Chapter 21 #2
“No. Only the person who casts it can break it. That’s one of the reasons they’re so effective.” He studied the sigil again. “You’d think whoever cast it would’ve put it on the inside, to keep people from going into the tunnel. But this one—”
“Is designed to keep anything from coming out,” Charlee finished.
Miles glanced over his shoulder at the endless dark and shivered.
“What if there’s no exit?” Trust Gabriel to ask the question no one else wanted to.
“Then we’ll have to hope your mom can undo the ward, because I’d rather take my chances with her than starve to death underground.” He took a fortifying breath—nowhere else to go but onwards. “Wish me luck, I guess. See you on the other side.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” Gabriel crossed the threshold in one swift move to stand nose to nose with Miles, haloed by the flare of red light. “I’m not letting you go alone.”
Miles wanted to shake him for being so stupid. Or kiss him. He hadn’t made up his mind yet.
“No,” he told Charlee sharply, before she could take more than a step. “Seriously, don’t. Think it through—we need someone here to bring Felicity if we can’t get out. Go find Bram and wait with him.”
Her hands clenched at her sides. “I don’t like this.”
“I know.” He didn’t either. “I’ll text you when we find a way out, okay?”
When, not if. For his own sanity.
“Be careful. If anything goes wrong, come back here and we’ll knock down this whole wall. The ward can only be so big.”
He choked out a laugh. Knowing Charlee, she’d rip it apart with her bare hands, one chunk at a time.
“See you soon,” he promised.
“Watch his back, Hawthorne,” she called after Gabriel.
Miles expected a snarky comment, but Gabriel nodded. “I always do.”
* * *
Their footsteps were muffled by the packed dirt as they followed the tunnel.
Miles pulled out two flashlights—he’d added them to his backpack after last time, nestled between the jar-heart and death-knife—the beams reaching farther than their phones.
Being able to see if anything was coming at them was a blessing and a curse for Miles’s nerves.
If the shadow monster dwelling down here decided to attack them, he’d rather it just killed him quickly before he had time to scream at the sight of it.
“It doesn’t bode well that my mother knows about this place.” Gabriel broke the silence. “I suppose that’s another point towards her being the killer.”
Having the key to the tunnel that almost certainly led to Jocelyn’s tomb didn’t prove Felicity was guilty, but it didn’t look good.
“At least she’s not home today,” Miles offered weakly.
“She didn’t say where she was going. She could be in Jocelyn’s tomb waiting for us.”
Wasn’t that a comforting thought?
“I won’t kill her,” Gabriel said quietly.
A dip in the ground sent Miles stumbling. “What?”
“That’s what the knife is for, right? That’s why you’ve been carrying it around. So when the killer comes, I can defend myself.”
Miles’s backpack suddenly felt ten times heavier.
“I don’t know. I’ve been trying not to think about it, to be honest.” He’d questioned so many times since leaving Nadia’s shop if taking it had been the right move.
“There has to be a path where no one dies. If we break the curse or destroy the book, she might break free of the grimoire’s influence. ”
Gabriel kicked a loose rock, sending it skittering ahead of them. It was impossible to make out his expression in the gloom. “You probably think I’m stupid for not wanting her gone after everything she’s done. Or will do.”
“I don’t think that at all. Your relationship is…
complicated, but she’s still your mom.” Gabriel was a person who cared, who gave second chances and held out hope, no matter how hard he tried to pretend otherwise.
That was one of the things Miles admired about him.
He’d never want him to change, not even for this.
“I must be a masochist.” Gabriel shivered in his thin button-up—the temperature had been steadily dropping as they ventured deeper.
“I know that no matter how much I give her, I’ll never get anything in return.
Not approval, not affection. Some days I wish she hated me, simply so I knew she felt something. ”
Miles gripped his flashlight between his teeth and shrugged out of his jacket, draping it over Gabriel’s shoulders.
“Here.” The chill numbed his nose, but his body was so flushed from unease that it wasn’t sinking in.
His sweater was thick enough he wasn’t going to freeze to death.
“You’re not a masochist. I think everyone wants their parents’ approval, no matter how illogical it is. ”
“It can’t be healthy,” Gabriel griped, slipping his arms into the sleeves.
“It’s not.” Miles zipped the coat for him.
It was comically oversized, huge in the shoulders and hanging over his hands, and Miles liked seeing him in it too much.
“Look at me—I know my parents love me and I still work myself into a mess every day trying to please them. If you’re a masochist, what does that make me? ”
He adjusted the collar where it had got caught, knuckles brushing against the warm skin of Gabriel’s throat. He heard Gabriel’s breath catch, and his mouth went dry.
“A good person who cares too much,” Gabriel replied, peering up at him.
The tips of Miles’s fingers tingled, heat crawling under his skin. He had officially entered the danger zone of distracted. Would it be totally crazy to kiss Gabriel right now?
Amusement curled the corner of Gabriel’s mouth up. “You’re not allowed to kiss me in this disgusting tunnel.”
An intoxicating mix of embarrassment and delight lit up in Miles. “Does that mean I can when I get us out of here?” He took a step closer, the toes of their shoes bumping. “You really have to stop bribing me with kisses, that doesn’t feel like a healthy relationship dynamic.”
“Why would I, when it’s so effective?” Gabriel’s teeth glinted in the dim light as he smirked. “It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Miles laughed. “You’re awful. But you’re not wrong.” He caught Gabriel’s hand and tugged him down the tunnel, flashlight held aloft. “Let’s find the exit before I start digging at the walls.”
They trekked forward until they hit a fork in the tunnel. Miles shone his light down each one as far as it would go, but they were both identical—more dark dirt and stone walls. The air down here was stale and heavy, trying to choke Miles with each breath.
“Left or right?”
“Left,” Gabriel picked without hesitation.
Miles wasn’t one of those “right is always right” people, but when the left path immediately started sloping downwards, he wondered if he should be.
His legs burned, and all he could think was that if they encountered a monster and needed to run away, this massive hill was going to seriously slow them down.
The walls grew slick and wet as dripping water echoed through the tunnel. Anxiety gathered in the pit of Miles’s stomach, heavy in his steps, sweat prickling on the back of his neck. It was getting harder to breathe, the stone pressing in from every direction.
Gabriel’s flashlight beam shifted over, blinding him. “Are you alright?”
“Not really.” Miles attempted a weak grin, failing spectacularly based on the concern furrowing Gabriel’s brow. “It’s cool.”
“Do you want to stop for a minute?”
A wheeze whistled out of him. “God, no. Let’s keep moving. Please.”
If they stopped, reality would sink in with a full-blown panic attack hot on its heels.
Gabriel’s flashlight went back to the path, but Miles could feel his attention on him. The only thing worse than freaking out was freaking out in front of your perpetually cool boyfriend. He focused on counting his steps as they walked, skirting around filthy puddles and slick mud.
“I just thought of something,” Miles told him, attempting to distract himself. “We’re not going to die down here. You know how I know that? Because we haven’t suffered through Shakespeare’s incomprehensible writing yet.”
That managed to pull a laugh from Gabriel. “Finally, we can agree on at least one thing about classic literature.”
“Not a fan?”
“Of convoluted, melodramatic plots?” Gabriel’s nose wrinkled. “Certainly not.”
Miles was pretty sure that was nearly every book he’d been forced to read in English, but he restrained himself from pointing it out.
The ground leveled out, making a lazy curve. “We must’ve walked across a huge portion of the estate by now,” Gabriel observed. “If this tunnel connects to the other, we should come to the collapse soon.”
Which meant, unless they’d taken a wrong turn, the tomb had to be close. If it was here at all.
Miles’s beam caught on a bright splash of color. Panic sent his heart racing—until he realized what he was looking at.
A blood-red poppy.
Gabriel approached it, reaching out to touch a silky petal. “How is it growing down here?”
“I have no idea. But hey, we must be going the right way—these are the same flowers I saw in Jocelyn’s tomb.”
“These exact ones?” Gabriel’s eyebrows met. The tunnel ahead was littered with more, a crimson trail leading the way. “You didn’t tell me they were poppies.”
“I didn’t realize the type was important. I was more focused on the fact they were growing out of solid stone.”
Gabriel glanced around, flashlight lingering on a trickle of water traveling down grooves in the wall. “In the spring,” he told Miles, “red poppies grow along the shore of the lake. No one planted them, and my mother’s tried to remove them, but they come back every year.”
“The lake…” The ceiling pressed in closer as Miles tilted his head back. “Are you saying that’s where we are?”
“Underneath it, yes.” He sounded remarkably calm for someone realizing a bajillion gallons of water were hanging above him.
“Okay, cool. No big deal, that’s not terrifying at—” A thought occurred to Miles.
“Wait. When Jocelyn warned me the future hadn’t changed, I saw her coming out of a lake.
This lake.” He wanted to smack his head in frustration.
“I’m so stupid. She was trying to tell me where she was. I should’ve put it together.”
If Jocelyn wanted all her half hints and cryptic messages decoded, she really should’ve found someone smarter.
“How could you have known? Even if you’d suspected, we wouldn’t have realized there was a tunnel underneath. We would’ve dredged the lake for nothing.”
True, but it’d still been right there in front of his face.
The poppies led them to an abrupt turn. Beyond it, two things emerged from the darkness. Down the tunnel, far enough that his flashlight beam could barely reach, was the collapse. And to the left, a massive tree was carved into the stone wall.
“It looks like my family crest. But not quite.”
Gabriel was right—the trunk and roots and the pointed star were identical to the Hawthorne crest. But the branches were different, straight and sparse instead of twisted. There was a thick line on either side of the tree, going all the way down to the floor and meeting at the top in a curved arch.
“I think it’s a door.” Miles stepped back as far as he could, shoulders meeting damp stone on the opposite side of the tunnel. It was definitely door-shaped. “But there’s no handle.”
He pushed at it, straining until his feet slid in the moist dirt and he almost fell. “Damn it.” Digging his nails into the crack didn’t work, and kicking it only made his toes throb. “What do we do? This has to be the way into the tomb. Jocelyn’s right there.”
“Let me try,” Gabriel offered. “Perhaps it’s spelled to respond to the touch of a Hawthorne.”
They swapped spots, Miles holding the light while Gabriel tackled the door. When he laid his palms flat on it, the stone thrummed briefly, but nothing happened.
“It could be another ward. And only your mom can open it.”
If that was the case, they weren’t going to be getting in anytime soon. They’d have to keep her under twenty-four-hour surveillance, follow her down here, and slip inside behind her without her noticing.
Yeah, as if. They’d have better luck with pickaxes, going in on this wall Seven Dwarves style.
“It could be a puzzle.” Gabriel traced the lines of the tree. Some of the branches were darker, but that could be from discoloration or water. “If it is, I have no idea how to solve it.”
“Me either.”
They’d hit another dead end—literally this time—but neither of them wanted to say it.
“Let’s focus on finding a way out of here,” Miles proposed. “We can always come back once we figure out how to get inside.”
Warring emotions rose in him—he was undeniably relieved for an excuse to put it off a bit longer, but he’d also been so ready for this to end. He didn’t know if the universe was rewarding him with more time with Gabriel, or punishing him by dragging out their agonizing quest even longer.
Either way, moping about it wasn’t going to change the fact they weren’t getting through that door. And Miles was beyond ready to get out of this claustrophobic hellhole.
“You’re right.” Gabriel sounded equally conflicted, lingering at the door. “It must not be our time yet.”