“Everyone’s clear,” I shouted.
Jenny nodded without taking her focus off the pit. “We can’t let this thing loose.”
“Have you seen any sign of Alex?” I asked, hoping she’d say yes. Hoping I was wrong about his plans.
“Nothing yet,” she said.
I crossed the street to guard Temple. “What about you? Have you found him yet?”
He waved me off, still muttering to himself in a language I didn’t recognize.
I checked the rooftops and every window I could see.
“I’m down to four arrows,” Jenny shouted.
“Would you people kindly stop interrupting my work?” Temple snapped.
I smothered the urge to toss him into the pit. We were all on edge, and Temple’s work had much more potential to explode and turn us all into zombie butterflies or ashy smears on the nearest wall if he was distracted at the wrong moment.
A sacrifice required ritual. Alex couldn’t just settle down three blocks away with a sniper rifle and put a bullet through Temple’s heart. It had to be done right.
Sending a shoggoth to devour this place was dangerous and chaotic, but there was no ritual. No formality. Even if we hadn’t gotten everyone out of the Gauntlet, their deaths wouldn’t have helped Alex.
He needed a sacrifice powerful enough to attract the attention of a god. We’d assumed that meant one of us.
“Brace yourselves,” yelled Temple.
My skin pimpled and my hair stood on end.
Temple slammed the end of his cane onto the ground.
Lightning stabbed deep into the pit. The thunderclap was a physical blow. I staggered backward, deaf and half-blind.
Steam and ichor and worse erupted from the pit. I saw Jenny fall. Chunks of concrete pelted my body, along with a smoking piece of still-wriggling tentacle. I noticed that none of the debris struck Temple.
He nodded once, clearly satisfied with his work. His mouth moved, but I had no clue what he was saying.
Jenny crawled up from the edge of the pit. She looked over her shoulder, then gave Temple and me a thumbs-up.
“We have to go,” I shouted.
She cocked her head and mouthed the wordWhat?
I squinted at my phone, trying to see the screen through the afterimage of the lightning bolt. With agonizing slowness, I typed a new text to Jenny and Temple:Alex is going to sacrifice the shop.
“Welcome, loyal followers of R’gngyk, to the final ritual.”
CHAPTER24
Temple
Iremembered my mother explaining our house to me. This was before she was cursed to wander the moonbeams forevermore.“Sometimes, when a wizard and a house love each other very much—”
Wait, no. I was confusing that with a different and more uncomfortable conversation.
The house talk had come earlier, when I was four years old. Like many interactions at that age, it began with me getting in trouble.
“Tempy, do you know what happened to my summoning bracelet?”
