Chapter 23

Well,not all hell—just some of its angrier, more deadly denizens.

Shades and gravelings erupted out of the trees and from the direction of the clearing. They slithered, bounded, and galloped toward us, howling and screaming.

At first, I thought Kyrios might have called the creatures, but they went after all of us with equal bloodlust. That didn't make us allies, but we were all united in our need to survive.

I hadn't seen him draw his blades, but Kyrios suddenly had a sword in each hand. He waded into the attacking monsters with a roar that made my hair stand on end. He was bloodied almost instantly. As fast as he was—and holy shit, he was fast—there were too many gravelings and even more of the much-deadlier shades. We'd all be mincemeat in seconds.

Grabbing a ley line back home was painful and potentially deadly. Latching on to one of the Broken World's crazy ley lines might be damn near suicide, but as far as I could tell, it was that or certain messy death. Kyrios was already down. Lucy staggered, bloody and wounded, and Malcolm was barely able to elude the shades. As for Ronan, he was nowhere to be seen.

I dropped my shields, sucked as much Broken World earth magic into my body as I could withstand to ground myself, and grabbed the ley line.

"Alice, no!" Malcolm shouted.

His voice vanished behind a wave of power that simultaneously brought the most pain and most pleasure I'd ever experienced at once in my life. I might have moaned, or maybe I screamed—it was impossible to tell.

My dark magic roared through the gravelings and shades. With shrieks, wails, and screams, they disintegrated as the wave swept through the trees, across the road, and past Kyrios's bloody, motionless body into the clearing beyond.

This was true power, and nothing had ever, ever felt so good.

I caught a flash of something out of the corner of my eye: a glint of silver-blue, but not a blade. My brain struggled to make sense of what I saw, even as my dark magic sought out of the last of the shades and gravelings and turned them to dust.

Someone grabbed my arm so tightly I thought the bones would shatter, but even that pain didn't register through the rush of power.

And just like that, the power vanished like someone had flipped a switch. With it went the pleasure, the pain, and my ability to stand. I dropped in a heap, too confused to do much more than breathe raggedly and cradle my arm. My vision swam and I shivered uncontrollably, though not from cold.

A dark figure crouched beside me. "I warned you if you weren't careful, you wouldn't be satisfied with the magic you were born with."

Ronan.

I wanted to tell him I hadn't had a choice, but the numbness gave way to agony. My entire body felt as though I was being crushed by stones. I set my jaw and tried not to cry out, but the pain was too much. I screamed.

Ronan cursed. His fingers brushed across my forehead and along my hairline. The touch was intimate and unwelcome, but the pain faded.

Finally, I took a shuddering breath and looked up into Ronan's glacier-blue eyes. "Cut it out of me," I said, my voice hoarse. "Please, cut it out of me, while I can still think straight. Before I turn into the monster who gave it to me."

"No blade I know can do that," he said, with real regret. "I would do this for you, if I could."

"Why? Who am I to you?"

He stroked my hair, but not like a lover. His gentle touch reminded me of Sean or Nan comforting a distraught member of the pack. "I don't know," he told me. "But I've come to believe we were meant to take this journey together—the whole strange, misbegotten lot of us."

"Speak for yourself, buddy," Malcolm said, floating into view over Ronan's shoulder. "Strange maybe, but hardly misbegotten."

Malcolm had never said much about his parents other than that they'd died when he was young, but Lucy was the forbidden offspring of a Guardian and a human mother. I was part mage and part shifter, the product of a secret romance between my mother and Daniel. Born of my blood, infection by the werewolf virus, and shifter magic, Daisy was…whatever she was, given physical form by Mira?'s black magic. We were certainly a motley, mixed-up group. I thought of the strange glimpse of silver-blue I'd seen while I was destroying the shades and gravelings. Was Ronan giving us a clue about his own origin?

My hand caught his wrist. "What are you?"

"I am just as you see me, nothing more." He glanced up, and his expression darkened. "Unfortunately, the Spartoi hasn't succumbed to his wounds after all."

I pushed myself up and looked toward the clearing. Bloody and breathing hard, Lucy stood just outside the Spartoi's reach, sword in hand. The blade dripped graveling goop. Daisy stood on Kyrios's chest, her paw pinning his sword arm to the ground and her teeth inches from his face.

"Why are you here?" Lucy demanded.

"I have tracked you since yesterday, when you defeated the Underworld creatures near Oakdale." Kyrios spat out blood.

Son of a bitch. Not only had Ronan watched us fight the gravelings from some secret hiding place, but this Spartoi had been crouched in the bushes too. We should have sold tickets.

Lucy was getting madder by the second. "Why the hell did you track us?"

"I wished to know where the creatures came from, and I believed you might lead me to the source of their incursion."

"Easier than doing any work yourself, I suppose," Ronan said, earning a glower from the Spartoi.

"We're here to put a stop to these invasions from the Underworld," Lucy told Kyrios. "So either stop interfering with us or I'll do what I have to do and text your prefect where to pick up your remains."

"I alone will close this cursed door," he ground out, his dark gaze on Daisy. "And I will certainly take this creature. It is magnificent."

"Wrong answer," Lucy said. "And not an option."

Moving almost too fast for the human eye to see, Kyrios palmed some kind of gleaming dark blade in his left hand and drove it hilt-deep into Daisy's side. My wolf let out a sharp sound of pain and staggered away from him. The mercenary soldier flipped to his feet and swung his sword at Daisy's head.

Everyone reacted at once.

I was on my feet before I could form a conscious thought about moving. My cold fire whip blazed out of my hand and lashed across the distance between Kyrios and me. I fully intended to cut him in half and deal with the consequences. Lucy went for him with a battle cry, sword raised. My cat-dragon took to the air with a hiss, her claws extended and ready to rip him to shreds.

Ronan got to Kyrios before any of us, ducking under my whip and avoiding Lucy's swinging blade with impossible speed. He plunged his sword through the Spartoi's chest before his target had a chance to avoid the attack. With a roar, Ronan drove the other man back a half-dozen steps and pinned him to the trunk of a tree with his blade.

I ran to Daisy. My wolf fell on her side, her chest heaving. Bloody foam spilled from her mouth. Black blood soaked her fur and the grass beneath her. My skin tingled with a familiar sensation. Kyrios's blade was silver and spelled.

I knew virtually nothing about my wolf's physiology, abilities, or magic, or about the spells on the blade, but silver was deadly to shifters and I had to assume it could kill Daisy too. I pulled the dagger out. To my horror, its blade was half gone—dissolved into flakes of silver still leaking poison into Daisy's flesh. It was a cruel and deadly weapon meant to kill a shifter. If Kyrios couldn't have Daisy, he intended no one else to have her either.

Fear and fury turned my world silent. I saw and heard nothing but Daisy. She would not die. She was me. She was mine. No one, not even the descendant of a dragon's teeth, was going to take her away.

With a snarl Sean would have been proud of, I rested my hand on Daisy's side to comfort her, stuck my fingers into the wound, and used my earth magic to pull the silver out.

She whined and spasmed as liquid silver ran from the wound and dripped to the ground. I pulled harder to get the poison out as quickly as possible.

When the last of the silver trickled out, Daisy shuddered hard and snarled. Before I could react, she flashed out of my hands in a burst of fiery golden magic, crossed the ten feet to Kyrios, and tore the Spartoi free of Ronan's blade.

And then she tripled in size and ate Kyrios in three big bites. His gurgling scream ended abruptly after the first meaty crunch.

Daisy raised her bloody muzzle and howled. The sound rolled through the forest.

"Son of a bitch," Lucy said, lowering her sword.

Malcolm made a sympathetic sound. "So much for that rude fella. Hope he doesn't give Daisy heartburn. Is this going to mean paperwork for you, Lucy?"

"The League doesn't even have a form for this." She grimaced and touched her bloody shoulder.

He snorted. "You're telling me you don't have a form for seeing someone get eaten? I've only been here three days, but I find that hard to believe."

"It's the Spartoi involvement that complicates things. Has a Spartoi ever been eaten by anything? I don't even know." She glared at Ronan, who withdrew his undamaged sword from the tree with suspicious ease. The blade must be spelled. "You could have kept her from eating him," she accused him.

Daisy licked blood from her muzzle with undisguised relish. Spartoi was apparently quite tasty—or maybe she just enjoyed the taste of revenge.

Ronan took out a cloth to clean his blade. "I'm not entirely sure I could have, Lieutenant, and if I'm being completely honest, I was rather reluctant to get between this wolf and her meal."

"You okay?" Malcolm asked me.

I thought about it. "A little better," I said finally. "I used my dark magic by choice to save us from the shades and gravelings. I could have killed Kyrios the same way, but I used my whip instead, by instinct. That's something, right?"

"That's important," Malcolm assured me. "That means you're still in control, still thinking clearly." Something in his tone made me think he wasn't certain how much longer I'd be able to stay that way.

Ronan watched me as he wiped Kyrios's blood off his sword. His hard mask was back in place, but I figured I knew what was thinking: that I'd used dark magic too much since coming here, that it was only a matter of time until I used it instinctively instead of my own innate power.

"I'm still me," I said. I wasn't sure if I was trying to reassure them, or myself.

When their blades were clean, Ronan and Lucy sheathed their swords. She took a first aid pack from her pants pocket and tore it open. I expected him to offer to help her use it on her torn shoulder, but he didn't; in fact, he ignored her hiss of pain as she cleaned the wound and bandaged it. I scowled, but Lucy didn't seem the least perturbed by his lack of concern.

It was some kind of warrior code, I realized belatedly: pretending not to see a fellow fighter's injury or pain and letting them treat the wound themselves. The dynamics were different between Lucy and Ronan than between she and I. He wasn't uncaring; he was showing her respect.

Meanwhile, he'd helped me rein in the dark magic I'd used to destroy the shades and gravelings before it got away from me and eased the agony I'd suffered afterward. His care for me didn't feel disrespectful, though—rather the opposite. And he'd skewered Kyrios for hurting Daisy and let her get her own revenge for the attack.

Who was leading this group and who was defending and protecting whom seemed very much in flux from one minute to the next. It appeared we'd worked out a de facto dynamic hierarchy, despite the presence of what might be categorized as four alpha personalities and one long-suffering trusty ghost sidekick.

And I'd thought werewolf pack dynamics were complicated.

"Time's a-wasting," Lucy said, cleaning her hands with a wet wipe that she stuffed in her pocket. "I'll figure out what to do about this mess later. Come on."

We followed her to the edge of the clearing, Daisy at my side. A small stone monument identified the ground beyond as a Chumash burial site at least eight hundred years old and asked visitors to be respectful of this sacred area.

"Oh, this pisses me off," Lucy said, surveying the clearing. "If this mage profaned a sacred burial site to cut a door to the Underworld…" She flexed her hands. "What's justice for her, Alice? All those dead people in Walliston. Isaiah's pack. All the others who've died. And now this. I'm so far beyond caring that your client wants to punish her for stealing."

"Theft is far and away the least of her crimes." I scanned the grassy area in the moonlight. "I don't see any sign of a ritual or any kind of door."

"That's because it's hidden." Malcolm pointed to the far left side of the clearing. "The door's there. Can't you feel it? It's like a wound."

I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses. The power of the ley line and burial ground obscured nearly everything else. I understood why Mariela had chosen this place to make her door, but I hated her for it.

Eventually, I sensed the echoes of a powerful ritual and the door. Malcolm was right: the portal felt like a wound in the earth. No—more than that. Like a horrible, festering wound in the world, made all the worse by where we were.

"Forgive us for this trespass on your homes," Lucy murmured.

Malcolm murmured a short prayer of his own. We made our way silently across the clearing toward the sickening sensation. My magic surged in response to the graves beneath our feet, the lingering traces of rituals conducted here over hundreds of years, and something else I recognized, though I'd never practiced it myself.

"Death magic," I said. "Blood sacrifices to open the door and keep it open."

Lucy inhaled sharply. "Human sacrifice?"

I shook my head. "Small animals. Birds, I think." Magic had echoes, and I recognized these as coming from flapping wings. Poor creatures.

"That's not all." Malcolm looked down at the grass. "There's a ghost here, staked to the ground. No—staked to the door itself. She wanted to make damn sure it stayed open."

We stared at the grass. Even in my Second Sight, I saw no visible signs of the rituals Mariela had performed, or of the ghost she'd trapped. She'd used her earth magic to hide the materials of the rituals under the dirt and grass, and her obfuscation spells were flawless.

Ronan's grim expression mirrored mine. "This is unconscionable," he grated.

"Can we release the spirit?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know," Malcolm said. "That might fracture the spellwork and slam the door."

"Isn't that what we came here to do?" Lucy demanded.

"Shutting the door isn't enough," I pointed out. "Remember, Mariela came here to invoke the Furies. If she succeeds, they're coming up and they're going to slaughter everything Mariela tells them to. I've got to go down there and stop her."

Ronan's glacier-blue eyes turned dark. He'd known I wasn't just here to shut the door, but I hadn't told him about Mariela, or my plans to hop in the elevator and head for the basement.

Malcolm's pain and anger bled over to me and left a sour taste in my mouth. Unsurprisingly, the suffering of other ghosts hurt him deeply.

I entwined our fingers the way Sean did when I was hurting. I'd never been able to really touch Malcolm like that before. I would never have chosen to come to this world—especially knowing we might not make it back home—but when his hand tightened on mine, I wouldn't have traded that moment for anything.

To my surprise, Ronan rested his hand on Daisy's head. "Guardian wolf," he said, his tone strangely formal. I recalled that Torryn had addressed Daisy the same way. "This is why I'm here, isn't it?"

Daisy growled.

"Care to explain?" Lucy snapped.

"The Underworld is vast and dangerous." Ronan rubbed Daisy's head. "You'll need a guide to Edis."

"What's Edis?" I asked.

"The infernal city on the edge of the Darkness. It's the gateway to the deepest parts of the Underworld, and home to a number of very scary things—including the Erinyes."

Lucy crossed her arms. "How do you know this?"

His eyes glinted. "I read books. You should try it. You might learn something."

She took a swing at him. He blocked her punch easily, which made me think she hadn't really been trying to make contact. "I've been there," he said shortly. "End of discussion."

The fact Ronan had been to the Underworld was unexpected, but not altogether a surprise. We still had no idea what he was, but if he'd been down there and made it back, that explained why both Daisy and Torryn had thought we needed him—though how they'd known was a complete mystery.

"What's it like down there?" I asked.

"Many realms, like our own world. Some are nightmarish, some quite Earth-like, and some like paradise. Vast wastelands, scattered settlements, some great cities like Edis."

"I thought the name of the city was Dis," Lucy said. She raised an eyebrow at Ronan. "I did read a book once."

"Dante recalled much from his visit and embellished the rest," Ronan said. "And though he didn't get all the details and names quite right, his description of the part of the Underworld he saw was fairly accurate, to a point."

My eyebrows went up. "Dante really visited the Underworld?"

"Many people have visited the Underworld," Lucy reminded me. "They came back with bits and pieces of what they'd seen. Many descriptions exist, some true to a limited extent."

I indicated Ronan with a tilt of my head. "So he's supposed to be our guide?" I asked Daisy.

She stared up at him, her golden eyes glowing.

"Wolf charades again," Malcolm sighed.

"Not just for a guide. I guess we'll find out the rest." I touched my cat-dragon's paw. Her claws prickled on my skin. "Same with her, I suppose."

"A dragon of any size is a great asset." Ronan glanced at Lucy. "Your skill with your blade will be very useful, as will your…other gifts. The Underworld is full of the spirits of the dead, as well as many creatures who may recognize you as one of their own. It's an advantage we'll need to slip through as inconspicuously as possible. We will be as unwanted there as these shades and gravelings are here."

Lucy looked thoughtful. "You may be right," she said finally. "But what about Alice? From what I understand about the Underworld, she'll stick out like a neon sign. The living don't belong there any more than those from Alice and Malcolm's world belong in this one. What do we do about that?"

"That's true." Ronan regarded me. "But Alice has crossed the veil between life and death, am I correct?"

"That is true," I said quietly. "A couple of times."

Lucy flinched. That news clearly bothered her.

"That will make it a little easier to hide her," Ronan said. "The bigger concern is Alice is dying because she carries magic not meant for a human. The Underworld will sense both the dark magic and her imminent death and try to keep her."

I recoiled.

Malcolm flitted and got in Ronan's face. "How the hell do you know all that?" he demanded. "And would it kill you to be a less of a prick? Alice doesn't deserve for you to talk like that. Is your kind born without an ounce of empathy?"

"As a matter of fact, we are." Ronan did something, and a puff of magic pushed Malcolm back a few feet. "Though it can be developed, given time. We don't have time for unnecessary coddling or circumspection. If we're going to the Underworld, we need to know each other's skills and abilities—and limitations."

"But apparently you're not including yourself in that, are you?" Malcolm retorted. "You want to know everything about us, but you're going to keep all your secrets. We've seen how good you are with that sword. Where's the other one, Ronan?"

Ronan stilled.

"Yeah, we know about that." Malcolm floated back and forth. "So, where's your second sword?"

Expressionless, Ronan turned to me. "You could wander through the Underworld for a century without finding Edis while the Erinyes slaughter thousands here and in your own world." His voice was colder and more remote than on the night we'd met at Hawthorne's. "Either follow me to them now, or I'll leave and you can make your own way."

"Why are you willing to go with us?" I asked. "Because Daisy and Torryn said you should?"

A muscle moved in his jaw. "In a way, yes. I have no more desire to see my—the Erinyes kill those Mariela has identified as her enemies than you do."

"And?" I prompted.

"I have unfinished business in Edis. Apparently, I'm meant to return and settle matters." He jerked his head toward Lucy's jeep. "We need to pack for the journey and hide our vehicles."

"My jeep has a tracking device," Lucy told him as we hurried back to the road. "We'll have to disconnect it. If I don't report in, they'll come looking for me."

"I'll take care of the tracking device," Ronan said.

"If the League, the Brotherhood, or anyone else finds that door before we make it back, they'll shut it behind us," she added. "And I don't know about you all, but I don't know how to open another one from that side."

"I have a thought about that," I said.

* * *

While Lucy and Ronan focused on hiding her jeep and his motorcycle, I took my backpack and returned to the clearing with Malcolm, Daisy, and my cat-dragon.

I set the strongest blood wards I could make on the doorway, using the ley line to keep them powered and hopefully impervious to the magic flares. The wards wouldn't stop Mariela from coming through, or any of us, but at least no more shades or gravelings would escape topside.

When the wards were done, I got to my feet. No sense beating around the bush. "Malcolm, I need you to stay behind and guard the door."

"No freaking way." He flitted in place. "How the hell could you even ask me that?"

"Because we have no choice." I touched his arm. "If someone manages to find this place and shuts that door, we'll be trapped on the other side. Someone has to make sure that doesn't happen. And if Mariela gets back to the door before we do, someone will have to be here to know about it and go for help to keep her from getting back to our world. It has to be you who stays. You are the last person I want to leave behind, but you're the only person I trust in any world to do those things."

He said nothing, but his fury scoured me.

"I can't make this suck any less," I told him. "I hate the thought of leaving you here—I hate it with every fiber of my being. You won't be any safer than us. I have no idea what might come this way. If you can think of a different solution, tell me. I would love there to be another way, because the thought of going without you makes me want to throw up."

His shoulders slumped. "Damn it, Alice."

Despite everything, I had to smile. "If I had a quarter for every time you or Sean said that, I'd have a mountain of change."

He smiled too. "It does seem to happen a lot." The smile faded. "I will keep that door open, no matter what. If Mariela does come through it before you get back, what do I do?"

"Find the closest League outpost and tell them. We'll find out from Lucy where that is." I hesitated. "It wouldn't be so bad for you to stay here. Your magic isn't as disrupted by the natural magic here as mine, and all the ambient power will keep you from going wraith for a long, long time."

"You mean if you don't come back." His voice was deceptively neutral.

"Yes. We have to think about that possibility too." I took a deep breath. "If you want, you could go back to the portal at Northbourne, in case someone comes through it, and try to hitch a ride back. Or maybe the portal near the bordello back home has another endpoint in this world. You might be able to get back that way if you decide to try to get home rather than stay. It's important to me that you either make it back, or you make a good life for yourself here."

"I will do my best," he said. "But it's important to me that you and Daisy make it back so we can all get home together. And the little cat-dragon too," he added, reaching up to rub his fingertip on her paw. She swatted at him playfully. "Have you picked out a name yet?"

"I think Esme." I smiled at my little guardian. "Esme the cat-dragon."

"I like it. It suits her." He glanced back toward the road. "I don't know what the hell Ronan is, but don't put your life in his hands if you can help it."

"I hope I don't have to, but it sounds like we're going to have our hands full down there. I'll keep Daisy at my side and Esme on my shoulder and Lucy at my six, and hope that's enough."

He floated back and forth. "I want to free the ghost who's trapped here."

"I do too. That'll be the first thing I do when I get back. Or you can do it if it doesn't look like we're coming back."

"I could take their place," Malcolm said quietly. "Release them and keep the door open myself."

I opened my mouth to tell him hell no, then thought better of it. "If you do that, will you be able to free yourself and close the door if you have to?" I asked instead.

He considered. "Probably. At least I'd be doing it of my own free will. I doubt this ghost volunteered to be Mariela's doorstop."

"It's your decision." Damn it, it was hard to say that to him. I hated the thought of Malcolm being trapped even more than leaving him behind. "If you do take their place, please make sure you can get free and close the door."

"I will," he promised.

Lucy and Ronan emerged from the trees with bags over their shoulders and identical determined expressions. I imagined my own appearance was similar.

"If you end up going home by yourself, please tell Sean I love him and I'm sorry I didn't make it back," I told Malcolm.

"He knows how much you love him," Malcolm said. "But I'll tell him." He hugged me, then stepped back.

"We good to go?" Lucy asked as she and Ronan joined us.

"I think so." I put my backpack on my shoulders and fastened the chest and waist straps. Given how bumpy the trip through the mirror had been, I could only imagine what we'd face to get from this clearing to the Underworld.

Esme resettled herself, her claws sinking into the padded strap. "Will you be safe there?" I asked her. "This might be a rough ride. I can put you in the bag."

For such a young cat, she had already mastered an expression of total disdain. Then again, I imagined cats nailed that look fairly early in their lives.

"So what do we do now?" I asked.

Ronan startled me by unbuckling his belt. "Whoa there, cowboy," Lucy said, raising her hands. "Not interested in joining the Mile Below Club."

Ronan gave her a bland look as he pulled his belt from its loops. "I have to tie us up. But don't worry—I'll be gentle if you're scared."

"One of these days, someone is going to stab you." Lucy adjusted the straps of her backpack. "What can we expect on the way down, and what will be waiting for us when we get there?"

"What we encounter on the way will depend entirely on the type of door we're going through." Ronan started coiling his belt in long loops, like a lasso. To my astonishment, it stretched into a silver rope that grew in length to more than twenty feet.

"Well, that's handy." Lucy glanced at me. "Let me guess: no enchanted rope back home either?"

"Not that I've ever seen," I admitted. For all its brokenness, this world had more than its share of wondrous things.

"The Underworld is nearly infinite, with many realms." Ronan tied one end of the rope around his waist. "We have no way to know where this door leads. With any luck, we won't fall out into a lake of lava."

Fantastic.

He tied the rope around my waist next, with about eight feet between us, then around Lucy's, and finally around Daisy's front legs and shoulders like a halter. The rope grew longer to accommodate all of us. I tugged at the knot at my waist, but it had no give. I wondered if part of the enchantment was knots that wouldn't give way. I hoped so.

"And the reason for the rope?" Lucy asked.

Ronan tested each of his knots. "So we don't get split up. It's a long way down."

"Sounds like this expedition will require as much luck as skill." Lucy sighed. "Let's hope we've got some coming our way. How do we get through the doorway?"

He shouldered his own pack and gestured at the grass at our feet. "Our blood and earth mage will do the honors." He made a sweeping gesture. "Alice, if you will?"

I crouched and placed my hands on the grass. Unlike the mirror I'd used to travel to this world, the doorway Mariela had cut to the Underworld was like a stab wound with magical sutures keeping it from closing and healing. The boundary strained against the magic holding it open.

My stomach churned. I didn't want to do this. The fact I had no other choice made it all the more unpleasant.

"It's just the Underworld," Ronan said from behind me. "You traveled between worlds to get here. What's one more jump?"

"One more jump," I grumbled. "Sure."

Malcolm pointed to the doorway. "Go get that scroll and kick Mariela's ass so we can go home."

I took a deep breath and exhaled. "Find Mariela. Get the scroll. Keep her from unleashing the Furies. Return to the doorway, get back topside, and go home. That's just six things. I can do six things."

"Atta girl." Malcolm forced a smile. "And don't drag your ass about it."

I dug my fingers into the dirt and pushed magic into the ground. Magic surged and suddenly the maw of the doorway yawned open in front of us, framed with crackling spellwork.

"Shit," Lucy said involuntarily.

A blast of cold air came out, bringing with it a smell that reminded me of a damp cave. "That's promising, maybe," I said. "It feels cool and I don't smell sulfur. Maybe the doorway comes out in one of the nicer neighborhoods."

"We can only hope." Ronan joined me on the edge of the abyss. "On the count of three, we jump."

"Got it," Lucy said. "Ready when you are."

Daisy growled impatiently.

I got to my feet. Esme made a guttural sound I realized was a purr. "Cat, you are so weird," I muttered.

"Oh, hey, Alice?" Malcolm said. "If they've got a Hard Rock Cafe in Edis, bring me back a T-shirt, will you?"

That made me smile. Bless Malcolm. "I'll do my best," I promised.

"One," Ronan said.

I took a deep breath. Malcolm gave me a thumbs up.

"Two."

I rolled my shoulders to loosen up. Daisy crouched. Lucy muttered something I didn't quite catch, but the corners of Ronan's mouth turned up.

"Three," he said.

We jumped.