I woke up on a thick carpet.

  All my injuries were bandaged, and I only felt a dull pain, and extreme lightheadedness, my entire world spinning. I was still in my suit, just had something tight around my neck.

  I blinked and noticed my face was right next to Isabella’s heels. Again.

  She grinned devilishly the second I looked up. “The princess is finally awake. Just looks a little sleepy. But I’ve got a cure for that.” She waved a phone in her hand, swiped across the screen, and I got an electric shock to the neck.

  I yelped in pain, the sleepiness gone.

  “The princess is going for a run. Since you didn’t bring me a collar yesterday, I’m lending you one of my own, and if you piss me off, I’ll attach a leash. Now, the collar can shock you, as you’ve just felt. It also has other great features, like a built-in GPS locator. That way, I can see where you are and how fast you’re moving. If you run too slow, you get zapped.” She pointed behind me.

  I scrambled to my feet. We were in a room where I must’ve been sleeping in a bed. There was a table, chairs, wardrobes, and my packed suitcases were lying by the wall.

  Isabella was sitting on the bed, smirking mockingly, threateningly toying with the phone in her hand.

  No time to think or talk or to do anything, again. I walked to the elevator and pressed the ground floor.

  “Run to the Cedar Hill Cemetery and back,” she shouted after me before the elevator door closed.

  As if I knew how to run from her place to the cemetery on foot.

  The elevator stopped on the ground floor. I stepped out of the building and started running.

  The collar zapped me. Ouch!

  I sped up. Not even five minutes in, and everything started hurting again.

  Mom. My only hope was that Mom would somehow rescue me from this nightmare.

  The city around me was still asleep, and the sun was just rising.

  My mind soon disconnected from the running, and so I conjured the image of the skill tree and the stat perks.

  Somewhere in all these trees, there had to be a skill or a perk that would let me get away from Isabella.

  Not today, not tomorrow, but there had to be something that countered her.

  From what I knew, she was dexterity-focused, with willpower for defense, as I saw her use shields, and she must have had some speed because she crossed the gap between us when I turned the gun towards myself in a split second.

  So, dexterity, willpower, and speed. Those were her stats, and from skills, she had a level fifty transformation perk, so she had to have built into that.

  Speed, I had to match that as I leveled up. Dexterity had some evasion stuff in the perks, but the main problem was the willpower-based shields.

  She shot herself with a nine-millimeter bullet into the temple, and the shield just sparked, so conventional weapons weren’t going to work on her.

  I combed the skill tree for the correct skills and found the specialization from Rogue into Mageslayer.

  Oh, yeah, that sounded like what I was looking for.

  The first ten levels concentrated on magical defense and detection, but then came the juicy stuff, and the level twenty-five perk was a shield-penetration passive.

  That was what I needed.

  Though I couldn’t put any points into it for now, because she would notice the moment I used any skill from the specialization, and realize what I was doing.

  No, I had to hoard all the points into the specialization at once, train all the skills at once, and then use them against her and free myself.

  The plan started forming in my head.

  I didn’t even know how long I’d been running. I got shocked by the collar about twenty times, but I reached the cemetery in the park, turned around there, and ran back.

  The whole world was spinning in front of me as I returned to Isabella’s mid-rise.

  I collapsed into the elevator, which moved on its own.

  Ding, a level up.

  Yay.

  After a while, it stopped, beeped, and the doors opened. Before me spread a huge pool.

  She actually had a pool on the seventh floor.

  Hair slithered into the elevator, grabbed me, and lifted me up. They carried me to a hole in the ceiling, above which stood Isabella. She wore her usual outfit, just with different heels.

  The hair brought me to her, and removed the collar. “We’ll repeat this tomorrow. You ran to the wrong cemetery, but I enjoyed the process, which is what matters the most.”

  I just groaned in exhaustion.

  “Now you’ll bathe, and then we’re going to work.” She pulled me closer and whispered, her lips grazing my ear, “If I ever find traces of urine or semen in the pool, you’ll learn what real pain is.”

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  “What about blood?”

  “I live for blood.” She let go, and I fell into the pool.

  The water was surprisingly warm, soothing me. Most importantly, Isabella wasn’t nearby, as she vanished from the hole in the ceiling.

  Exhausted, I floated in the pool. I didn’t question the logistics of building a pool into the seventh floor of a mid-rise, and just appreciated the absolute twisted logic of it.

  She lived on the top floor, because that was the only floor worthy of her.

  So, she made a pool in the floor underneath it, and had a hole cut into the floor of her apartment, so she could jump from it into the pool.

  And this wasn’t even her home, but one of the many such buildings she owned around the world, and apparently only used when she happened to be in the city, which could be zero days per year.

  What an absurd way to use wealth.

  I bathed for about half an hour and at least rinsed my suit a little. I’d been wearing it for nearly twenty-four hours, and it didn’t look like I’d be freed from it anytime soon.

  I got out of the pool and sat down in a tunnel that looked like it was for drying.

  Hot air blasted me, and I sat in it until I was dry.

  I was so hungry I could kill, but asking Isabella for food wasn’t a good idea. Any interaction with Isabella was a bad idea. Heck, being in the same city as her was a bad idea.

  I just had to survive until Mom arrived.

  The elevator beeped, and Isabella stepped out. “If the princess is bathed, we can go to work.”

  I stood up, and my legs rewarded me with intense pain.

  My back immediately joined in, and I had to appreciate the cruel coordination of Isabella whipping my torso with her hair and then having me run to also wreck my legs.

  I hobbled into the elevator and went down with her.

  She smelled of blood and sweat. This time though, the blood smell wasn’t from me.

  We got into her Audi and drove down the hill to work.

  Never in my life had I wanted to get to the office so badly.

  In there, I could sit down, and the office chair now seemed like a gift from heaven.

  We arrived at the meeting room she had conquered, and I collapsed into a chair.

  Isabella didn’t even sit down before the director’s assistant knocked on the door. She opened it without waiting for a confirmation and stepped halfway in. “Excuse me, but you have a visitor downstairs. Mrs. O’Connor is waiting at the reception.”

  I perked up, my heart rate soaring. Mom got here really fast.

  Isabella glanced at me from the corner of her eye and waved her hand for me to go.

  I jumped out of the chair, ignoring the pain, and went with the assistant. We rode down in awkward silence.

  Though it seemed to be awkward only for me, because she looked like she was used to it.

  We reached the ground floor, stepped out, and my mother, Katherine O’Connor, indeed stood by the reception. She wore jeans, a coat, and her graying but still red hair hung freely down her back.

  She looked great for her age, and I realized I’d messed up. My heart sank into my stomach.

  Bringing Mom to Isabella was a mistake. But I didn’t know how to stop it now, and so guilt mixed with desperation inside me.

  I walked up to her and forced a smile on my face. “Hi, Mom.”

  Mom smiled at me, but the smile quickly vanished. “Oh my god, Peter, who did this to you?”

  I didn’t feel all that beaten up, but I must have looked pretty damn bad. “It’s okay, Mom…” My voice cracked. “Isabella. It’s—”

  “That damned chihuahua again.” She hugged me, and I almost

  broke down. “Where is she? I’ll have a word with her.”

  I nodded toward the turnstiles. Mom already had a visitor badge, so we passed through and entered the elevator.

  She examined me with deep concern in her eyes the whole way up, and I fought with myself not to collapse.

  We arrived on the top floor, and I led her to the meeting room.

  “Wait outside,” Mom commanded. “It’ll be better if I talk to her alone.”

  I stood beside the door, and Mom walked inside.

  Through the door, I glimpsed Isabella. She sat normally, her headphones on the table, and for once, she wore a serious expression on her face. At that moment, she looked like a completely different person, like she was fifteen years older, serious, focused, with an aura of suffocating power.

  The door didn’t close fully. A strand of Isabella’s hair held it slightly ajar so I could hear what they were saying.

  Mom stopped three feet in front of Isabella and crossed her arms over her chest. “Can you explain to me what in God's name you are doing to my son?”

  “I could explain it to you,” Isabella said in a calm, deeper tone I’d never heard from her before. “But then I’d have to kill you.”

  Mom’s jaw and shoulders dropped. “What has he gotten himself into?”

  “You know the rules of secret societies, Katherine. They haven’t changed in four and a half thousand years, so they’re still the same as when you retired. If someone with a clearance level below two stumbles into a tier one concealment event, they must be eliminated. Peter has tier six clearance, and though you used to be at tier two, retirees get downgraded to tier four at most. No exceptions.”

  Mom sat down. “Then why is he still alive?”

  “Because I’m not like you. When did you write Peter off? When he was four? Five? When did you give him talent tests and find out he had none? When did you decide to shield him from the secret societies, instead of preparing him for them?”

  Mom shook her head. “Without magical talent, this world offers only suffering and death. I’ve seen it in dozens… hundreds of people. Magic is a power multiplier, so no matter how good one becomes at it, it’s ultimately limited by the base. With a nonexistent base, no amount of practice or effort, or power-ups makes any difference. A thousand times zero is still zero. The hardest-working donkey in the world is still just a donkey.”

  “That’s your problem and your belief. I see the world differently, and I won’t justify myself to you or anyone else.” Isabella pointed at the door. “Get out of my office.”

  Mom turned and left the office. I couldn’t look at her. She hugged me and said, “Hang in there, and I’ll find a way to fix this. I promise.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Mom let go of me and left.

  Filled with guilt like never before, I returned to the makeshift office, where I now couldn’t look at Isabella. “I owe you an apology,” I muttered. “More than just an apology.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. Your father abandoned you before you were born. Your mother wrote you off when you were five. You’ve got about a thousandth of your parents’ magical talent, and during your probation at your first job, you stumbled upon an active portal, which usually gets one killed without any questions. Fate shat in your cradle and shut the window. But I don’t care about any of that, so sit down and finish those images. We need to know where that portal leads.”

  I sat down and unpacked my laptop. But I couldn’t help myself and asked, “Why? Why did you break the rules for me?”

  “Because of how my master once taught me how to live. Thirty years ago, when I was fourteen, I was in a terrorist group trying to disperse a powder around New York that turned people into demons. The local secret societies sent the local head of interventions after us, and he showed us the difference between terrorists and a professional killer. He wiped us all out.

  “I didn’t deserve a second chance. I knew it, he knew it, my guardian angel knew it, the devil knew it, God knew it, everyone knew it. But he didn’t care. He let me live and took me on as his subordinate. To him, I was cheap labor. But to me, it was a life I had never dared to dream of.

  “And as fate gave me a second chance, I spit in its face by sometimes giving a second chance to someone who doesn't deserve it. Pressure turns coal into diamonds, and you’ll either become a mage worthy of knowing about portals, or you will die trying.”

  “Thanks.” My eyes filled with tears again. “I don’t know how to thank you, but… thanks.”

  Isabella’s face split into one of her insane grins, and all the seriousness vanished from the room. “If you want to thank me, then kneel before your mistress.”

  No one could see through the office door, and even if they could, I didn’t care. I got off the chair and knelt in front of her.

  “Lower.” She tapped the floor with her shoe. “Much lower.”

  I bowed to the floor until my forehead touched it.

  Isabella turned on her chair and threw her legs up on the table.

  I stayed in that position for a while, and when nothing happened, I asked, “How long do I have to stay like this?”

  “Until you pick your self-respect up off the floor.”