She stood, revealing her true self again—that leathery hag with shadowed hair and jagged teeth. A rattling laugh clattered from her throat. “Oh, Joseph,” she hissed. “You could have lived an eternity in ecstasy with me. Instead, you choose a girl who doesn’t even belong to you. How naive are you?”
“Where is she?” I growled.
Medea covered herself with her kimono again and sauntered away from me, moving through the doorway beside the fireplace. “You coming?” she called from the other room.
I followed her around the labyrinthine—it was somehow a castle on the interior, though the exterior blended in with the neighborhood—mansion and into a reading area. A long sofa with no arms or a headrest stretched across the wall to my right. On the opposite side of the sofa, a bookshelf covered the wall from floor to ceiling, stuffed with so many books that Medea had started stacking the overflow literature into columns on the hardwood.
Currently, she stood before an expanse of wood-planked wall. She pressed on it, and a door—once flush with the wall and invisible to the naked eye—popped free. Medea pulled it open to reveal a stairwell that descended deep into the bowels of the house.
I still stood in the doorway that lead into the reading area. I had a sick feeling that my daughter was stowed down those stairs and in that darkness. I swallowed back that fear. Would she have led Xander down there, too? Had she incapacitated him and carried him down the steps, or had he willingly followed her? I couldn’t think of a reason why he would have voluntarily descended those stairs unless he had confirmation that Melanie was down there, or Medea had enthralled him—but with his holy pact, he would have proven even harder to enthrall than me.
“Thought California didn’t have basements,” I said, trying to buy time. What if Xander wasn’t down there? What if she had disposed of him some other way?
“I remember you having a bunker of sorts.” She moved around the hidden door and down onto a stone step. “If you wish to save your daughter and your friend, you should consider following me.”
Well, I guess that half-answered my question. I pattered after her, thoughts of Mel and Xander propelling me deeper into danger. “Does everyone know where I lived?” I asked, stepping into the secret corridor. My voice echoed in the tight confines of the area. “I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well, yet Xander found me. Dakota, who I don’t even know, found me. Hecate and her goons found me. Was I that obvious?”
We spiraled down the circling stairs, further and further into the abyss. Medea guided our descent with a glowing orb of light that burned from the palm of her hand. After a few minutes, when my lungs began to sear with fatigue—yes, we’ve established that I’m out of shape—we stepped off the last stair and into a dark hallway lit by torches planted into the wall.
“Holy Hades. Did we just walk back in time? That’s a pretty neat trick.”
Medea ignored me. She trekked across the stone floor to a large door that looked like something straight from a medieval castle—complete with steel bracings and a ringed knocker-handle thing. “It’s unlocked,” she said, stepping aside to allow me passage by her. “Go ahead.”
I cleared my throat, swallowing back a little fear that had built up over the past few minutes. Where had she led me? What answers awaited behind the door? Sighing, I stepped forward and placed my hand on a horizontal bar fashioned across it. I pushed with all my strength—that thing was heavy and impractical—and it creaked open, revealing a circular, shadowed room about the size of a basketball court lit only by candles and torches. The air smelled of burning incense and cold stone. Someone had used sidewalk chalk to trace a large wheel around the candle lighting.
Around the perimeter of the wheel, a small army of Empousa stood in a circle. Four Anemoi—ethereal wind spirits that can only be summoned and controlled through powerful magic—floated in a line behind Xander, who stood sandwiched between the two types of enemies. His shirt was shredded to ribbons, revealing a photoshopped body. The Anemoi backed him into the dozens of Empousa, who waited patiently by not breaking their line to attack him.
I would have asked how he had wound up surrounded by spirits and vampires on the outskirts of a ritualistic summoning circle, deep in the bowels of a castle disguised as a suburban house—but before the tangle of words could blunder off my lips, something else caught my eye.
The Empousa stood perimeter around the summoning ring to guard a little girl who lay on her side in the center of the wheel. The wall of Cursed blocked most of the details, but I saw her slight shoulders trembling. Without a second thought, I sprinted to her, unconcerned about the Empousa or the Anemoi or Medea or the fact that I was powerless in this room of monsters. Medea didn’t stop me, and the Empousa moved aside and allowed me to enter the circle.
I fell to my knees and grabbed Mel. I lifted her onto my lap and moved her dark hair from her face. Her lips were partly open. I put my cheek to her mouth and felt the labored release of warm air.
“Mel,” I said, holding her wet, cold face. “Mel.”
Her dark eyes—shit, they looked so much like Callie’s eyes—fluttered open. “You’re too late,” she said in a tiny voice. “You couldn’t save us.”
I gritted my teeth and released breath that I had been holding through my nostrils. “No,” I said, my voice quivering. “I’m here. I’m right here. I made it.” I glanced up. The Anemoi had surrounded Xander, allowing for a few of the Empousa to turn around and face me and my daughter.
How had Medea summoned
