“A way out?”
“We’ll see,” she said warily.
At their approach, the sunlight and Anya’s torch revealed a fork in the tunnel. One way, dark as the one they had been traveling.
The other, damp and muddy under a ceiling of roots and showered with streaks of light from the world above. And directly ahead, radiant in a beam of light and pecking at a puddle of mud, was the phoenix.
Heart in his throat, he turned to Anya, unsure of how she would react; but she was gone. By the bounce of the torchlight, she had run ahead, down the dark tunnel.
He started to call after her but stopped. Why had she run? Had she seen the phoenix, too? If she had, which was the true one?
Or perhaps she had merely grown tired of escorting her rival closer to his prize and, seeing an opportunity to desert him without leaving him completely helpless, had taken it.
Regardless, if he called out, the bird would be startled. If it was real, it would run. If it was the mimic, it would make brunch of him.
And unfortunately, if it was real, he had no way of catching it without Anya. Perhaps he could coax it toward him, offer it something to eat. Did birds like salted mackerel? Did mimics? Neither could hate it more than he did; he’d be glad to be rid of the stuff, but he did need it for his blood.
The phoenix still hadn’t moved. Perhaps he could just…grab it.
Quietly, so as not to alert it to his presence, he stepped toward it. It flapped its wings and disappeared down the passage, past the filtered light of the roots, into the dark. Slowly, he followed it, stopping at the edge of the curtain of roots, peering into the darkness after it.
He registered movement behind him. Heart hammering, he braced to run; but it was only Anya, returning from the other tunnel.
“Did you see it?” she said when she reached him.
“It disappeared again,” he said. “You saw it too?”
“I thought I did, until I shot it.”
“The mimic?”
She nodded. “It’s dead.”
Not a hair was out of place. She hadn’t even worked up a sweat. “Easy prey, for a predator,” he observed, frowning.
“All in a day’s work,” she said breezily. “I told you I’m the best there is. It did look real, though. The one you saw was the true phoenix. There must be an opening ahead.”
He hesitated. “We know there’s no danger the other way. Perhaps we should try that way, first.”
“No, if the phoenix went this way, this is the way out.” She started forward again. “We’re wasting time.” She lifted her torch. He noted the torchlight reflected in the white of her eye.
“How do you know it’s safe?” he asked, pulse quickening, thinking on his feet. “Did Goose tell you?”
“Of course,” she said without inflection.
His breath caught, and he took an involuntary step backward. “Anya. Tell me my secret,” he said abruptly.
Anya stopped and turned to face him, a familiar, sardonic look on her face. “Which secret? You have so many.”
“The one I just told you,” he prompted, stalling. Uselessly, he reached for his pen. It certainly seemed like her. Was she testing him? Revenge for all he’d put her through? “The one no one else knows.”
If it was the mimic and he started to draw his blood, it would surely attack him. If it was the mimic, he had to do something, or he was going to die soon.
Could he stab it? Could he make himself stab a neck that looked anything like hers?
Unsure, he pulled the pen from his satchel. As he did, his uncertainty evaporated. Anya’s face ripped and stretched, rearranging into an appalling melt of woman, insect, and amphibian. With a rippling like wet clay, the rest of its body shifted, and the mimic revealed its true form.
Now twice Sy’s height, its pale and hairless body looked soft and fleshy, but it was encased in a thick carapace, shaped almost like a spidery cave cricket, with six long, crooked legs. It had no mouth and its four eyes fixed on him, uncannily small and milky white. The ends of its jagged front legs were sharp and pointed like protruding fangs.
