I threw my hands in the air, dissolving the mini fire. “Like I was supposed to know I had a private elevator to hell?”
“This is the und-d-der-r-wor-rld?” Hondo’s teeth chattered.
“It’s gotta be Rattle House.” Brooks rubbed her hands together before tugging the gateway map out of her backpack.
“One of the six fatal houses?” I said.
“Fatal?” Hondo echoed.
“Yeah,” I said as I drew more fire from Rosie to warm everyone. “The first is Dark House—so dark it drives people crazy. The second is this place. The third is Jaguar House, filled with hungry razor-toothed cats ready to rip out your throat.”
“Man,” Hondo groaned. “What’s up with the Maya gods and blood and guts?”
Brooks drew closer, her hawk eyes glowing amber. “The fourth is the worst, if you ask me. Bat House, filled with the bloodthirsty shrieking things.” She shivered a little as she studied the map. “They like to suck your blood nice and slow.”
“Dude, can you make the fire a little bigger?” Hondo asked, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Trying to meditate away the cold.”
“Is it working?”
“No.”
Rosie whined and danced as she stared down at the shifting eyes in the ice, trying to stamp them out with her massive paws.
“You’re afraid of the eyes?” I asked her.
Rosie groaned her agreement, and then, without warning, a torrent of fire erupted from her mouth, aimed directly at the floor.
“STOP! STEAK!” I yelled. “You want to melt the floor and let them loose?”
“Uh, that would be a huge NO!” Hondo cried, opening his eyes.
Surprisingly, Rosie listened to me this time; I scrat
ched her neck.
Ren rubbed her arms vigorously, scanning the miserable space no bigger than my bedroom. “Uh, guys…I don’t think there’s a way out of here.”
Anger pulsed beneath my skin that this…this was my entrance to the underworld? What happened to the nice, newly renovated apartment Ixtab and I had hung out in before?
“These houses are just places to test people’s strength,” I said, looking around for an exit. But why would Ixtab want to test me more than I’d already been tested? “The twins got through here somehow….”
“The twins,” Hondo repeated, venom in his voice. “Well, if those morons could find a way out, so can we.” He rushed around the room, tapping his knuckles on the icy walls, looking disgusted.
Rosie hurried behind him.
“Well?” I peered over the edge of the map Brooks was holding. The wrinkled paper was a mess of crisscrossing lines in all different colors, connecting flashing blue squares. I remembered the first time I saw this thing and how it was like staring at a long scientific formula. Ms. Cab had explained that these magic maps are rare and the squares mark the gateways to different places and layers of the world.
“Whoa,” Ren breathed. “All the place names keep changing. I just saw Boise Tortillería and now…the letters are some kind of hieroglyphs.”
“Look for one that’s blinking slowly. They blink faster when they’re going to close soon,” I said, as if I could read the thing. Thankfully, Brooks could, sort of. Hopefully enough to get us to the other side of hell and close to South Dakota.
“Er…we’ve got a problem,” Brooks said.
“Other than freezing to death in hell?” Hondo shouted as he continued looking for a way out.