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Dewey flung it aside and rubbed his chin again. “Wait.” He darted to the backpack and dug through it. “Here! A crowbar. That’ll do it.”
“That may actually work,” Paige said with a deep sigh as she climbed to her feet. “Okay, ready?”
She counted to three again before she tugged at the stone with all her might.
“Almost!” Dewey said. “Just a little farther!”
Paige strained every muscle in her body to lift the stone another inch.
Dewey slid the crowbar through the small opening and leveraged it to help her lift. After ten minutes of work, they’d shimmied the stone away, revealing an opening in the floor.
A rickety wooden ladder led into a dark chamber below. Dewey grabbed the flashlight and shined it into the chamber. The beam died before reaching the floor.
“That’s deep,” Paige said.
Dewey grabbed a skull and held it over the opening. He dropped it into the blackness. A splash sounded a few seconds later. “Yep.”
Paige glanced at him, her lips drawn into a thin line. “You go. You can fly. It’ll be faster.”
“No way, uh-uh. I’m not going into the creepy pit alone.”
“One of us should stay here. It would be stupid for us both to go in there. What if we get stuck?”
Dewey thrust the flashlight at her. “You go, then.”
“Why me? You’d be way faster, and if the ladder breaks, you can fly out.”
Dewey poked a finger at her. “You’re the librarian!”
Paige shoved it away and jabbed a finger at him. “You insisted you wanted to do fieldwork!”
They stared at each other for a few seconds, neither willing to give in.
After a moment, Paige flicked her gaze away, holding her hands out in front of her. “Okay. We shouldn’t split up. That’s how people die in like every horror movie ever.”
“Right. Yes. Creepy temple. Werewolves involved. Probably shouldn’t split up.”
“Right,” Paige said with a sharp nod. “So we both go down.”
“Deal. I’ll carry the flashlight. You take the backpack.”
Paige nodded, strode to the bag, and tossed her phone into the waterproof pouch before slinging it onto both shoulders and snapping the clip across her chest.
She puckered her lips and blew out a long breath, staring into the deep, dark hole. “Okay, let’s go.”
Dewey flitted inside while Paige crawled onto the first steps of the ladder. It creaked and groaned under her weight when she inched her way down it rung by rung. Dewey hovered close to her, swinging the flashlight around as they descended. Water dripped below them, the only other sound outside of Paige’s heavy breathing.
“I see the bottom!” Dewey shouted after a few moments.
Paige scurried down the final few rungs, then she leaped off and into a pool of water that reached her thighs.
“Ugh,” she moaned .
Dewey swung the beam back and forth in the chamber. “Must be an underground river. It goes that way.”
He aimed the beam into the distance.
They crept forward, moving along with the flowing water.
