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I looked at him blankly before following his gaze to where my knives had impaled something furry and scaly and really, really wrong to the tabletop not three feet away. I shrieked and jerked back, and the knives followed the motion, letting go of their prey to be reabsorbed by my bracelet. And untethered by anything, the gory body slid slowly off the tilted side of the table.
Caleb pushed it aside, giving the darts a target other than us. We crouched in the dark, hearing the steady thud of metal into meat, until Pritkin surfaced at my elbow a few moments later.
Pritkin popped up at my elbow a moment later. He gasped in a lungful of air before catching sight of the dark hulk of the creature floating a few yards off. “What is that?”
“The welcoming committee,” Caleb said straight-faced. “What did you find?”
“The corridors are flooded, but the nearest staircase is clear from about halfway up. It’s doable.”
“If we make it that far,” Caleb growled, glancing upward.
As if it had heard him, the chandelier finally stopped rotating. Without the scrape of metal on metal, the chamber was almost silent. The only noise came from the water lapping against the walls and splashing into the flood. And the even softer sounds of wretched sobbing.
Both men tensed and Caleb waved the light around, but of course he didn’t see anything. “What is making that noise?” Pritkin demanded.
“Augustine’s idea of a joke. He spelled my dress,” I told him.
Pritkin sized me up for a moment. “Take it off.”
“What?”
“I can use the charm on it to confuse the wards.”
The arm that wasn’t holding on to the table crossed protectively over my chest. “But . . . I’m not wearing anything underneath.”
“Nothing?”
“Maybe panties.” At least I thought I was. After the day I’d had, I wasn’t really sure.
Pritkin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Would it help at all to remind you that I’ve seen it?”
“Once! A long time ago! And it was really, really dark!”
He started to say something and then seemed to catch himself. “Give me what your maidenly modesty can spare, then.”
“Why do you need it again?”
“Oh, for—Give me the damn dress and I’ll show you!” Before I could reply, he pulled out a knife, reached underwater and sliced off what felt like half the skirt.
“Why do these plans of yours always involve me getting naked?!” I whispered viciously—to no one because he’d already gone.
In a minute, another row of darts tore loose with the earsplitting sound of shredding metal. They ignored us in favor of targeting Pritkin and the row of sobbing fabric he was sticking in cracks and crevasses along the wall. The material was fast turning into tatters as dart after dart hit it, fracturing the stone behind and letting in what could now literally be called a flood. Between the crying dress and the rushing water, the wards suddenly had plenty to shoot at besides us.
“Come on!” Caleb tugged me out of the protective shade of the table. “That charm won’t last forever!”
We swam full out for the far wall, staying underwater as much as possible. The wards had rotated away from us to fire volley after volley in Pritkin’s direction, their rusty clanging a cacophony in the enclosed space. I peered into the gloom every time we surfaced, desperately trying to see him, but the light was just too low. The most my eyes could pick out were brief flashes off multiple knifelike edges, as dozens of darts were flung through the air.
I was still looking when I swam into the wall. Caleb steadied me and then ducked underwater for a minute. “The door is just below us,” he told me after surfacing. “John was right: the corridor is completely flooded. But the stairs are only about fifteen feet to the left.” He started to dive again, but I caught his arm.
“John will be all right.”
I stared at the hail of darts that were still being unleashed behind us. Chunks the size of boulders had been carved out of the wall where they hit, with a spiderweb of cracks radiating out from the larger ones. “How could anyone be all right in that?”
“Trust me—I know him.”
“So do I,” I said savagely. “That’s what’s worrying me!” A crack echoed through the room, loud enough to momentarily drown out the wards. And the next second, a huge piece of the wall gave way, dropping almost whole into the flood like the calving of a glacier. It hit the water with the granddaddy of all belly flops. The resulting wave reached even us, slamming me back into Caleb.
“Don’t move,” he whispered as the nearest chandelier rotated our way, drawn by the disturbance of the water. It swiveled this way and that, sending darts slicing through the waves crashing all around us.
