I release Levi and tell him, “This is Cadence, a friend. We can trust her.”
He nods and extends a hand, but Cadence balls hers back into fists.
“I can’t muddy the waters right now,” she explains. “I need to be clear if we’re going to get out of here alive.”
Levi looks confused.
“Cadence is an oracle,” I tell him. “She’s psychic. Sometimes the sensory and psychic information overwhelm her processing system.”
He drops his hand immediately. “Got it.”
“She’s right,” I tell him now. “We need to get out of the building,fast.” I don’t know how much he saw of what happened on the stage, or if he understands how much danger we’re in. “The elevator is too risky. We need to use the stairs. All the way down this time.”
Together, we scramble back to the stairwell and race down it, certain we’ll be confronted at any moment. But we make it all the way to the storage room behind the bar, and I can see the door that leads onto the club floor from here. If we could slip into the crowd, we could maybe get out the front without being seen. But that’s a lot ofifs, and the crowd under Arla’s thrall could be dangerous.
“Stay behind me,” I tell Cadence and Levi as we creep across the storage room. We’re lucky no one’s back here, that Arla had everyone on the floor tonight, corralling the masses and supporting the ritual. I crack the door open and peer into the club. It’s dark and crowded, but the chanting is breaking up, bodies shifting frantically in varying directions as they realize something is wrong. Smoke shrouds the room, the lights of the stage casting a toxic glow over its empty set. There are shrieks and voices rising, asking what happened. And then I spot Arla shoving people as they jostle her, face contorted with rage as she tears in this direction. Her capelet is gone and her lipstick is smeared, the glossy undulations of hair now disheveled, the lake green of her eyes swimming with vengeance. I am a rogue element in her carefully orchestrated world, an acolyte out of thrall. A colossal disappointment. Athreat. She will hunt menow. Bring me to heel or send me to hell. I’m not sure it matters to her which.
Quickly, I push Levi and Cadence back and close the door. “We can’t go that way.”
There’s another door,the voice whispers in my head. It doesn’t lead out, it leads down. But there’s nothing for it. We’ll have to take our chances in the underground.
I grab a stainless steel table. “Help me,” I demand as we all three slide it to block the door to the club, before rushing toward the basement stairs, only to recall that the door to them is locked.
“Does Arla keep a spare key somewhere?” I ask Cadence.
“Only one I know of is the one in her bra.”
Trapped, we cast around looking for anything to help, and then Levi spots the silver box that is the bar’s refrigeration. “Hold on!”
He darts toward and disappears inside, emerging a moment later with a fire axe in hand. I think for a second he’s going to hack down the wooden door barring us from the stairs, but instead he spins the axe around and digs the adze between the door and jamb just above the lock, prying until the whole thing bursts inward.
“Keep it,” I tell him before he can set the axe down. My memory plays back the image of Arla pulling a second key from her bra as we hurry down the stairs. “How did you know about that, anyway?”
“I stocked produce at a grocery store briefly in college. They kept them in all the coolers and freezers in case anyone got shut in. It’s a pretty common safety standard.”
“You are the MacGyver of booksellers,” I tell him between breaths.
“Where are we going now?” Levi asks as we reach the bottom.
“Nowhere good,” I manage before we spill into the basement. We are halfway across it when I tell them to stop, a detail snagging in my peripheral vision.
I approach the chamber slowly, the pull of the iron door lapping at my cells. I eye it like it’s the drain in the deep end of thepool, something that could never be trusted, that might suck me down and hold me there without warning. I squat down.
Brennan’s buckle shoe sits empty on the floor before it, the polished black leather spattered with something dark. It congeals inside the heel, streaks the buckle brown. Several stained drips lead beneath the mysterious door.
Rising, I meet Cadence’s haunted eyes. I know where Brennan is now. It’s easy to hide a body when you have a well of untold depths at your disposal, a beast within that feeds on death and destruction. Brennan was sacrificed like Rudzitin, his blood too important to waste, but Aaron was just collateral damage. She must have caught them together. I realize now she was probably never going to let Aaron live, knowing what he did. I hear her voice inside my head.This is the price, kitten. Everyone has paid it.
She told me she’d been given a gift that couldnever be taken away. Just before using telekinesis to slide his ring onto her finger. The gift was power—Brennan’spower. I guess killing us gives her more than unlimited access to the Fathom forever. It gives her unlimited access to our magic too.
My teeth grind, anger and grief, the feeling of being too little, too late too many times tonight pulverizes between them. A desperate twist of longing for Aaron’s bright humor and sarcastic wit rips through me, his love of truly terrible booze.
Behind the door, water sloshes, and the bricks are slick with moisture that shouldn’t be there. The slime mold I’d seen inside is peeking through the mortar now, reaching for freedom. I imagine the Fathom rising, her dark, silky body changing shape in its ascent, every atom bending and breaking, becoming and dismantling in a dance of creation and destruction. Her power a force so incomprehensible it defies definition. And yet, all of it is crammed into this twelve-by-twelve chamber by a small man with big dreams and a finite number of forgotten scribbled words.
It must be excruciating, I think, to have the foundations of magic at your disposal and not be able to use them, even to free yourself. To be trapped by what you are. To have your verynature turned on you. My grandmother’s portrait, all fierce eyes and shining hair, slices through my memory like a paper cut, and a bouquet of empathy blooms in the wound.What foolish webs we mortals weave.
The voice stirs inside me, the rustling of old feathers.If she can exact a price, it posits,so can you.
What price would I have Arla pay for spilling Brennan’s blood? For Aaron’s? What should her redemption cost?
