Elemental Thief

Chapter 27

Ridley woke slowly, becoming aware bit by bit of the dull pain in her head, the aching throughout her left side, the hard surface beneath her body. She peeled her eyelids apart as she probed at her memory, trying to dredge up her last waking thoughts before—

Crap. Her heart leaped into action, sending renewed pain shooting through her head as the scene in her apartment rocketed to the surface of her mind. She pushed herself up and took stock of her surroundings: An empty, unfamiliar room. A closed door. A single window. And no Dad.

"Dad," she whispered as her hand rose to the back of her head. Her fingers moved through her hair until she found the source of her headache: a large lump. One of Lawrence's men must have hit her. "Where are you?" she muttered, climbing to her feet. Her thoughts tumbled over one another, arriving all too quickly at the worst possible scenario. She was alive and trapped somewhere, which meant she was valuable to Lawrence. But Dad wasn't like her, which meant he wasn't valuable. Would Lawrence really have left him alive? Left him in a position where he could go to the police and tell them exactly who had broken into his home and abducted his daughter?

No, came the silent answer. Of course not.

But he can't be dead, she thought immediately. He CAN'T be. But the fact that Dad wasn't locked up here only served to confirm her worst fears. She hurried to the door and twisted the handle, though she knew already that it would be locked. When the door wouldn't budge, she jiggled the handle more desperately. A sob clawed its way up her throat, tightening her chest and stealing her breath.

"Stop it, stop it," she whispered fiercely to herself, stepping away from the door and forcing her hands to her sides. "Don't. Panic." She took several deep breaths, then let her magic rise away from her body. Before attempting any specific movements, she nudged the magic toward the door. It curled lazily through the air, brushed against the door, then rebounded instantly in a jagged flash, zigzagging back and forth almost too fast to follow. She stepped backward and out of the way just as the magic erupted into an explosion of sparks and vanished.

In the darkness that followed, Ridley let out a grim sigh. It was just as she'd expected: an arxium door. Or at least, it had arxium hiding somewhere inside it, since the door appeared to be made of wood. She turned and moved toward the window, where the heavy clouds blotting out most of the light made it hard to determine whether it was late afternoon or early evening. She nudged her magic toward the bars crisscrossing the window. The blue glow drifted slowly, then burst away from the window in a rush of angry sparks. Ridley ducked down, only rising again once the magic had vanished. "More arxium," she muttered. Another brief magical experiment informed her the floor, ceiling and walls also contained arxium.

Wonderful. Magic certainly wasn't going to get her out of here.

She gripped the bars and peered out of the window. Her eyes took in a perfectly landscaped garden with manicured hedges and white modern art sculptures, and in the distance, a familiar house. "Holy crud," she whispered. Even if she hadn't recognized the house, the oddly shaped sculptures would have given it away.

She was a prisoner on the mayor's property.

In his pool house, to be more precise, if she correctly remembered what she'd seen of his garden. It made sense, of course, given who had abducted her. But still, it seemed crazy that Lumina City's mayor had a room like this on his property. It couldn't have come about by accident. This room would have been made specifically to confine a person who might want to escape using magic. She doubted she was the first prisoner to inhabit this cell, which meant the mayor of Lumina City—and his son, it would seem—were in the habit of locking up magicists.

Ridley folded her arms and stared at the door she couldn't get through. Lawrence said he knew about her magic, but did he know exactly what she could do with it? Hopefully not. Because when he opened that door, she was going to get the hell out of here. How long would it take before he showed up though? Archer said Lawrence was meeting someone at Brex Tower tonight. The shorter, less extravagant version of Aura Tower. Had he left already, or would he come by to check on her before going?