“He’s pulling the van around,” Corbin supplied. “He’ll meet us out front.”
With that in mind, he packed his kit with a bit of everything, should they need more magical firepower.
Corbin slid his gaze past Linus. “Are you coming too?”
“I got you the lead,” Adelaide said tartly. “The least you can do is bring me along.”
Oscar tucked in his lip and leaned forward. “Can I come?”
“It’s too dangerous.” Corbin picked him up and set him adrift. “We’ll play when I get back.”
Floating on air currents Woolly provided, Oscar swam to keep from drifting away. “Promise?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Corbin poked the ghost and sent him tumbling. “Only if you don’t cheat this time.”
“I don’t cheat.” Oscar puffed up his chest. “I can’t help if you can’t go through walls like me.”
“We’ll finish this later.” Corbin ruffled the boy’s hair. “Keep an eye on Grier while we’re gone.”
“I will.” He snapped out a salute. “Here.” He manifested a small foam dart gun from wherever he kept such things until he required them. “It’s got a full clip.”
“Thanks, buddy.” Corbin accepted the weapon with solemnity. “Later.”
Without further delay, Linus slung on his messenger bag and exited the house.
Unarmed and undaunted, Adelaide followed, and Corbin brought up the rear.
They piled into Moby, and Clem drove them a block from the coordinates then parked on the curb.
Though several stores in Savannah kept Society hours, the lingerie store wasn’t one of them. Its windows were dark when they arrived, and Linus wasted no time drawing on a sigil to pop the lock on the door. Flashing lights past the threshold warned of a security system, but he deactivated it with a swipe of his wrist too.
Clem shouldered in first, and Linus let him. Boaz was his friend, and he had a right to worry.
Adelaide came in behind Linus, then Corbin, and they spread out to begin their search.
Ten minutes later, they met up at the manager’s office at the back of the store.
“I got nothing.” Corbin checked with Clem. “You?”
“Nope.” He looked to Linus. “You?”
Linus shook his head then noticed Adelaide hadn’t joined them but remained apart. “Adelaide?”
“Do you hear that?” She cocked her head. “It’s like water dripping, but it’s too steady, too perfect.”
“I figured it for a leaky sink.” Clem tested the office door. “The employee bathroom must be in there.”
With a practiced twist of his wrist, Linus drew on a sigil to grant them access then stood back. It was that or get trampled as Clem took point. Adelaide wasn’t far behind, both of them desperate for another sign from Boaz.
The office was a tight rectangle with an even tighter kitchenette cluttering its rear. Two black doors, one marked as an exit, stood on the opposite wall.
Clem went straight to the bathroom, but he backed out fast. “Empty.”
Linus walked past the exit, on his way to examine the bathroom for the source of the dripping, and magic tingled along his senses. He turned to face the exit door and tested the push bar at its center. There was no give. The bar didn’t budge. And the tapping…stopped cold.
Corbin appeared at his shoulder. “Did you find something?”
“Perhaps.” He drew a sigil on his palm and swept it across the doorway, cataloging the density of magic. “There’s a ward on this section of wall. I’m not certain if there’s an actual door it’s protecting, or if it’s only glamoured to look that way.”
“I’ll circle around back,” Clem decided. “It’s in the right place for an exit, but it never hurts to be sure.”
After he went to try his luck with the door from the outside, Linus shooed Corbin and Adelaide back.
“I’m going to diffuse the glamour first, so we can see what we’re dealing with before we crack it open.”
And pray to the goddess their missing loved ones were revealed.
Twelve
Tuning out the worried come on, come on, come on Adelaide kept chanting under her breath, Linus used a sigil to dent the glamour enough to see where to make his next hit, one that would disable it. The work struck him as familiar, but it wasn’t another of Leisha’s manufacture. This hand was far subtler.
A pulse of energy swept through the room as the exit door wavered and trembled before melting into a metal square, three feet by three feet, welded into the wall. The handle at its top reminded him of a laundry chute, but this was too industrial for that.
“Boaz could fit through there,” Adelaide said softly, as though reassuring herself. “Tight, but doable.”
“I’m going to break the ward.” Linus glanced over his shoulder. “Stand against the walls in case its more powerful than it appears.” As a protest parted Corbin’s lips, he held up his wrist to show the impervious sigil. “I’ll be fine.”
With Corbin and Adelaide in position, Linus withdrew his inkpot and a brush. He covered the rusted metal in the thicker medium, layering in protections for them while peeling back its defenses. Certain he had done his best to contain any martial repercussions, he drew on a combination of sigils that dissolved the ward and jarred the door open with a metallic whine of protest.
The drawerlike access point revealed a tunnel made of reinforced metal resembling an air duct. “Hello?”
The tap, tap, tapping resumed, and Linus glanced back to assess a new presence in the room.
Unsurprised to discover the wraith, he still chastised him. “You were supposed to remain with Grier.”
A skeletal hand came to rest on his shoulder, and Linus understood that habit had summoned Cletus, his own fear and nerves creating an irresistible beacon for the wraith.
“My apologies.” He gestured to the shaft. “While you’re here, do you mind?”
The wraith groaned assent and drifted into the opening. Trusting his allies—no, his friends—to watch his back, Linus shut his eyes and let the wraith’s vision cloud his until they were one and the same.
“The bottom is wiped clean of dust, but the sides and most of the top are thick with it.” Linus narrated for the others’ sakes. “They used this shaft. Recently. There’s no fresh accumulation.”
“That’s good news then,” Adelaide murmured. “See anything else?”
“I’m not sure what this structure’s original purpose was, but there are interconnecting shafts that fork off it in different directions. The downward slope makes me think they intersect the underground tunnel system at some point.”
Cletus halted before another metal door and inspected it for a ward before gliding through to the other side. He materialized in a rusted-out cistern littered with protein bar wrappers and empty bottles of water.
“Cletus?” A scratchy voice came from the darkness. “Am I hallucinating?”
Nudging the wraith closer to the voice with a mental push, Linus gritted his teeth at the bruises purpling Boaz’s eyes, cheeks, and neck. Blood crusted his short hair and ears, but he had washed his face clean.
The wraith poked his cheek with a bony finger, and Boaz jolted, his eyes widening.
“Wakey, wakey.” He reached for a pile of blankets and peeled them back. “The cavalry has arrived.”
Heart in his throat, Linus watched as his disheveled mother sat up and honed her glare on Cletus.
“Linus?” Her expression softened. “We’ll need assistance to navigate the shaft.”
Unable to ask why, he urged Cletus to spread his arms and shrug the question.
“I seem to have broken my leg,” she said haughtily. “The Pritchard boy has a concussion. A vampire struck him with a metal pipe, which I honestly didn’t expect to prove harder than his skull.”
“She’s not wrong,” Boaz admitted. “On both fronts.”
The gesture at odds with his somber countenance, Cletus gave them two thumbs up and then retreated.
As the wraith made his way back to the office, Linus blinked clear of their connection.
“They’re both alive and mostly well in a cistern about a five-minute crawl from here.” He held still while his vision returned and noted Clem had rejoined them. “They’ve requested our assistance with an extraction.”
“I’m in.” Clem rested a hand on Adelaide’s shoulders. “I’ll bring your pet ox back to you.”
“Thanks.” She hugged him briefly. “I am rather fond of him.”
“Count me in too.” Corbin dumped his backpack at his feet. “I’ve got headlamps. Who wants one?”
Linus shifted toward Adelaide. “Will you be comfortable waiting for us here?”
“No problem.” The cold light of resolve entered her eyes. “Someone needs to keep an eye out for whoever chased them down there in the first place.”
“You’re right.” Linus gestured to Corbin. “Stay here with Adelaide.”
“Okay.” Head down, Corbin checked, “Are you sure you don’t need more help?”
“Boaz has a concussion, but he won’t require physical assistance, only guidance in the event he becomes disoriented. Clem can handle him.” Linus moved to shut the door and ward it until their return. “Mother has broken her leg, but I can carry her out alone. Two of us can manage.”
“I can do that.” Corbin eyed the door. “We’ll hold down the fort until you return.”
“Do we need to call anyone?” Adelaide picked at her nails. “Or can they make it home?”
“They can both come to Woolworth House,” Linus decided. “We can ask the pack healer to treat them.”
Another time, Grier could have healed them good as new, maybe better, but he wasn’t risking her health for minor injuries.