Chapter 12
Ophelia tromped after the stupid cloud of pixies, her fingers lingering on her lips and cursing herself. Gideon had said he loved her, and she hadn’t said it back. Nope. She’d just left. Ghandi. What the hell was wrong with her?
Okay, so that was a rhetorical question. She mentally added what’d happened between them upstairs to the list. Ophelia scrubbed a hand over her face, not caring about her stupid makeup. Ugh, she was a mess. She took a swig from her flask, frowning. Shit. Probably should’ve topped that off.
The door above opened, interrupting her pity party, and Jena thumped down after her, shrugging on a heavy parka.
Ophelia stopped at the bottom of the steps and pivoted, her brow furrowing.
Where the hell… Instead of going outside like she figured, the harem had disappeared into the back of Jena’s shop.
“Where are they going?”
The witch shrugged, looping her messenger bag over her head and looking just as confused. “I have absolutely no idea.”
They followed the trail of sparkling dust into a storage room filled with crap, and to a door leading to the basement. Jena shook her head at Ophelia’s look and headed down. Ophelia sighed, following her. Great. The little idiots were taking them on a tour before getting down to business.
Considering the amount of junk upstairs, the basement was surprisingly empty of anything save cobwebs and the packed dirt floor. The pixies were hovering in the corner of the fieldstone foundation nattering.
“Here-here-it’s-here!” the one with the acorn top on her head screamed, pointing.
“What’s here?” Jena asked, bewildered.
“Stupid-thump,” one of them muttered, and another punched them.
“Door-it’s-a-door,” a third pipped.
The one beside her nodded. “Goes-down.”
“Below-below-below!”
Ophelia and Jena exchanged a look. “Um, okay. Can you show me how it works?” the witch asked.
The one with the cap rolled her eyes and disappeared into a crack between the stones.
Jena sighed, running a hand over her face. “Okay, yeah, they’ve done this to me before. Guys, that’s not gonna—”
Something clicked, and a section of the wall groaned, swinging inward and leaving a ragged hole about a foot off the ground. A low, dark tunnel lay beyond.
“—work,” Jena finished lamely.
“I’m assuming you didn’t know this was here?” Ophelia said, slipping off her heels and setting them to the side. It looked like a tight fit, and six extra inches wasn’t going to do her any favors.
The witch shook her head. “Nope.”
“Oh fun, so this will be an adventure for us both,” Ophelia said, clasping her hands beneath her chin.
Jena glared at her, huffing as she clambered through the hole. “At least it’s not a coal chute,” she muttered.
“Do I want to know?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, perfect. Definitely tell me about it then.” Ophelia stepped over the threshold, ducking her head and cringing when the door slammed shut behind them, leaving them in total darkness.
Jena sucked in a breath. “Okay, so this is a problem. I can’t see a thing.”
“Trust me, you’re not missing much,” Ophelia snorted, crouched over with a hand against the low ceiling above. No way would Gideon and Chase have been able to squeeze through here.
“You can see?”
“Enough to know you’re lucky you’re a pygmy.” Jena flipped her off and Ophelia grinned. “Fuck you too, babe.”
“Fine, then you go first, just give me something to hold on to.”
“You’re really needy, you know that?” Ophelia grumbled, not about to take her hand. “Here, it’s the back of my tunic. Trust me, it’s there.”
Jena fumbled at the gossamer, frowning. “Does that mean your bare ass is hanging out?”
“You’ll never know, and if I were you, I’d crouch down a little more.”
“Great.”
“Come-on-come-on-come-on!” one of the pixies stage-whispered, zipping back.
“Ready?” Ophelia asked.
“Just fucking go.”
Ophelia started after the pixie, cringing at the sensation of pulling around her midsection from the gossamer. Whatever, she could deal. It was only temporary, unlike her miserable existence.
The packed dirt and stone tunnel teed. A pixie gestured for them to go right, dumping them out into another tunnel riddled with roots.
They poked out from the walls and sloping floor, tripping them as their bristly filaments caught in their hair.
She batted at the dangling things and squeezed by a taproot as wide as her thigh, swearing as Jena contorted herself to do the same.
Shit. Maybe Chase was right, and she should’ve stayed at the Witchery.
Whatever. Even without the witch lugging around that huge gut of hers, it would’ve been slow going.
Ophelia sneezed, whacking her head against the ceiling.
Ghandi, the must down here was thick enough to taste; no way had anyone come this way in a very long time.
“I think we’re following Cross Street, headed toward Main,” Jena whispered at another juncture.
They pushed through a rusted gate hanging on squealing hinges into the next tunnel lined with stone, a slick of ice running down the center of the floor.
Shafts of light hit the far wall, and another set did the same a couple hundred feet away.
“This must be the sewers,” Ophelia said, her breath coming out in a cloud as she straightened up, her hands at the small of her back.
“Close-we’re-close!” a pixie whispered, appearing beside Jena with an exaggerated shush.
She took off, heading away from the center of town.
They followed her for about a block, Ophelia’s toes totally numb by the time they came to another gated tunnel.
This one was in much better repair. It swept to the side, well-oiled.
“Was that silver?” Ophelia murmured.
Jena nodded, the light fading again. She reached down and grabbed Ophelia’s tunic. “Where did you manage to score gossamer?”
“It was a late Yule present from a friend,” Ophelia said after a moment.
The witch snorted. “You have one of those?”
“Right? Shocked the shit out of me, too.”
The tunnel slowly dissolved into a pitch blackness even she was having trouble seeing in.
Their too-loud breaths and the tug of Ophelia’s tunic barely keeping her grounded enough to go on.
Then, something in the distance. Clumps of weird glowing algae began to appear on the walls.
The air grew warmer, and the gooey clumps grew larger, their light becoming strong enough to illuminate the tunnel.
Jena dropped Ophelia’s tunic. “Okay, I’m good,” she said, frowning at the slime covered walls. “Relatively speaking.”
A pixie flew back making an exaggerated shushing motion, then mimed creeping along.
They slowed, a brighter light source just up ahead, and an angry buzzing reaching their ears.
Shit. That must be all the pissed off pixies Soku was talking about.
Jena and Ophelia held their collective breaths as they peeked out from the tunnel.
“Holy shit,” Ophelia murmured, Jena’s eyes as wide as her own must be. Chase and Felix hadn’t been kidding: the Below was about as far from a sewer as you could get.
The street running past them was cobbled with polished stones and pristine houses reminding her of a German village lined its sides.
Bold geometrics were stenciled on the doors and shutters, and weird plants bloomed in flower boxes and pots below the windows and lined balconies.
Huge urns of them dotted the sidewalk beneath tall gas lampposts.
Their amber light flickered off the ceiling of crystals above, refracting rainbows over everything.
Ophelia had never seen anything so idyllic. Well, it would’ve been if an irate cloud of pixies weren’t hovering over the buildings like a storm about to break.
“I had no idea there were so many of them,” Jena whispered, her eyes huge.
“So, when’s that eighteen-wheeler of coconuts coming?” Ophelia asked.
The witch put a hand to her mouth and shook her head.
A gnome with a handcart turned a corner and trundled down the opposite side of the street, muttering. Shit. Ophelia pulled Jena back into the shadowed tunnel. Okay, they were here, but how were they supposed to get any further without being seen?
Two pixies appeared at the mouth of the tunnel. One held up a hand for them to wait, then glanced over her shoulder, giggling. The other held his stomach, full-on belly laughing.
Yeah. No good could come of that
A terrific crash sounded from beyond the tunnel, followed by a smattering of others like bombs going off. A man started yelling, and doors crashed open, footsteps pounding away from them. More angry voices raised to join his, and the pixie frantically gestured for them to follow.
Ophelia and Jena darted after her to an alley across the way, several houses down from where they’d been.
The cloud of pixies was at the far end of the street bombarding the irate crowd with flowerpots, gleefully smashing them over the cobblestones.
Others were viciously attacking howling residents, their tiny mouths stained with blood.
Ophelia snickered as they made it through, glancing at their guide with new respect.
Pixies really were evil little bastards.
Thankfully, they didn’t have to worry about the ceiling here being low, but it looked like they were coming up on another street.
Ophelia held her breath as the pixies hurried them across it into a cultivated space of greenery.
A collective shout of dismay went up behind them and something big shattered with a burst of light.
Ghandi, Ophelia didn’t even want to know what mayhem the little beasts were up to now.
Their guide motioned for them to crawl into a cluster of evergreen bushes, giggling and clapped her hands together. “Stupid-stupid-stupids!”
Jena put a hand to her abdomen and cracked a grin, huffing. “You have to admit, that was pretty effective.”