“If my using the blade upon Nathaniel does not frighten you, then I will use it on you, but I will find what frightens you, Anita, and then you are mine.” Moroven walked to Damian, who was still held between the two Harlequin. “You believe me, don’t you, Damian? You believe that I will do everything I have promised.”

“Yes,” he whispered, his eyes wide, showing too much white around the edges, like those of a horse about to bolt. She touched his face and his personality just slid away so that his eyes were like empty windows.

Moroven turned to me with a smile. “He’s afraid for you both. It opened him to me, and now he is mine again.” She led Damian up the stairs as if he were a zombie with no will of his own. “Enjoy your last view of Nathaniel’s beauty, Anita. I give you my word that the hour I give you now will be the last time you see him whole.”

81

WE WERE ALONE except for the two Roane, who stood to either side of the doorway like good guards. They were both armed with handguns, peeking out from underneath their shirts, which seemed almost un-Irish by this time. In a country where most of the police—excuse me: Gardai—aren’t armed, it seemed wrong for anyone else but us.

Nathaniel and I looked at each other. I concentrated on those big beautiful eyes of his and did my best not to look at his hair. It would grow back. It would. But if I paid attention to it at all, I was either going to start crying or screaming, and neither was going to help us. We needed to help ourselves, not hurt ourselves. Moroven was going to do that for us in an hour. I pushed her threats away, shoved the hatred in her eyes out of my head, or as much as I could. None of it helped me. I stared into Nathaniel’s eyes and thought how much I loved him. I looked down at the braid of his hair lying underneath him like a promise of things to come, which was exactly what it was. Fuck. I prayed for an idea of how to get us out of here, along with Damian.

Nathaniel rubbed the side of his face against the chain that was across his shoulder; he scraped the gag out of his mouth. He worked his jaws and said softly, “Gag was fastened over my braid.”

“Once she cut it, you had slack,” I said.

He smiled. “It will grow back.”

I nodded and managed to smile back at him.

The guard with the paler brown hair came toward us. “How did you get the gag out?”

Nathaniel answered, “It was tied around my hair, so now the gag is loose.”

The answer seemed to make the man uncomfortable. “You should do whatever she wants you to do,” he said.

“She’s going to kill me anyway,” I said.

“There are different ways to die, Anita. Don’t let her kill you slowly.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Barnabas,” he said.

The dark-haired guard called, “Don’t talk to them.”

“If you don’t want to watch her kill us slowly, Barnabas, help us get out of here.”

He shook his head and started backing away. “I feel sorry for you, but not that sorry.”

“Barnabas, get away from them!”

“I’m coming, Tommy.” But to us, he said very low, “Don’t look to me for help. If she tells me to kill you, I will. I’ll make it quick, but I will kill you both if she orders me to.”

“Good to know where we stand, Barnabas,” I said.

“Stop talking to the prisoners!” Tommy yelled, and started walking toward us.

Barnabas just walked back toward the other man, who continued to berate him for talking too much to us. He made it sound like we were stray puppies that you couldn’t get attached to because we were going to be put down anyway. I got the feeling that this wasn’t Tommy’s and Barnabas’s first rodeo that had ended with prisoners dying—fast or slow. There was no help there. We couldn’t offer Barnabas enough of anything to get him to betray the Wicked Bitch, and his friend Tommy was even less user friendly.

Nathaniel said, “It would be a shame if you never got to experience just how double-jointed I am again.”

It seemed like a nonsensical thing to say, but I knew in a moment like this, it had to be important. I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he whispered, “More double-jointed than Houdini.”

I finally realized what he meant: he was almost completely double-jointed. He could rotate his shoulders all the way around and pretty much everything else. It was interesting in the bedroom and when he danced onstage, but in this moment, it might be exactly what we needed. He could get out of the chains, and then he could let me go, if we could distract the guards.

I had to be the distraction, but how? I was wearing lingerie, so sex was an option. It certainly wasn’t a fate worse than death or watching while the Wicked Bitch cut pieces off Nathaniel. If I got the guards close enough and raised the ardeur, it might work, but I didn’t know if Moroven would sense it. The ardeur could be a flashy power, and we didn’t need more attention.

I looked up at the chains on my own wrists. My one hand was almost small enough to pull through if I was willing to lose some skin and bleed myself. Wait. The guards would notice that.

I looked at Nathaniel. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

“I love you most.”

“I love you mostest,” he said, smiling.

I smiled back, took a deep breath, and started pulling on my loosest wrist, hard.

Tommy of the black hair called out, “What are you doing?”