My right foot dangled. Here we were, tipping into the void that had always awaited me.
Quin steadied me as I brought the other leg over the threshold and scooted around to get into the right position to slip down. I grasped the two-by-four at the base of the opening, feeling gravity pull at me. Quin had a knee on the sink to help me lower down, his hands under my arms, his breath against my temple—
My tail end had wedged into that tight spot. I was caught.
“My best feature,” I said.
“Not even close,” he said softly against my cheek. The air around us was charged, this time, no mistake, electric—
“Did you all leave me?” Lumpy Jim called from the next room.
I ducked my head, squirming and wiggling through the squeezy bit, trying not to imagine what any of this looked like from either direction. Shimmying, boots kicking for solid ground.
And then I broke through—
And lost my grip.
54
Free fall into nothing—
But I was dangling. Caught, my scream cut in half. Quin had me by the wrist. Above, his shoulder was braced against the plaster.
I scrabbled with my other hand, looking for purchase, but there was nothing. Then my toe kicked something, and I stretched, touching tiptoes to a flat surface.
“Got it?”
I found solid ground, and he released me.
That hadnotbeen easy, Pascal. And now my strumming arm was sore.
“Go,”Quin said.
I couldn’t move, though. Something primal within me hated this subterranean space, this darkness. It was like every horror movie I had ever seen, every nightmare I’d ever had, where the ground beneath me opened up, sending me tumbling through the nothingness that I’d known was there all along. The air, dusty, reeking of mold, coating my lungs. I was cold, shaking.
I had to get out of here. I felt my way with my foot, down a step blindly, then another, hands out, reaching for anything at all. How had Pascal done this? Where had they all gone?
My fingers scraped brick. I pressed my hand against a rough wall, grateful for something solid. At the same time, I realized I could see vague outlines, shapes coming out of the darkness as my eyes adjusted. The straight edge of a table, a wooden chair tipped to the floor. A glimmer of light.
I lurched across the room for it, but tripped and reached—
I collapsed against something steady. Glass clinked against glass somewhere nearby.
When I had my balance again, I was holding the edge of a chest-high structure, soft with dust.
A… bar?
I was surprised but also, somehow, reassured. The bar was bedrock. The void beneath me was replaced by the slats of a dirty wooden floor.
The light I had reached for was a reflection in a mirror behind the bar, bottles lined up against it on a shelf. My eyes had grown even more accustomed now. I could see that the bar stretched away from me, hooking into an L, and past that sat a high-backed booth. Three booths, nofour, lined the wall. Red upholstery, I thought. The leather cracked, ripped, and losing dark, hairy stuffing. Pendant lamps hung low over the tables, turning each stall into a little world of its own.
This must be where it happened. Shady deals, illicit woo.
I was still shivering when I spotted, across the room, an arched opening in brick. Through it, a dime of light that shouldn’t be there.
In the vast dark of this underworld, it was such a small thing, hope.
I picked my way across rough floorboards toward the light, a north star that widened as I got closer.
