Rivals and Retribution by Shannon Delany

lumpy country road. I was freshly bound and gagged and if I’d thought my shoulders had ached before at the tension brought on by having my wrists pulled so tight behind me, it was nothing compared to the pain that burned in them now.
    But … I wiggled my fingers and tugged at my wrists. It did not feel like they’d had duct tape handy this time. As raw as my wrists were, I could still work with less than perfectly knotted rope. And from what I’d seen of Gabriel, he was as much a Boy Scout as he was an angel.
    Which was clearly not at all.
    I listened to the muffled sounds of voices on the other side of the car’s backseat as closely as I could, trying to determine how many people rode in the seats ahead of me, and who they were. The voices were frustrated and disillusioned.
    And sounded distinctly like Gabriel, Marlaena, and Dmitri mid-spat.
    I closed my eyes again, allowing my mind to drift away from the jouncing trunk and dissolve into what remained of Derek’s thoughts as I worked the rope with numb fingers. I needed to find a way to utilize all my assets and combine every bit of knowledge I had to get out of my current predicament.
    Derek’s memories had offered up odd but useful suggestions before.
    He had answers. Weird, creepy answers, but they were still answers. And that was what I wanted.
    Answers.
    Help from any source.
    The right answers might give me a way out of this.
    I thought of Derek. I remembered how he’d seemed at Homecoming—before I’d known any of the truth about him, and he was there, filling out the spaces in my brain, spreading like floodwaters creeping beyond riverbanks to ooze across low-lying hayfields.
    My brain shuddered and my heart raced as my world dissolved and his popped into focus.
    We were with Wanda again— within Wanda again. Although the décor in the hallway had changed, become crisp and clean and nearly sterile with very few images hanging on the walls, I still recognized it as hers.
    Derek skipped down the hallway, only a few years older than the last time I’d been here, and shoved open a door. Inside was a beautiful park, filled with trees and flowers surrounding a fountain and an assortment of statues. In the branches, birds chirped merrily.
    We’d found Wanda’s happy place.
    But the birdsong ceased and the sky darkened as we bounded across the threshold.
    “She’s built better defenses,” we said.
    “Never mind those—find the icon.”
    We headed toward the burbling fountain, seeing the statues spread out not far from it. These were of ordinary people, built of granite, all of them posed and frozen in some action that seemed part of their nature.
    We paused in front of a tall man with broad shoulders. He wore a button-down shirt, and an exposed gun holster like a detective might wear on the job. He looked like he was in his late forties, strong creases beginning to show around his mouth and across his brow. He had decidedly few laugh lines. On the base of the statue was written a single word: BOSS.
    “I have him,” we said.
    “Excellent.” Mommy’s voice filled our ears. “Now make him shine in her eyes.”
    Derek pulled out a can and shook it. He held it up to the statue and sprayed the paint liberally all over the man so that he was covered in a sparkling coat of gold and our arm ached. “Now she’ll notice him.…”
    My mind balked. Wanda was being manipulated into noticing her boss? What sort of ramifications would that have? I speculated, beginning some mental math before Derek’s mother burst in on our shared thoughts again.
    “Good work,” Mommy assured. “Now get out of there.”
    We turned back toward the fountain, but our knees turned to jelly and we staggered the distance to the doorway, gasping. “Can’t … drained.”
    “Don’t quit on me now.”
    Air brushed our face like a warm breeze in a world where the temperature was dropping in jumps of tens of degrees. And the air—the sweet breeze that carried just the faintest