Ariel’s jaw firms. I guess she’s made her choice.
She lifts the knife.
My fingernails bite into the palms of my hands. Don’t lick it!
She tosses the knife into the jail cell. It clanks on the floor as she ceremoniously spits on Filth’s body and turns away.
Grinning, I clap her on the shoulder. “See? You can resist the temptation in the real world.”
She grins back, then kicks Filth’s head back toward his body and walks over to kneel next to Felix. Her lips quirk in a rueful smile as she lifts his limp arm and lets it drop. “Out cold. I guess a severed head is where he draws the line.”
Something flickers in my peripheral vision, but when I look down the hall, I see nothing. When Ariel follows my gaze, however, she stiffens, her smile disappearing.
“Leave now!” she yells at the empty hallway. “If you don’t, you’ll join your underling here.” She jerks her chin toward Filth’s remains.
Underling? Is she talking to Kain? Then I realize what’s happening—and my remaining blood turns to ice.
“That’s not Kain!” I shout. “It’s Hekima. He’s using illusions on you.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me. Leaping to her feet, she rushes an invisible foe, throws a punch at nothing, and dodges an invisible strike. Jaw clenched tight, she follows her illusory enemy until she’s a few feet from where I’m still standing, gaping at her.
She looks at my feet and screams. “No!”
Puck. I can guess what Hekima is showing her: Kain is here, and he’s just killed me. I’ll bet Hekima’s making me look like Kain, a trick he used to commit those other murders as well.
As if to prove my theory correct, Ariel balls her hands and advances on me, her beautiful face twisted with hate. “You’re dead.”
Chapter Forty-One
Puck, puck, puck. I don’t think I can bring myself to hit Ariel or hurt her in any way—not that my qualms are anything but academic. After seeing what she did to Filth, I know I don’t stand a chance of hurting her. She’ll be the one doing the hurting, and it won’t even take that long.
My heart gallops at two hundred miles per hour. This is called a fight or flight response for a reason—and the time to fight is over.
Turning on my heel, I bolt for the jail cell.
Ariel’s footsteps echo behind me. Panting like a dog after a day in a desert, I leap inside the cell and slam the door in her face, sliding the bolt into the locked position.
“You think this will stop me?” She slams her palms against the bars.
I jump back. “I certainly hope so.”
She grabs a bar in each hand and strains to pull them apart, her lean muscles flexing beneath her skimpy dress.
No way. She can’t—
But the heavy-duty bars are bending. She’s stronger than any uber I’ve heard of.
I’m so dead.
Or not. I scoop her knife from the floor and frantically squirt a bunch of hand sanitizer onto the hilt. No blood, can’t have all this blood. Once it’s clean, I turn to face the door, where she’s diligently working on the bars.
Would she give up if I stabbed her? Maybe I could do it in the arm or some other nonlethal place?
The bars are almost wide enough for her to fit her head through. I look around frantically for some alternate solution. Looking down, I finally see it—a horrible, horrible option, something I’d normally say is a fate worse than death. Except here, faced head on with my mortality, I realize this fate may be just a little bit better. I guess my will to live overrides my squeamishness.
Maybe.
I dash to the hole leading to the sewer.
My first mistake is looking down. When I see the murky, foul-smelling liquid down there, I decide maybe Ariel can kill me after all. If I have to be killed, it might be nicer for a friend to do it.
Except it’s not just my life that’s on the line. Pom will die as well—and so will Mom, if I don’t convince the Council that Hekima’s the murderer.
Shaking all over, I sanitize the blade of the butterfly knife, fold it, and slip it into my pocket. And yes, I realize how crazy I am to do this, given what I’m about to dive into. Gulping in a breath of fetid air, I plug my ears with my index fingers and my nose with my pinkies, like a kid learning to dive for the first time, and sneak one last peek at the cell bars to see if maybe Hekima has given up.
Nope. Ariel is sticking her head into the opening she’s just made. It’s now or never.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I jump feet first into the sewer abyss.
Chapter Forty-Two
As I fall, obscenities in all the languages I speak repeat on a loop in my head.