by Linsey Hall
“It was,” Aerdeca said. “But we escaped that life.”
“Escaped?” That was a heavy freaking word.
“Escaped.” Aerdeca nodded. “And never went back. I’d advise you to do the same.”
“We can’t. Something valuable has been stolen, and we need to get it back. Our only lead is at Grimaldi’s.”
“There’s nothing valuable enough to go there,” Aerdeca said.
“There is.” I told her about Arach and the ghosts and the Protectorate’s magic.
Aerdeca frowned, indecision flashing across her face. She hesitated. “Fine. That is compelling. And it makes sense that Arach’s heart would go to Grimrealm.”
“Grimrealm?” Lachlan asked.
“That’s where the casino is located. Grimrealm is an underground black market and neighborhood. And I mean black. You think Darklane is bad? It’s nothing. Sure, dark magic happens there. Bad people and crime and shit you don’t want to mess with. But Grimrealm is where all the really bad shit happens.”
“And you spent time there?” Nix asked, clearly trying to get to the bottom of the mystery that was Aerdeca and Mordaca.
“We were born there.” She shuddered. “Anyway, Grimrealm’s market is famous. If you wanted to sell some powerful magic, that is where you’d go. It’s completely under the radar, and absolutely awful.”
“So they’re selling Arach’s heart.” Bile rose in my throat. She was my friend. And they wanted to sell her heart.
Bastards.
“It’s the best place to do it,” Aerdeca said. “But it’s going to be hard to get in. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb with your magical signature.”
Shit. She had a point. “So there are no normal people there?”
“In Grimrealm, being evil is normal. You’re going to have to figure something out if you want to pass. Otherwise, they’ll kick you right out. And that’s what they’d do if you’re lucky. I’d put money on them killing you instead.” She nodded, eyes turned back toward the past. “Yes. I think they’d kill you.”
“But you can tell us how to get there?” Bree asked.
“Not exactly, no. When we escaped, we were smuggled out in barrels.”
Barrels? Holy fates, talk about desperate measures.
“I didn’t see exactly how we got out,” Aerdeca sad. “And we were just teenagers, anyway. But I do know that the entrance is through Fairlight Alley, next to Darklane. That’s where they took us out of the barrels. Mordaca was having a panic attack, so we didn’t make it all the way to the safe house.”
They’d needed a safe house? What the hell was in Aerdeca and Mordaca’s past?
“So, somehow, we can get from that alley into Grimrealm,” I said, studiously avoiding the topic of Aerdeca’s past. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for the shit she’d been through as a teenager—hell, I knew all about that—but it was obvious she wouldn’t welcome it.
“Yes. Somehow.” She shrugged. “But I can’t help you with that. The only thing I can really tell you is that you’re going to need a damned good disguise. Something that will hide your magical signatures and make it look like you’re evil enough to be down there. They won’t trust anyone who doesn’t stink like dark magic.”
“I can help with that.” Nix reached under the counter and pulled out a snake-shaped dagger. The magic that wafted off of it smelled like the bottom of a sewer. Even the Paris sewer hadn’t smelled this bad. Worse, it was overlaid with the scent of sulfur. “Cass just brought this back from a temple in Indonesia. A powerful dark wizard imbued it with some kinda gross murder charm. We can’t sell it, obviously, but the magic in the dagger is almost completely decayed, so we couldn’t leave it in the temple like that. It would have blown the place up eventually.”
“Do we carry it with us?” I asked.
“No. We want to put the original dagger back in the temple. I’ll put the magic into a set of cloaks. It’ll shroud your own signature. And if it’s broken up, it won’t be so dangerous, so the spell probably won’t explode.”
“And take us with it.”
She grinned. “Exactly. When you’re done, burn the cloaks.”
“Perfect.” This was going to be dangerous, but excitement welled in my chest. We had a solid plan.
12
A couple of hours later, after Aerdeca had given us as much information as she could about Grimrealm and Nix had created the disgusting, dark magic-soaked cloaks for us, we headed over to Darklane.
Aerdeca gave us a ride in her white Cadillac, dropping us off near the entrance of Fairlight Alley. There was a festival today, and the crowded streets were bustling with people. We were right at the edge of Darklane here, so the stalls selling goods were a mix of normal citizens and Darklaners.
Aerdeca leaned out the driver’s side window. “Good luck.”
“Thanks again. I hope Mordaca likes her present.”
Aerdeca tried to smile, but worry still flickered in her eyes. Worry for us. What had happened to her down in Grimrealm?
I doubted she’d ever tell me.
She pulled away from the curb, and I turned to my friends. We each had a cloak clutched in our hands—no way we were putting them on until absolutely necessary. All around us, the streets were heaving with people.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Born ready.” Bree grinned cheerily.
I chuckled.
We pushed our way through the crowd, heading toward the entrance to Fairlight Alley. As we neared, the crowd thinned. My stomach turned slightly, and I felt a strong compulsion to back away from the alley.
“Repelling charm,” Lachlan said.
I gritted my teeth and headed forward. There were no people standing in front of the alley, as if they’d all agreed that this section of the sidewalk sucked, and they’d stay ten feet away.
Bree grabbed my hand. “I’m going to keep guard here, where the people are standing. It’ll look too weird if I stand right outside the alley. No one in their right mind would stand in the middle of that charm.”
I nodded. “Good plan.”
Since we didn’t know what we were walking into, we’d decided that Bree would stand out here and keep watch for a few minutes.
She stayed behind, squished between a man wearing a balloon animal hat and a woman in old witch’s robes. The rest of us put on our cloaks. The stench immediately made my eyes water, but the feel of it was worse. The cloak, which was a dark green wool, felt like it was made of spiders crawling over my skin.
“Ugh, this is the worst,” Rowan said.
“Worse than jumping in a pit full of worms.” Caro flipped the cloak up over her platinum hair.
I did the same, immediately wanting to tear the thing off and jump in the ocean. Lachlan was stoically silent, of course, but I caught the shudder that ran through him.
“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered.
We headed toward the alley, striding over like we knew what we were doing. Unlike the alleys in the Historic District, this one didn’t smell like pee. It didn’t smell like much of anything, actually, which was pretty weird.
And it wasn’t very deep. We got about forty feet back, and it dead-ended into a brick wall.
“Well, that sucks,” Caro said.
I stared hard at the wall, remembering Paris. I reached out, pressing my hand against the brick. It was rough against my hand, so it was definitely real.
Maybe.
I pressed hard.
My hand sank into the brick.
“Nice,” Rowan said.
I stepped through the wall, having to really work for it. My heart thundered in my ears as I appeared on the other side, ready to draw my weapons from the ether.
There was nothing here.
Just an alley, like the one we’d left behind.
My friends appeared next to me, having fought their way through the illusion of the brick wall.
“Not what I expected,” Rowan said.
I approached the end of the
alley, which was another forty or so feet in the distance. This time, it was obviously the true dead end. No matter how hard I pressed on the wall, I couldn’t get through.
“There’s got to be a clue somewhere,” Caro said.
We began to search the walls, and the ground, but it was all just brick and stone. Not even an old cigarette butt.
“Hey, look at that.” Rowan shined her cell phone at the ground, holding it at an angle. She pointed to the indention of a square.
“That’s got to be a door of some kind,” Caro said.
“Which means there might be some kind of mechanism to open it.” I inspected the walls, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
“Or a password,” Lachlan said. “Though perhaps that’s not the wisest way to permit access to an underground market. What if they need to change it?”
“Fingers crossed that it’s not a password,” Caro said.
I stood right over the trapdoor, spinning in a circle as I inspected the walls around me. I unfocused my gaze slightly, hoping to catch a pattern if I wasn’t looking too hard in one direction.
At first, it just made me vaguely queasy. Then I caught sight of a few bricks in the opposing walls that looked smoother than the others. I approached one, resting my fingertips against it. Yep. Smoother.
“Guys, I think I found something,” I said.
Caro appeared at my side a second later. “Twenty bucks you have to press these bricks in a certain order to open the trapdoor.”
“But there are three on this wall and three on the other wall,” Rowan said. “There are 720 permutations.”
“What?” Caro asked.
“There are 720 different orders in which we could press the bricks,” Rowan said. She’d always liked math, saying that it was a certain thing in an uncertain world.
“I’d bet good money that you only get one shot,” Lachlan said.
“Then how do we figure out the order?” Caro asked.
I inspected each of the bricks. They were all worn down evenly, so that gave no clues.
“If we had a spell that could reveal the past, we could turn back time and watch someone else enter,” Rowan said. “But those spells are hard to come by.”
“Can you make one?” I asked Lachlan.
“If I had two days. The magic takes a long time to brew.”
“We don’t have two days.” Arach, Florian, and the Pugs of Destruction didn’t have a week.
“Incoming.” Bree’s voice crackled out of my comms charm. “Two demons.”
“Shit, Bree. Can you make us invisible?” I asked, unsure whether her power could extend all the way back here.
“I can try.”
“Get by the walls, everyone.” I pressed myself against the back wall, far enough away from the trapdoor and the special bricks. My friends joined me, and we stood frozen, shoulder to shoulder.
When our breathing went dead silent, I realized that Lachlan had used his ability to repress sound. A second later, my friends disappeared. So did I. I couldn’t even see my legs.
Jackpot.
We stood stiff as boards, tension thick in the air.
A moment later, two demons sauntered into the alley. They looked comfortable as could be, as if they came here regularly. The biggest one, some kind of blue demon that probably had control over ice, if his chill, foggy breath were any indication, went straight for one of the special bricks.
My heart raced as he pressed each brick in order, walking from one side of the wall and back again. The trapdoor in the middle of the floor opened up, and he and his friend jumped right in.
I debated following, but the thing closed almost immediately.
“Jackpot!” Rowan grinned.
I touched the charm at my neck. “Bree? You can come back here now. We know how to get in.”
“On my way.”
“Okay, everyone. Line up around the trapdoor,” I said. “We’ll all jump in at the same time. That thing closes real quick.”
My friends lined up around the door, Bree joining them when she arrived. I went to the wall and hovered my hand over the first brick.
“Ready?” I asked.
They adjusted their cloaks, and there was a chorus of yeses. I pressed my fingertips to the first brick, then moved quickly to the next. Within ten seconds, I’d pressed them all. Magic sparked around the trapdoor, and it opened.
I hurried over, and we all jumped in.
My heart thundered as I fell, but I landed easily a few seconds later, some kind of magic slowing my descent.
I shuddered at the feeling of dark magic filling the space. It was like my cloak, but it was everywhere.
The tunnel that we’d entered was hewn straight out of the dark earth. Torches flickered from the sconces on the wall, green magic providing enough light to see by. The demons were long gone, fortunately, and the tunnel extended into the darkness.
I breathed shallowly against the stench of dark magic, shivering again at the feeling of it crawling over my skin.
“They must have a powerful spell to keep this feeling from spilling out into Magic’s Bend,” Bree said.
“No kidding,” Rowan said. “This would have the Order of the Magica investigating in a hurry.”
Lachlan looked at me. “Ready?”
“Yeah, let’s get a move on.”
As a group, we headed down the tunnel, our footsteps silent. Tension prickled across my skin. Any minute, we could run into other patrons of the Grimrealm. Would our disguises work? Down here, it’d be damned hard to escape if they all turned on us.
We’d walked for only a couple minutes when more magic prickled against my skin.
Like a warning.
Rowan gasped. “Something’s coming.”
A blast of flame shot from the wall, right in front of us.
I threw out my shield, the white magic bursting forth. For once, my magic obeyed me. The fire slammed into the shield, making my arms shake. It was fierce and orange, filling the whole cavern in front of us.
“Holy fates, good work, Ana.” Caro’s face was stark.
“You saved us from becoming barbecue,” Rowan said.
I chuckled weakly, studying the flame. It wouldn’t let up, just kept blazing against my shield.
Next to me, Lachlan crouched down. He was running his hand over a small mound of earth right next to the wall. “I think we were supposed to step on this to keep the flame from blasting us.” He pressed on the mound of earth, but the flame didn’t stop. “I think this stopped the flame from coming. But now that it’s started…”
“It won’t stop,” I said.
“I’ve got it.” Caro held out her hands, her magic swelling on the air. “Everyone back up.”
We did as she commanded, though I was careful to keep the shield up.
“Okay, drop it!” Caro said.
I let my magic fade, and the shield disappeared. The flame roared forth, almost encapsulating Caro. Huge jets of water burst from her palms. It doused the flame, filling the tunnel with steam.
I choked, the steam seeming to make the stench of my cloak even worse. When it finally faded, the tunnel looked totally normal. Caro had hit it with the perfect amount of water. There wasn’t even a puddle on the floor.
“Nicely done,” I said.
Caro brushed her hands together. “Kind of an expert with the H2O.”
Lachlan stepped on the mound of dirt, and a spark of magic glittered in the air. “I think that should do it.”
I raised my hands and called on my protective shield, forming a bubble around us. “Just in case.”
The shield held strong, and I grinned. My little bit of practice with Lachlan had definitely helped. I made sure to focus on why I wanted this magic—to keep us from becoming crispy critters—and the shield held strong.
We entered the section of tunnel that had been flaming. There wasn’t a single sound of breathing, so everyone was clearly as nervous as I was, even with the shield.
Abou
t a hundred yards later, when I heard the sounds of people, I dropped the shield.
“That was intense,” Bree said.
“Well, hold on to your butts, because I think it’s going to get a lot more intense.” Rowan pointed to the glow of magic that lit up the exit to the tunnel. “I think we’re here.”
I adjusted my cloak, making sure that most of my face was covered. Everyone else followed suit. We approached the edge of the tunnel, walking with a brisk stride. As we neared the exit, I caught sight of masses of people.
If I’d been worried that wearing a full-body cloak would be suspicious, I didn’t have to be. More than half the people in the market were wearing cloaks. Apparently, if you dealt in stuff that was this dark, you didn’t want to be identified.
The market itself was wild—black tents filled the space, with colorful signs floating above them. They advertised everything from potions to charms to weapons and clothing. People clustered around them, filling the walkways to bursting.
All of it stank like the inside of an old dumpster that had been eaten by a giant fish that was now rotting, and I sucked air in shallowly.
Didn’t dark magic users wonder why they stank so bad?
Seriously, could anything be worse than this stench?
“I can’t believe someone is trying to sell Arach’s heart down here.” Horror echoed in Bree’s voice.
“We’ll stop them.” Lachlan’s tone was firm. “Then we’ll report this shithole to the Order of the Magica.”
My gaze darted around the market. The stalls and people blocked a lot of my view, but the market was obviously huge. On the edges of the open space, there were shops set right into the rock, using the earth for walls.
“It reminds me a bit of Hider’s Haven in Death Valley,” Bree said.
“Just a lot bigger,” Rowan added.
They were right. We’d only been in the haven once—it was actually the topic of the story I’d tried to tell the bullfrog—but the haven had been a much smaller, less evil version of this place.
I stepped out into the market. “Let’s find Grimaldi’s. Stick close together. If you get separated, leave.”
Together, we pushed our way through the crowd. The feeling here was just plain dark. Like I was in a nightmare come to life. I brushed past a few people, and terrible images flashed in my mind. Death and torture.
