Free Haze by Paula Weston Page A

get out of this rat trap.’
    ‘Do you think…?’ The chill is all through my body now.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Do you seriously believe the family is tied up with demons? With Zarael?’ I haven’t seen the leader of the Gatekeepers. I never want to.
    Rafa opens his mouth to reply but sees something in my face that makes him pause. He rethinks what he was about to say. ‘Look, I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, but it’s not likely the Gatekeepers are involved.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘For a start, if they had a place that could trap us, they wouldn’t be leaving it unguarded. And trust me, if Zarael or Bel had been here, little miss let’s-do-a-deal wouldn’t be in one piece. Demons aren’t renowned for self-control when it comes to humans and confined spaces.’
    This place is getting claustrophobic. I’m drawn to the door. ‘What do you think this is made of?’ I run my palm over the rough surface. ‘It doesn’t feel like steel. Maybe it’s the same thing Sophie’s trinket-thingy is made from—something powerful enough to block a Rephaite from shifting.’
    ‘Nothing can do that.’
    I give him an even look. He begins to examine the photos again.
    ‘What about iron?’
    ‘No,’ he says absently. ‘I’ve shifted into planes and they’re full of iron.’
    ‘You shifted into a plane? While it was in the air?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Did I ever do stuff like that?’
    ‘Frequently.’
    I let my hand drop from the door. ‘Jason wasn’t lying about Sophie having a trinket that protects her. She grabbed something through her dress when you headed for this room.’
    Rafa stares at the wall, not seeing and not listening. Then he grabs a pencil and a scrap of paper.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    He peers at an image and writes something down. ‘Listing everyone in these photos to see who’s missing.’
    ‘Why?’
    He meets my eyes, taps the pencil against a photo, then trails it across several others.
    ‘Because, Gaby, I’d like to talk to whoever is selling us out to these bitches.’

IRON WILL
    ‘I’m thirsty.’
    ‘Don’t think about it.’
    ‘How can I not think about it? I’m thirsty.’
    Nearly thirty minutes have passed. It’s getting colder, a bone cold that even Rafa is feeling. I can’t stop thinking about what’s going on outside this room. Where the hell is Jason? Why hasn’t he got us out of here already? Did Sophie do something to him? Has he left us here?
    I look through my photographs of Jude. Some I’d seen on Rafa’s phone, but there are new ones. Of the two of us jogging side by side on a dirt road next to a field of wheat, of him saying something to a small group of Rephaim in a training room, all of them listening intently. Of him with people I don’t recognise.
    My throat feels cracked. I swallow.
    He could be out there somewhere. And we’re here. I see Rafa’s eyes flicker to the photos of Jude and I wait for him to say it: that if we were looking for my brother like we were meant to be, we wouldn’t be here. But he doesn’t. And then I think about the place on Patmos in Greece, the island cottage where Rafa and Jude hung out. It was there Rafa pulled me to him when I was crying over another photo of Jude.
    I nearly open my mouth. I nearly tell him what scares me the most, but I can’t deal with those thoughts. Not in this tiny space. Not holding these photos from that other life. I put them aside.
    ‘Did you tell Ez and Zak where we were going?’ I ask.
    ‘Only vaguely.’
    ‘They’ll keep an eye on Mags till we get back, right? They wouldn’t leave her?’
    ‘Not unless something came up.’
    Not much of a reassurance. My body is shivering. God, I need to get moving. We really have to get out of here.
    ‘You sure you didn’t sense demons when we arrived?’
    ‘I told you—’
    ‘I know, I’m just asking.’
    He turns away from the wall to face me. ‘If they’d shifted here in the last few hours, I’d feel it. So would you.’
    I think back to that