Fox and Phoenix (Lóng City 1)

Okay. Pretend that you’re watching an old-time vid, clicking through a single frame at a time. Go back to yesterday again. Lian had declared she would walk home if necessary. You were thinking she looked like a hawk, an eagle, bright-eyed and fierce. Slower. Next picture. Quan shows up and speaks. Lian bolts to her feet. More talkety-talk. (Careful. Slow down.) Angry Lian. Quan desperate. He reached out and pulled Lian into that astonishing forever kiss. Both stare at the other. Click to next. Quan’s speaking. Now, he tells Lian. She strikes. Quan darts through the farther door . . .

I hurried through the farther door, following memory.

A corridor continued a short distance, ending in a blank wall. Doors and openings led off to either side. Quan had disappeared right away. He must have, or else the chief librarian’s minions would have caught up with him. That meant he’d turned almost immediately into a side chamber.

I made a careful search of the next alcove on my right. A pair of cranky ghost dragons glared at me as I quickly ran my fingers over the bookshelves, then along the cracks between the various cases. No luck. No exits.

To the left, then.

They say you make your own good fortune. Disbelieve in yourself, and the world does, too. Yún and I had proved that last year when we gave the princess her heart’s desire, but this was a much harder task. An almost impossible one. For all I knew, Quan had used a secret nobles-only spell, one they hadn’t bothered to share with Lian.

I scanned the chamber with fingers and eyes. No luck here, either. I turned to go, trying to quash my doubts. A puff of air brushed my cheek as I crossed the tiny chamber. It took me two more steps before I registered the clues. Breeze. Basement. No windows or doors. Where had that breeze come from?

I backpedaled like a slow-motion monkey until I felt the breeze again. It came from the right-hand set of shelves. Now I could see the narrow gap between two tall stacks. It ran from floor to ceiling.

I pressed my eye to the opening. Shadows flickered in the darkness beyond, and the breeze carried the unmistakable scent of damp earth and magic flux. From farther off I heard dripping water. Yes. Here was Quan’s secret passageway.

“A SECRET PASSAGE?” Yún said.

“How else could he get out?”

We’d returned to the library. Yún had told the chief librarian that I had failed to obtain the correct scrolls. If he would permit, she would carry out the princess’s orders. She had come equipped with writing materials and, she added, a better understanding of her mistress’s requirements than her unfortunate companion, who had been dropped into a gargoyle pit when a young child. To my disgust and relief, the chief librarian believed her.

Now Yún examined the almost-invisible division between two bookshelves. She laid a hand over the gap and whispered a spell.

The magic flux chuckled. Nothing else happened.

“I wish Qi were here.” She sighed.

“I wish we weren’t,” I said.

Yún didn’t bother to answer Mr. Obvious. She tried a few more spells, but nothing worked. Meanwhile, Yao-guài was chittering and chattering emphatically. I hushed him. He snapped at me. I tried to grab his beak, but he escaped and leapt at the bookshelves, trilling loudly. Yún tried to pull him away—he’d latched onto a stack of old papers and bits flew everywhere—but he only snapped and trilled louder.

“Yao-guài,” she hissed. ?

?Stop making so much noise—”

Yao-guài opened his beak wide and a note rang out.

My ears popped. My insides lurched. It was like standing on the edge of a very tall precipice.

Yún didn’t look much better. She clutched her stomach, and her face turned the color of a pasty, pale dumpling. Yao-guài hummed. A sour stink filled the air, as though a wild animal had passed close by. Just when I thought I would throw up, the humming stopped suddenly and the tension vanished.

Click.

One bookcase slid backward three feet. With a happy cry, the griffin launched himself into flight and soared through the gap. Yún and I darted after him.

And stopped.

We stood in a dim, shadowed corridor. Dust coated the stone-paved walls and floor. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling in a thick veil to our left. From far off, I heard the sound of water dripping and the clickety-clack of beetles scuttling away. Yao-guài had vanished.

“Now what?” I said.

“We follow those footprints,” Yún said, pointing at the fresh tracks in the dust that led off to the right, through the fluttering shreds of more cobwebs.

We followed them through two double bends and left at another intersection. There the corridor continued in a straight line, but the tracks stopped at a hatch set in the middle of the floor. We undid the bolts and eased the hatch open. Yao-guài reappeared on Yún’s shoulder, chittering, then dove into the tunnel. We scrambled down the metal ladder after him.

Magical lamps flickered on as soon as we hit the ground. In some ways, it reminded me of Lóng City’s sewers. Well, except these underground passages didn’t stink of dung and garbage.