Page 16 of Locked
I moved quickly past Basil in the living room and made my way to my room.
"Are you okay, Zelle?" Basil asked, darting after me as soon as he realized something was wrong.
"I'm fine… just… ready for bed."
"Okay…" he said slowly, peering at me from the doorway. "I guess I could sleep too." He jumped up on the bed, curling up beside me.
His purrs calmed me down enough to almost fall asleep. Instead, I just stared up at the darkened ceiling, wondering why I'd done what I'd done.
Kinden
I groaned, letting my phone fall from my hands and onto my lap. Covering my face, I swore into the empty room.
I'd really done it this time. She wouldn't even read my messages.
Fucking great job…I lamented to myself.
I hadn't meant for it to happen. Not again. I was too opinionated. Zelle wasn't ready to hear it yet.
Sorrel popped his head in through the living room doorway, his mouth moving as he chewed something. A sandwich. A cookie. Something not-crunchy. But something. He was always eating.
His brow knit with worry. "What did you do this time?" he asked.
"Is it that obvious?" I asked miserably.
"Kinden…" he said, the rest of his body followed his head into the room and I saw what he was eating. A sandwich. I was right. He had a ham and cheese on rye clutched in his left hand. A blob of mayonnaise fell from the bottom of it and plopped on the ground at his feet. "Oops…" he muttered, glancing around for a tissue or something to wipe it up. A double split off from his body, darting back into the kitchen for a napkin, but making no move to clean up the mayo on his own.
I rolled my eyes and snapped my fingers, cleaning the greasy condiment from the hardwood floors and wondering just what kind of a hogsty this would be if Sorrel lived by himself. You'd think, with his ability to make nearly identical doubles of himself, he'd be able to train one of them to clean up.
"I argued with her about that… that woman again…" I admitted, waiting for the inevitable sigh from Sorrel and being surprised when it didn't come.
"I don't know what that bitch did to Zelle to make her come to her defense so quickly…" he said, shaking his head as his double dropped the napkin on his plate, fusing seamlessly back into his body. Sorrel's hunter training never ceased to amaze me. Even though, I was fairly certain that his ancestors were spinning in their graves at the thought of an elven hunter's double being used to fetch napkins from the kitchen.
"Held her prisoner for her entire life? Kept her cut off from the outside world? Has her fearing for her life on a daily basis?" I filled in.
"I know youthinkyou know what's being done to her, but you don't know the specifics. You know the words and the verbiage, but that's not knowing what it's like, Kin."
I knew that. A lump rose in my throat. Of course she had to defend her captor. When the only person you saw was your captor, you had to build a rapport. I'd read extensively on the subject for the past year. Basically ever since we'd first encountered Zelle online. And yet, still… I couldn't quite grasp the delicacy that was needed.
Sorrel had been the one to discover her blog.
Rifyr had been the first to establish contact.
And all I seemed to do was upset her.
"Look, if we can get a little more info, you know we can help her out…" Sorrel said, taking a seat opposite me on the sofa. He caught more mayo on his thumb and I wondered if I should just cast a self-cleaning charm on the couch to cover all my bases. It seemed like I used my mage training more for house-cleaning than I did at work. "I wish we knew someone who could take another look at that law. Someone in the King's Court, maybe? There's gotta be some way to invoke a statute of limitations of witch ownership."
"Yeah, but we can't. We can't get that info from her. She won't give it to us. Also, we don't know anyone in the King's Court. And nobody wants to mess with the witches anyway. There's not many cases anymore and I think they're hoping it'll die out. They're probably scared that the witches will remember they can trade humans for services and start doing it again."
Sorrel groaned in exasperation. "Every single witch I know wouldn't give two shits if they made human trade illegal."
"We just don't know enough about Zelle to take this to anyone…" I replied. And we didn't. We only knew what she chose to share with us. And there was a distinct possibility that it wasn't real anyway.
There was always the unspoken fear. I knew we all thought about it sometimes.
That Zelle might not be real. That she really was too good to be true.
Except, what was she getting out of us if that were true? We had no way of sending her financial support or gifts. It wasn't like we were being catfished.
