble when he went off on Nuri and Cyrus. And I really, really hope Jaxon got my father’s rune and Macy and the others aren’t totally freaking out. I just hope we can get through this quickly. I don’t know how much longer Jaxon has.

“Which cell?” the guard working the gate asks. He looks an awful lot like the guard who is leading us, except one of his antlers is half broken.

“They’re with Remy,” the guard leading us answers.

The other one nods and plugs a bunch of numbers into the fancy electronic dashboard he’s got sitting behind him. “They’re parked in cellblock A, spot 68 today,” he tells him, and our guard nods.

I’m a little intrigued by the idea of cells being parked like cars, but that’s something to worry about another time. Right now I have a more pressing question.

“Who’s Remy? And how did you know to mention him?” I ask Flint under my breath as the portcullis starts lifting with a loud clang.

“My mom whispered to me right before Cyrus took me away. She told me to find Remy. I don’t know why.”

“Let’s go,” the guard says as he begins lumbering down this new hallway.

We follow him, sticking close together because the farther we walk down the hallway, the narrower and shorter it gets.

We pause outside another gate, and the two guards have basically the same conversation we just went through. But instead of ignoring us, this guard looks at us as he opens the portcullis. And says, “You’d better hope that he’s in a good mood. Remy hates surprises.”

“Yeah, he does,” agrees the guard who’s been leading us here. “How many guards did it take to collect the pieces of the last person to ask for Remy?”

“Four,” the gate guard answers. “And they had to make multiple trips.”

Suddenly a room without a sea view—and without Remy—seems like the way to go, no matter what Nuri said.

But just as I’m reaching that conclusion—along with Flint and Hudson, I’m pretty sure—the guard presses a bunch of numbers on his control pad. But this time, instead of the portcullis going up, I can hear the sound of metal rubbing together, like massive gears grinding against each other.

As the gears move, both guards step a little closer to the metal gate. I’m about to ask what’s going on when the floor we’re standing on drops into a steep slant.

“What the hell?” Flint squawks, trying to grab on to something. But it’s too late. We’re already sliding down, down, down…and right into a giant metal tube slide.

I hit the slide first, and I claw at the sides, trying to find something, anything to hold on to. But it’s completely smooth, no ragged edges, no handles, nothing to grab. Which might be a blessing, considering I can hear Hudson and Flint sliding hot on my heels, and I really don’t want to be crashed into by either of them.

It takes nearly a minute before I reach the end of the slide, and then I fall about five feet through the air onto a pristine metal floor.

This time I hit ass first, because apparently landing on my feet with a little bit of dignity is too much to ask. It hurts, but I’ve got no time to absorb the pain because I’ve got to scramble backward to avoid being hit by a falling Hudson who, of course, sticks his landing like a gymnast at the Olympics. Seconds later, Flint does the same thing.

The jerks.

“Where do you think we are?” Hudson asks as he reaches down to pull me to my feet. I take the help because both my ass and knees hurt now, and we haven’t even been in this place two hours.

“Cell block 68?” I answer as I look around the room, which is nearly as shadowy as the hallway. Still, there’s enough light for me to register that we’re standing in a cell made completely of a perfectly smooth, perfectly polished metal. It’s old metal—a little discolored in some places, a little dull in others—but metal just the same.

I run a hand over the wall, but there are no ridges or seams at all. From what I can see, the whole thing is one continuous piece—walls, ceiling, floor. I’ve never seen anything like it, and the artist in me is fascinated, even as the rest of me is terrified that we’ve just landed in a perfect metal coffin.

And that’s before a low, terrifying growl comes from seemingly nowhere and makes every hair on my body stand straight up.

108

WarLocked Up

I whirl around, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from, but Hudson and Flint have already stepped in front of me—blocking whatever it is from getting to me but also blocking my view of whatever it is.

Another, deeper growl sounds, and I can’t help wondering if Remy is a T. rex, because I can’t imagine what else could possibly make a sound like that.

I try to push Hudson aside a little bit, but he’s not budging. And when I try a second time, he lets loose a warning growl of his own. Too bad I don’t have a clue whether it’s directed at me or the terrifying creature that has now taken to snarling at us basically nonstop.

I finally figure out that if I angle just right, I can peer between Hudson and Flint and see what they see—which at the moment appears to be a pair of glowing red eyes.

“Now, Calder, keep your drawers on,” says a low, deep voice that’s as hot as cayenne pepper and as smooth as the pecan pralines my mother used to love. “Don’t you recognize company when you see it?”

Apparently not, because—drawers not withstanding—the only thing Calder does is let loose another long, slow growl.

“Who are you?” Hudson demands.

“I should probably be asking you that question, don’t you think?” comes the easy answer. “Since you came uninvited into my home and all.”

“Uninvited?” I squawk. “It’s not like we had a choice.”