CHAPTER 14: CLEARING THE AIR

            Leila was on her feet in an instant.

            “ANGEL!” Leila cried.  “HE’S HERE!”

            “Do you seriously think she can hear you?” I asked.  She continued to holler.  “Even if she could,” I continued, “do you think your fate would be any less severe?”

            “It might,” she said defiantly.

            “No.  It won’t.”

            She shook her head at me.  “I figured you got shrunk.  Though I don’t know how you managed to get here.  Especially in her room.  You must have a death wish,” she said.  “So, what now?  You’re here to gloat?”

            “No.  I want to get out of here.  And I’m assuming you do, too,” I said.

            “She’ll find you.  When she wakes up, I’ll tell her you were here.  And you’ll be sorry, and she’ll restore me.  She’ll find you, and she’ll kill you-” she said.

            “Before or after she kills you, too?” I wouldn’t give her a chance to respond to that rhetorical question.  “Have you forgotten what she just did to your brother?  To Kyle?”

            Her brown eyes smoldered at the mention of his name.

            “How do you know about that?” She asked.

            “I was there.  Clinging to Angel’s… panties.  I saw.”

            “You really are trying to get yourself killed, aren’t you?” She said, shaking her head more.

            “We don’t have much time,” I said.  “Either I can disappear, leave to your fate, and take my chances alone, or we can help each other and at least make a decent attempt to get out of this place.”

            “There is no getting out of this place.”

            “What’s it going to be?” I asked.

            Leila looked at me for a long moment, and then she looked past me at the slumbering giantess witch who murdered her brother less than an hour ago.  Then her eyes met mine again.

            “Do you have a plan?” She asked.

            I smiled.  “We should have this conversation somewhere else.”

            She couldn’t argue with that.  I approached the hair brush Angel had set upon the dresser a little earlier.  With some effort, I managed to untangle a long strand of her black hair.  It was heavier than I’d imagined, and as thick as steel cable.  After several attempts at trying to maneuver one end of Angel’s hairs over the small fishbowl (I couldn’t exactly lasso the damn thing), it cleared the rim.  Pushing the hair carefully, Leila was finally able to reach it from her side of the glass.

            “Do you have it?” I asked.

            She nodded.

            I pulled, and I pulled some more.  When she neared the top, she reached her arm over the lip of the glass.  She swung a leg over, but lost her grip and tumbled right out of the bowl.  I managed to catch her in my arms.  I looked at her face for a moment, and then awkwardly set her down.  I showed her the air vent I planned to use for escape on the far wall.  She agreed it was our best way out of here.  We climbed down a cord extending from a small stereo on Angel’s dresser.  Leila was surprisingly agile, and she kept up with me all the way to the floor.  When we finally approached the air vent, I realized it was a little out of our reach.

“Now what, smart guy?” She quipped.

I scanned the room again.  “Give me a hand with that,” I said, pointing.

We found one of Angel’s stiletto pumps, the one used to crush the barkeep, not all that far away.  With our combined effort, we were able to push it up against the vent.  Climbing in through the open toe of Angel’s shoe, we carefully worked our way up the slick surface towards the heel.  Climbing the back end of the shoe, we were now at the vent.  I went inside first, then grabbed Leila’s hand and pulled her through.  I looked back at Angel’s shoe, realizing how suspicious it looked there.  We probably had a few hours before morning, maybe not even that.  Whatever we were going to do, we needed to do it fast.  When Angel saw the empty fishbowl, it wouldn’t take her long to figure out where Leila went.  And that she had help.

The vents were fairly clean, but there was enough dirt and debris to make for easy footing, especially on the inclines.  We started walking, still without a plan, but we agreed that get away from Angel’s room was a good start.  But first…

            “So I have to ask you something,” I said, still walking.  “You’ve already double-crossed me once tonight.  Should I expect a triple-cross the moment I turn my back on you?”

            “Right.  Sorry about that,” she said, sheepishly.  “I… panicked.”

            “Explain.”

            “When I came to you,” she gave me an Allstate gesture with her hands, “that was real.  I was going to have you… expose them.  Us.”

            “I figured as much,” I said.  “Your cover story was the truth.  Kyle is… was… your brother.  You even gave me his photo.  You gave me $5,000 up front.  And promised another $20,000 later.  Very Han Solo of you, by the way.  Pretty steep bait for just another guy to ‘snatch,’ don’t you think?”

            “I panicked.”

            “You said that already.”

            “When you turned your back, I got a text.  It said, ‘Abort.  She’s watching you.’  And I panicked.  That’s why I sent you to the bar.  If I followed through and gave you the proof of everything that went on here, she’d have known.  I had to think quickly.  I’m sorry.”

            “A text?  From whom?” I asked.

            “A girl.  One of the girls here.  She was gonna leave with me once we exposed this thing.”

            “Nicole?” I asked.

            She stopped.  “How… how could you possibly know that?”

            “Let’s say I have been people-watching since I’ve been here.  She’s the only one I’ve seen not enjoying herself in the… activities.  So you got cornered, and you threw me to the wolves.  That sound about right?” I asked.

            “Sorry.”

            “Yeah, you said that, too.”

            We were walking again.

            “And Jayne?  Seriously?” I threw my arms up.  “I watched what she did to her draw tonight.  Thanks a lot,” I said.

            “You know why I had to get Kyle away from her, then.”

            “How did that happen?” I wanted to hear that story.

            “Angel brought him here.  Inadvertently, in a snatch.  I didn’t know until I saw the fresh batch of guys.  I was going to select him with my draw, but Jayne beat me to it.  I took my little man to Jayne’s room, and I… offered a trade.  When she refused, I pulled a sleight of hand.  I swapped my man for Kyle and… smashed him, the other guy… before Jayne realized I’d made a switch.  I told her I didn’t mean to, and that I’d make it up to her.”

            “You’re a killer,” I pointed out.

            “I don’t want to be.  Not anymore.  All these guys are… someone’s brother, someone’s son.  Someone’s someone, you know?”  I don’t know why, but I believed her.  “It’s true.  I don’t want to be a part of this anymore.  That’s why I came to you.”

            “So you smuggled Kyle out, and then you… and Nicole… hatched a plan to get this place exposed.  That sound about right?”

            “Yes.”

            “One more thing,” I said.  “Do you seriously believe Angel snatching Kyle was an accident?”

            She looked at me.  “No.  No, I guess I don’t.”

            “So are you going to triple-cross me?”

            “No.”

            We approached the light of another vent.  The basement.  I had almost forgotten what I’d seen in this room.

            “Tell me about that,” I said, pointing.

            In the middle of the basement looked like a very small but detailed model town.  There were crude but structured buildings.  Even what could have passed for streets.  The entire model was no more than a miniature city block.  And the whole thing was draped by a mesh fence.  The material reminded me of a screen door, or a mosquito net.  But this one wasn’t designed to keep things out.

            “That’s…  I guess you can call that the city of Angel’s,” Leila said, shrugging.

            “Cute.  How many are there?”

            “A lot.  Hundreds, I dunno.  She brings them out, like forty or fifty at a time, during the monthly draw.  And let’s us pick.”

            “How many of you girls are there?”

            “Twelve, including me.”

            “How old is she?” I asked.

            “Who?”

            “You know who.”

            Even Leila didn’t know the answer to that one.

            “Fine.  Tell me how the amulet works.  That’s our key to returning to normal, right?” I asked.

            “That’s going to be a problem.  Only she, Nicole, and Jayne can actually use it,” Leila said.

            “Why?” I was somehow not all that surprised.

            “They’re witches.  I mean, Angel is a true witch, and Jayne and Nicole are her … I guess junior varsity, I dunno.  She empowered them because she trusts them.  She going to give them the… um… power.  That’s the ultimate goal of all of the girls, to be initiated into witches and learn the power.”

            “What power?” I asked.

            “Immortality.”

            “You mean agelessness?  I know she’s old…” I started shaking my head.

            “Not just old.  REALLY old.  And no, I don’t just mean agelessness.  She can’t be killed.”

            “How?” I asked.  Disbelief wouldn’t even register anymore after everything I’d seen.

            “How what?”

            “How will she be able to pass this power on?” And I can’t believe I was talking about “powers.”

            “A ritual.  Something about how she kills off her draw.”

            “The blue light,” I murmured, remembered Wingman’s end.  Leila stopped in her tracks.

            “What did you just say?” She asked.

            “Nothing.”