“Sure,” he said. “Simple.”
His cold and hopeless tone sent shivers down my spine. I gave him a hard look and saw guilt behind the hopelessness, and anxiety behind the guilt. I wanted to take him away somewhere private and force him to tell me what the fuck was wrong. My heartbeat sped up and my mouth went dry as several awful scenarios ran through my mind.
What if he hadn’t passed? What if I had to leave him behind? I couldn’t do it. For as many issues as Kai and I had, he was bonded to me. It would kill part of my soul to be without him. I would literally waste away, and eventually, I’d die.
“Kai—you do think you passed, right?”
He turned his shuttered gaze my way. “I don’t know.”
“Bro! How could you not know? Those questions were easy!” Jayce looked as pained as I felt.
Kai shrugged and walked away. I wanted to chase after him, but I let him go. We’d always been at odds, and there had always been barriers between us. But now, there was something going on in his head that I couldn’t figure out or even feel. That was new and different in a way I didn’t much like.
After a nervous evening and a restless night, the three men who had been cleared went off to find something to do while Kai and I headed back downstairs for our second round of interrogations.
“Do you think you’re going to be able to give them what they’re looking for?” I asked him as we rounded a corner on the first floor, striding toward the basement stairs.
He glanced out a window that overlooked the dark, foreboding cave beyond. Sighing heavily, he shrugged.
“Guess I don’t have a choice.”
I gave him an odd look, but as usual, he avoided my gaze. Goddamn it. I wanted to ask what he meant, but Vesper met us at the bottom of the stairs. She gave us each a long, somber look, then turned.
“Follow me.”
“I don’t know why you’re being so theatrical,” I commented, mildly annoyed. “It’s not like this is the first time we’ve done this.”
Irritation prickled under my skin like an itch I couldn’t scratch. I hadn’t gotten nearly enough coffee at breakfast. They seemed to be rationing it, which made me very concerned about what would happen if we were stuck down here for any significant length of time.
You can drag me to the underworld, but if you take away my coffee, then I’ll really be in hell.
“No, it’s not the first time you’ve done this.” Vesper glanced back over her shoulder at me. “But it is the most important. If either of you can remember anything else at all, it might just hold the key to our salvation.”
I rolled my eyes at Kai. Such drama. He merely pressed his lips together and kept his eyes straight ahead. Okay, so maybe I was the dumb fuck who didn’t realize how important this was. Or maybe I just didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t exactly think Owen would have been muttering about the butler in the pantry with a wrench while he had me slung over his shoulder.
“You first.” Vesper pointed to me when we reached the heavy door. “Kai, you’ll be next. Make yourself comfortable.”
Toland glanced up as I entered the room behind his assistant. He looked exhausted. He seemed to be aging years by the day, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to help him. I didn’t know if it was because he looked so strained and ragged, or if it was the training that Jayce had given me over the last two days, but the siren’s song didn’t hit quite as much resistance when she began.
“Tell me what you heard when you were captured. While Owen was carrying you over his shoulder,” Cassandra said.
It came to me in bits and pieces and didn’t seem to make any sense. I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t know what he’s saying.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Her song was enticing and soothing. “Repeat it just as you hear it.”
My brows furrowed slightly, but I let the melody of her voice drag words up from the depths of my brain. This time, I didn’t try to make sense of them. I just spoke them as they came to me.
“Why tread grown bellow. Uptown laugh trite. White up red down green left yellow right. White red green yellow. Up, down, left, right.”
“Vesper?”
“Recording, sir.”
“Continue, Piper.”
“Uh—stupid simpletons. Something—the code, wasn’t even here—untether the school—should be more difficult. Uptown laugh trite.”
“Good. That’s good. What else did he say?”