“Did the Healer have claws, Ula? Human hands but for claws?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “His claws… How did you know?”

“I’ve met someone who told me about him,” I said, hearing Ryu and Anyan shift in their chairs on the other side of the room. “He sounds like a nasty piece of work.”

“He called himself a Healer, but the things he did… He just tore through our bodies…” For the first time since we’d started talking, Ula’s eyes filled with tears. I extricated one of my hands from her grip, squeezing the other to let her know I wasn’t letting her go, then passed her a tissue I had stashed in my hoodie’s pocket. I glanced quickly at Anyan, and he nodded. Ula had done everything she could for now. Except for one, last question…

“Ula? Honey? I understand how you were captured. But how could… how could they keep you? Why didn’t you use your magic?”

“They gave us shots. Two the day we were captured, then every morning. Something in them made it so we couldn’t feel our elements.” Ula let go of my hands in order to grasp the cushions she sat on. I could hear fabric ripping as she tensed. “And I still can’t feel them. I can’t feel… anything. What if I can never use my magic again?” Her eyes searched mine, her expression pleading, and I could feel her rising panic so palpably it made my flight-or-fight response start to kick off in reaction.

“What if I’m ruined?” she asked finally, her small green face creasing with agony.

“We’ll figure out what they did to you,” I hissed, suddenly furious. “We will figure out what they did, and then we will fix you. You’re not ruined, Ula. Never ruined.”

She sobbed once, hard, and I reached for her. She cried in my arms, and I told her, over and over again, that we would find out what had happened to her.

And I prayed to every god I’d ever heard of, including that of Job, that I was telling the broken little kappa the truth.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Do they make something stronger than whisky?” I asked numbly from my corner of the booth.

“Nope. Unless they have moonshine,” was Anyan’s only response.

“Then I’ll take whisky, too. Make it a double. If they won’t sell you the bottle.”

The barghest gave me a grim smile then went to get our drinks, leaving me with Caleb, Daoud, Ryu, and Julian.

We were spread out in one of our fancy hotel’s giant, cushy booths, but we all looked like we’d just come from a funeral.

Each of the women had told a similar story of horror, and the healers who attended them had been able to fill in blanks that they were as yet incapable of revealing. Besides rapes and beatings, each of the women had endured different series of bizarre, Dr. Mengele–type experiments. One woman had her ovaries replaced with a human’s; one had her womb removed and replaced with a bizarre balloonlike contraption; yet another had a human fetus implanted inside her. We didn’t even bother to conjecture about what had happened to the pregnant human. By the time they were rescued, most of the women’s “surgeries” were so infected that they’d basically had to be hollowed out, losing any of the female reproductive organs that the “Healer” and his monstrous cohorts hadn’t gotten to first.

And I’d been the one to talk to all of the victims. They’d clammed up, and understandably so, whenever a male spoke to them. Even Ryu—who, for all his flaws, was a master at getting people to trust him—couldn’t make a dent. Anyan, with his huge size and intimidating features, didn’t stand a chance.

But they’d all talked to me. I was small, and a woman, and the havsrå—an absolutely beautiful creature with perfect female features, except for a strange, hollowed-out back—had commented that she could see I’d been hurt as well. When I told her that the people who captured her were responsible for the deaths of my mother and my close friend, she’d actually tried to comfort me. Her kindness had nearly broken through my attempts at professionalism, considering that her beauty and grace had made her a particular favorite of her captors.

And yet, despite the horrors she’d endured, there was still kindness in her soul.

“Those bastards tried to break those women,” I said rather randomly. “But they didn’t succeed. The females, they’re going to be okay.” I nodded my head firmly, as if by saying it I could make it so.

The boys just looked down glumly. I think the fact that they’d had to sit on their hands and be quiet through the women’s stories made it all even worse, for them. Especially for Ryu, who was used to being in the center of things. And despite their violent histories, both baobhan sith and the barghest had been horrified by what they’d heard from the women and from what we’d been told in our own healer’s reports. My compatriots may have been accustomed to war and certain forms of brutality. But there was a big difference between what happened on a battlefield and the shit some sadist could dream up given time, a female captive, and a lot of pointy medical equipment.

Ryu sidled closer to me in the booth. I was too weary, at that point, to sidle myself away.

“You were amazing today, Jane.”

“Thanks, Ryu. But I just did what I had to do.”

“No, it was incredible how you talked to those women. You were so brave.”

“Somebody has to talk to them. They have to tell their stories. And somebody has to listen.”

Ryu frowned, clearly at a loss for how to talk to me. But after everything we’d heard today, the last thing on earth I wanted was flattery. I wasn’t being brave or strong, I was simply in the same position that we all were in: doing the best we could to get through the next five minutes.

And to stay human while we do it. That thought managed to bring a small smile to my lips, and my eyes sought out Anyan’s big figure at the bar. He was hard at work negotiating with the waitress as I think he was really trying to buy the whole bottle. I’d noticed, over the course of our various adventures, that he never glamoured any humans unless he absolutely had to, and she appeared to be giving him a hard time.

“Jane?” Ryu interrupted my barghest-ogling.

“Sorry, what?”

“I was asking about how you were doing. With Iris and everything.”

“I’m doing okay, actually. I think.”

“I’m very sorry for her loss. And for yours.”

“Thanks,” I said, wishing we could talk about something—anything—else.

“Whisky,” Anyan’s gruff voice interrupted as he plonked down a bottle of Black Label and five glasses. “She wanted a kidney for the Balvenie, so this’ll have to do,” he apologized, quite unapologetically.

“Thanks, Anyan,” I said, already reaching for the bottle. “I am gonna have some booze, and then go to bed. I feel like we’ve been running a gauntlet all day, I’m so exhausted…”

Before I could finish, I felt that familiar, yet ever strange tingle of First Magic, just as Terk apparated in, directly onto my lap.

Fuck, I thought, knowing that whatever the brownie was here for, it would probably mean an end to my early-to-bed fantasies.

The little creature in my lap waved at me, then threw open its arms for a hug. I couldn’t help but smile as I leaned forward, wrapping my arms gingerly around its little shape. Terk was so small that I was practically smothering the poor little brownie in my bosom, when Anyan coughed.

“Um, Jane, I really wouldn’t…”

Before he could finish, Terk pulled back to give Anyan an angry squint with his right three eyes. Then he made a gesture and there was a loud pop as a letter apparated onto the low tabletop in front of us.

Terk gave me one last sweet smile, chittered something that sounded rather miffed in Anyan’s direction, and then popped himself out. After which we all sat, staring at the letter like it might be a bomb.

Finally, Anyan reached forward with a small sigh and opened it. After a few seconds, he read to us its contents.

“It’s from Cap. In the last few days they discovered another laboratory in Wisconsin, but still in Borderland territory. Terk flashed everyone in for a raid, right away, and they captured a doctor. The rest of the staff were killed or killed themselves. The rescued vics were all halflings this time, so they don’t want to talk to us. But we can have the doctor now that they’re done with their questioning. Cap and the girls are gonna start toward us tonight; we’ll meet her halfway and she’ll give him to us. There are maps, everything else we need. Bad news is, we need to leave in an hour.”

“Fuck.” Daoud moaned, scrubbing a hand over his face.

We all nodded agreement as Anyan corked the whisky back up. Standing wearily, we made our separate ways to our rooms so we could pack. I was so tired, in fact, that it took me a second to process anything past the fact of my exhaustion. But then I finally realized what we’d just been told: We were finally getting our mitts on one of the doctors. We would finally get some answers; maybe get some proof as to who was really behind these laboratories.

My power crackled about me, the ocean’s power surging through me at the thought of getting answers. And of getting our hands on one of the monsters responsible for all the pain to which we’d been witness today.