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“Underworld is a location and there’s one in each realm. The vilest elements of our world and from earth frequent these establishments. But they are guarded with every manner of dark fae ingenuity possible.”
“Can’t Mastyr Stone and his Guard go in and clean it out?”
Davido shook his head slowly and Oregis mimicked him, but not for humor’s sake. The forest gremlin appeared equally solemn and his large pointed ears twitched.
“Why not?” She knew her voice sounded shrill, but she’d never been so frightened in her life.
She was fae. Very, very, very fae. She was feeling it now, as well, the future heading toward her like the proverbial freight train.
Sometimes the sensitive elements of her genetics could be so raw from sensation and feeling, she would sit trembling for half an hour. What she sensed now, as she opened those same sensors, was a darkness she’d never felt before. She’d only experienced something similar earlier when she saw the dark fae inject Rez with the poison.
She shifted her gaze to Oregis. “So, the black market isn’t part of Underworld?”
He shook his head. “We might be a thieving lot. But most of us have a code we adhere to especially concerning Underworld. But there are some, even among my kind, who prefer the more addictive aspects of the place.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“No. Don’t want to. Sometimes gremlins go in. Mostly, they don’t come out.”
“Have you ever seen the entrance?”
“Hell, no. It’s said that once you’ve seen it, it’s too late.”
“How do we even go looking for it then?”
Both Davido and Oregis remained silent.
She realized Rez hadn’t been saying much. As she turned toward him slightly, she sensed something different. His gaze was narrowed and fixed on the opposite bank of windows or maybe the rolling forest and snow clad peaks beyond. He seemed deep in thought.
Rez?” She wanted him to come back. She needed him here, in the conversation.
She repeated his name with a sharper tone.
Though he finally turned to look at her, she could tell his thoughts were fixed elsewhere. His words illuminated what he was thinking. “I know what we have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“We need to go into the continuum right now and see if we can locate Underworld.”
~ ~ ~
Rez turned to look at the forest again. He knew in his gut they needed to use Holly’s time-path to locate Underworld. But his thoughts had run a completely different direction, something he couldn’t say to Holly right now.
Instead, his daughter had come sharply to mind. She’d been sixteen and so beautiful the night she’d been taken. She’d been shooting hoops with her brothers and had blown him a kiss. “Love you, Dad. Don’t forget the school play.” She was the lead in an old realm musical and the performance was at midnight. “I’ll be back by eleven.”
He’d come back to a nightmare.
But why was he thinking about Isobel now?
His heartrate suddenly doubled. What if the reason he’d never found her, not even in any of the realm morgues, was because she’d been taken to Underworld?
“You would do that? You would go to Underworld?”
It took Rez a moment to register Holly’s question. When he did, he also recognized the familiar disparaging surprise in her voice.
By now, though, his own opinion of her had softened and he’d begun to comprehend she had reasons for believing everything she’d heard about him as well.
“Of course, I would.” He even smiled.
