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Patch patted him on the back.
“Octavian, Arabelle, Theon. You three go first,” Devlin barked out like he was ordering them into battle.
“But I want to be on the front line!” Punch complained.
Devlin ignored him. “Patch and I will go in on either side of Leda. Stash, you and Punch take the rear. He looked at Nyx. “I trust that you and Sunstorm can handle the two civilians?”
“Naturally.”
Nyx didn’t sound annoyed, but there was a sharp spark in her ocean-blue eyes. As a demigod, she’d probably long since tired of being treated as weak by the gods. On the other hand, she didn’t have seven gods surrounding her like a force field. Faris must have thought I was made of glass.
We all cast form-fitting, water-repellent bubbles around ourselves—Harker cast one around Bella, while I cast one around Arina—then we stepped into the water. There were fish in the lake, but no sharks or monsters, much to Punch’s disappointment. We walked across the lake’s sandy bottom until Arina suddenly stopped and stomped her foot down to indicate the spot of interest.
I flicked my hand, casting a spell that swooped into the dirt like a digger. My magic bounced against something solid. I stepped closer and leaned over to gaze into the hole I’d made. The wet sand was already settling back into the hole, but I could still see what I’d dug up.
It was a door. A door in the floor.
I reached down and grabbed the door’s metallic handles to open it. A shimmering field of blue light stretched across the doorway, repelling both water and sand. I poked it with my finger to see if it repelled people too, but my hand passed right through the field. Now, that was a force field.
I hopped through the door in the floor. The moment I passed through the blue field, my water-repelling spell popped, drenching my clothes. Good thing I’d removed my boots. I could dry my clothes with a wave of my hand, but shoes were trickier. They soaked up water like a sponge.
I landed in a small sitting room which had eight fat, cushioned armchairs arranged in a circle at the center. A woman of around seventy, dressed in grease-stained work overalls, sat in one of the posh chairs. She was fiddling with the small mechanical device in her lap. She looked familiar somehow, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen her before.
Nyx landed beside me, also soaking wet. “Where’s the grimoire?”
“No grimoire here.” I looked around the room, but there were no doors except the underwater entrance. “Just her.”
“That’s a radio she’s holding,” Bella said. She was the next one through the door.
“A broken radio,” the elderly woman said. “But not broken for long.” She flipped a switch on the device, and it lit up. “There. That’s better.”
“Who is she?” Harker asked the moment after he landed beside Bella.
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” I said.
The elderly woman smiled at me. There was something creepy lurking beneath that kind, wrinkled facade and white hair.
Stash landed in the sitting room. “There is something odd about her,” he said, echoing my thoughts.
Stash had the power to see through to someone’s soul, so I definitely took his statement seriously.
“What do you see inside of her?” I asked him.
Stash watched the woman. “There’s something false about her.”
The old woman didn’t seem bothered by his statement. She just kept smiling. She looked like she was waiting for something to happen.
Devlin, Octavian, Punch, Arabelle, and Theon landed in quick succession. This tiny room was starting to get awfully crowded.
“Where’s Arina?” I asked.
“She was right behind us,” Octavian told me. “She and Patch are studying the blue barrier. Apparently, it’s a fascinating feat of magical engineering.” He rolled his eyes. “Nerds,” he added under his breath.
I stepped toward the woman with the now-functioning radio. “Who are you?”
She held up her finger. “Just a moment more.”
Arina and Patch burst through the blue barrier.
