I gave the three slumbering people a last look. It wasn’t fair that they had such an even, predictable life when it was all I could do to keep mine from exploding every three months. “Have you tried quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” I said as Trent and I rejoined them, and then my gaze dropped to the door at the soft click.
“Who guards the guardians?” Trent said as Zack spun the knob again, and this time, the latch engaged. “Someone has a sense of humor.”
“Go.” Nash pressed his lips as he turned to the loud voices approaching. “I’ll lead them to the other side of the compound.”
“Rache, come on!” Jenks prompted.
Zack was already halfway down another one of those cramped stairs lit by lights hanging from exposed wire, and I hesitated, taking Nash’s hand for a moment. “Thank you,” I said, and then Trent tugged me away. “If you ever need a job . . . ,” I said as he pulled me down the stairs.
“If this gets out, I will,” Nash said, and then the door shut.
“Wait,” I insisted as I tugged from Trent, hesitating until I heard Nash’s muffled shout and the sound of them fading. I exhaled, trusting the man I’d known for all of five minutes.
“If you ever need a job?” Jenks said pointedly as he landed on my shoulder.
Trent had gone ahead, and I felt myself warm as I began to follow. “With Ivy gone, we could use some muscle. Besides, if I don’t grab him, Trent will.”
The air began to smell musty—and sort of metallic. A thick rug spread where the stairs ended. The light was brighter, too, but I hustled forward when Jenks took off, stopping just inside what I assumed was a larger room.
“And demon makes three,” Landon said when I came blinking out of the darker tunnel.
Trent took my arm, tugging me closer as I looked across the brightly lit, almost claustrophobically low-ceilinged room. It glittered with gold and jewels arranged in glass cases and narrow shelves. But it was Landon and the eight men and women who held my attention.
“There’s four of us, moss wipe,” Jenks said as he hovered beside Zack.
Trent twitched, and the eight security guards lifted their weapons in threat.
Guns? I thought, realizing how badly elven magic wasn’t working.
Landon smirked. Somewhere between punching me in the gut and now, he’d put his ceremonial robe on over his slacks and white shirt, and the purple and green reminded me of what demons dressed their favorite familiars in. A purple sash was draped around his neck, and he even had on the flat-topped cylindrical hat. I wondered if he was trying to curry favor with the Goddess. If his security was using mundane weapons, it wasn’t working.
And then my chin lifted when I realized it was Hodin’s ring that he was setting on a display rack with the rest. Everything he’d taken from me was in a bowl beside him, and my lips parted when he plucked the baby bottle out from between Trent’s and my phones and dropped it in his robe’s expansive pocket.
“From one dead-end hole to another,” Jenks muttered as a pounding began on the door at the top of the stairs. “Don’t you elves ever make escape routes?”
Trent shrugged, and Jenks dropped to the floor to look for one.
“I never did like you, Zack, even before you died,” Landon said, grimacing at Jenks’s fading dust trail. “You made my childhood miserable. Which will make this almost a pleasure.”
Expression ugly, he backed to the wall and motioned for the guards to shoot us.
My eyes widened as they readied their weapons. Surprise flashed through me, and Zack made a sound of disbelief. Heart pounding, I yanked on the ley line, pulling in energy to blow them backward and into the tapestry-covered walls. “Fire in the hole!” I shouted to Jenks, then inhaled to invoke the spell with the force of my leaving breath.
“Celero inanio!” Zack shouted at the top of his lungs, and I turned to look at him in horror. It would burst the cartridges right in their weapons!
“Rhombus!” I exclaimed instead, simultaneously imagining a circle to encompass all of us. Trent’s energy poured into me, his power supplementing mine through Hodin’s curse. Our thicker barrier flashed up, closing above our heads as a thunderous boom shook the air: scores of bullets exploding at once.
I ducked, looking up at the unexpectedly muffled sound. The barrier dimpled with gunfire, and I squinted past it, a hand