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With a wag of his tail, Singer melted into her shadow that was slanted across the baking pavement.
A minute later, a taxi turned into the alley. Loren stepped aside to give the driver room as he rolled up, brakes squeaking as he stopped the car. She got in the back and buckled her seatbelt, praying with all her might that the house would be empty when she got there.
“What’s the address?” the human driver asked as he turned down the radio and cranked the air conditioning as high as it could go. The local station was discussing a strange weather phenomenon, but she didn’t have a chance to hear what it was.
“775237 Victoria Amazonica District.”
—
When Loren reached the front steps of Hell’s Gate, it felt like a lot longer than seven days had passed since she’d set foot on the property. As she stared at the closed front door, her heart was weighed down by a feeling she didn’t quite understand, a sadness that made it a challenge to move her feet from where they were planted.
This was her home, and she never wanted that to change. Ever.
With a steadying breath that filled her lungs up with the scent of jasmine and creosote, she stepped up to the door and unlocked it, moving as quietly as she could.
Darien’s car wasn’t here, and neither was Max’s SUV. The jeep Ivy and Jack shared was usually parked outside, but it wasn’t here either. She couldn’t see inside the colossal garage to check for any of the other vehicles, but she was banking on her memory of the rough schedules the Devils all kept, holding out hope that no one, not even Tanner the homebody, was here.
When she stepped into the entrance hall, her lungs greedily sucked down the scents of her home: the spicy fragrance of the flowers on the glass table, the lingering aromas of brewed espresso and freshly peeled oranges, the fabric softener Ivy always bought. It was funny—the things a person noticed about a place after being gone for a while.
“Anybody home?” she called quietly.
No one answered. The only sound in the house was the crunch of ice between shadowy little teeth.
Crunch. Crunch. Swallow. Snap. Crunch. Crunch. Swallow.
Loren walked into the kitchen, standing on her tiptoes to see the top of the fridge as she approached. The Hob’s back was facing her, his form nearly invisible in the shadows cast by the cupboards above the fridge, not to mention the plethora of cereal boxes surrounding him like the walls of a cardboard castle.
Loren smiled. “Can you chew a little quieter, please?”
Mortifer froze. Slowly, so slowly that it was overboard dramatic, he turned to look at her, his cranberry—colored eyes narrowing into slits. And then, just as slowly, he took another ice chip from his pile on the fridge and stuffed it in his mouth, exaggerating every movement. Eyes on her, he bit down hard, every pointed tooth showing. Crunch!
Loren rolled her eyes. “I was kidding, don’t be so serious.” Mortifer kept glaring, a low snarl slithering between his teeth. “I’m wondering if you might be able to help me with something.”
He stopped chewing. Stopped snarling. Curiosity shone in his eyes, and he twisted his small head to one side like a pigeon.
“Can you speak?” She’d never heard him speak before, never heard him make any sound, other than a hiss or a snarl, and on rare occasions when he was really upset, a cry that sounded an awful lot like a bleating sheep. Usually, he reserved those cries for Darien, and usually they involved tattling on Bandit’s bad behavior. But maybe…
Her eyes snagged on the small whiteboard and dry erase markers that were secured to the side of the fridge with magnets. Ivy had written some food items on the board with the purple marker; hopefully she had them memorized, because Loren would soon be erasing them.
Loren grabbed the board and the black marker off the fridge and looked up at Mortifer. “Can you write?”
The Hob wiped his wet hands on his shadowy legs and climbed down from the fridge.
—
Ten minutes later, they were standing in the backyard, staring into a wide hole in the ground below a tree, the broad canopy shading a large portion of the vibrant green lawn.
“You want me to climb in there?” Loren asked. She looked down at Mortifer, who stood near her ankle, whiteboard and marker in miniature hand. The whiteboard was bigger than him.
He scribbled something down, his fingers barely wrapping all the way around the marker, the tip of it squeaking as he pressed way harder than he needed to. He put the cap back on the pen and held the whiteboard up so she could read it.
Weak spot in Divide, he’d written.
Great. As if one weak spot into Spirit wasn’t bad enough, there was one right in their very own backyard. The air was slightly cooler here, just like that spot in the library, where she had caused a blip in time, freezing the hands on the clock.
The library… Loren’s lip jutted out in thought as she assessed the mouth in the ground, the hollow place only about three feet deep. Had the creature that had attacked them somehow come through the Veil after she’d blown up that girl’s cup?
Loren shook the thought away and focused on the task at hand. “Will I end up in Spirit?” she asked the Hob. The spell stopped her from saying the full name: Spirit Terra.
