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  ‘You’ve slept for a long time. The drugs should wear off soon, if not already.’

  At the mention of drugs, my stomach clenched. I’d heard the horror stories about girls having roofies slipped into their drinks, and knew exactly what went on while those poor girls were passed out. I reached down and groped my bare flesh for any kind of bruising, but my arms, the insides of my legs and stomach felt okay as far as I could tell.

  The guy paced the floors for a few minutes before he stopped at the foot of the bed and rested an arm against one of the ornately carved posts.

  He drew in a deep breath and studied the wooden mermaids, somewhat reluctantly resting his eyes on me, the corners of his mouth twitching in a possible attempt at smiling as he exhaled.

  ‘So, what’s your name?’ His low voice came out an octave or two higher, as though he was trying to sound pleasant and unthreatening. But I remained silent and didn’t move a muscle, not even to breathe. The only conversation I wanted to have was of the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here variety.

  He bowed his head and swore to himself, retreating into the shadowy corner of the room where he’d sat earlier.

  I watched him, my eyes travelling down his broad back and following the length of his denim-clad legs right down to the long black boots he wore—boots with daggers strapped to them. Although he seemed roughly the same age as me, give or take a year, he outdid me in height and weaponry.

  Despite my resolve to remain silent, a question burst from my lips.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Nearly a week. You’ve spent most of the time in and out of sleep. The maids have had to assist you in the bathroom. Unfortunately, the drugs didn’t quite agree with you.’

  A week? Panic closed in like a tight wall, squeezing me until it was hard breathe.

  ‘Where’s my sister?’ My eyes darted intermittently between the door and my captor.

  ‘I didn’t take her; just you,’ he said in a quiet voice, which croaked at the last word.

  A strange combination of elation and crushing guilt twisted my insides. Lauren was safe and I was beyond glad, but I couldn’t believe that it had taken me this long to feel true, heartfelt concern for her wellbeing again. Digging my nails into my palms, I closed my eyes. My sister’s stricken face floated about in my mind, quickly followed by the faces of my grandparents, my parents, my good friend Zoe, and Aiden—all those I had ever loved. Perhaps this is what dying people meant when they said their lives flashed before their eyes.

  I sucked in a deep breath and took mental stock of my situation. I wasn’t dead yet. If the guy had wanted to hurt me, then surely he would have done so already. This was possibly some strange mix up. He’d gotten the wrong girl… or maybe he thought I’d been drowning that night and had ‘saved’ me?

  I sat up and tried to make eye contact, but he was leaning forward, elbows on knees and head in hands.

  ‘Where am I?’ I asked, trying to control the tremor in my voice.

  From the darkened corner he sighed and left me hanging for a while, answering with a cryptic, ‘You’ll find out soon enough. Sylvia will arrive shortly and explain everything.’

  ‘Who’s Sylvia?’ I raked my fingers through my hair, trying to recall anybody I knew by the name of Sylvia.

  ‘Keeping me here is illegal. You need to take me home right now.’

  Silence followed, only to be broken by chair legs scraping against stone when the guy stood up and strode towards the door—my only way out.

  I leapt out of bed and ran towards the exit, but before I reached it he slipped through and locked the door behind him.

  Beating against the cool metal with my fists, I shouted, ‘Come back!’ and ‘Let me out of here!’ over and over again until the words cut into my throat like razorblades.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SOMETIME LATER I woke, slumped against the door, confused and disoriented. But it took only seconds for the chest-crushing reality of my situation to return.

  I had to get out of this place. I had to get back to Lauren and Nana and Pop. The newspapers were probably printing articles about my ‘drowning’ like when Aiden went missing, subtly suggesting teen suicide.

  I got up to explore the room. The place was dim, with an odd, glowing lump of crystal for a lamp on the bedside table, which didn’t give much light at all. It was enough for me to see that there were no windows, which meant I had no way of knowing where I was—and, worse, no means of escape other than the door. Even the tiny ensuite bathroom connected to my room, which had a toilet and small basin, had no windows.

  As the grey walls closed in on me, my breathing turned rapid and shallow.

  This couldn’t be it for me. Without ever setting things right with Lauren. I wrapped my arms across my chest and meditated on that last thought.

  But could I ever truly forgive Lauren for her part in Mum and Dad’s accident? Because forgiving my sister would mean forgiving myself. And I could never, ever, in a million years, do that.

  I pressed the flats of my hands into my stinging eyes. There was no time for tears or for falling apart. I needed to think. I needed to get out of this place. For all I knew the pale guy was somewhere polishing his favourite axe. ‘Sylvia’ probably didn’t even exist, or perhaps—I shuddered to think—she was his alter-ego.

  There had to be something in this room—a weapon, or an escape hatch. I searched desperately, darting from one corner to another, but to no avail.

  The room was large, but it was bare: only a bed with an antique-style wooden table at the foot, a bedside table, a chair and a few framed paintings of mermaids decorating the walls.

  I shuffled closer to inspect the artworks and a shiver trailed down my spine. Something about these paintings wasn’t right. They were done with an artistic hand, but the innocent expressions on the mermaids’ faces contradicted the voluptuous bodies they’d been given. They looked a bit like those dolls you see in toy stores, the ones with the huge, childlike heads covered in trashy makeup—weird and just wrong.

  I squinted and could barely make out a small, scratchy signature beginning with ‘D’ at the bottom right-hand corner of each of the paintings.

  As I turned away from the walls, a metal vent on the floor, in the corner to my right, caught my eye. I rushed across the room to crouch beside it in the shadows.

  The metal strips were as thick as my thumbs and the hole below most likely too narrow for my body to fit through, but it didn’t stop me from wrapping my fingers around the cool steel bars and giving it a good hard yank, throwing my whole body behind it.

  But it was no use. My legs skidded beneath me, the stone floor scraping skin off the back of my bare heels before I landed on my bottom with a dull thud. I swore and leaned over, pressing my face against the metal grid.

  ‘Hello?’

  From the black abyss, my own voice, timid and forlorn, replied. I slipped an entire arm through a gap in the grid and felt around for something—perhaps a trap-door—but felt nothing.

  While I tried to ignore the sinking sensation in my stomach, my eyes returned to the paintings. They were framed behind glass.

  Before I knew it, I’d elbowed the nearest one, sending sheets and shards crashing to the floor. It was loud—too loud. I should have put a sheet beneath it to dull the sound.

  With my heart slamming against my ribcage, I stared at the door, waiting for footsteps. But none came.

  The broken glass had produced several blade-shaped shards. When my captor returned, I planned to threaten him with the sharpest and force him to let me go. I’d kill him if I had to, no matter how kind his face looked.

  After brushing off a few tiny prickles that had embedded into my forearm, I tore a thick strip of the material that lined the back of the picture frame and bent down to carefully select the longest and sharpest piece of glass for my weapon.

  I chose one that was roughly thirty centimetres long, a decent enough weapon once I wrapped the stiff, beige material around its base
.

  Footsteps approached the door.

  My stomach dipped and my mouth went dry.

  With shaking hands, I stacked most of the glass onto the remaining ripped canvas before tipping and stuffing the whole lot, frame and all, down the gaps of the vent. The lack of a thud made me wonder if the hole was some kind of bottomless pit, or maybe a link to other rooms. If the threat of cut glass didn’t work, I’d return to the hole and scream my lungs out in hope of somebody hearing.

  The tiny cuts on my fingers stung like murder, but I had no time to assess the damage.

  ‘Robbie, open the door,’ said a woman from the other side, her voice sultry and deep. It brought to mind snakes slithering around in dark, murky waters.

  So Sylvia was real. And my captor’s name was Robbie. I’d imagined something more sinister, not the very name of my grandparents’ old dog—a playful blue heeler who loved nothing more than to chew holes through garden hoses.

  I rushed towards the bed and dived beneath the covers, carefully tucking the weapon beside my right leg. Beads of sweat dripped down my forehead and seeped into the cuts when I used my fingers to wipe the dampness away.

  The pale guy, Robbie, held the door open, the muscles in his arms cording and flexing, while an attractive raven-haired woman dressed in a long emerald dress entered. She looked to be in her late twenties. She was followed closely by a girl around my age wearing a plain, cotton shift-dress and a handkerchief tied around her head. Both were as pale as Robbie.

  The woman had a blue satin dress draped over one arm and a pair of golden sandals in her hand. The girl carried a tray of food and drink.

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. This was all too weird.

  I reached down and wrapped my fingers around the weapon, securing it in my grip. The bed covers jiggled I was shaking so much.

  For a moment the younger girl stared at me, transfixed, her pale-blue eyes widening at the bedcover as though she could guess what was underneath. But she said nothing.

  ‘What’s the matter with her, Robbie?’ the raven-haired woman asked, her upper lip curled back in revulsion. ‘She’s perspiring—how disgusting.’

  ‘Side effects from the drugs,’ he said with a worried frown, giving me doctor-eyes again.

  ‘Well, make sure you keep an eye on her until they wear off completely. We don’t want our guest of honour getting sick, do we?’

  Robbie held my gaze for a second, his eyes soft and apologetic, his face extra pale, before he looked away.

  The young girl set the tray of food on the table at the foot of my bed. It smelled unbelievably good—a soup or stew with maybe garlic and herbs—and my empty stomach growled with hunger.

  This time, when I met the teenage girl’s eyes, she offered a small, remorseful smile and bent to tuck the stray ends of the bed sheets beneath the mattress like a nurse. I hoped all her tugging wouldn’t reveal the glass I had hidden.

  While the raven-haired woman and Robbie discussed the drug’s side effects, I reached out and clasped the girl’s hand in mine, pulling her towards me. Her hand felt warm and soft and I clung to it desperately.

  ‘Please,’ I said, pleading with my eyes as well as my words, ‘please tell me where I am and what’s going on here?’

  The girl dropped her head and averted her attention to the older woman.

  ‘You may leave, Anne,’ the woman said, dismissing the handkerchief-headed girl who, after tugging her hand from my grasp, scurried out the door without a second glance.

  Robbie, who held the door open, stared across the room, his eyes distant and his brow furrowed.

  I buried my hands—which had started bleeding again—back beneath the bedcovers.

  ‘Do we have a name?’ the woman asked Robbie. A tattoo of twin fishes, like the Gemini sign, decorated her right arm. It had an inscription underneath it, unreadable from this distance. Flames of ink licked along the length of her forearm.

  ‘Not yet,’ Robbie said, folding his arms across his chest.

  The woman curled her top lip again, as though the sight of me revolted her, but upon meeting my eyes she quickly recovered with a smile that didn’t quite reach her own almond-shaped ones.

  ‘If you refuse to tell us your name, we will have to give you one,’ she said, turning to Robbie, a smirk twisting her red lips into something grotesque. She snapped her fingers, as though trying to remember something. ‘What was that little pudgy woman’s name from last year, you know, the suicidal one? Oh, that’s right, Hanka.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor Hanka. I think this one would make a lovely Hanka, what do you think, Robbie?’

  Robbie scowled and, with a shake of his head, turned away, giving me the impression that he didn’t always agree with this woman.

  ‘I’m Miranda,’ I murmured, my shoulders bunching up. It felt wrong, handing over something so private and precious, something given to me with love by my parents, to these strangers, but I refused to be named like I was somebody’s pet.

  ‘Miranda,’ the woman repeated, reaching forward to stroke my cheek. I recoiled from her cool fingertips, my head twisting away, my breathing hard.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  ‘Robbie, please step outside,’ she ordered. When he hesitated, she added, ‘Women’s business,’ which quickened his steps.

  My hand groped beneath the covers for my crude weapon while Robbie exited the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

  ‘My name is Sylvia. I’m sister to Marko, the king of Marin.’ She widened her green eyes for emphasis when she said ‘king’ and then smiled coyly as though expecting me to giggle with enthusiasm. ‘He’s beside himself with excitement at your arrival.’

  I didn’t respond. I was completely thrown by the word ‘king.’ Maybe he was the leader of a cult, or some kind of street gang. And where on earth was this ‘Marin’ she was talking about?

  After making the mistake of glancing at the food tray, my stomach grumbled. A chunk of crusty bread, a steaming bowl of what appeared to be soup and a crystal goblet of dark, blood-red wine made my body tremble with hunger and thirst.

  Noting my reaction to the food, ‘Sylvia stood and stroked the fabric of the dress laid out on the bed’

  ‘I wore this when I was around your age. It should fit.’ A smirk distorted her beautiful face. ‘You might find it a little tight in some areas, but it will do for now.’ She fingered the satin with a long, feline fingernail and narrowed her gaze. ‘Put it on, and then you may eat.’

  I kept my face set like cement, not giving a hint of my internal conversation: Bring out the glass knife. No. Don’t bring it out—yet.

  In the end, my cautious side won out. It was too soon to reveal my weapon. I needed to wait until the competition evened out and I was completely alone with somebody, not one-on-one with another outside the door.

  I buried my glass knife further beneath the covers and sat forward to snatch up the blue dress. It was flimsy, but would at least provide some dignity when I ran from this mad place.

  ‘Excellent, Miranda,’ Sylvia crooned when I slid out of bed and turned to slip the silky thing over my head.

  ‘Here, let me help you.’ She eased the dress over my shoulders, drawing my hair out and feathering it lightly across my back.

  This small act of kindness had me wondering about Sylvia’s involvement in all of this, and whether or not she’d be willing to answer some questions—or even help me.

  But when I turned around and met her eyes, and saw the icy contempt in them—contempt for me—I shivered. How could she dislike me so much when she didn’t even know me? Why bring me here in the first place?

  Once dressed, I scurried back into bed—the only place I felt marginally safe. Tears blurred my vision, turning the turquoise-blue bedcover into a shimmering sea.

  ‘When am I going home?’

  Sylvia ignored my question and instead set the warm tray of food onto my lap. Savoury-scented steam wafted up my nose. Oh, god, I was hungry. My dry mouth watered an
d my hands trembled.

  ‘Eat first,’ she commanded.

  I wrapped my injured hand around a silver spoon and winced in pain.

  ‘And then you’ll take me home?’

  ‘Just eat and then we’ll talk.’

  Staring down at the food, I wanted so desperately the inner-strength to hurl it across the room and declare a hunger strike until I was set free. Lauren would succeed. She was a dieting pro. Whereas me—I couldn’t go for longer than a couple of hours without food before feeling shaky and lightheaded. Mum always used to say I had the metabolism of a racehorse—‘With the stumpy body of a Shetland pony,’ Lauren would add with a smirk. Right now my hunger was like a monster slashing at the sides of my empty stomach.

  It took all of one minute before I gave in and attacked the food ravenously, which, of course, was reckless—it could have been drugged.

  It was a salty fish soup with rice, and it tasted good. Between huge gulps, I rammed in chunks of the chewy bread like a scavenger.

  Sylvia screwed her face while she watched, and I immediately covered my mouth with my hands, heat radiating from my cheeks, but a minute later she began nodding, her full lips widening into a creepy smile.

  ‘Good,’ she said and continued to nod. ‘You’re eating, at least. Young women need to eat well, especially when they are of the reproductive age.’

  My jaw stopped working. I had to resist the urge to spit the food out all over the pretty bed. My own mother hadn’t even discussed this sort of thing with me before she died.

  After swallowing the remaining food, which now felt like a huge, sharp rock in my throat, I pushed the tray to the end of my bed and slid back beneath the covers.

  Closing my eyes, I prayed Lauren and my grandparents hadn’t given up hope on me yet. I prayed the police were on their way.

  I didn’t drown like Aiden…I’m here…wherever this is…

  ‘You didn’t touch your wine,’ Sylvia said, her sharp tone piercing through my hopes.

  My eyes popped open. She’d confirmed my suspicions that the wine could be drugged. It was the only reason I hadn’t skolled it in one go.