Kitty’s Big Trouble by Carrie Vaughn (books to read as a couple .TXT) 📕

turn,” Anastasia said, her voice muted and anxious. She stood outside our small circle of light and her features were shadowed.

I faced her. “Do you know something or is that just more doom and gloom?”

Cormac said, “It’s that we can’t get out of here without Grace leading us. She’s got the key to the place. Until we find her, we’re stuck.”

Chapter 9

I BACKTRACKED, LETTING the others follow me as they would, until I came to that first intersection. Or what should have been that first intersection, the one that led to the closet and the storeroom where we found the nine-tailed fox. The light was almost nonexistent now, and I was seeing the place through wolfish eyes. Maybe that was why I didn’t recognize it. I couldn’t have taken another wrong turn. I heard the others come up behind me, stepping softly, breaths echoing against the stone. The light from Cormac’s lantern pressed forward like a wall.

Crouching, I took in the smells. I caught the other werewolf pack, their maleness and foreignness; their ill intent in hunting us, all musky and sour, full of adrenaline. I took in our own smells: the chill of the vampire, Cormac’s human warmth, the familiar scent of Ben. I thought I even caught a hint of Grace—a trace of what her store smelled like, retail scents of cardboard packaging and money overlaid with the smoke from her candle. But when I tried to follow it, her trail vanished, as if she had simply taken off from the spot and flown away.

There should have been pools of freshly spilled blood, its odor wafting through the tunnels. I only smelled the drying blood smeared all over Ben and me.

I pressed my hands against the rough brick. It was hard not to feel as if the walls were closing in on me, or imagine unseen gazes of otherworldly spirits drawing closer, the skittering of movement growing louder. It was beginning to sound like laughter.

“What have you gotten us into?” I said to Anastasia. Growled, rather.

“You knew the risks,” she said.

The risks being that something completely unexpected and bizarre would happen? Okay, then. “‘It’s Roman, he’s taking over the world,’ you said. ‘Okay, I’m on the way,’ like I’m some kind of superhero. When am I going to learn?” I started marching, following the wall. It couldn’t go on forever. “There’s got to be a way out of here.”

“Kitty,” Ben called, and I stopped. That was all he had to say. Taking a breath, I calmed myself.

Anastasia sounded tired when she said, “I called you because I don’t have anyone else to turn to. Not anymore.” She was supposed to have her protégé and her servant, Gemma and Dorian. But she’d led them into a trap and gotten them killed.

She’d done the smart thing, bringing a guide here to make sure we had a way into and out of whatever magical cubbyhole this was. I was the one who’d chased Grace off—for her own good, of course. From a certain point of view this was my fault.

Pointing fingers wasn’t going to get us out of here.

A few paces behind us, Cormac had set down the lantern and by its light was drawing on the floor with a piece of chalk. Along with the amulets and charms, he evidently carried chalk in his pockets now, too.

I crept closer for a better look; the white lines of the chalk drawing stood out in the semidarkness, almost as if they glowed.

“Stay back,” he said, and I stopped. He had drawn a quick design, arrows and arcs, a couple of letters. It looked like scribbling.

“Will that help us find Grace?” I said.

“I don’t much care about Grace. I’m just trying to find a way out of here.”

“How long is this going to take?”

He ignored me and kept working. I started pacing because what else could I do? I looked back and forth down the corridor, wondering what was going to jump out at us. Ben was doing the same thing nearby. Our anxiety sparked across the space to each other, feeding each other. We were caged wolves.

“Kitty, calm down,” Anastasia said.

“We’re not safe here.”

“We killed them. They’re not coming back.”

“But what else is down here? Another one of those nine-tailed foxes? Or those guys could come back as zombie werewolves. What’ll we do then?”

“I hadn’t thought of zombie werewolves,” Ben muttered.

“There’s no such thing as zombie werewolves,” Anastasia said, and if you couldn’t believe an eight-hundred-year-old vampire about something like that, who could you believe?

“Says you,” Cormac said. I stopped and looked.

He set one of his silver daggers in the middle of the chalk design, stood back, and waited. After a breath or two, it trembled, all on its own, metal scraping against concrete. Slowly it turned, like a compass needle. The dagger’s tip passed one marking, then another. We gathered closer, watching to see where it rested—and if that would point to the way out. But it never rested. It rotated a full circle, wavered, reversed course and did the same in the opposite direction. Almost as if confused, it turned one way and the other, rattling harder, making more noise as it skittered on the hard floor. It seemed sentient, the way it searched and grew more erratic when it didn’t find its goal.

Corman finally stepped on it, trapping it. “It’s not working.”

I paced again. Cormac picked up the knife, dusted it off, and scuffed out the chalk marking with his boot.

“Now what?” Anastasia said.

“This was supposed to be your party, why don’t you come up with something?” Ben said.

“I just wanted the pearl. Chen was supposed to be here, the pearl was supposed to be here, I didn’t count on any of this.” She shook her head, squaring her shoulders and resettling her dignity. “We should wait for Chen. She’ll return to find us.”

“Not if she’s smart.” I stalked away from them, down the straightaway. “Even if we can’t find the same door there’s got to