All I could do was keep creeping forward. I found the edge of the pit after only a few minutes of searching, and held my breath as I skirted around it. Safe on the other side, I let out a sigh of relief and kept moving.
The following couple of hours were nightmarish. The distant moans that had given this cave system its name were eerily reminiscent of the sound the breeze had made at night as it blew across the top of the tree-trunk cell where the Fae had held me for torture. I kept expecting to feel skittering legs running across my skin as I crawled forward a painful few inches at a time in the darkness.
When I first heard the sound of human voices laughing and talking somewhere ahead of me, I was afraid I was hallucinating. But then something flashed in my vision in the distance—light reflecting off the walls of the cavern.
“Hello?” I cried, holding my breath as I waited for an answer.
There was a pause, then someone called back, “Hello?”
“Yes!” I yelled. “Hello! I’m in the dark! I need help!”
After a bit more calling back and forth as the people tried to determine where I was in the tunnel system, I collapsed back to sit against a section of the wall. It took them about twenty minutes to find me, at which point I had to spin a story about a fictional friend who’d dragged me down here and abandoned me as a practical joke.
My rescuers were understandably incensed on my behalf, though they did give my carry-on bag several odd looks. I brazened it out, not acknowledging the oddity of having luggage with me, and fortunately they were too polite and concerned to press the issue.
Ironically, once I had light, I could see that the tunnel we were traversing was smooth-floored and carefully maintained. It didn’t take much time at all to get to the main cavern and—more importantly—the heavy spiral staircase leading to the public entrance of the cave system.
“Thank you,” I told the group of three college-age guys. “I don’t know how I would have gotten out of there without your help.”
The one holding the light smiled, but he looked troubled. “You should maybe tell the police what happened—or at least the park rangers. That was way beyond a practical joke.”
I nodded earnestly and made agreeable uh-huh noises, already backing away with a wave and hurrying toward the staircase. Climbing the heavy iron spiral with bruised knees and scraped palms was just about as much fun as it sounded, but before long I was at the top, emerging into the light, huffing and puffing.
Clearly, I looked about as bad as I felt, because a park employee hurried toward me, wearing an expression of worry. I held up a hand, trying to get my breath back.
“Um... yeah. Slight mishap,” I said. “I’m okay, and I’m not planning on lodging any complaints or filing any lawsuits, promise. But if you could point me to the nearest place where I can get something to drink and charge a cell phone, that would be awesome.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I’D THOUGHT QUITE A BIT about the next few stages of my plan. Now that I was out of Hell and back to human civilization, stage two was getting enough juice in my cell phone to try calling Rans. The problem was, after nearly a month, I had no clue whether he’d be in St. Louis, Atlantic City, London, or Timbuktu. I was really, really hoping it wasn’t Atlantic City.
With the battery indicator showing ten percent, I called up my saved numbers and dialed. There was a pause as I held the phone to my ear, broken a couple of seconds later by three rising tones, rather than ringing.
“We're sorry,” said a recorded female voice. “You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”
I hung up. So much for stage two. Time for stage three.
I dialed again, and Guthrie picked up on the second ring.
“Yes? Who is this?”
A sigh of relief escaped me. “Guthrie? It’s Zorah. Do you know where Rans is right now? His cell phone’s out of service.”
There was a beat of silence on the line. “Pretty sure he left the country last week, Zorah. Is everything all right?”
No, I thought.
“Yeah,” I said. “I just, uh... need to see him about something.”
“Well,” Guthrie said, “he didn’t really talk to me before he left, but I see an airline ticket to Heathrow in my credit card records, booked under his most recent alias—the John Reynolds one. So I’d try London or York. That’s probably why his U.S. mobile number is disconnected. It’s easier to get a new SIM card when you’re traveling abroad.”
“Okay,” I replied. “You said York. That’s where he’s from, right? Does he have a house there or something?”
“I’m pretty sure he still does, yes. Sorry, Zorah—I don’t have an address or anything like that. And that may not even be where he is. But he did definitely book a flight to London.”
I chewed on my lower lip, thinking. “All right, that’s still helpful. Thanks, Guthrie—I mean it.”
“No worries,” Guthrie said, sounding distracted. “You sure everything’s okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I lied. “I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. Thanks again.”
After I’d hung up, I paused, thinking hard. No one involved was going to like what I had in mind for stage four. But the alternative was to involve Nigellus, and that wasn’t going to happen if I could possibly avoid it.
I chose a different number and dialed it, holding my breath as I waited to see if the owner would be around to pick it up. It rang. And rang. And rang. I tapped my fingers impatiently against my thigh, hoping against hope
