second he’d raised the cover higher, I squeezed through the gap and found myself wrapped in Thorn’s free arm, pressed to his brawny torso. He lowered the metal disc, his body braced between the tunnel’s walls with his back and feet at opposite sides, and adjusted me against him.
“I’ll convey you down, m’lady.”
“Thank you ever so much,” I said with a grin.
It was hard to keep that good mood intact as the sewer smells closed in around me in the dimness. Only a few thin streaks of light fell from the little holes in the manhole cover. Thorn set me down on a stretch of dingy concrete, his mouth set as if he were restraining a grimace at the stench. “It is very dark from here on. The others have gone ahead to search for our elf.”
“Let’s hope they find him soon.” I had no qualms about wrinkling my nose. Breathing through my mouth to dilute the stench, I pulled out my phone and switched it to flashlight mode. I wasn’t afraid to go tramping around in these tunnels, but if I could avoid taking a wrong turn into a trench full of literal crap, I’d prefer that.
Up ahead, one of those trenches held a turgid flow of murky water. Well, water and lots of other things much less appealing than H2O. Was that the swish of a crocodile’s tail?
Better not to look too closely.
I crept along the walkway beside it, my stomach starting to churn for reasons that had nothing to do with my nerves. After what felt like a hundred and one years, a figure emerged into view up ahead: Omen, a hint of his hellhound magma glow making him stand out against the darkness. “Here he is,” he said in a dry tone that didn’t give me much idea of what to expect.
The skinny man who stepped out beside him could best be described as “sullen.” Everything about him seemed to droop, from the fall of his black hair, the bags under his eyes, and the slope of his jaw, all the way down to the floppy tongues of his miraculously spotless sneakers. True to elvish form, his ears had sharp tips aimed toward the ceiling. If we had to take this meeting out in public, maybe Ruse could give him some hat pointers.
“He says his name’s Gloam,” Ruse said, materializing just behind me. He rested his hand on my waist with the sweep of his thumb in a fond caress. “I asked to make sure, and surprisingly enough, it’s definitely not ‘Gloom’.”
I held back a snicker with a twitch of my lips. “A fae woman by the lighting store told us you were good friends with Luna.”
The elf sighed, the sound heavy with disillusionment. You’d have thought we’d just told him his house had burned down and his car exploded. Although given where he was living, maybe that had already happened.
“Luna,” he said in a dour voice. “I thought I mattered more to her than to be abandoned without a second thought. But off she went to who knows where and left me all alone.”
Antic popped out of the darkness with a tsk of her tongue. “She’s dead now, elf. So maybe it’s better you didn’t go with her, huh?” She tweaked his sagging shirt sleeve and shot me a smile as if seeking my approval of the point she’d made.
Gloam appeared so depressed already it was hard to tell whether that news affected him. “Some mortals say to die is to go to a better place. It could be that’s true.”
“Let’s hope it is,” I said, aiming to speed things along. “And she left in a rush because she thought she was about to get murdered right then by hunters who were in the process of murdering other friends of hers. I take it that you did know her pretty well?”
“We explored the human nightlife together. She said I was the only one she could talk to who wouldn’t think she was strange.” He sighed again. “Everyone thinks I’m strange. Who am I to judge anyone else? Not that it stops them.”
I wasn’t sure “strange” was the right word for the impression he gave off, but getting into a debate about it didn’t strike me as a good use of my time. “I’m sorry to hear that. You don’t happen to know about other people she was friendly with in the city, do you? Maybe a man named Philip… a human man?”
“Oh, yes,” Gloam said,