Chapter Thirty-Five
I sat beside Kane in his car, numb, bereft of words. My eyes were glued to the phone screen, staring at the image. My daughter, standing in a stark, gray-walled room, her eyes wide and scared. The text in the message simply said, I want the box. You have 24 hours.
I tried to convince myself that it was a clever image editing trick. He had taken a photo of Tammi in the street and changed it. Perhaps he had used a filter called kidnapped, or maybe he had one of his computer kids change it with Photoshop. Wasn’t there a strange difference in the image lighting, as if my daughter and the background didn’t match? Didn’t her face appear unnatural, as if the image had been manipulated?
But I knew the truth. Her face seemed unnatural because I’d never seen her scared before. The background didn’t match because I couldn’t imagine my daughter in such a place, held by this monstrous man.
“Here it is,” Kane said, his tone grave.
I had asked him to take me to my daughter’s address, hoping to see her already back from school. I had intended to knock on the door, throw caution to the wind, just to make sure everything was all right. But there was no need. There were two police cars parked in front of the house. In the window, I caught sight of Jane, Tammi’s adoptive mother, staring outside, her face streaked with tears. Her gaze was desperate, as if she hoped Tammi would suddenly materialize in the street, unharmed.
“Drive on,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Don’t you want to talk to the police?”
I shook my head. “ABC has informants in the police. If he finds out… if he even smells a whiff of cops…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t utter the possibility that my daughter would be harmed.
“Where to, then?”
“Park around the next corner. Please.”
I thought he would argue, would try to figure out what my plan was, but he didn’t. He followed my instructions, turned right at the next intersection, pulled up out of the cops’ view.
I opened my contact list. He was always on top, his nickname dictating his position in any alphabetized list. I hit the contact ABC.
Three rings, and he answered. His voice lacked any pretense of warmth, of pleasantry.
“Lou Vitalis. We had a deal.”
“I didn’t break it. I was about to deliver the box to you.”
“And instead you disappeared. Fled through the window when we knocked on your door. That was unwise, Vitalis. I don’t like betrayal. You have something precious of mine. And I have something precious of yours.”
“Don’t hurt her.” I meant it to sound threatening. A Liam Neeson moment, where I let him know that if he hurt my daughter I would find him and kill him. Instead, my words were broken, scared. I was pleading.
“You shouldn’t be worried about it at all. We can meet right now if you want. You’ll give me the box with the crystal, and I’ll give you your daughter, still unharmed.”
Still unharmed. I shut my eyes.
“I don’t have the crystal on me.”
“You sold it to someone else. That’s why you fled when we came for it.”
Once, when I still worked for him, Breadknife had found out that one of the boys had snitched. Nelson, only fourteen, had been persuaded by the police to give them a bit of information, enough to start building a case against Breadknife. However, they didn’t know that one of them was on Breadknife’s payroll. Nelson’s betrayal was exposed. ABC summoned all of us to let us know. His voice had a strange property to it, as if it was the only thing standing between us and an erupting volcano. It trembled and shook in a manner I found terrifying. And Nelson disappeared, of course, rumors of the manner of his death fueling many nights of hushed whispers.
Breadknife’s voice now had the same tremor.
“I didn’t sell it to anyone,” I blurted. “It…” What would he do if he found out it was stolen from me? Would he even believe me? What would happen to my daughter? No. He couldn’t know that. I had to buy some time. “It’s in a safe place. I was afraid the dragon would find me, so I hid it.”
“Hid it where?” The rage was still there, slightly more in control.
“I’ll get it to you,” I said. “I need more time.”
“You have until tomorrow morning, Vitalis.” The line went dead.
I breathed hard, my fingers trembling.
“We need to find Harutaka. Get the crystal back from him.”
“We don’t know where he is,” Kane pointed out. “I haven’t seen him since last night. We have no way to contact him.”
Just like he intended. “Isabel will be able to find him,” I said, desperately believing that was true. “She lives nearby.”
As I guided Kane through the streets of Roxbury, I tried to map out my course of action. If Isabel could find Harutaka, I would go to him, armed with everything I had, get the crystal back and deliver it to Breadknife. If he received his precious crystal, he would let my daughter go.
But what if Isabel couldn’t find him? Harutaka was clever, and knew of Isabel’s powers. Perhaps he could find a way to hide.
Then I would ask her to locate my daughter instead. We could go to Jane, ask her for Tammi’s belongings. Surely Isabel would be able to find her. And then I would free her. Somehow.
I had a feeling that something was wrong as the car got close to Isabel’s shop. The door was hanging slightly open, a crack of darkness. Even as Kane pulled up to the curb, I was already pushing the passenger door open and leaping out, barging into Isabel’s shop.
“Isabel? Isabel!” My shouts hung in the air, unanswered. My eyes slowly got used to the shop’s dark gloom, and my feeling of dread grew. The floor was littered with shards of glass, papers, books, and bits of cloth. Isabel’s wooden furniture had been toppled and smashed. Almost nothing in the shop remained whole.
In the corner, a small limp form was curled, inert. I rushed to it, a sob in my throat as I saw it was Isabel. Her face was bloody and bruised, her hair tangled, her clothing torn. She lay in a fetal position, as if she had been trying to protect herself from the beating. Her right hand was outstretched, two of the fingers twisted at unnatural angles. I was relieved to see her chest rising and falling—she was breathing. But when I whispered in her ear, tried to shake her gently, I got no response.
This was ABC’s doing, I knew, and a molten kernel of pure rage blossomed inside me. He should pay for what he’d done to my friend.
“Is she alive?” Kane was by my side, horror and worry in his voice.
“Barely,” I answered. “ABC got to her. He probably tried to get her to tell him where I was. Maybe he asked her to find me for him.”
“I’m calling an ambulance,” Kane said.
I nodded distractedly, caressing Isabel’s hair, not daring to move her. “Call Sinead too. Tell her to get here.”
Kane spoke urgently on the phone behind me. I tuned him out, focusing on Isabel, whispering in her ear, apologizing, begging her to wake up, promising vengeance. She was lying amid her tarot cards, which had been scattered on the floor.
One drew my eye, the image on it disturbing. It was the card of the Lovers, but it looked wrong. Different.
I picked it up and stared at it. The nude man and woman stood across from each other, as before. But above them stood a strange creature, its body a mass of darkness. The couple’s expressions were masks of pain and fear. Their bodies were etched with scars and wounds.
I picked up another card, the High Priestess. The woman in it was fighting off a dark creature as it slashed her with its claws, her cheek torn and bleeding.
The Empress was dead, several shadowy creatures looming around her body. The Fool cried as a creature tormented him with a barbed blade. The Emperor sat in mute horror as creatures committed atrocities around him.
“Sinead is on her way,” Kane said behind me. “So is the ambulance. What is that?”
“It’s the future,” I answered. “It’s the future Isabel saw.”