“We’re going in there?”
“After me. We’ll crawl.” I entered first. Alderose followed right behind. Her inner engine ran faster than mine and she kept landing her hands on my ankles. “Rosey, slow it down a bit. I have to feel my way forward.”
“But you were just here,” she said.
I corrected her. “I was here hours ago and I was a newbie. Now that I know what’s at the other end of this tunnel, I’m a lot less excited.”
She laughed. “Gotcha. I’ll try to temper my enthusiasm.”
“You do that.”
I repeated what worked before. Swipe the air, plant that hand, move forward, swipe with the other hand. We didn’t talk again until the tunnel began its transition toward the water. “It slopes downward,” I said. “Nothing too radical. We should start to see the light coming in from the cavern soon.”
Dread began to fill my belly. I had never been afraid of swimming, and I wasn’t now. I was afraid of Jadzia coming after me with her knives—or worse, both her and Gosia misreading our intentions and going after all three of us.
“You okay, Clementine?” Laszlo’s voice was the warm blanket of comfort I needed.
“I’m good,” I said, stopping. I leaned to the side. “Do you two see the green glow?”
“Yeah, I do.” Alderose whistled softly. “I couldn’t do this without you, Clemmie.” She patted my calf.
“And I’m glad you’re here.”
Another couple dozen crawling steps and we arrived at the end of the tunnel. The same glow greeted us, and the same reflected light drew upside-down ripples across the ceiling of the cavern.
“This place is amazing.”
“Sure is.” I lowered onto my belly, propped my elbows on the wide landing, and peered over the side. The ledge was where I remembered it, only there were no friendly seeming threads coaxing me forward. I reviewed with Alderose and Laszlo how the threads had created a nest and the greaves and gauntlets.
“Didn’t you say they also pulled you into the water, away from Bas and the tunnel?”
“Not the threads,” I said. “Jadzia. Or maybe it was Gosia. I know Bas freaked. I freaked, but the threads making the armor and stuff on my body never felt ill-intentioned.” Unlike the two creatures. I pivoted my upper torso and spoke into the darkness behind me. The only thing I could see of Laz was the pale glow emanating from the carved symbols inlaid along his horns. “Do you two think we should we keep going?”
“Laszlo and I are armed ankles to wrists. What concerns me is how we’re going to stick together once we’re in the water if there are no threads to bind us?”
“Crap. I didn’t think about that,” I admitted. I bent my knees and waggled my mother’s boots in my sister’s face. “These’ll just weigh me down. Undo the laces and take them out. It’s not much but it’ll give us something to tie ourselves together.”
“We’ll be a raft of Magicals. Like those otters you saw near Vancouver.” Alderose snorted and began to tug at the laces. Laszlo broke his silence with a comment about his concern with my lack of weaponry.
“With you two nearby, nothing can get to me,” I said.
“Take this. It’ll make me feel better.” Laszlo passed a short, sheathed dagger forward. I made a show of tucking it into the bralette, right between my breasts.
“Thanks, Laz.” Boots off, I pulled myself into a ball and swung one leg over the end of the tunnel until I could free the other leg and hang there. My toes met the top step and I let go. I talked my sister through the same actions. She was quickly followed by Laszlo, who still wasn’t saying much of anything.
“You okay?” I asked, once he’d gotten his footing. “We can tie ourselves together before we get into the water.”
That was the last bit of wisdom I had to offer.
Ropes whipped out of the water and lashed my sister and the demon to the rock wall. Thick threads formed a net around my body, pinning my arms to my torso and my legs together, and hauling me off the ledge and into the water backside first. More threads—angry, determined, rough—wove a mask over my head and across my face and ripped the cord holding the dampening charm off my neck. I screamed. The pull to reach for Laszlo was unbearable. I grabbed the thickening threads winding their way down the front of my body and pulled, but they’d slipped underneath the jumpsuit and were fumbling for the knife.
I was pulled under the surface and this time there was no Gosia or Jadzia to breathe life into my lungs.
I blacked out, faster than fingers pinching the flame at the end of a candle.
Recovering from my second abduction was nothing like it had been the first time. That was a cakewalk. This was hellish. I was bruised all over. My ribs hurt, my head hurt, even the roots of my hairs hurt. I’d been hauled around by my ponytail. My arms and legs were bound tight; the darkness around me was absolute. Worst of all, I was gagged. Bile burned at the back of my throat and I had to concentrate to keep from throwing up in my mouth.
A body was wedged next to me. I tried to roll closer, tried to listen for breath, sniffing the air to catch its scent—or any scent.
Alderose.
Cloth moving against sand alerted me to my sister’s movements. She rolled toward me. Our heads touched. I pushed my tongue against the matted threads covering my face, pulled some of them inside my mouth, and chewed and bit until there was hole big enough I could stick my tongue out.
Hysteria almost made me laugh. The sight of my tongue would really frighten whomever had taken us. I flopped away from my sister and concentrated on making a bigger hole around my mouth.
The sensation of a small snake crawling up my outer
