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Darius turns to me, his expression a mixture of frustration and determination. “I won’t accept that. Give me more time to figure it out.”
I reach into my pocket to check my phone again, but we haven’t miraculously found reception since the last time I looked. The only change is that my battery is low.
I tuck my phone away. “What if you discorporealate?”
The idea has nagged at me for a while now. Our only way out may be for Darius to shuck his corporeal body and escape that way. He can take on a new form and return for me.
But he shakes his head. “I haven’t tried it yet without—”
When he cuts off, I tilt my head back to find him looking away with a guilty expression.
“I know you and Marc have been sharing a body at night,” I say softly. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice that he never comes to my room to sleep anymore?”
Darius’s shoulders sag. “I’m sorry, Merri.”
“It doesn’t bother me if it makes you guys happy.” I reach out to catch his hand. “I imagine it’s comforting for both of you after you were together for so long. There’s no reason to hide it.”
He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “You’re too understanding.”
My pulse quickens, and I clear my suddenly dry throat. “So, you haven’t tried discorporealating except for when you join with Marc?”
Darius dips his head in acknowledgment. “It’s not the same as simply abandoning a body. The process is slower. I’m not sure where I’ll end up if I step out of this form with no other body to move in to. I could be pulled back to the demon plane or to the safe house where our soul stones reside.”
I squeeze his fingers. “If you have to kill me, do that and discorporealate. We need to know what will happen to you, and if you’re sucked back to the safe house, you’ll be there to remind me of who I am.”
“I’m not ready to choose that path.” He kneels beside me, bringing our clasped hands to his chest. “We’re in this together, my lady. We’ll find a way out.”
I manage a weak smile, the corners of my lips twitching. “We’ve gotten out of tighter binds.”
Amusement lights his eyes. “So we have.”
With a heavy sigh, I push myself to my feet. “Okay, so what’s the new plan?”
Darius’s grin widens, and he rises as well, his broad shoulders brushing against mine. “Well, I have an idea. But you might not like it.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Try me.”
His gaze drops to the ground. “We pile up the bones so I can get closer to the ceiling, then burn through the roots.”
I frown. “But the roots will just heal themselves.”
His jaw clenches with determination. “Then I’ll keep burning until we create a big enough hole to escape through.”
I chew on my lower lip, torn between the knowledge his plan is still likely to fail versus the need to try anything, no matter how unlikely it is to succeed.
“Okay,” I say at last. “Where do we start?”
Working together, we gather bones from the outer edges of the pile and stack them in the center. It will be a precarious mound, and Darius will need to work fast once he climbs on top.
It’s mindless, tedious work, but at least it keeps us busy instead of focused on the inevitability of our situation.
Sharpe and Meredith both know we headed to the Bone Yard, but there’s no way a search party will find us down here. Even if someone retraced our steps to Nickodemus’s lair, the boogeyman would have no reason to tell them where we went.
And if, by chance, he sent them into the hole after us, they’d just fall prey to the same trap we did.
All too fast, we run out of bones from the fringes, and taking more from the center area keeps creating small avalanches that threaten our work. When we step back, our new mountain only reaches halfway to the ceiling.
I stare up at our gruesome creation. “Will it get you close enough?”
