The others agreed that this was an excellent idea, and I heard several sets of footsteps scurrying back and forth on the other side of the door, no doubt pulling out and arming the explosives that would turn us and this whole place into pancake central.

“Now what?” I whispered.

Fletcher looked around and around the room, trying to come up with an idea, just like I had. But he was more successful because his green gaze locked onto the barrels.

“If we can’t get out, we can’t get out,” he said. “Nothing’s going to change that no matter how much we curse. So let’s give them exactly what they want—us dead and buried.”

Fletcher grabbed one of the barrels, tipped it over, and crawled inside. It was a tight fit, but he folded up his body well enough so that the metal shell completely covered him.

Good thing, since I heard a series of blasts at the other end of the warehouse, and the concrete started screaming about all the fire, heat, and explosives that were ripping through it and heading in this direction.

Boom . . . Boom . . . BOOM!

Every successive blast was louder and closer than the last, and the entire building started to shake.

“Come on, Gin!” Fletcher called out above the growing din. “Get a move on!”

I had no choice but to follow his lead, tip one of the other barrels onto its side, and crawl inside. The metal smelled dry and ashy, and I could feel soot covering every part of me, almost like it had been used to store coal to burn in a furnace.

I pulled my feet inside the container just in time to keep them from being crushed by a chunk of stone that broke free from the wall and crashed to the ground. A second later, the door blew in with a deafening, fiery roar. The shock wave sent spiderweb cracks thicker than my fingers zigzagging through the floor and up the walls, and the room collapsed in on itself. A deadly shrapnel of concrete, cinder blocks, and thick lengths of rebar flew through the air, all of which clattered against and dented in the side of my barrel, as if I were in the middle of a terrible hailstorm. In a way, I suppose that I was.

As the debris knocked more and more dents into the sides of my makeshift cocoon, I wondered if the metal would give up and cave in completely. All it would take would be one piece of rebar to skewer me to death. Fletcher too. But it was too late now to do anything but huddle inside and hope that the barrel would somehow hold up against the chunks of stone that were raining down all around us—

BANG.

For a moment, I was still in the warehouse, still trapped in that soot-coated barrel, still watching the ceiling collapse and starting to bury Fletcher and me alive—

BANG.

The noise sounded again, snapping me out of the last dregs of my dream, my memory. I opened my eyes and sat up, putting my back against the bars and looking toward the cell door.

Dobson stood on the other side, a long, thick, black nightstick in his hands.

BANG.

He smacked the wood against the bars a third time, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of flinching at the hard sound.

“Rise and shine, Blanco,” he crowed. “You’ve got visitors.”

11

Dobson stepped to one side so an officer could insert a key in the cell door and open it. Five people trooped inside the barred space, a mix of men and women, all wearing the charcoal-gray prison jumpsuits of the Ashland correctional system. The officer stepped inside as well, unlocking and removing the silverstone handcuffs that kept the prisoners’ strength and elemental magic in check before scurrying back out with the cuffs and locking the door behind him.

I looked over the prisoners for a few seconds before turning my attention to the other people streaming into the room—all the ones outside the cell.

Uniformed officers, suited detectives, even the janitors and administrative staff gathered around the three sides of the cell. They stared through the bars at me, sizing me up, just as I was them. Then fat wads of cash started going from hand to hand to hand, and the conversation started, the chorus of voices getting louder and more excited as the money moved from one person to the next.

“Give me a thousand on whoever’s fighting Blanco.”

“Make it two thousand for me.”

“Five thousand says that she doesn’t even last five minutes in there.”

So there was to be some serious gambling to go along with tonight’s blood sport.

I expected nothing less from the bull pen.

I’d heard whispers about this place for years, and Fletcher had a file on it in his office, although I’d only skimmed the information. Still, I knew the gist of it. About this single cell hidden deep in the police station where the cops corralled particularly strong, sadistic, and troublesome prisoners, sicced them on each other late at night, and watched the resulting carnage for their own twisted amusement. From what I’d heard, the fight didn’t end, and the cops didn’t open the cell door, until at least one prisoner was dead.

And tonight, they wanted that prisoner to be me.

According to the rumors, most fights in the bull pen featured only two prisoners, not the five-on-one grudge match I was facing. But Dobson had obviously made some special arrangements for me, no doubt on Madeline’s orders. Still, as the rolls of bills kept going from one person to another, I couldn’t help but wonder how many folks were betting on me. Finn certainly would have, if he’d been here. But given the knowing smirks aimed in my direction, it didn’t seem that many people were willing to take a chance on me, not when I’d been so clearly marked for death. Their loss.

Dobson moved through the crowd, shaking hands, slapping backs, and taking bets, just like the aw-shucks good ole boy that he portrayed himself to be. He was definitely the ringmaster of this little circus, and I wondered how long he’d been bringing prisoners back here just so he could watch them bleed out and pad his own pockets at the same time. Well, I hoped that he enjoyed the show because tonight was going to be the final performance, if I had my way.

A clock mounted on the wall across from the cell told me that it was a few minutes until midnight. No doubt that’s when the action would officially get under way. So I used the remaining time to look beyond the cell and the cops, and I realized that people had also gathered on the second-floor balcony that overlooked the bull pen.

Three people, to be exact—Madeline, Emery, and Jonah.

Madeline relaxed in a padded seat behind the balcony railing, in the exact center of the room, directly across from the cell door, so that she could have the best view possible of my impending demise. Emery was seated at her right elbow, just like always, with Jonah standing a few feet away. All three of them were smiling with cold satisfaction, and a bottle of liquor was perched on the railing in front of them, as though they were going to toast my death. I wondered if they were going to smoke some cigars too.