Chapter 29
Josiah must have chosen a less remote area of the Realm Below for the next encampment.
While the room containing the new cubicle farm also appeared empty at present, it had clearly seen regular use in the past, judging by the scuffed desks inside the taupe cubicles.
Not to mention all the abandoned PCs with boxy monitors—and the various motivational posters on the walls.
Those posters differed in notable ways from the human versions she’d grown up with.
No one was exhorting the desperate-looking kitten clinging to a branch to Hang in there, baby.
Instead, the text read: Do you want this adorable cat shifter to accidentally get sent to a hellscape dimension when it falls and dies?
No? Then stop hanging out by the water cooler, brENDA, and do your damn job.
The TEAMWORK poster read: Either cooperate with each other or meet your inevitable fates a lot sooner than previously intended. Talking to you, BOB and DENISE.
Gwen couldn’t say she felt particularly motivated by the posters—but the room itself was doing the trick in their stead.
Now that she and the other captives had access to those old-fashioned monitors, they also had makeshift weapons to heave at the two guards in front of the door.
And because the space was much smaller than their previous prison, those guards wouldn’t get nearly as much warning of an attack or as much time to fire upon an advancing horde of determined oracles.
The group had held a hasty whispered conference earlier that night, and they’d unanimously agreed: An hour before dawn, they’d make their move.
Not all of them would survive the attempt. Maybe none of them would. But they’d all prefer to die on their own terms rather than at the hands of a supercilious asshole like Josiah, so it was happening regardless.
Gwen had chosen the cubicle closest to the guards, within their direct line of sight, to allow the others a bit more privacy.
Dread and anticipation had left her unable to sleep, even after at least an hour of trying, so she gave up and peeked through her lashes at the masked, armed males standing between her and freedom.
“I can’t believe Bree drowned her would-be attacker, then used her assailant’s glamour to fake her own death and investigate the academy’s secret sorority’s murderous cult.
” The guy on the left shook his head. “We probably should’ve been suspicious when she insisted on banging Olivier in that hot tub of melted Camembert. ”
The right guard sighed. “Mimi always said her best friend had a weakness for the French classics.”
Gwen squint-glared at them both, infuriated. They were already holding her captive, and now they’d ruined the suspense of her favorite streaming show? Motherfucker.
Wait. Was the door behind the guards…opening? Slowly?
The two males didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. Their discussion didn’t falter, even for a moment. Were they expecting someone? Or were they too involved in their spoiler-riddled conversation, too intent on stymieing a possible oracle escape attempt, to notice a threat from outside the room?
Maybe she was imagining things. The lights in this room were dimmer than in the captives’ previous prison, so the shadows could be playing tricks on—
Without a sound, a bearded male who looked very much like rule-bound, stiffly diplomatic Councilor Hugh Blacke, Esquire, slipped through the gap and suddenly, violently, cracked the two guards’ heads together.
Their unconscious bodies dropped to the floor with muffled thumps, and he closed the door behind himself and knelt at their sides.
When Gwen gasped, the smell of brimstone filled her lungs.
As she gaped in shock, the slim, black-clad demon patted down the guards, removing their guns and daggers and placing the weapons on the marble floor.
His face tightened, the temperature of the room spiked, and suddenly the guns had transformed into melted puddles of metal.
A moment later, the daggers became red-hot handcuffs that he shaped around the guards’ wrists without regard for the hiss and stench of their burning flesh.
That kind of easy violence, the unflinching infliction of pain, seemed very unlike Hugh. No matter what her eyes might be telling her.
The other oracles had begun to stir. To murmur to one another as they tried to figure out what was happening.
“Gwen?” Matilda softly called out, but Gwen had no answers for her yet.
The demon’s blunted horns reflected the overhead lights as he strode across the room and squatted next to her. Every fiber of her being wanted to reach for him, but…
She held up a hand, and he halted before touching her.
“Gods, Gwen, are you o—” he began to say, molten-amber eyes stricken.
“How do I know you’re Hugh?” she interrupted in a whisper, because she and everyone else had been catastrophically fooled by Josiah. “Prove yourself.”
He paused, forehead knotted, and the singularly solemn, caring expression he directed her way would have established his true identity even without the evidence he offered next.
“Forgive me for not offering a more polite bit of assurance, but…” When he reached out again, she didn’t stop him, and he lightly laid his hot, smoke-scented palm over her lips. “You like it when I do this.”
“I really do,” she told him, her words muffled by his hand, and launched herself at him. “How did you…”
No. There was no time for that now.
Instead of questioning his arrival, she clung with all her strength to his lean, sweltering frame and allowed herself one fierce kiss on his startled but willing mouth. Two. Three.
Then she shoved him away again, untangled herself from her blanket, and scrambled to her feet with his belated assistance. “I’m so glad you’re here, but we should go before anyone else comes or the guards recover. What’s the plan?”
“We need to get to the courtroom before dawn,” he answered without hesitation, then placed something cool and round in her hand and curled her fingers around it.
She barely noticed. “All nine of us or…?”
Even as she spoke, the raw throb of her scalp wound became a mild itch. Renewed strength flooded into her weary limbs with each moment that passed. Startled, she looked down to see that he’d given back her pomander, complete with a fresh healing spell.
“All nine of us.” His lips quirked faintly. “I knew you wouldn’t leave the others behind willingly, and I had no desire to knock you unconscious too.”
She blew out a hard, relieved breath. “Thank goodness. Give me just one second.”
Jing-Jing’s cot wasn’t far away. Gwen hurried there, squatted, and molded the younger woman’s hand around the pomander instead. Jing-Jing peered at her confusedly before melting into the cot with a soft sigh of relief a moment later.
Satisfied, Gwen stood and addressed her fellow oracles. “Okay, everyone, get up and get moving. We’re blowing this pop stand ahead of schedule.”
“What’s a pop stand?” Timon sounded sleepy, but he willingly rose from his cot. “And why would you blow it? Unless…” His face screwed up. “Ewww. Why are you talking about penises, Gwen?”
“It’s old-people slang unrelated to penises,” Jing-Jing told him before rising with a murmured thank-you to Gwen. “Our fearless leader is ancient, remember? Just like Tilda.”
“Not as ancient as poor Harry,” Matilda said. “Please help him up and give him the pomander next, our Gen Z queen. It would be very sigma of you. No cap, rizzler.”
“That’s…” Even while cringing in secondhand embarrassment, the young woman assisted Harry to his feet with extreme care. “No. That’s no.”
“Hold on.” Even without raising his voice above a murmur, Hugh managed to draw everyone’s attention. “Before sunrise, we need to be waiting in the courtroom. Does anyone know how to get there from this location?”
Headshakes all around.
“We’ll search for it as a group, then.” Gwen directed her best strict-schoolmarm look at the assembled oracles. “Remember what we decided last night: We stick together at all times and have each other’s backs. Agreed?”
A round of firm nods.
Gwen rejoined Hugh and reached for his hand. Once he’d interlaced their fingers, they beelined for the closed door together, the other captives following closely behind. When he cracked it open, she peered into the hallway outside.
Nothing. No one. Just blank white walls and cold marble floors leading down endless branching corridors.
When Gwen took a deep breath, bracing herself for whatever lay ahead, Hugh darted a concerned glance her way. “Are you okay, honey?”
“You’re here, so I’m fine.” She squeezed his hand. “How about you?”
“Much better now,” he told her, then pressed a quick kiss to her crown and pushed open the door to the unknown.
—
They must have jogged through the halls of the Realm Below for an hour before meeting any other signs of civilization or occupation.
Which was good—if no one saw them, no one could report them for trespassing or kill them on the spot—but also unfortunate, because the terrified, under-rested oracles were worn out.
And since the courtroom was most likely located in a more populated area, they probably weren’t even close to their intended destination yet.
Eventually, though, Hugh gestured for them to halt several feet away from a not-quite-closed door. And as soon as everyone stilled, Gwen could hear a conversation between two Realm employees occurring within that room.
“I can’t believe Death and the Fates are still taking their winter break while we’re back on the night shift already.
” A whirring sound indicated the use of some kind of equipment.
“Without them here, we can’t hold court sessions for the newly dead, because there’s no one to sign off on the judges’ final-destination verdicts. Which is—”
“—putting our after-death operations even further behind,” the other employee cut in, sounding equally irritated.