i sighed. "well, i don't think it's any secret bella digs you. either that, or she's a masochist for hanging out with you and your grumpy self this long."

shelton gave me a hurt look. "hey, i ain't grumpy. just antisocial. but you know, maybe bella-"

thirty feet away, the doors leading inside the grotto opened, and a young blonde girl stepped out, skipping merrily along in front of a matronly woman with long, silvery hair. a shock of cold fear drowned out shelton's words.

self-preservation claimed my reflexes and triggered a panic event racing from my brain all the way to my toes. i gripped shelton and jerked him behind the ticket booth, cutting him off mid-sentence. sheer terror commanded me to flee this place at top speed. i glanced at shelton's pickup truck, some hundred yards and a million miles away in the parking lot. we'd never make it without being seen.

"what the hell?" shelton grumbled.

i peeked around the corner. shelton peered in the same direction. i didn't know the silver-haired woman from sight, but judging from the company she kept, i could take a good guess.

"you afraid of that kid?" shelton said.

i trembled as i pressed my back against the ticket booth and said in a low whisper, "that girl is my sister."

chapter 5

shelton's mouth dropped open a fraction. "that's ivy?"

i nodded.

"she's the one who almost wiped out every vampire in maximus's compound with a spell too powerful for most arcanes to even dream about pulling off?"

i nodded again.

he let out a low whistle. "hoo-boy. i just recognized the woman with her. it's old lady conroy. man, i wouldn't mess with that woman if you gave me an army of ninjas and pirates with laser guns."

"jeremiah tried to kill me the first and last time i saw him. i have no doubt eliza wouldn't hesitate to finish the job." i risked another peek and took a good long look at the woman who i'd once thought was my grandmother. shaking off the horrific feeling, i took note of where my sister and eliza were headed-not toward the parking lot, but the stable. instead of walking inside, however, they veered toward the back of the long, wooden structure where it sat against the rocky cavern wall. i frowned. "where are they going?"

shelton moved to the back corner of the ticket booth and looked. "they ain't going to pick up an elephant, that's for sure."

a man wearing yellow-and-black-striped arcane robes appeared at the rear corner of the stable and gave eliza a deep bow. he said something i couldn't make out over the noise of the menagerie housed in the stable and motioned for ivy and her grandmother to follow.

"dude looks like a bumble bee," i said, snickering.

"that's a utility arcane," shelton said, narrowing his eyes.

"utility?"

he nodded. "arcanes who perform public works like aether power, arch maintenance, and all that jazz wear those clown suits."

with the threat to my existence out of sight, i took a deep breath. swallowed the knot of panic in my chest and fought down the urge to flee. this was a golden opportunity to spy on my beloved relatives, but mustering the courage proved harder than i thought.

you have to find out what they're up to. the fate of the world depends on it.

when my subconscious put it like that, it felt like i had no choice. i sighed. steeled myself with the knowledge i could run really, really fast if necessary and said, "let's go."

i headed toward the stable. shelton headed toward the parking lot.

we stopped, turned, and looked at each other.

"are you out of your mind, kid?" shelton's forehead wrinkled with the kind of expression he probably reserved for the mentally insane.

"i have to find out what they're up to," i said. "you go. tell the others what i'm doing in case they catch me and kill me."

he clenched his teeth and forced a storm of curses through them, swirling his long, leather duster as he spun a hundred eighty degrees and stalked my way. "if elyssa and bella find out i left you to do something this idiotic, they'd cut my tommy-knockers off and boil them in acid."

for an instant, i felt bad for putting shelton in the situation but remembered the time he'd tried to kidnap me and my dad, and the guilty feeling evaporated. sometimes, a little coercion was the best way to make shelton do the right thing. i looked toward the stable for a moment to be sure my murderous relatives hadn't reversed course and trotted toward it.

"g'day, guvnah!" shouted the cheery looking pooper-scooper boy as he appeared from within the stalls.

i almost screamed at the unexpected declaration of good cheer. my heart did its level best to implode through a black hole of its own creation. i choked back a shout, pressing a hand to my chest and glaring at the young boy whose only function in this place seemed to be cleaning animal dung from the stable.

"holy mother of beef burgers," shelton said, giving the kid an affectionate pat on the head. "you about scared the crap out of me, oliver."

the boy grinned. "can i be of service, harry?"

shelton gave him a sly look. "maybe." he produced a couple of silvery bills i recognized as tinsel, the official currency of the overworld. "a woman and girl just went behind the stables. do you know what's back there?"

the boy gave shelton an innocent look, though the proffered bills vanished so fast, i thought i might have imagined the boy's fingers snatching them. "oh, sir, i wouldn't know anything about a hidden control room or anything like that."

"what a shame," shelton said. "well, is there anything else you can't tell me about it?"

"i wish i could tell you about an air vent with an illusion covering it so it looks like part of the cave wall." he walked behind the stable, leading us down the narrow alley between it and the smooth-hewn cave wall behind it, trailing his fingers along the rock at waist level until, at one point, they went through it. he pushed something. it clicked, and a thin, mesh-like spider web detached from inside. oliver rolled it up and stowed it inside the fake wall.

"what was that?" i said in a hushed voice.

"it keeps out bugs and stuff," shelton said. "like an air filter."

the boy pointed toward a section of wall several hundred feet away. "the main entrance."

shelton gave him a couple more bills. "thanks, oliver."

the boy gave shelton a grave look. "i don't mean to pry, but are you on another investigation?"

"you two know each other?" i asked.

shelton shrugged. "oliver assists me from time to time."

"i helped him pull a bounty on a rogue fader a few months ago," the boy said proudly.

"a what?" i asked.

"a dream leecher," shelton said. he regarded oliver for a moment. "ever been inside the control room?"

"i've looked inside from the air passage a few times. it's quite large." concern welled inside his large eyes. "they ward the floor against non-authorized personnel. i let a cat run loose in there once, and it set off an alarm."

"did the cat explode?" shelton asked.

the boy shook his head.

shelton ducked and poked his head through the illusionary wall. pulled it out. "the duct is big enough for us," he told me. "let's go see what there is to see."

taking a deep breath to allay the knot in my stomach, i followed shelton through the fake wall. invisible from the inside, i clearly saw oliver and the back of the stable. the sounds of elephants, birds, and other creatures within the structure provided audio camouflage. shelton squatted in the vent and duck-walked. i followed his lead. we arrived at a ninety-degree turn about ten feet away, turned, and stopped at the lip of the passage where it ended in another of the spider-web type filters. shelton detached it and set it aside after rolling it up to reveal a massive room straight out of my memories.

if i hadn't known better, i would have sworn i was back beneath thunder rock, an abandoned angel relic infested with all sorts of horrors that tried to kill me the first and only time i'd been there. i could almost see the oily black forms of infantile cherubs toddling from dark corners, arms outstretched, and rictus-shaped orifices crying, "dah-nah" as they tried to suck the life out of me. i remembered running for my life. i remembered somehow activating one of the smaller arches and taking it for a terrifying ride which dropped me into the middle of el dorado, another city of nightmares.

a hand tightened on my bicep, and i snapped out of my trance.

shelton's concerned gaze greeted me. "don't lose it now, kid," he said in a low hiss.

i nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. he released a long sigh.

running my eyes across the room, i noted the familiar features. arches just large enough to accommodate a person lined one side of the room, each one embedded on a platter of shiny onyx and ringed by silver-a safety measure i likened to the one around the much larger obsidian arch in the grotto way station. the silver ring prevented the magical energy field from spilling outside and fracturing reality. those cracks usually led to the gloom, a place i didn't care to visit.

these arches seemed intact, whereas the majority of the ones in thunder rock looked as though they'd been blasted with dynamite. but something else seemed different here. something i couldn't quite place my finger on. i looked up and down the rows for a moment, before it occurred to me what was missing. in the center of the room beneath thunder rock stood a snowy-white arch veined with obsidian. i remembered that arch taking up far more real estate than the smaller arches-maybe three or four times more. this room didn't have that arch.

shelton nudged me and motioned toward the far side of the room.

a map of the world towered over the bee-robed arcane where he stood talking to ivy and eliza. cyrinthian symbols lined the wall to the left of the map, each one linked to dozens of dully glowing stars dotting the map. the landmasses on the map only vaguely resembled the continents i knew. in my spare time, i'd looked over maps depicting the evolution of the world and realized whoever made the map in this room had most likely done so before humans had ever walked the earth.