The sticky, mudflat-like floor pulled at my shoes, and I sank a few inches into the glowing surface. I tugged at them, shifting over the sploshy floor. Above us, an endless row of the undersides of beds lined the ceiling. Muffled, distorted voices carried over the tunnel’s humming, and every now and then, a dream spark popped in and out of existence.
Last backed up against the marrow-white wall and then flinched away when the spongy surface sucked at her.
“Are we in the monster under the bed’s home?” Her voice was high and trembled like a child who’d just woken from a nightmare. Her face was pinched, and her gaze darted nervously over the pulsing tunnel walls, the floating dream and nightmare lights, and the beds lining the ceiling. She looked, for the first time, like she was a small girl in need of a comforting hug. She’d once said the monster under the bed had terrorized her as a child. Was she still afraid of him?
“Yes,” I said matter-of-factly. Last wouldn’t want comfort or pity from me.
I wiped the tears and the blood from my cheeks and took a deep breath. Now that the horror was gone, the stranglehold it’d had on my emotions had loosened. I could breathe again. I could think.
“Have you met him?” Last asked, flinching as the walls moaned and a red nightmare light screamed.
“No.” I turned to Luvic. He was whispering something—talking to Cora, I think. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end at his predatory jackaltooth posture. The way he stood, the way he moved, was becoming more jackaltooth every day.
“Luvic?”
His gaze sharpened and focused on me.
I pointed to the underside of the bed. “The horror isn’t going to stop with the Smiths. It might not even get to them. It wants to consume the city.”
Luvic pressed his hand over his heart, comforting Cora. “Not just wants. It needs to. Did you feel it?”
I nodded. I’d felt it. “Do you want to stop it?”
Please say you do. Please.
He stared at me, weighing my expression. Then he gave me his old familiar “let’s make some mischief” smile. “Do you?”
“We aren’t stopping it,” Last interrupted. She shivered as the floor sucked at her feet. Then she kicked at the spongy floor and shook off her childhood fears. “No. There is no stopping it. That was the point. This is it. This is the moment Primus has been working toward. He’s going to kill the Smith. Our monster is going to make it happen. You, Mari, are going to go up and help him, just like the leggerock promised you would. You”—she pointed at Luvic—“are also going to join Primus. If the city has to be sacrificed so he wears the crown, so be it.”
Luvic ignored her, studying my features in the red light. “Mari?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember the bee sting?”
I nodded. I wouldn’t readily forget Luvic jabbing me with an object of power. Especially a diamond-studded bee brooch. Luvic had entwined us when he’d pricked our fingers and joined our blood. I just wasn’t sure exactly what that meant.
“Tell me you want me to stop the horror.”
“I want you to stop the horror,” I said quickly.
Luvic grinned. “Oh, good. Me too.”
“No! You will not?—”
Luvic flicked his hand, and Last dropped to the spongy floor, her hands bound and encased in water. Her feet were tied. Her mouth was gagged. She twisted and writhed and attempted to conjure. He’d locked her tight.
“I have a Silencer,” Luvic said.
Last screamed behind her gag. There was hate rolling off her in violent waves.
“What do you mean you have a Silencer? The Merchant said he’d already sold?—”
Luvic smiled.
“You have to be kidding. You were the one who bought it right out from under us?”
He’d been with us that day. He’d pretended surprise when the Merchant said he’d already sold it.
