If he was using magic, it meant Amelia was probably in charge now, which made me bristle. It didn’t matter if Cormac seemed all right with the arrangement. I didn’t like the idea of him being used.
He passed the amulet over the safe as if it were some kind of Geiger counter.
“What’s he doing?” Anastasia asked, moving next to me.
“He’s kind of a wizard, I guess,” I said.
“Kind of?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
She glared unhappily.
Straightening, Cormac pocketed the stone amulet. “Something magical was there but it’s gone now.”
“I don’t suppose it left a trail?” I asked. He shook his head.
“It’s a trap,” Anastasia said. “This has all been a trick, and I fell for it—”
“I’d just like to point out that we’re not the ones lying dead on the floor,” I said. “If this is a trap we’re not the only ones who got stuck.”
The silence drew on as we contemplated that unpleasant thought. Once again I started pacing, as if that would make the corridor larger, as if a way out would appear before my eyes. My shoes, coated with blood, started sticking to the floor. The stench of blood was making it hard for me to think.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Find Grace and start over.”
We moved forward, back the way we’d come until we reached the intersection.
“Left,” Cormac said, before I could ask if anyone remembered which way we’d come.
“I knew that,” I muttered.
We turned and went on, strung out in single file in the narrow hallway, which my imagination was making narrower, and darker. This section seemed to go on a lot longer than I remembered.
“Aren’t there supposed to be stairs here?” I said. “I remember there being stairs.”
“Did we take a wrong turn back there?” Ben said.
“It wasn’t wrong,” Cormac said.
“But there were definitely stairs.”
Finally, we came to the next intersection. But this one didn’t branch off at right angles as the others had. Instead, the hallway split in a Y. It may have been my imagination, but the stone seemed to give way to dank earth, as if the passage left the city and continued on in wild, underground tunnels. I smelled dirt and mulch coming from the way ahead.
I stated the obvious. “We haven’t been here before.”
“So we took a wrong turn,” Ben said.
“This is much, much more than a wrong turn,” Anastasia said, her voice muted and anxious. She stood outside our small circle of light and her features were shadowed.
I faced her. “Do you know something or is that just more doom and gloom?”
Cormac said, “It’s that we can’t get out of here without Grace leading us. She’s got the key to the place. Until we find her, we’re stuck.”
Chapter 9
I BACKTRACKED, LETTING the others follow me as they would, until I came to that first intersection. Or what should have been that first intersection, the one that led to the closet and the storeroom where we found the nine-tailed fox. The light was almost no
nexistent now, and I was seeing the place through wolfish eyes. Maybe that was why I didn’t recognize it. I couldn’t have taken another wrong turn. I heard the others come up behind me, stepping softly, breaths echoing against the stone. The light from Cormac’s lantern pressed forward like a wall.