were. A stab of panic hit straight through my gut as I snapped my head up. I yanked on the chains as hard as I could, my body shaking with fear. They wouldn’t budge. Dust clouded above me, but the chains didn’t break. I summoned my power and gave a tremendous jerk, but still nothing. Fear turned into shock and confusion. Iron chains shouldn’t be able to hold me. I’d brought down an entire warehouse before, just by willing my power. This made no sense. None of this made sense.
But why was I here? How did I get here?
“Are you okay?” the girl asked. “Hey! Are you deaf?”
“No,” I snapped, my voice hoarse. “I’m not deaf. I’m thinking. Or trying to, at least.” I looked around the room, looking for anything familiar, but I’d never been here or seen this girl before.
And then it hit me, the memory rolling in like acid fog.
Nathaniel.
Will.
Nathaniel was dead and Will probably was too.
I couldn’t breathe. I gasped for air—rapid, uncontrolled gasps. My lungs wouldn’t work. My heart pounded and my vision faded to black as I sagged heavily against my chains. I felt like I was dying. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I wept for my friends. The memory of Nathaniel turning to stone in my arms and Will taking Merodach’s blade to his chest was too much. I cried and thrashed and screamed, cursing the demonic reapers and swearing to tear them apart piece by piece.
Then I swallowed hard and forced my tears to cease. I had to be brave. I had to escape and get back to Will if he was still alive. If he was dead, I’d have known. I’d have felt it in my soul. Now I had to get myself out of this, because no one was coming for me.
And my panic wasn’t helping the girl I was imprisoned with to stay calm.
“Are you okay?” she asked once I’d stopped crying. Her face was streaked with dirt and bloody scrapes.
I ignored her question. “Where are we?”
She shook her head weakly. “I don’t know. A basement, I think.”
Useless. “How long have you been down here?”
“A day. Maybe two. I don’t know. They’ve only come down once since I woke up in here.”
“They?”
She was quiet for a moment, her pale blue eyes locking on mine. “Monsters.”
Reapers. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“No. Do you?”
Yes. Maybe. “We have to stay calm.”
“I’m scared,” she said, shaking. “And I haven’t eaten in so long. I don’t feel well.”
“Hey,” I said sharply, just as she was about to cry. “I’m going to figure out how to get out of here.” The problem was, I had no idea how to do that. Something was keeping me weak. I wasn’t so sure I could bust out of these chains by brute strength alone.
My necklace was gone, and my strength felt like it had gone with it. Kelaeno had broken it, and I felt its loss dearly. I looked around the room more carefully. On the left wall of the cellar, past the girl beside me, was a staircase. When I looked through the darkness to the opposite wall, my heart stopped and some invisible horror tore through my stomach.
The sarcophagus. The stone box stood vertical against the wall so that I stared at its lid as if it were a doorway. On one side of it was a wooden table with a large, weathered old book opened on it, but it was too far away for me to read the text. Beside the book was a rough clay bowl and an ornate, ancient-looking box. A silver dagger lay on the other side of the book.
Nausea and helplessness swept over me. I began to feel terrified for myself and the girl now. My heart pounded so fiercely I worried it’d hammer right through my rib cage. I thought quickly.
“What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
“Emma,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Ellie, and I’m going to get us out of here. How old are you, Emma?”
“Fifteen.”
I glanced at her. The clothes she wore, a junior varsity track hoodie over a T-shirt, were filthy and torn. “What’s the last thing you remember before you woke up here?”
She shook her head and sagged heavily on her chains. “I was out jogging. I have a meet on Saturday. What day is it now? What was the last thing you remember doing?”
Watching Will and Nathaniel die. “Sitting there and doing nothing.”
She gave me a puzzled look and I let my eyes fall to