“Now,” Aziza hisses, nodding towards the door.
She’s right. The people are no longer content to stand in their spots and shout. Everyone is milling around now, shoving each other, shouting louder than ever before, and this chaos will perfectly cover us slipping through the door. I glance along the row to make sure we’re all ready to go. I feel my heart skip a beat when I see Jinx. He’s standing directly behind Mrs. Hammond and it looks like he’s whispering in her ear. He pulls back from her and she shouts again, so loud her scream cuts through all of the noise.
“If the mayor won’t give us our town back, then by God we’re going to have to take it,” she yells.
This gets a cheer, and as one, the crowd surges forward towards the council. Rye takes my hand and pulls me away as the crowd surges again, and within seconds we’re across the room and through the door. I find myself standing in a conference room that’s empty, and as Ya-Ya slips in last and pulls the door closed, it’s quiet enough to give me time to process what I just saw.
“That worked better than I expected.” Jinx grins.
I whirl to face him. He’s going to just admit what he did? Is War about to come bursting out? My hand instinctively closes around the spear in my pocket, but I don’t pull it out yet or go to touch my tattoo. I want to hear what he has to say and see how the rest of the team react. They don’t know what I know, and if they think I’m just attacking Jinx for no reason, they’re going to get in the way and that could be deadly.
“What did you do?” Rye demands.
“I heard a couple days ago that Deputy Hammond and a couple of the other deputies were being let go. Mrs. Hammond is pregnant, and as you can imagine, losing the family income has her rather pissed off. Chuck in a few hormones and it was easy enough to get her pissed off enough to speak up in the meeting. To be honest though, I didn’t see it going that far. I just thought it might create enough noise for us to start getting closer to the door.”
“And I guess War’s presence in Whisper did the rest,” Mel says. “Because what happened in there isn’t normal.”
“You can’t just let me have my moment, can you?” Jinx laughs. “We don’t need War to cause an argument. That was simmering away nicely. It just took me telling Mrs. Hammond not to let the mayor define her life.”
Oh, I think War had a very big hand in this. I think War instigated it in fact. I watch Jinx for a moment, my hand still on the spear, waiting. Did he do this to get us alone in here so he can attack? Is he done worrying about separating me from the team first?
“Well regardless of whether I did it single-handedly or with a little divine intervention, we need to make the most of it and get moving,” Jinx says.
Okay, so he’s not going to attack me here. He’s likely going to wait until we’re in the tunnels and then try to get me off alone. His words remind me of why we’re here though, and I feel my tattoo burn slightly right on cue.
“This way,” Sunday says, moving away from us. “I’ve been studying old maps of the town. The entrance to the tunnels is in the next room if the maps are correct.”
With no better plan, we follow Sunday across the conference room and through the next door. This room looks like a filing room. It’s filled with filing cabinets and the large table in the center has a pile of paperwork ready to be filed away too. Sunday nods to a hatch in the bottom left-hand corner of the wall opposite us.
“There it is,” he says.
He moves towards it and gets on his knees. He tries to open the hatch, but it won’t budge.
“Dammit. It’s locked,” he says.
“Stand back,” Rye says.
Sunday gets up and moves aside. Rye approaches the hatch and kicks it hard. It flies open with a loud bang that makes me cringe.
“Hurry up, because I’m sure that attracted some attention if they’re not still fighting in there,” Aziza says.
I don’t think they’ll still be fighting now that War is no longer amongst them, and I don’t wait for the debate that’s bound to follow. I get on my knees and crawl through the hatch before anyone can stop me. Inside of the hatch is a ladder leading down and I begin to climb down it.
I can hear the others behind me as I climb down. It’s not a long climb and I jump free of the ladder within a couple minutes. The tunnels are bare concrete walls, but torches are set into the walls and the tunnels are light enough to see where we are going. The team get off the ladder one by one and join me in the little clearing.
“Sailor, what were you thinking going off like that?” Rye demands.
“I was thinking we were going to waste too much time debating, so I moved. And now I’m thinking now isn’t the time for this conversation,” I say calmly.
“Sunday? Which way?” Aziza asks, cutting Rye off before he can start in on me again.
He’s still glaring at me, but he’ll get over it once we’re not in such close proximity to War. I look both ways and see identical branches of tunnel running in each direction.
“I have no idea,” Sunday says. “How would I know?”
“You said you studied the maps,” Aziza says.
“I did. And I can tell you that way leads to the brook on the east edge of the forest, and that way leads to the center of town. But believe it or not, there was no key on
