We crept low through the grass. My breathing came out more ragged than usual. What was I doing? What was I about to take part in?
Ari trusts him, you trust her. You’re freeing an innocent man. You might earn a shard. Any of those reasons ring a bell?
But as we drew closer to the intimidating fortress that was Blackveil Paranormal Prison, that reasoning started feeling flimsy as rice paper. I feared this was something that, if it went wrong, not even the Outcasts could save me from. Lukas and Valencia would probably thank me for making their job easier.
“Riley.”
Ari’s voice brought me back. She crouched at the edge of the grass where it stopped at open land leading to the prison’s gates. “You okay?”
I hoped my uncertainty wasn’t showing. “Just peachy.”
“No time for wigging out now. There’s work to be done,” Mitch said.
“I said I’m peachy,” I added with more bite in my voice. I tried to show it, too, tightening my hands into fists. Calming my breathing and focusing on that small, smooth steel sphere deep inside me. An infinitesimal bit of calm trickled through me.
“Here.” Ari handed me a slim piece of fabric I realized was a mask. “Tie it over your eyes. Nothing we can really do about your hair but I’m sure we’ll be all right.”
“You two have one?” I said, fastening the fabric around my face and adjusting it so that it didn’t obscure my vision. “They’ll be more likely to recognize both of you more than me.”
Ari and Mitch both held up theirs. “It’ll do the job,” Ari said. “But we’ll try to stay shifted as much as possible. That shouldn’t cause any problems.”
She nodded at my disguise before turning her attention back to the front of the prison. “They normally run patrols around the outside but this is Marco’s shift. He should be out here soon.”
“And you’re sure we can trust him?” I said.
“Sure as anyone else,” Mitch said, not reassuring me in the least.
“Marco knows us. He won’t squeal,” Ari said. She stood slightly from her crouch. “There he is. Come on.”
We skirted around the outside of the open field. Powerful floodlights—I assumed protected from magical interference—swept sporadically across both the inside and out. As we drew closer to the towering walls, I could make out the stock-still silhouettes of guards in some of the towers. A couple more moved slowly atop the walls, but they weren’t near our side.
We reached the base of the nearest wall and pressed ourselves against it. Movement flashed out of the corner of my eye and a guy appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He was stocky with wavy black hair, dressed in a navy prison guard suit.
“You made it,” Marco said. His eyes lingered on me before moving up the wall to where the nearest guard tower was. “I know you won’t change your mind, but I still think this is a bad idea.”
“You know as well as I do my son is innocent,” Mitch growled.
Marco nodded. “The trial they put Corey through wasn’t fair, I know. But I still think waiting out his sentence would be best. I know that’s not going to happen,” he added, hands up, as Mitch swelled with anger.
Ari patted Marco on the shoulder. “We appreciate you doing this. You sure they won’t blame us getting in on you?”
“If anyone gets in or out that means multiple people failed. They won’t be able to pin a break-in solely on me.” He pointed down the length of the wall. “There’s a guard entrance about fifty yards down, blended to look like part of the wall. We’re between shifts so you need to hurry inside.”
“Thanks, Marco,” Ari said.
“Don’t thank me yet. And stay away from the isolation ward.” His voice carried an even more serious tone. “I don’t have to remind you what kind of prisoners they keep in there.”
“I could use a reminder,” I said. Growing panic was making it hard to breathe again.
“It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Mitch said. “Now let’s move.”
Ari and Mitch took off down the wall.
“I hope you’re not in too deep with this,” Marco said to me. “Whatever it is they’re promising you, I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
Him and me both. “We’ll just have to see, won’t we?” I said before jogging after the others.
Mitch was running his fingers along the wall when I caught up. His sharpened nails snagged on a seam in the metal and he grinned. “Found it.”
The door swung open and we found ourselves inside the yard, in a small partition protected by a thick chain-link fence and topped with barbed wire. The spotlights from the towers were away from us but moving fast in our direction.
“Get on.” I hadn’t seen Ari or Mitch shift, but suddenly a cheetah and a lion stood beside me. Mitch had lowered his front paws to make it easier for me to mount.
The flood lights were nearly on us. A growl rose in his throat. “Now.”
I hurriedly swung my legs over his back. He took off before I was totally settled, tearing around the outside of the gate at a blur, Ari just ahead. I could feel rather than see the yellow wash of the spotlight tailing us. I pressed my face closer to the back of Mitch’s mane.
“Faster!” I hissed.
“I’m plenty fast!”
The yellow grew in my peripheral. “Mitch! Faster!”
“I ain’t your horse!”
I wanted to say that he’d been the one who’d offered, but my heart had stuck in my throat as my eyes began to water from the burning glare of the light.
“Inside!”
And then Ari was throwing open a door at the far end of the yard and we were tumbling inside, me hitting the hard concrete floor as Mitch shifted back. I was up in an instant, sure that we’d stumbled right into a nest of guards, but the room was empty. Rows of lockers lined either side. A Hang in there! poster of a baby panther holding onto a rope by its front paws was plastered on one wall, beside an announcement for a guard pickup game of basketball and someone looking for their electric toothbrush.
Ari went to the door and glanced outside. “Marco was right, they’re switching patrols. We don’t have much time.”
I noticed a pile of neatly folded clothing beside her. Guard uniforms. Looked like the laundry had just come in.
“Here.” I rustled through the pile, coming up with a shirt and pants for each of us.
“We don’t got time for this,” Mitch grumbled.
“You have time to get caught?” I snapped. “This will make it easier for us to move around. Unless you plan on sprinting through the entire prison.” I tossed him a uniform. “Put them on.”
Ari wrinkled her nose at the shirt and pants I gave her. “Come on, I haven’t gained that much weight.”
Never before had I so calmly wanted to strangle two people.
It took longer than I would have liked but finally we all slipped the guard uniforms over our normal clothes. Hopefully nobody would question why the once neatly folded laundry now resembled a pile they’d find on the floor of a teenage boy’s room.
“One final thing,” I said. I tossed them both hats with Blackveil Paranormal Prison stenciled on the front. “The masks will be a dead giveaway. Try to hide your face as best you can. Hopefully with these nobody here will be able to recognize you.”
The look Ari and Mitch shared made my chest clench with anxiety.
“Yeah, hopefully,” Ari said finally before shoving it on her head and pulling it low. “Let’s go.”
The hallway outside was still empty. I heard voices close by, but not close enough that I thought we were in imminent danger of being discovered. Not yet, anyway.
“Prison block one for the witches and such is this way.” Mitch pointed to the right and we took off at a fast walk. The back end of Blackveil was nothing but rough concrete hallways and the smell of rust. Ari peered around every corner before waving us on. We heard laughing and talking from some of the rooms with open doors. As we swiftly snuck past I spied guards huddled around tables or TVs. A couple more were playing cards.
After what felt like an eternity, my pulse hammering the inside of my skull the entire time, we crossed another four-way intersection. I immediately felt a change in the air. It was a cold, heavy blanket smothering every inch of me, seeping into my skin and only stopping just short of the steel sphere I’d surrounded my magic with.
“Feel that?” I whispered.
Ari nodded. “It’s a massive repression charm.”
“That means we’re in block one,” Mitch said. “We should split up and look—”
“We should totally not do that,” I said. “That’s, like, horror and prison break movie 101.”
“In prison break movies they always split up,” Mitch huffed. “You might be some super special elemental, but this is my turf, kid.”
“She’s got a point, Mitch,” Ari said. “I don’t want to be worrying about you the entire time.”
“Ha! Worry ’bout me? Who do you think you’re talking to—”
“Here we go!” Ari said, brushing past him to a piece of paper posted beneath laminate. “It’s a schedule.” She ran her finger down it. “Guard assignments and the prisoner rotations. Let’s see…Let’s see…Ah!”
She tapped one of the blocky times on the schedule. “It’ll be easier to find Corey when all the prisoners are out in the yard, but it says the earliest they’re released won’t be until the morning.”
“We don’t got time for that,” Mitch said. “Uniforms or not, we’ll be caught for sure by then.”
“Then what do we do?” I said, trying not to shoot furtive glances down the hallway. The voices from the break room were getting louder, or maybe that was my growing fear.
“We passed something that gave me an idea,” Mitch said, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Be right back.”
Before Ari or I could argue, he’d shifted to his lion form and sprinted back the way we’d come.
“Not to sound rude, but is he capable of listening to anyone?” I asked.
“He was the leader of Fang and Claw for a long time, so he’s used to leading,” Ari said with a defeated sigh. “It may not seem like it, but he usually has more of a plan than he lets on. I’m sure he has a good ide—”
An earsplitting alarm cut through the air. The lights immediately changed from dim yellow to angry red, the blaring beating like a drum through my bones.
I smashed my hands over my ears. “He has a plan?” I shouted at Ari.
“I said usually, not always!” she shouted back.
The ground vibrated and I spun to face it, expecting a torrent of guards headed our way, but it was only Mitch, back in human form, sprinting toward us, an exuberant grin on his face. He grabbed our arms as he ran past. “I set off the alarm!”
“We can tell! Why did you think that’d be a good idea?” Ari screeched.
“Because that’ll wake up all the prisoners. And that means…”
We took the next turn and stopped. The alarm wasn’t so jarring out here, mostly because we’d entered an enormous space that seemed to absorb the sound and disperse it far over our heads, sounding not unlike that screeching vulturous creature. Two floors of cells lined with steel bars ringed the room. In the very center sat an intimidating black obelisk, its surface carved with runic markings. Even from here I could feel the power emanating off it. That had to be what kept the prisoners’ magic at bay.
“Hear that?” Mitch said, cupping a hand to his ear, a grin on his face.
I was pretty sure I couldn’t hear jack squat over the alarm, but the closer I listened the more I picked it out. Disgruntled shouting. Cursing.
Little by little, hands and arms shot through bars and yelled at someone to “shut that stupid thing up, can’t you see I’m tryin’ to sleep here?” Others yelled things that were…not so polite.
“We’ll get a much easier look at them now,” Ari said, nodding appreciatively. “I’ll admit that was a…decent idea.”
Mitch pulled his hat farther down his face and took the stairs to the first floor of prisoners. “A quick lap around these two floors and we should find him. Piece of cake.”
I kept my eye on the obelisk as I followed them up. Then I kept my eyes on everywhere but.
“Hey, sweetheart…” a man crooned, leaning casually against the bars of his cell. “I normally hate waking up, but if I get to see you then it’s not so bad.”
Shivering, I tucked any errant strands of red hair beneath my hat and hurried to catch up with the others.
“Where you going? I won’t bite! Though if you’re into that, I got some friends I can share you with…”
“Ignore them,” Ari said. She scanned each of the cells we passed. Many of the prisoners had picked up that there were guards walking around and were either coming to jeer and leer at us or were staying deep within the shadows of their cells. “Most of them are all talk.”
“Most,” Mitch warned.
“I can’t believe you put up with this,” I said as we passed one cell where a woman sat in the corner, fingers moving in rapid gestures, muttering what I assumed were spells under her breath. “How did you make it through?”
“You establish very early that you’re not someone to mess with,” Ari said. “I knocked a few heads around. Broke a few teeth. And bones. And…other things. In here, the worst thing you can do is become the victim.”
“And you joined Fang and Claw. Don’t forget,” Mitch said. He gave a threatening growl at a prisoner who reached a little too close to my shoulder. The man immediately scampered back. “We protect our own.”
Ari smiled. “That you do.”
Much like I’d done when shielding my magic, I focused inward, blocking out the jeers thrown our way. Eventually, we made it around the first floor and headed to the second.
“What if he’s not here?” I said. I scooted out of reach of the latest pair of grabbing hands. Ari shot the guy a look I was pretty sure said “you lay a finger on her, I break yours.”.
“He’ll be here,” Mitch said.
“And if he’s not? Is there anywhere else he could be?”
“What about the isolation—” Ari said.
“He’ll be here,” Mitch insisted. “No way they’d send my boy to that hellhole.”
But by the time we neared the end of the second floor of cells, even Mitch had begun to lose confidence. “He ain’t here. Why ain’t he here?”
“Mitch, I know you hate it, but we have to check the isolation block,” Ari said. “We’ll make it fast and then we have to get—”
She stiffened, panic in her eyes. I followed her gaze and my stomach dropped. Three guards—real guards—were heading straight toward us.
“What are you doing up here?” the leader said. She scratched the side of her head with her hat. “Didn’t know they sent anyone up to check yet.”
There was a horrible moment of hesitation where none of us spoke, and then I blurted, “Yeah they did. They, uh, sent us. To check. And we did. Check, I mean. We checked all the cells. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Ari and Mitch winced. The other two guards frowned at me.
“We know nothing’s out of the ordinary,” the woman said. “It was a false alarm.” She let out a growling sigh and kicked at the nearest cell where one of the prisoners had gotten too close. “This stupid place is breaking down, a garbage-filled disaster waiting to happen. And not just literal garbage, either, if you get what I mean? If it isn’t one thing it’s another.”
“Maybe we should let ’em all out into the yard now,” Mitch said, pitching his voice lower in a horrible attempt to disguise it.
“You kidding?” one of the men said. “Not after yesterday.”
“Uh, what happened yesterday, again?”
“You must be stupid or unobservant,” the third guy said, and I had to clench my fist to resist punching him and totally blowing our cover. “Prisoner brawl? Lucky it didn’t spill over into the shifter block. Took five guys to put one of the instigators away in isolation.”
I resisted giving Ari and Mitch a significant look. “Was there another guy involved in this brawl?”
Now the leader, too, was giving me a strange look. “You think he beat up himself? Course there was.”
“Right. Of course. We should, uh, head back down. Check in and report.”
Ari tugged her cap lower on her head as we brushed past them. I held my breath until we hit the stairs, and then let it out in one exultant sigh.
“Hey!”
My panic came rushing back. One of the guards was pointing at Ari. “Take off your hat!”
“What for?” Mitch said.
“I said take off your hat! Piercings are against regulation!”
I grimaced. Piercings. I hadn’t thought about that. And it was something Ari had loads of.
“Wait a minute…” the other guard said, peering closer. “Doesn’t she look—”
“She does,” the woman said, taking a step forward. With a snarl she shifted into a wolf and barred her teeth. “Sound the alarm for real. We have intruders.”