Strains

When I open my eyes, I see nothing but gentle glows hanging from the walls. My head is throbbing and my stomach is doing cartwheels. What the hell was in that drink he gave me?

My vision focuses a little more and I realize where I am. To my right is the dead portal that I know is under the library. I climb the steps and try to open the door with no luck.

Why would he lock me down here?

I bang on the door for a minute and even try to shout for Caiden. But I stop when it’s apparent he isn’t letting me out and this noise isn’t helping my head. I slump against the door.

What am I going to do?

What can I do?

I guess I can’t do anything, except wait.

***

And wait I did. So long that when I got hungry, I ate the snacks that were lying outside of the portal. So long that I watched the light under the door fade and come back again. And long enough for my hair to grow back to its original length.

Caiden hasn’t come by at all, so I’m beginning to wonder how exactly I’m ‘helping’ him.

When I’m not thinking about that, I’m wondering if anyone is worried about me. Is anyone going to care enough to look for me? Even if Hercules is still upset with me, he’d have to notice that I’m not around to get him his wine. And Matthew would come back soon to give me a punishment.

They’d look for me, wouldn’t they?

I hope so. I’ve tugged on the door for hours, with zero progress. It’s looking like I’ll need rescuing this time.

Sucky.

Sometime in the evening, the door shakes behind me and opens. I lunge towards the opening, but Caiden pushes me back inside with a wall of fire.

“Sorry,” he says.

“You keep saying that, but it’d be a lot easier to believe if you let me get back to the academy.”

He walks past me, leaving an impassable wall of fire at the door.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Pissed, now let me out of here.”

“I’m being serious, Elizabeth.”

“So am I, Caiden.”

He grabs a few snacks and walks around the portal.

“Get down here.”

“No thanks,” I say and take a seat on the stairs. Like I want to binge on snacks with him as if I’m not some kind of prisoner. He stomps up the stairs and pulls on my arm. I try and pull away, but he pulls harder and forces me down the stairs.

I had no idea he was so strong.

“We’re going to need to speed this up.”

My stomach flips when he drags me to the portal. With nothing but junk food in my stomach, the nausea is overwhelming and I puke all over Caiden’s shoes. It would have been satisfying if I could have ruined them, but body nastiness has a tendency to disappear pretty much instantly in Near Elysium. But he must’ve been surprised anyway because his fire upstairs immediately goes out.

Caiden drops me and I fall to the ground. He takes out a knife and brings it to my neck.

“You can’t be serious. You trapped me down here just to kill me?”

His face turns to stone. “You’re not afraid?”

“Not even a little. Go ahead. At least I’ll be able to go back to my room. Just try and make it clean, I’d rather not have to sit here and wait to bleed out.”

He smirks.

“Going back to your room isn’t what I’m here for. You are going to open the portal.”

The hell I am, how would I do that anyway?

He’s about to say something else when the door upstairs bursts open and a dark figure bounds down the stairs.

Caiden sighs.

“I assumed you wouldn’t be here until tomorrow, Matthew.”

“Always happy to surprise you, Caiden. Now give me my student and we’ll go. Simple.”

Finally.

Caiden pulls me up but doesn’t release me.

“What exactly are your intentions with her?” he asks.

Matthew looks at him dubiously. “You kidnapped her and you have the nerve to ask me that?”

“There’s no way you volunteered to watch her out of the kindness of your heart. I’m not an idiot. I’ve figured you out. Now why don’t you tell your student the truth?”

“What are you talking about, Caiden?” I ask.

“Just kill her then,” Matthew says quickly. What the hell? I thought this was a rescue mission.

“Convincing the council that a strainless student could exist was a stroke of genius, I must say.”

“Shut up, Caiden. I’m warning you.”

“What are you saying?” I say, but I have a feeling I’m not a part of this conversation.

Matthew leaps forward, swinging a knife towards Caiden and I. Caiden gets us both out of the way before we can get hit. A wall of fire spreads between us and Matthew. Did he really just try to kill us both? It was like he didn’t care if he hit me.

“Your facilitator neglected to tell you a secret that only psychics know. There is a place between here and the living world. Where souls who’ve passed on are judged and sent elsewhere. Most do not choose where Fate places them, but psychics do. We are told that this is a world where we would be gifted supernatural abilities, where everyone is gifted.”

I look through the flames over at Matthew. He doesn’t need to say anything. The look on his face tells me everything I need to know, Caiden is telling the truth.

“But Doc said I didn’t have a strain either.”

“Not one that he can tell, but a psychic can always tell another psychic, isn’t that right, Matthew?”

“Quit trying to manipulate her. Everything I did, I did to protect her,” Matthew shouts over the roar of fire.

“Is that your excuse for erasing her memory? Or poisoning her food?”

What is all this?

Caiden loosens his grip and I crumble to the floor. None of this can be right. Tears begin to stream down my face. My stomach cramps begin to rack my body until I’m doubled over. This can’t be right. Matthew…he wouldn’t. How could Caiden accuse him of those things?

I don’t want to believe it, but slowly the pieces come together as a puzzle I don’t like the look of. Matthew forcing me on a diet, and Hercules feeling weak when he ate my food. Matthew knowing where my arrival point was. Him agreeing to be my facilitator.

“Matthew, what did you do?” I sob.

“Elizabeth, do you still want to stay here? I mean really? What does this place have to offer you?” Caiden says, but his voice is only a faint echo. Matthew refuses to answer my question, so I break our eye contact to look at the floor. There, right next to my hands, is a piece of taffy. The white wrapping paper is nostalgic and reminds me of the boardwalk I lived near. I can see it so clearly, the cobblestone road that was too narrow for a car to pass through. A candy shop with a large picture window that looked onto the taffy stretchers as they weaved salt through the candy.

Without touching the taffy, I can taste it. In fact, I think I hear the ocean.