Night After Day

Chapter 9: Friends in Strange Places

"I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ... 'a.'" I layed on my back and stared up at the cobwebbed ceiling.

 I heard the springs on the mattress in Owen's cell squeak as he considered it, "Ant?"

"Nope, arachnid." I shifted away from the eight legged friend that had made its home in a corner of my cell. Gross.

I heard him laugh and I smiled. "I get another turn, 'M.'"

"Mosquito, seems like vampires aren't the only bloodsuckers around here."

I was silent for a few seconds and in the distance we heard a door slam. Owen whispered. "My turn, 'S.'"

"Shadows?"

"Nope."

"...Shade?"

"No, give up?" He sounded amused.

"Give me a second," I sat up and looked around my cell... Mattress, bucket... nothing starting with "S." 

"Fine, I give up."

"Sink."

My voice echoed around the dungeon. "You have a sink?!"

We both cracked up laughing, a sound that seemed very much out of place in the particular environment we were in.

I laid back and for about the twentieth time my thoughts turned to my family. They must have been worried sick. They were probably putting missing posters everywhere around town and notifying the police... Of course they wouldn't find me... Maybe Riley would tell them that she'd last seen me going to Angeline's house? 

I pushed my curly blonde hair out of my eyes and tied it back in a messy pony tail. I went to push up my glasses but they weren't there. I remembered what had happened with a jolt, why did I randomly get my sight back? I'd had glasses since Year Five...

"Owen?"

"Yeah?"

"What is going to happen? I don't want to stay here for the rest of my life."

"Neither do I, but I don't think we have a choice, one of these days I think Angeline is going to get tired of the taste of my blood, then maybe she will let me go."

"Let you go?" I said with a flicker of hope.

"Kill me." He elaborated.

My heart sank and I sighed.

I turned my head to the side and frowned, swinging my legs over the side of the mattress and sitting up. "What do you want?"

Angeline stood there on the over side of the bars. She just stared at me for a moment, then pushed a food tray through the bars, which I pushed back to her smoothly with the words: "No way."

"I'm trying to get on good terms with you Hayden."

"When hell freezes over, Jesus rises from the dead, and my mother buys me a Volvo... Then maybe I'll send you a friend request."

I heard Owen snort with laughter and Angeline frowned. "Well... That isn't a sound I'm familiar with hearing in a Patenuade dungeon... Laughter?" She moved along and stood in front of Owen's cell, "I thought I destroyed your sense of humour a long time ago."

He stopped laughing and pushed his long white dirty hair out of his eyes. "I think you'll find I'm full of surprises."

"We'll see." She moved back in front of my cell and I shifted my weight away from where I was peeping through the hole in the wall, watching them.

"Hayden, I'm going to open this cell door and you are going to follow me."

I shook my head. "Yeah, that'll be the day."

She smiled sweetly. "Okay... Let me rephrase that," she looked down and pulled an elegantly made dagger out of her coat, "when I open that door, you are going to come out and follow me... Or I'm going to take great pleasure in putting a blade through your new friends' gut."

I swallowed and slowly stood up. Owen watched me closely and muttered. "You don'.t have to do this blondie."

I looked back at him. "I'll see you soon, okay?" 

We looked into eachothers eyes and for a split second I felt something unfamiliar in my heart, I couldn't describe it, and it confused me.

He placed his hand on the bars as I walked through my open cell door and muttered to me as I walked past. "Stay safe."