In one of those cells a witch had gone mad. Abraham Burnbaum had once been a prominent neurologist, a prosperous man devoted to his work and his family. A man who gave back, used all his skill to save lives. Who’d enjoyed golf and sailing. Like the CO, he’d watched his family die, and none of his knowledge, his skills, his connections in the medical community had saved them.

Only he and the grandson named for him had survived. Little Abe with his quick, gurgling laugh, his passion for dinosaurs and absolute loyalty to Iron Man had survived and, like his grandfather, had begun to show abilities that the scientist in Burnbaum would have deemed nonsense.

For more than a year he’d kept the boy safe. Even when they’d had to leave the house in Alexandria, as the fighting came too close, he’d kept his boy safe. He’d made it an adventure. Hiking, hiding, fishing, making camp in the woods, or in a house already abandoned.

South, he’d taken the boy south. Warmer climates, longer growing season.

Then he’d made a mistake. He’d grown tired, careless, or just naive. He’d thought he could make a home for the boy in the little ramshackle house just over the North Carolina border. For a time he had, tucked away from the road.

But they’d come, the soldiers, sweeping in so fast he’d known escape wasn’t possible. He could fight—he had a gun, he had the strange powers in him. But he feared for the boy.

“Abe.” He’d pulled the boy into the kitchen. “Quick now. Into the hiding place.”

“But, Granddad.”

“Remember what we said.” Abraham pulled up the door to the root cellar. “Remember what you promised.”

“I don’t want to—”

“You promised. Go down, and don’t make a sound. No matter what. Don’t come out, no matter what, until I come get you. Or until you know they’re gone. And when you know they’re gone, what do you do?”

“I stay quiet and I count to a hundred ten times.”

“You don’t start counting until you don’t hear a sound.” He nudged the boy down the ladder. “Hurry. Not a sound. I love you, kiddo.”

“I love you, Granddad.”

He shut the door, and as he’d practiced and practiced, he concealed the door. The handle melted from sight, not a seam showed.

They didn’t knock or call for him to come out. They broke in, front and back doors, armed. Even as he started to put his hands up, one fired at him. Not a bullet, though it gave him pain. He staggered under the tranquilizer.

He heard their boots storming through the house, heard orders shouted to find the kid.

He came to, his mind muddled, in a small room. Restrained to a bunk, he struggled to think through the drug.

Little Abe. Had they found his little boy?

They could do whatever they wanted with him as long as Abe stayed safe.

They tortured him, using a paralytic while they ran their hideous tests. Sometimes he heard screaming, but it never lasted long. No one spoke to him except to interrogate, and after a few days, not even then.

He comforted himself he’d kept Abe safe. Let himself dream of that wonderful laugh, those mischievous eyes.

But then, the days, the weeks, the months of solitary captivity, the drugs, the brutal tests smothered all hope.

Was that Abe he heard screaming? Calling to him for help?

He screamed, and when they came in, he tried to fight, tried to find the magick through the drug. He sparked a fire, enough to singe one of his captors, enough to earn a beating until someone else snapped out an order.

They strapped him to the bunk again, poured more drugs into him, ran more tests.

They drove him mad and the madness drove him into the dark.

And the dark was sly.

He gave himself a seizure, just a small one, just enough to have them cut back the dose of the drugs. He showed them only compliance, even when they took him to the showers, hosed him down. Even when they tortured him.

All the while he gathered the dark around him, offered what he was to it, and heard its chortling laugh inside his head.

They would burn, all burn. Black fire, black crows circling, black smoke rising to blot out the sun.

He called on the dark, gave it words in his head he hadn’t known. Saw it smile at him, heard its promises.

They would burn, all burn, and he would rise from the flames. Triumphant.

So when an agonized faerie cursed her tormentor, Abraham loosed all his hate, his rage, his madness, poured it out of himself in black flame. And they burned, all burned.

But the dark is sly as madness is, and swept him down with the rest.

Shaking, sweating, Fallon slid down the wall. “I saw. I saw. I’m sick. I’m going to be sick.”

“Hush now.” Mallick gathered her up. “Sleep now.”

He took her under, took her away.

After he laid her on her bed, he lit white candles, set white sage to smoking, bathed her face. When she stirred, he urged a potion on her to ease the sickness and shock.

“I saw …” Could still see. Would always see. “I have to tell you.”

“You did. You told me while you saw, while you heard, while you felt. You told me all of it. You need to rest. You pushed further than you should have. You weren’t ready for so much.”

“If I wasn’t ready, I couldn’t have done it.”

“If you’d been fully ready, you wouldn’t have gotten sick. That should settle now, and I’ll make tea that will soothe the rest.”

But she grabbed his hand. “He was a good man, Mallick. He was a good man. A doctor, a healer. He sacrificed himself to save his grandson. Then they wouldn’t even tell him if they’d found the little boy, if the kid was okay. They wouldn’t tell him. Like they wouldn’t tell the girl—Janis—where her mother was. Why would they be that cruel?”

“To break the spirit. A broken spirit is more debilitating than a broken body.”

“They broke his mind instead, and that’s dangerous. They broke his mind, so he opened to the dark, and the dark heard him. Something dark heard him and …”

“Exploited him.”

“Yeah, exploited. And lied to him, because he’s as dead as the rest. Janis never hurt anyone, but I think when she cursed the lab guy, the one who hurt her, it gave whatever worked in Abraham more, even more. I think—there were so many voices I couldn’t hear at first, so I had to push them back. But I think so many had broken, so many wanted to hit back, somehow, it all rose up, and when Abraham lit the fuse, it blew.”

“It’s possible. Very possible. Just as it’s possible, with so many contained, there was already dark among the light. And that added more as well.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She closed her eyes a moment. “They had a hundred and forty-six people locked up. They had room for one-fifty. Some just died, others they sent somewhere else. But that night a hundred and forty-six. It was ten years ago. It happened ten years ago, March fourteenth, at nineteen hundred hours, twenty-seven minutes.

“We have to go back.” She tightened her grip when he shook his head. “We have to tend to the dead. All of them, and we have to purify the ground.”

“Yes, the dead should be tended, and their spirits released. A place of cruelty can be destroyed and the ground purified.”

It made him proud she would think of it, she would know the importance of it.

“But not this day,” he told her. “Tomorrow. They’ve waited this long. I’ll speak to Minh, as he will want to go. Some of the others will.”

“Tomorrow,” she agreed. “But we won’t destroy the building. It’s well built and its location’s good. We may need it one day.”

He went to make her tea because she was weaker than she understood. The next time she wouldn’t be, he thought. Already she’d shown a cooler head than he. What he’d seen and heard through her? He wanted to destroy all that stood on that spot.

But the warrior, the leader of warriors understood a war meant death. It also meant prisons.

“She’ll never be a child again,” he told himself as he added honey to the tea to mask the faint bitterness of the restorative. “Not after this day.”